Montclair free-for-all

Since Montclair changed its form of government to directly elect its mayor 20 years ago, not a single incumbent has won a second term.

The job pays $7,000 and doesn’t wield much more power than a regular member of the Township Council. But with Mayor Ed Remsen’s announcement that he will not seek reelection, five people – including three current council members – have taken out petitions to run for the office in this long, narrow New York City bedroom community with a dense and diverse population of about 40,000.

The non-partisan election in May promises to be an impassioned free-for-all. Council members Joyce Michaelson, Ted Mattox and Gerald Tobin have all decided to seek the mayor’s seat. Also interested in running are local antique dealer Noel Brogan and former Councilman Donald Zief. And since the council members’ terms are not staggered, all six seats are up for grabs – with 23 people currently interested in seeking one of those positions either at-large or in one of the four wards, many of whom will run on slates with the mayoral candidates (some of the mayoral candidates have also picked up council petitions).

“They tire of us, they want some new faces in there,” said Remsen, who said that he never really planned to seek reelection, but didn’t say so early on because it would essentially render him a lame duck. “You can have a real lack of continuity sometimes, and the upturn of having a turnover is you have a cluster of people who run as a team and want to get something done.”

The town’s mayor sits on the council and acts as its head, but like the rest of the members, only has one vote on most issues. He does have the power to appoint school board members and the library director. The day-to-day running of the town is the responsibility of the Township Manager, who is appointed and evaluated by the entire council.

“We’re sort of like the board of directors of a non-profit organization,” said Remsen.

For the most part, the mayoral candidates agree that Montclair faces a few major challenges: high property taxes, overdevelopment, and an increasing gap between the middle-class and wealthy majority of residents and its smaller poor population. Some also fear that the town – which is about 1/3 black – is becoming more segregated.

Remsen said he’s not sure whether he’ll make an endorsement, but he’s certain of one thing: he won’t get behind Mattox, who, along with 20 other Montclair residents, filed an ethically-charged lawsuit against the Township, which resulted in a countersuit filed by the council. Mattox, in his four years as an at-large councilman, has become the black sheep of the body. In December, 2006, Remsen even accused him of trying to bribe him in order to vote to increase council salaries.

Mattox, 43, moved to Montclair from Manhattan’s Upper West Side 10 years ago and has served one term on the council. He thinks that this election could represent a generational shift – from the long-term residents who are comfortable with the way town government has always been run to people who, like him, moved there recently and haven’t yet seen a return on their real-estate investments.

Residents, he said, are paying high taxes but aren’t seeing the tip-top town services that they’d expect. He noted that Montclair’s school barely crack the top 100 in the state, and that it wasn’t recently named in New Jersey Monthly as one of the state’s best places to live.

“Montclair’s image has suffered over the last few years through what I would consider a town council that is not up for the challenge of leadership,” he said, noting that Montclair is in deep debt. “I think where we are now as a township is we really have to get back on the road to fiscal responsibility. That means keeping our police cars on the road a year longer, taking a good, hard look at things like temporary salary freezes for non-union employees.”

Mattox’s relationship with the rest of the council has been strained, to say the least, culminating in the lawsuit he helped file alleging that the town gave out no-bid contracts.

“I definitely think it will be hotly contested, and it will boil down, I think around generational lines. More and more people are coming from other places,” he said.

Councilwoman and Deputy Mayor Joyce Michaelson said that the tone on the council has been snippy, and pointed to the lawsuit as an example of the nastiness of the current situation.

Taxes, she said, are a problem. So are overdevelopment and the conservation of historic buildings. But it will be a lot easier to solve these issues with a council that can work together.

“One of our council members is using us, so that’s not a good tone,” she said. “And you have sarcasm being fought with sarcasm. In my mind sarcasm doesn’t work, lawsuits don’t work and guns don’t work.”

Michaelson said that she’s forming a slate, but isn’t ready to release the names of her running mates.

Noel Brogan is a local antique dealer who’s lived in town for 40 years. She’s never held elected office before, but thinks that she’s well-known enough in the community to make a splash in this election. But she sees some of the characteristics she’s cherished about her community – most notably its tight-knit nature and its ethnic diversity – are in danger of disappearing amidst the influx of ex-New Yorkers moving into new, densely built developments. She calls it the “citification” of Montclair.

And there’s one person Brogan blames more than anyone for overdevelopment: Township Manager Joseph Hartnett. The council, she said, needs to keep him in check, and replace him if necessary.

“We’re not Queens, we’re not Brooklyn, we’re not the Bronx – this is Montclair, and it’s known the world over,” she said. “People who have lived their whole lives in New Jersey have a different sense of the state, their neighborhoods, the community and themselves… People who come form big cities and have always lived in the little microcosm of an apartment and co-op or whatever.”

None of the town’s developments, she said, give anything back to the community.

“It’s actually the town manager’s fault even though he’s supposed to be responsive to the mayor and council,” she said.

But Gerald Tobin, who’s served on the council since 2000, said that Brogan should know better than to make this election about a town manager who’s not supposed to be political.

“It would be a bad thing and a perversion of the form of government to make the manager an issue in this election,” he said.

Tobin, a 58-year-old lawyer, plans to run for mayor but has not yet announced who will join his slate. Like Michaelson, Tobin feels the discord on the council, and points some of the blame at Mattox. But, he said, he will make it a point to be conciliatory.

“I feel like we’ve had a lot of divisiveness over the last few years in terms of our current council. A lot of people feel they’re disengaged from the process, the council’s not listening, and by my experience and temperament I tend to be a conciliator.”