OFFICE OF THE MAYOR

Message of Mayor Mary-Anna Holden

Madison Mayoral message, January 1, 2010

            Ambitions run high this year despite financial constraints similar to those of 75 years ago. 

            Notwithstanding 1935’s Great Depression, community leadership nurtured vision, clarity of direction and civic generosity.  Thus, marked progress in Madison history was made. 

            Big changes were in store for the struggling nation and our borough in 1935, as they are now.

            Locally, Mayor Allan H. Brown and his Council worked to balance a budget with unknown federal and state welfare-relief mandates.   However, he vowed that no citizen would go hungry or without shelter.

            Today, this mayor faces her own balancing act as the Council is faced with a State-mandated $250,000 pension contribution increase; a $300,000 healthcare cost increase; and is forced to no longer subsidize the cost to purchase power from its dwindling surplus – one that once fed the Borough operating budget to lower taxes.  Last November’s delay in the much-needed electric rate increase has only reddened this utility’s bottom line.  I congratulate those who courageously shunned political gamesmanship and realistically supported this still-needed rate increase.

            As this may seem an added burden to our residents, the Borough will proactively help residents and merchants meet their electric and water utility obligations with payment plans, and seek legislation and technology to allow power to be priced by peak and off-peak usage.  The good news is that as of today, the State is opening a rebate program to communities with a municipally owned electric utility to encourage purchases of energy-efficient appliances, such as washers and dryers.  Also, we are only the second of these same-type communities to be allowed participation in the NJSHARE program whereby residents in distress may apply for up to $700 in assistance with heating and electric bills.  Program information will be included with Borough utility bills.

            In 2010, the Borough will work in a new paradigm enabling the Council to finance and follow through on long, long-discussed projects, and to permit making the most of the many talents and offers of citizen volunteers, just as Madisonians united to help one another 75 years ago.

            Mrs. Marcellus Hartley Dodge, for her part, handed over the keys to an $800,000 new borough hall on Decoration Day 1935.  Twice between 1933 and 1935 her project employed more than 100 local residents in excavation, steel working, millwork, masonry, and more.

            Similarly, on Memorial Day of this year, we will re-dedicate the Hartley Dodge Memorial Building in a re-enactment of its dedication.

            2010 will mark the end of other long, drawn-out projects.  The 1999 grant-funded train station landscape planting is complete, and now work may begin to rebuild Lincoln Place’s infrastructure, and have it assume its rightful place as the historic downtown’s gateway.

            The nine-years-promised Civic Center elevator installation will be completed by March, increasing functionality and programming possibilities for this public space.

            We will develop and dedicate Northern New Jersey’s finest sports facility at the 49 acres and adjoining high school acreage, with opening play slated for early Fall.  Initial development will include three multi-purpose, artificial turf fields and one tournament-sized, standalone baseball/softball field.  Funding will stem from an alliance among the Board of Education, the Borough of Madison and the Madison Athletic Foundation, with the all-volunteer, charitable Madison Athletic Foundation as lead agency for fundraising and the help of the Open Space, Recreation and Historic Preservation Fund volunteers for grants seeking and writing.

            I charge the Recreation Advisory Committee and our Director of Technology, Jim Sanderson, with seeking out and implementing easily accessible, online, facilities scheduling and sports registration before summer.  Asset management is a priority. Paper and pencil, and the perennial “we’ve-always-done-it-that-way” attitude are no longer acceptable for organizing playing time or fields maintenance.

            Natural turf fields will continue to improve with gratitude to the initiative of volunteer talent assuming capital projects that supplement the Department of Public Works workforce.  They hearken to the federal Civilian Conservation Corps, or CCC, created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933 in what was an infrastructures employment opportunity that expanded into the Works Progress Administration of 1935 (perhaps the dawn of America’s greatest creative period).  Borrowing from Roosevelt’s 1935 model, I call for the creation of a Madison Civilian Community Corps.  Ours, however, will be a volunteer-based drive rather than an employment opportunity.

            It is a call to mobilize community talent to lend a hand to one another, to complete long-discussed tasks; to take ownership of projects; and to save taxpayer dollars. Maybe your talent is clearing brush; bagging leaves; shoveling snow; sprucing up the downtown; resume writing for an out-of-work neighbor; plotting a path to note flora and fauna; fields maintenance; video programming; pond and stream clearing; writing; or creating picnic grounds.  Madison needs you.

            By example, May Day has gained strength in numbers with over 900 participants last year.  It’s just the right mix and catalyst for our Madison CCC. 

            Let’s expand May Day to a Green Fair weekend emphasizing ways to go “green,” save “green” and all while taking steps to sustain your own quality of life over the long term.   I envision exhibitors for energy savings; recycling; composting; green cleaning products; solar, geothermal, rain and green-roof technologies; local food production and gardens planning; Mayor’s Wellness Campaign demonstrations for walking, biking and senior fitness; and maybe even a return of last year’s beloved Dodgeball tournament with the traditional May Day work and Arbor Day festivities.

            Clearly one other item borrowed from the WPA would be to muster writers and photographers to update, from 1980 to the present, the book, Madison, the Heritage Trail.  Another would be the return of the downtown Art Show, emphasizing local artists and craftspeople.  Certainly music and theatre were a large part of the WPA and Main Street Executive Director, Jim Burnet, I know will seek to return the popular entertainment series along with the Farmers’ Market to Madison business venues in the downtown and the East End.

            Let us pool our individual talents for the greater good of Madison.

            Sherwood Anderson in his book Home Town captures the essence of American small town values, versus a city’s, 75 years ago in a series of essays, and illustrates an intimacy of small town life.  He suggests that those values that united a community to overcome the Depression are permanent and immutable, and are what makes human life possible and worthwhile.   “Man is his brother’s keeper, but only in the towns is he willing to accept that responsibility, a responsibility that makes human life endurable.”

            Let us in 2010 renew our special sense of community and break the confines of the current Great Recession with volunteerism and stewardship for our fellow Madisonians.

                                                                                    - -  Mary-Anna Holden,

                                                                                                Madison Mayor

                                                                                                 January 1, 2010

The mayor's New Year's message for 2010 may be viewed on YouTube