February - March 2002 Edition

From The Mayor's Chair   We live in the shadow of New York City.  Fair Lawn's 31,600 residents, our community, our emergency management, our businesses and other commercial establishments, our retail merchants, our municipal services.   Growing up in Rockville Centre, New York, a community on Long Island that is about 26 miles to the East of Manhattan, I felt very much the same way and maybe that's why I am so at home in the Borough of Fair Lawn, where I moved in 1981 (from the Big Apple) to raise a family and make a home.   The Mayor of the City of New York is all-powerful. We know that in the wake of the events of September 11, but as a kid, I remember Mayor Wagner, Mayor Lindsay, Mayor Koch and lately Mayor Giuliani. (I know I have omitted some other names, but they weren't all-powerful in the media, and perhaps in real life).   You listen to Mayor Giuliani on WCBS radio in their "ask the Mayor" program, see him demand that his Commissioners take action, and find that he is in the thick of things -- like the World Trade Center disaster, right in the bunker at Ground Zero. When he's not doing something, Peter Vallone, the long-time president of the City Council is. (Both are now gone, thanks to term limitations).   By contrast, our system of government has a very different role for the Mayor, the Borough Council, and the way that they interact with the public, the Manager of the Borough, and in resolving the problems of the day.   For the past 25 years, I have been a practicing lawyer in New York City. During the last four years, I've been privileged to serve as an elected member of the Fair Lawn Borough Council, a municipal legislative body composed of five members. Over the past three years, I have had the honor to be Mayor -- a post I continue to hold today, elected not by the citizens of Fair Lawn, but rather by the Borough Council itself.   Ours is a Faulkner Act community, meaning that we have a Manager who runs the Borough on a day to day basis, and a Council that functions pretty much like a corporate board of directors -- setting broad policy, but not dealing with the specifics of resolving issues that at the forefront of any one boro resident's mind.   The Mayor is on the front-line, however, and Faulkner Act or not, living in the shadow of New York City, the belief is that the buck stops at my desk -- and it does. For better or worse, the Mayor's office is complaint central -- when Borough residents aren't calling me at home, or in my "real" office, the law firm where I practice on the Upper East Side of New York City.   The Mayor's principal job in Fair Lawn is to preside over the Council meetings which take place about 48 times each year -- in plenary or work session. It is also to provide leadership on issues, insight, and to draw on experience and common sense to try and solve neighborhood problems that are common to, and affect, all of us.   Besides presiding over the Council, one of the major responsibilities that I have is to be a spokesman for the Borough on many issues. That has called me to speaking engagements throughout Bergen County, and even throughout the state. I even testified once before the Senate Banking Committee, in September 2000, as Mayor, but that was because they were seeking my expertise as a coin collector -- which has been my hobby for more than 40 years.   But the speaking that I enjoy most is when it is to groups that meet here in Fair Lawn. Rotary Club, a Church group, a Men's Progress Club, to a cub scout troop studying government, or even the third grade at one of the grammar schools studying our own home town -- that's what I like the most. It also led to one of the funniest stories that I can recall.   I was speaking to the third grade class at Westmoreland School. I usually speak for about 15 minutes and tell the third graders all about Fair Lawn, and the Council. I start by asking them how many votes the Mayor has to get to be elected -- try and confuse them. A couple of the kids knew that it was only three votes (three members of a five person Council). Then I take about 20 minutes of questions.   One of the first questions was "Mayor, what do you like most about your job?" The answer to that is an easy one. I said, "I like marrying people", and I do. It's the happiest day in the life of two people who love each other deeply, and are thinking at that moment of nothing else but spending their rest of their lives with their beloved. "In fact, I've married six people this year," I said. And that's true. Each year, I marry about a dozen couples; sometimes in their living room, sometimes in Boro Hall, sometimes at a reception center -- I use a version of a quiet, respectful ceremony that I borrowed from former Borough Judge Dennis LaHiff, because the State statute says that a Mayor has authority to marry people.   About 15 minutes later, yet another little hand shot into the air and asked with all innocence, "Mayor, when you take one of your six wives out, do the five that stay at home get jealous?" It broke up the teachers, the aides and me, too, as we hastened to explain that I was acting like a priest or a rabbi, not the groom.   A Mayor's work is truly never done. Whether it's an e-mail to the manager to follow up on a council request or a response to a homeowner who seeks a proclamation for the 100th Birthday of her father, or just to inquire from the manager where the snow plows are.  Deputy Mayor Marty Etler, Deputy Mayor for Community Affairs Steve Weinstein, and Council members Victor Amato and Allan Caan -- we all have a common goal (which we think we've met over the last four years): a safer, nicer, friendlier, and better Fair Lawn.   What Do You Think?: Send an e- mail to editor@fairlawnnews.com or post a message on the Fair Lawn News Discussion Forum.