News-pourri

The first steps in the property swap between the township and the Board of Education were taken the week of Sept. 24. Through the swap, the Board of Education will acquire about 13 acres of the Consolata Mission property on Route 27, and the township will get about six acres on Amwell Road, in the form of the old Middlebush …

A Township Councilman appears to have tried to influence a Municipal Court judge – over whom he has reappointment power – to help a local landlord evict tenants from her property, according to emails reviewed by the Franklin Reporter & Advocate. The councilman, Rajiv Prasad (D-At Large), steered the landlord to Municipal Court Judge Hector Rodriguez in an email sent …

Analysis

The Board of Education on Sept. 26 took its first step to look five years into the future. The board’s facilities committee met in its annual open meeting to discuss the upcoming Long Range Facility Plan.

The Mayor and Township Council for the second consecutive meeting on Sept. 25 were criticized for the handling of a proposed “Peace and Nonviolence” monument park, targeted for township-owned open space. At the meeting, council members also discussed the idea of scraping all existing plans for the park and starting over with a reconstituted “citizen’s committee” the first charge of …

An anonymous automated telephone messaging campaign designed to bring supporters of the proposed “Peace and Nonviolence” monument park to the Sept. 25 Township Council meeting is underway. The robo-call message, which is less than two minutes long, does not identify who sponsored it.

A portion of Cedar Grove Lane is scheduled to undergo some rehabbing starting Sept. 25. The stretch of the county road from Easton Avenue to New Brunswick Road will be milled down and repaved, said county engineer Matthew Loper.

The effort by a group of township residents to recall Township Councilman Rajiv Prasad has begun. A “Notice of Intent to Recall,” the first step in the process, was filed with Township Clerk Ann Marie McCarthy on Sept. 18. McCarthy has three business days from then to validate the three signatures on the notice – Christina Ganzer, Ravikanth Kolla and …

Updated with comment from Deputy Mayor Robinson and statement from the Somerset County Democratic Committee. The chairman of the Somerset County Republican party Sept. 18 called on Deputy Mayor Shanel Robinson to release all of her emails concerning the “Peace and Nonviolence” monument park issue.

A Township Councilman on Sept. 13 called on an embattled colleague to “consider resigning” over his actions in furtherance of the proposed “Peace and Non-Violence” monument park. The comment came from Councilman Ted Chase (D-Ward 1) after members of the public had eviscerated the council in general, and Councilman Rajiv Prasad (D-At Large) in particular, for more than an hour …