Poor Old Mrs. Jones

The West Orange Council Chambers were quite full tonight as residents protesting the weakening of the Tree Ordinance politely made their case for a stronger ordinance.... and listened to the Council attempt to explain their "dilemma".

The presentations of several in the audience were quite impressive. There was the mention of Mayor McKeon having supported the Kyoto Accord to reduce green house gases. And here is Mayor McKeon now backing more and more development and tree removal every day in his own town!

There was also the very visual presentation of a tree trunk which was used to demonstrate how trees absorb stormwater runoff. Were the council not so determined to keep the evening short, it could have been mentioned that trees save their host city millions of dollars in infrastructure costs.

But the confluence for the evening was the Council offering as rationale for this diluted and quite useless ordinance the fact that there are two opposing needs: the need to protect individual property owners' rights and the need to preserve the township's trees.

Even if this split in needs were not the ostensible rationale for the Council not having any tree ordinance in place for almost a year, the reasoning strains credibility for all of us watching this process unfold.

In previous discussions, the Council spoke of the poor woman who has neither health, nor youthful mobility, nor monetary resources to appeal if she needed to take down a tree and the ordinance got in her way. Poor Old Mrs. Jones.

Yet, Paul Tractenberg in his presentation, spoke of much more onerous, expensive and confusing ordinances that would necessitate that Mrs. Jones spend time and money she does not have to hold a garage sale, dispose of her leaves or have her chimney relined. Professor Tractenberg's argument went right to the core of the Council explanation of this anemic ordinance. Why does the town council feel so strongly for Mrs. Jones if her hardship concerns removal of a tree, but demands that she go through a rigorous process if she wants to invite her neighbors to pick over her discarded treasures?

It really makes no sense.

And it totally defies logic that there are people in West Orange, who knowing all the facts, would advocate for the diluted tree ordinance that the council would obviously gladly accept. In its absolute application, this ordinance would preserve no trees at all.

Are we really to believe that the Council has heard from legions of Mrs. Jones' asking the Council's intervention to keep the tree ordinance toothless? Hard to believe.

But the Council proffers this moral conundrum as the reason the ordinance has taken 12 months to craft, and now has everyone going back to the drawing boards once again to come up with yet one more ordinance, one more solution.

A solution indicates that there is a problem. Sorry, Township Council. There really is no problem here except for what ever tacit agreement you made with the developers and/or with the Mayor to make certain that nothing and no one gets in the way of progress.

Please don't take your constituents for a bunch of fools. You have made yourselves as transparent as Casper, and we are seeing right through you.