Council approves Urban Parks Application

IRVINGTON, NJ — The Irvington Township Council voted to approve an ordinance for their urban park application during their council meeting on Monday, Feb. 27.

The application includes a grant request from the NJDEP Green Acres Program to help offset the costs of renovating the center playground, located at Civic Square. The total cost of the renovations, including engineering and inspection costs, is $776,310 and the grant request is $500,000.

If the grant request is approved, the total cost of the civic playground renovation would be $276,310. If it is not approved, the initial cost would remain the same.
Additional ordinances that were approved during this council meeting include a beekeeper program for the township, as well as an ordinance to impound and remove ATVs and other illegal vehicles from the road and public parking spaces.

The council also approved the $9.5 million flood mitigation ordinance that was postponed during the last council meeting.
Irvington resident Ronald Shaw made a comment on the issues surrounding ATV’s and other illegal vehicles on the road.

“The ordinance approving impounding and removing ATVs off the road is great,” Shaw said at the meeting. “My question is, how are you going to enforce the ordinance? Chasing down vehicles in Irvington is illegal to my knowledge. The reason that they park in certain areas during the summer is obviously due to the heat. If we outlawed the heat, this would make sense. Otherwise, it will be incredibly difficult to enforce an ordinance of this nature.”

Another resident, Eloise McDaniel, raised separate concerns regarding speaking times for residents during meetings and concerns about how quickly council meetings end.

“I would like to once again discuss the fact that town hall meetings are not held in the town hall and are still held over Zoom,” McDaniel said at the meeting. “Not everyone has access to a computer and thus cannot raise concerns or voice their suggestions during these council meetings. Additionally, we are only given three minutes to speak, in spite of the fact that only a handful of people attend these council meetings online. Why is that? We should have five minutes to speak at these meetings, just like residents do in other towns in New Jersey. We pay our taxes and deserve the right to have our voices heard at these meetings, just like anyone else.”

Irvington Council President Jamillah Beasley responded to the concerns of the residents.
“The allotted minutes to speak during council meetings was decided upon a long time ago via ordinance,” Beasley said during the meeting. “In regards to when council meetings will once again be held in town hall, as I discussed at the last council meeting, we have no timeline for that but will alert the public as to when it will be safe to resume meetings in the town hall.”