Plainfield’s Flood Plan Advances—Will Funding Catch Up Before 2026?
Third in a series evaluating municipal compliance with the Union County Hazard Mitigation Plan NJ21st obtained Plainfield’s stormwater files through an Open Public Records Act (OPRA) request. The responses included a stormwater ordinance, an engineering estimate for Milton Campbell Field, 2016–2025 capital budget records and an incomplete email exchange that appears to be about a recreation grant The ordinance Plainfield...
Behind the $60 Million Berkeley Heights Sewage Plant Price Tag…. What’s Documented, What’s Not
When Berkeley Heights talk about $60 million in needed sewer system upgrades, it can sound like there’s a detailed engineering report sitting in the Municipal Building that lists every pipe, pump, and repair. That’s not what’s actually happening. The story is more complicated. The $30 Million, 15-Year Baseline When the township put the wastewater system up for potential sale, the...
Fanwood’s Drainage Study Aligns With Union County Hazard Mitigation Plan
The second in NJ21st’s series examining whether towns hit by repeated floods have followed through on the commitments they made in the Union County Hazard Mitigation Plan. Much like Scotch Plains, Fanwood has dealt with flooding issues, especially in low-lying areas like Westfield Road and North Ave. Fanwood provided a Drainage Systems Study, prepared in October 2023, in response to...
Scotch Plains Meets State Stormwater Rules, Broader Flood Strategy Seems Seems Unclear
Background Scotch Plains sits within the Green Brook watershed, a region that has been the focus of federal flood mitigation planning since 1986 through the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The town has been hit by at least three major flood events in the last ten years:. -August 2015 -September 2021- Hurricane Ida -July 14, 2025 Scope of Review The...
BHPSNJ Referendum Breakdown…. Soft Costs, Maintenance, and Inflation Risks?
The Berkeley Heights Board of Education has submitted a $50.3 million pre-referendum budget estimate to the New Jersey Department of Education for review. We requested this information through OPRA which led to another display of willful ignorance and petty bureaucratic power plays — but that’s for another article. One of the documents received was a Scope/Budget Analysis of what the...
Latest OPRA Roundup: What We Learned (and Didn’t) from the Berkeley Heights School District
From time to time, NJ 21st requests all OPRAs sent to the Berkeley Heights School District. In the latest report there were four requests. (Sort of.) One OPRA request asked for all bids and/or bid tally for the Mountain Park drainage project from June 14, 2022. In response, the District provided the one bid that had been received, by GM...
Why Berkeley Heights Should Align Uniform Construction Code Fee Policy with State Standards
A resident asked me (a while ago) to investigate what happens to the revenue collected by the Township’s construction office. Scope and Source We honed in on 2024 as a sample and requested the following through OPRA: All records of revenue collected by the Construction Department from January 1, 2024 to 12/31/2024. Including (but not limited to): Permit fees (building,...
BHPSNJ District Acknowledges GPA Concerns, Leaves Students Vulnerable to College Recalculation
Closed Door Presentation obtained through OPRA Confirms GPA Concerns — But Offers No Solution For months, parents in Berkeley Heights have raised concerns that Governor Livingston High School’s GPA system might be quietly putting students at a disadvantage when applying to college. The debate centers on how colleges recalculate GPAs, and whether the way Berkeley Heights weights and scales grades...
BHPSNJ Provides Updated School Level Budget
Sort of. After months of OPRA requests, multiple files, and a lot of back and forth, we finally have something that resembles the building-level budget detail I originally asked for. Roughly adding up the data provided, the total comes to about $6 million — less than 10% of the District’s full $~60 million budget for 2025-26. In other words, even...
Fire Prevention in Berkeley Heights: A Post-Budget Look at Policy and Funding
Following public pressure and policy changes, questions remain about funding, oversight, and implementation Context After the initial vote this year to approve changes to the Fire Prevention Bureau, NJ21st started a petition that secured over 300 signatures urging the Town Council to keep the Bureau under the Fire Department. Public pressure likely contributed to a compromise in the final version,...
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