September Monthly Message From Mayor Stacey Ewald

Residents may have read the recent news that the School District of the Chathams is considering a send-receive agreement with Harding for Harding high school students to attend the Chatham high school.  Harding only has a K to 8 school district.  They currently send their high school children to Madison High School.  As part of this negotiation, the Board of Education has asked our Joint Recreation Committee to consider whether they’d be able to absorb the Harding K to 8 students in our Joint Recreation programs.  The Board of Education and Joint Recreation both held meetings last week where this request was discussed.

I understand there were a lot of comments at the Joint Recreation meeting regarding the potential Harding-Chathams send-receive agreement. The Township and Borough do not have jurisdiction over the school district.  This decision is solely theirs.  Likewise, our Joint Recreation program does not have any say in the school district decision.  Their objective is solely to determine how, if at all, they can accommodate the Harding K to 8 children into our Chatham sports program, and to make a recommendation to the Township and Borough based on their assessment.  The final decision on incorporating the Harding students into our sports program will be made by the municipalities. We expect these discussions to take place over the next couple of months.  I want to thank the Joint Recreation Committee and their Chair Tom Claps for their work in general to make our sports programs wonderful but also thank them for their efforts in reviewing the feasibility of incorporating the Harding K to 8 children into our sports programs.

I wanted to highlight a couple of items on the agenda this evening.  We have a public hearing tonight for an ordinance to amend the Construction on Holiday Ordinance.  This was intended as a small change to include the federal and state holiday of Juneteenth but there was a suggestion to consider additional changes to prohibit construction that occurs on weekends and holidays on the interior of a property.  Whether to expand the scope of this amendment at this time will be discussed and, if needed, an additional hearing will be put on the schedule so residents can comment

We also have introduction of an ordinance related to establishing an overlay zone on a portion of the Ferber Farm.  This property was purchased by PSE&G for staging for their monopole installation project.  Now that the work is largely done, they will turn over the bulk of the property to the Great Swamp Wildlife Refuge.  Three acres of the property will be given to the Great Swamp Watershed Association for their headquarters.  This overlay zone will help provide some structure with respect to the use of the property. 

Our Events Committee is busy planning for our fall festival event which is scheduled for October 26 at Castle Park.   The Fall Festival will follow our Environmental Committee’s workday.  For families looking for a day of service activity, it’ll be a great opportunity to care for our parks and fields followed by a lot of family fun so save the date!