Joe Lukac Campaign Chair for Manville 11/02/2014 By Lisa Payne Thanks Joe for letting me interview you today on such short notice, and with elections only a couple days away. Because of so many different opinions and comments raised from the newspapers, online and from people I’ve spoken with there seems to be vastly different statements made from the opposing side. I will ask some questions related to these statements in addition to other general concerns. Question: In 2012 it was stated the Mayor missed what is said to be one of the most important meetings of Manville’s future with relation to the flooding issues. It was also stated that a few Democrats were also not present during this same meeting. The topic at the meeting was a massive flood levee that was constructed at Manville border in Zarephath. My question is do you believe this levee will increase the potential for flooding in Manville, if so what are the possible solution? Answer-I attended nearly every one of those meetings and the Mayor didn’t show up neither did most of the prominent Democrats. In addition, I did research into this and I checked the facts. Some information came from a third party flood Project Company and the based on the observations of some of the Manville residences first-hand knowledge, in which they actually witnessed them building the levee higher than what we were told at the public at that meeting. Zarephath had stated that the levee is and has been the same height since 1957. We believe it is higher. The Republican Party believes it is higher and does have an effect on flooding. At the Flood meeting last month, once again Mayor was not at meeting and this was major Flood Commission meeting, the most important in the history of Manville in which they reported to the DEP the benefit of proper ratio results for a flood project. This past meeting this is the first time when DEP actually admitted that the levee most likely does have an effect on the town of Manville. We believe some possible solutions would be the Republican team that’s sits on the council now conduct a full investigation of this levee, find out about the permits, height, impact on Manville and possibilities that can be done to help Manville in the long term to work out solutions. We need to get all the facts, get the whole truth. Question: Manville recently hired four new police officers, is this necessary in a town that’s only 2.2 square miles? Answer: At this moment based on the entire group united and this is something we discussed. Sometimes you have hiring for retiring officers, but in this case we do not see the justification for hiring it’s more like over spending. The police force should be given a structure. You cannot blame the police department for poor guidance and leadership from the governing body. The police officers themselves do an excellent job. Officer Peterson, who is a prime example of what is to be a model police officer, is retiring. He is one of the most straight forward by the book cops on the force. The younger officers coming onto the force would do well to follow Officer Peterson who is a prime example of what it is to be a police officer. He will be sorely missed by everyone. As another side note of what our police force does do to help with the community is project DARE They get the kids involved in the DARE program is just one of the examples, we feel the children enjoy being a part of DARE and learn the police are their friends in time of need. The current administration has let the DARE program lapse, We will work hard to bring it back again into the school program. Question: What is the township doing to improve the small now vacant businesses on the Main street? Are many town ordinances being relaxed to allow multiple like kind of businesses? Answer: The democrats stated that in their redevelopment plan which they will announce in November that there is a plan for existing businesses. We had no prior knowledge that the redevelopment plan was going to made at the last council meeting. What we discussed was that we would like to take a good look at the ordinances in effect now and make them tougher to promote more community friendly businesses. To attract better business you have to make the town attractive and more appealing. Question: Again I ask this question because I feel it really needs asking twice Bound Brook has really come far in their beautification of their town and done so fairly quickly, why hasn’t Manville done anything to improve the streets, curbs, sidewalks? We see random garbage, beer bottles, weeds, and cracks in sidewalks and this is on the main roads? Why doesn’t Manville have any garbage can placed randomly out on the Main street like many other towns have? Answer: The question of garbage cans has been brought up in council meetings and the excuses as to why not in the past. We have said, people are throwing garbage in streets. We need them throughout whole main street not main area. Some of store owners don’t clean up enough. Our small business owners are committed to the town, the ones in Manville are exceptional and some don’t live in town but care about Manville. Walmart, I believe was a bad decision because it will hurt the small businesses. To fix the beautification problems, I believe we should have a team from the council, and team from the business owners’ association work together to come to a solution where it makes sense to both sides. The ordinance is a piece of paper if not followed or nobody follows them. Business owners have phenomenal ideas about how to address this issue. Some have great ideas, to keep Manville cleaned up and how to a good wholesome town. Team effort works with town and businesses. We can with businesses owners, the Schools, the local clubs, and of course the Towns People come together and make Manville beautiful again without much effort. We know it, we can do it. Question: What is your parties’ position that is different than the democratic parties’ position for the future of Manville that will make a difference? Answer: The Republican Party, the difference between our party and the Democratic party is, We actually have a plan of action on quality of life issues. Once again I give some examples, boy scouts, girl scouts, the school clubs, Vets, and other clubs could get together and do projects around town as like make a garden or plant a tree, beautify a corner or open space. We could have more than one clean up per year. Clean the town, pick- up garbage around parks with the scouts or other clubs. Finally to cut spending. Manville People knows how to pull together I’ve lived here all my life I know it I’ve seen it happen more than once, we can do it. This is the way it can be done and we are very open to suggestions. Councilman Skirkanish, a year ago said he was going to do a neighborhood watch. We still don’t have one. We are looking into this possibility. In the Sheriffs Assoc. of America, statistics prove when there is a neighborhood watch in an area there is less crime in the community. We will do all we can do to bring back Manville to back to its roots to the Manville we can stand proud to be. That makes us different. Thank you Joe Lukac for this interview and representing the Republican party Best of luck to you all.
Posted on: Mon, 03 Nov 2014 11:15:53 +0000
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