Westfield Mayor Brindle Gives Updates On Rialto, More At Meeting

WESTFIELD, NJ — While the agenda for the Westfield Town Council meeting on Wednesday night may have seemed run-of-the-mill, Mayor Shelley Brindle gave opening remarks that hinted at forthcoming announcements about the now-closed Rialto Theater and other initiatives. Brindle also announced Martin Luther King Day events and encouraged those with a young family member with special needs to register that person for a free ice skating lesson on Monday.

She also talked about the conclusion of an investigation into a purported offensive Tweet in October. (Note: see new Patch story here.)

Here is the text of her comments:

Good evening everyone, and thanks to all who came out tonight for our first regular meeting of 2020. As I discussed in my State of the Town address at last week’s Annual Organization Meeting, this year will be a pivotal one for Westfield -- one where we make some defining decisions about the course we’d like to collectively chart for our future. I am excited to get to work and about what’s ahead.

Car thefts

As we’ve communicated numerous times over the last year, car thefts have been on the rise in many towns in this area, including Westfield. Between public remarks made by both Chief Battiloro and myself, letters to the editor in local press outlets, ward-specific Nixle alerts, and nightly social media reminders, we have spread information far and wide about the need for residents to lock their cars and remove their keys from their vehicles. Yet, we continue to see cars being left unlocked, making Westfield an ongoing target for this criminality. Last week, to reach even more residents, we began distributing flyers to the most heavily affected areas of Town, and we’ve partnered with the Board of Education to have each public school principal send out the flyer to their email lists. I hope that, by now, everyone is aware of this issue.
When Chief Battiloro was sworn in last year, he made community policing a top priority. I want to take a minute to clarify exactly what that means. Community policing is not a one-way outreach to the residents by the Police Department; rather, it’s a philosophy that promotes strategies using public partnerships to proactively address public safety issues. When the chief and his department have Pizza with the Police events, serve up coffee at Starbucks and put more officers on bikes at public events, it’s of course for them to provide a neutral, approachable environment to meet with residents. But, more importantly, it’s also to establish long-term, two-way channels of communication so that the residents and the police can work together to prioritize public safety.
It’s not a job they can do alone. They have a role to play, and so do all of us. Our extraordinary police department has been working exhaustively, both in plain sight and through less visible tactics, to thwart additional car thefts. We will now ask all of you once again to ensure, every day and every night, that your cars are locked and the keys removed. Spread the word to your neighbors, and do your part by availing yourselves of the multiple communications channels we are providing: Town Updates via email on our website, Nixle alerts, and following the Town and the Police Department on social media. I’ll steal the chief’s line by saying this is a crime of opportunity, and we need to work together to make sure that opportunity no longer exists in Westfield.

Rialto Update

As I mentioned in the State of the Town Address, we have been driving very productive discussions concerning the future of the Rialto. When the theater closed in August, so many concerned residents with a variety of relevant and impressive backgrounds reached out to me and offered to help. From this outreach, we have formed a visionary and experienced advisory group that represents expertise in commercial real estate and financing, theater management, grant writing, economic development, and the film industry, to name a few. With their collective input, we are in active discussions with the owner of the Rialto, Jesse Sayegh, about how it can be reimagined for the future of Westfield.
We are in the process of applying for grants to fund the cost of a consultant with specific experience in the performing arts and theater renovation space so that we can conduct a full assessment and feasibility study of how to proceed. We have collected a lot of very valuable input and are ready to move on to this next step in the near term to get some more concrete plans in place. I will have more to share about these and other exciting developments in the coming weeks.

Parks and Recreation Strategic Planning

I know that everyone is anxiously awaiting the release of the Strategic Parks Plan, which is a truly comprehensive and extremely detailed document to help us define the road map for Westfield’s parks, open spaces, and recreational opportunities. The Recreation Commission will review the proposed Plan at their next meeting tomorrow night and provide their comments. It will then be referred back to the Council in February, and finally sent over to the Planning Board for incorporation into the Master Plan Reexamination. Having reviewed the plan in detail, I’m not only very excited about the possibilities, but more convinced than ever that taking a holistic planning approach was the right course -- and one that will result in smart, long-term investments made with a broader view beyond the urgent need for fields.

Downtown Westfield Corporation

I’d like to congratulate the DWC Interim Executive Director, Kathleen Miller Prunty, on her recent election to the Cranford Town Council. Kathleen is coming up on the end of her interim appointment with the DWC in late February, and recently posted the job description for a new, permanent executive director to usher in an exciting new era of leadership as we continue our work to revitalize our downtown.
It’s also important for the public to know that we recently received the findings of the investigation into an alleged Twitter incident from October [Patch story here], in which accusations were made of a partisan post by the DWC account. After a thorough review by forensics investigators, they could find no evidence of unauthorized access to the DWC Twitter account, nor could they find evidence supporting the very existence of the alleged tweet. They concluded that the tweet was never posted, and was in fact fabricated and subsequently circulated on Facebook.

While I am grateful to have this matter thoroughly reviewed and put behind us, I am of course disheartened to know the true cause of this issue was the deliberate circulation of disinformation intended to discredit not only Kathleen Miller Prunty, who was a candidate for Council in Cranford, but the DWC as a whole -- which is comprised of dedicated professionals whose contributions remain valuable to our town.

MLK Day

Please join the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Association of Westfield on Monday for their annual commemoration events. The day begins with a pancake breakfast at the Westfield Community Center, followed by a service project at 10am at the Presbyterian Church, where toiletry kits will be assembled to benefit the Bridges Outreach organization that assists with homeless populations in New York City, Newark, Irvington, and Summit. You can donate travel sized toiletry items such as shampoo, dental floss, toothbrushes, toothpaste, and more at the Municipal Building and the Presbyterian Church through Friday, or bring them to the Jan. 20 event.
Following the service project, the annual march will commence at 12:15 and proceed from the MLK monument to the Presbyterian Church.

Human Relations Advisory Committee

As we honor MLK’s legacy of peace and tolerance, it is also a great time to announce the upcoming formation of the Town’s Human Relations Advisory Committee (HRAC), the ordinance for which will be introduced in February. I bring it up tonight to reiterate the message I delivered at last week’s meeting about living in a community that fosters an environment of inclusivity, mutual understanding, and respect. The HRAC is intended to serve in an advisory capacity to promote these values and help ensure that all individuals can participate fully in all aspects of community life. It will be comprised of seven resident members and two alternates who will work with the Mayor and Town Council to improve access to programs, recommend policies, promote inclusivity, and provide education and awareness within Westfield. It’s clear to me from the unacceptable increase we are seeing in bias incidents in and around our town that we need to do more than offer statements of condemnation that, without additional action, do not make enough of a tangible impact.
We will be soliciting applications for the HRAC in the next few days and plan on introducing the members after the second reading of the ordinance next month. I would like to thank residents Pam Brug and Alexis Jemal for suggesting this committee and helping to move this vision forward.

Skating Event

If you have a family member or friend with special needs, please encourage them to register for the free adaptive skating session on Monday, Jan. 20 at 2 p.m. at The Westfield Rink. Thanks to the Westfield Hockey Club for sponsoring, and a special shout out to the Access and Inclusivity Council for facilitating.