Green Brook Strategic Plan Advancing

The Strategic Plan stemming from is moving along, after an initial draft was sent out to all those who attended for corrections and comments this week.

Once the participants have had an opportunity to review the document and any necessary changes are made, the report will be uploaded to the township website and residents will be given an opportunity to read and comment.

The Township Committee will also ask consultant Reagan Burkholder, of the Summit Collaborative Group, to present the report and recommend next steps to begin the process of implementing the goals set forth in the report, at a date yet to be determined.

There’s only one problem with all of this according to Mayor Jerry Searfoss: nobody from the Board of Education attended the meeting.

“I think there were four people that said they were going to be there,” Mayor Searfoss said during Monday's Township Committee meeting. ”Frankly, I think it’s embarrassing because everybody knows that one of the best parts of this town, if not the best part of this town, is the education system. There were plenty of accolades being thrown around...but nobody was there to talk about it or accept the accolades.

"As far as I know, I haven’t heard anything from anybody from the board of ed stating why they weren’t there," he continued. "Did all four people have emergencies? Other then that I thought it was a great day and we got a lot done, but I was disappointed with the fact that the Board of Ed. chose to not show at that meeting.”

Board of Education President James Benscoter agreed with the mayor that it was an embarrassment.

“It was an error on our part,” Benscoter said in a phone interview after the meeting. “Two people had emergencies and two others forgot. I understand him being disappointed. It was an embarrassment for the board, and me being the president, am embarrassed by it as well. I actually was one of the people planning to be there. Somebody came to my house that morning for coffee and it just slipped my mind.”

Benscoter said that he is planning to reach out to the mayor, but has already reached out to some of the other board members to see if they can be involved somehow even though they missed the meeting.

“I am going to call Jerry because we definitely wanted to be involved and we were trying to get a lot of people there,” he said. “I talked to other board members and we are going to try and meet with them to see if we can still be involved somehow."