News
RB Council To Change Meeting Time To 6:30 P.M.
By John Burton
RED BANK - Those considering attending Red Bank Borough Council meetings will now have to set their clocks for a different time.
The borough council this week decided to change the time for the twice-monthly public meetings, beginning next month.
Starting Sept. 8, meetings will take place at 6:30 p.m. on the first and fourth Mondays of the month.
The change is being implemented as the result of a request from Councilwoman Kathy Horgan, who works in New York City. Horgan asked her colleagues for the change because additional obligations at work have made it difficult for her to attend the first meeting of the month, which has been taking place at 5:30 p.m. The second meeting of the month has been taking place at 7:30 p.m.
"I'm OK with it," responded Councilman Arthur V. Murphy, echoing the views of the other members and Mayor Pasquale Menna, who said he would have no problem with the time change.
The Sept. 8 will be advertised as a special meeting and will take place at 6:30 p.m. At that meeting the council plans to introduce an ordinance to make the time change permanent, Menna said.
For many years the council held both of its monthly meetings at 5:30 p.m., but that time became a political issue when two previous Republican council members, Jennifer Beck and John Curley, lobbied for a later time.
They argued that the 5:30 meeting time was much too early to accommodate residents and sought to have the meetings held later. At the time they raised the issue, then-Mayor Edward J. McKenna Jr. said that the council used to hold later meetings, but they were poorly attended. McKenna said at that time that the earlier meetings drew more residents.
As a compromise a few years ago the council agreed to hold the first meeting of the month at 5:30 p.m. and the second meeting at 7:30 p.m.
