1. Immediately implement the urban park and watershed zone concepts without empowerment, for the purpose of clearly defining our open space demographics for grant purposes, and to form a basis to lobby Green Acres and petition our state legislators. Then, once the concepts have been refined and adopted by the Freeholder Board, we must petition our state legislators to adopt these concepts into law in the state legislature.

2. In conjunction with the premise outlined in point #1, adopt a resolution to petition the state to remove all watershed properties from the parkland inventories of all counties statewide. This will allow green acre’s applications to be weighed against more accurate per capita functional park space figures.

3. Adopt a resolution to promote the Mount Laurel exemption proposal, in the form Freeholder Rumana wrote it with Passaic County Recreation Director, Rich Fortino. This, if passed by the state legislature, would create a lucrative funding source and provide substantial money for urban green space.

4. Hold a forum with all state legislators representing our county to thoroughly discuss the urban park zone and watershed zone concepts.

5. Hold a meeting with all utility companies to foster public/private joint ventures to allow for the development and utilization of their easements, where appropriate, for the creation of public greenways, exercise trails, etc. In addition, we must open discourse with other business entities to discuss income tax credits and concessions, etc. for those business entities who donate or lease their property for open space/recreational use.

6. Increase the open space trust fund appropriation to 7/10 of a cent in the year 2000 budget. The state requires that the counties must allocate a minimum of 5/10 (or 1/2) of a cent to their open space trust funds to be eligible to participate in the state’s open space acquisition program. We must allocate the additional 2/10 of a cent over the state minimum to compensate for last year’s under funding. This will allow Passaic County to petition the State to expedite our applications on sensitive parcels of property around the county that will otherwise be deve1oped and thereby lost forever.

7. Upon implementing the 7/10 of a cent open space trust fund contribution, we should immediately petition the state to receive permission to leverage the sensitive parcels of property around the county, such as Federal Hill in Bloomingdale, Lafayette Hills in Hawthorne, the 55 acre tract along the Pompton River in Pompton Lakes and the 12 acre tract along the Peckman River in Little Falls, against future grants and loans. This would allow the county to use the $238,000.00, currently in our open space trust fund and the $1.6 million, a 7/10 of a cent levy would generate next year as collateral to meet our matching contribution requirements or for bonding the purchases of these parcels outright. This would constitute our short range, two year plan, and allow the current county open space board plenty of time to develop a comprehensive, long range plan, without sacrificing the sensitive parcels previously noted, in the interim.

8. Allow Passaic County’s Recreation Director, Rich Fortino, or someone with the same or similar proven record of accomplishment and expertise, to return to work. We must have a full time Recreation Director/Open Space Advocate on our county’s staff, if we are to succeed in improving the quality of life for the citizens of Passaic County. In addition, we must quell the political nonsense that has ostensibly stalled Passaic County’s government for these past two years. By letting Mr. Fortino to return to work and by providing him with the appropriate supplies and a secretary to handle administrative responsibilities for this office, I am confident that, by working together, our county’s residents will realize a much improved quality of life.