Hern Places 'Alcoholic Beverages' Ordinance on Next Meeting Agenda For Second Discussion

After the introduction of an ordinance to amend the existing Alcoholic Beverages ordinance was defeated by a 3-2 vote at the April 11 borough council meeting, Mayor J. Brooke Hern said he will place the ordinance back on the agenda for the next council meeting, scheduled for this Monday.

Under the current ordinance, which was enacted in October of 2009, police officers can enter a private residence where individuals under the age of 17 are illegally consuming alcohol. The amended ordinance would allow police officers to enter a private residence where individuals under the age of 21 are consuming alcohol.

Hern said he expected the introduction of the ordinance to pass by a procedural vote at the meeting on April 11. Although he expected Councilman Vincas Vyzas to vote against it, since he “seemed to be heading in that direction,” Hern believed there to be a consensus of council based on many discussions between council members, the police department and the Municipal Alliance.

Council President Michael Gennaro, Councilman Armand Galluccio and Councilman Alan Lesnewich voted against the ordinance, while Councilman Jim Cucco and Councilman Robert Munoz voted in favor of the ordinance. Vyzas was the only council member not present at the April 11 meeting.

“I was quite surprised and frankly, I think there’s an irony here that this ordinance was voted down; while at the same time, there’s a flashing sign outside the building on Springfield Avenue reminding everyone that April is Alcohol Awareness Month,” Hern said.

The mayor said he had not heard any reasonable opposition to this ordinance expressed by council members, other than from Councilman Vyzas. Also, he has asked Police Chief Anthony Buccelli, Deputy Chief Scott Torre and members of the Municipal Alliance to be in attendance at the April 25 meeting.

“They will be on the agenda for discussion to talk with members of council who voted against it to see if there’s a way to address whatever concerns developed between the last time they talked to these folks to the time the vote was taken,” Hern said. “Really, we need one more vote. I assume we will have a full council on April 25. It’ll be six people, we already have two ‘yes’ votes, we need one member of council to change their vote to ‘yes,’ and I can break the tie. I think that’s achievable, and I do think it’s important that the police have the ability to intervene when underage drinking parties are out of hand.”

Hern said he supports the drinking age being 21 and says this ordinance is a matter of safety for underage persons participating in a party where alcoholic beverages are being consumed, and it's also a matter of public safety if and when these persons leave a party in their cars to drive home.

In New Providence, Hern said the police can enter a private home where an underage party is underway and a parent is home. But, if the underage persons are unattended, without adult supervision, the police cannot intervene.

“I can’t understand how anybody can be satisfied with that state of affairs, with the law being as it is in New Providence,” Hern said. “When police do intervene, because there’s no local ordinance to charge them with, they have to charge them with a violation of state law, which is something that gives them a record, which means when they apply to colleges or apply to jobs and they are asked the question about their violations of law, they have to put this down,” Hern said. “With this law in place covering 18 to 20 year olds, the police can give them a citation for a violation of a Municipal Ordinance, which is basically like a traffic ticket.”

Hern said in the same situation where a party is underway, individuals under 18 years of age can be charged with a Municipal Offense because the local Municipal Law covers those 17 years of age and under.

“So we even have a situation where the consequences of being involved with a party with a parent who is home are far worse than they would be if we passed this because kids make mistakes. Not all of their mistakes should impact their lives in dramatic ways,” Hern said. “Having a beer and becoming intoxicated and being at a party that gets out of hand so the neighbors alert the police department, that’s not something that necessarily should haunt a kid and create a record for them that could give them difficulty with applying to college or a job."

If the ordinance is defeated again, Hern said his course of action will be determined by what he learns during the council discussion, but he ultimately will continue to work on it.

“I’m not content to live in a community that basically sanctions unsupervised, underage drinking parties by 18, 19 and 20 year olds, especially when the kids know it. Not only kids in our towns, but kids in surrounding communities apparently know it,” Hern said.

Hern is referring to Deputy Chief Torre’s presentation at the , where Torre said many young individuals in the area know that New Providence does not enforce the underage possession of alcohol for individuals aged 18 to 20 on private property.

“Currently, we’re the only town in this area that doesn’t have it, and the kids know it,” Torre said at the March 14 council meeting. “We did many presentations where the kids would … joke around about it and say ‘yeah, we’re the only town where you can’t come in the house.’”

Out of 566 municipalities in New Jersey, 454 responded to a survey sent out by the borough. A total of 305 municipalities were found to have such an ordinance already in place, like the ordinance Hern is placing back on the agenda for Monday’s meeting, including the neighboring communities of Summit, Chatham, Berkeley Heights and Mountainside.

“I think because of the awareness of the situation here, the chances of a tragic event occurring are heightened because I think we’re going to have more parties,” Hern said. “Why would a kid in Summit host a party at his house when he knows his friend in New Providence can have the party and no one has to be concerned about any kind of intervention from the police department? Of course their choice will be to have it in New Providence, and it’s all the more reason to make our law in New Providence consistent with the laws in surrounding communities.”

Patch recently spoke to Gennaro, Galluccio and Lesnewich regarding this ordinance.

While all three agreed that underage drinking has been an issue in New Providence for quite some time, each Councilman explained reasons for voting against the ordinance.

Gennaro said his decision was a difficult one to make because on one hand, he thinks everyone supports trying to keep alcohol out of the hands of underage people.

“We recognize that there is an exception to the state law, which makes it a crime for underage people to have alcohol on public property. But it doesn’t really address what happens in a private home,” Gennaro said. “On the other hand, I can only speak for myself, but I am very leery in extending government powers, police powers especially, in situations where it makes it more possible and more likely for police to enter a private home in order to pursue evidence or indications that underage people would have alcohol.”

As Gennaro weighed those two competing interests, he said his general philosophy is less government is better. 

“It’s not to say that if things progress and the ordinance proves to be a problem for police that it can't be reconsidered,” Gennaro said. “At this point in time, I don’t think the existing ordinance has really been in place long enough for people to conclude that it’s a success or a failure.”

Gennaro said he and other members of council have every confidence in the borough’s current police force and that they would do the right thing in the best interest of minors. But he also noted that officers on the police force in town could change within the next few years.

“You don’t know who is going to be on the police force in the future and one of the things that laid on my mind is we just had a statement from our County Prosecutor quoted in The Star Ledger when the county budget was passed, stating that he thinks Summit, New Providence and Berkeley Heights ought to merge their police departments,” Gennaro said. “Passing ordinances that expand police powers and allowing the entrance into private homes based on the premise that you know who your police are and you have every confidence that they will do the right thing is not accurate when you consider that things can change drastically a few years from now. Who knows? Union county, every county could have a county police force if a merger of services continues the way that a lot of our government officials are talking.”

Like Gennaro, Councilman Galluccio said he also thought the ordinance has not been in place long enough to determine if a change is really needed.

“In my mind, we didn’t give it enough time to see if we really needed to add the other age groups and there was really only one incident [discussed at a council meeting] where the police were called into a party from the time we enacted the ordinance until it was brought up to change the age and with that one, they didn’t even have to use our ordinance,” Galluccio said. “They used the laws of the state that allowed them to go in when someone said ‘hey, there is someone down there very drunk and passed out.’ So in my mind, we didn’t have enough background on it yet to say ‘hey, let’s go ahead and change it.'”

Both Galluccio and Gennaro also said regardless, it is the responsibility of the parents to know what their children are engaging in.

“[Parents] need to be aware of what’s going on in their home, whether they are home or not,” Galluccio said. “With our son, we never worried about him if we were out that he was going to have a party because he knows we would have a neighbor come by and check, and call us.”

Gennaro said he has seen tragic consequences with kids in town directly related to drugs, and said perhaps alcohol could be a gateway to that. But in the end, he said parents have to “stand up and open their eyes to what their children are engaged in. The parents have to bare the responsibility for making sure their children are engaging in appropriate behaviors and don’t develop habits that will lead to these sorts of tragedies.”

In terms of the ordinance not being in place long enough, Lesnewich echoed both Galluccio and Gennaro. Through his research on the history of the proceedings leading up to the ordnance being enacted in October of 2009, Lesnewich said there was a significant amount of debate, public hearings and concerns coming from both sides.

“So as a new councilperson, I believe that unless something is actually broken, there’s no reason to fix it this quickly, and I have respect for the council people who went before and I’m sure they voted for valid reasons the way they did,” said Lesnewich, who was appointed to the council in January. “That’s number one, basically a respect for integrity of the system and the newness of the ordinance.”

Lesnewich said he has raised three children and has worked with many teenagers over the years through coaching and teaching Sunday School at the at New Providence, so he is aware of some of the situations in town.

“But as an attorney and as a former member of the Somerset County Prosecutors Office, I looked at the ordinance, and I believe the ordinance as written covers the concerns completely that have been raised by the Municipal Alliance, and I obviously respect and appreciate what they are doing in town. [The ordinance also] covers the concerns that the police officers have raised, who I also respect,” Lesnewich said.

Having read through the ordinance several times, Lesnewich said the ordinance as written allows the police the opportunity to have probable cause to enter any residence where they think there is a party going on, and the health and safety of youth is an issue.

“The only difference is, as I understand it from the public hearing we had and the comments made by the people who spoke, was they are saying you also need to have some impact on 18-, 19- and 20-year-olds,” he said. “But the benefit of that, I didn’t see. What that does to change their ability to go into the house for safety concerns doesn’t change at all. So I don’t understand that argument.”

Lesnewich said it would be difficult to determine the age of someone at a party without seeing identification so under this ordinance, police would still have the ability to enter a residence, ensure the health and safety of any underage persons, and then determine the accurate age of those there.

“So the ordinance as it’s written right now permits the police to enter the house if they think the ordinance is being violated,” he said. “It doesn’t matter how old the kids are. They can get into the house and it could be a bunch of 23-year-olds who look like they’re 17 and once they look at their identification, then [the police officers] can say ‘oh sorry, you’re all 23, you’re legal age.’ Or they could go into a house and find out everyone is 17. But the fact is, the way the ordinance is written, it gives them the probable cause to enter the house to do what they think they have to do for the safety and welfare of anyone who might be at one of those parties.”

Lesnewich said he would also like to see more factual information, showing that underage drinking parties in New Providence are in fact increasing and becoming a larger issue, and that there are teens from neighboring towns who are coming to New Providence to consume alcohol on private property.

“I haven’t seen any factual information that would support that and I have specifically asked if there is information like that. The information that was provided to me showed that there were only two of those parties and in both situations, the police were able to go in,” Lesnewich said. “There was no information suggesting that there’s a bigger problem in town because I can tell you this: as a father and a councilman, as someone who works with teenagers, if I thought that argument had any weight and there was factual information that New Providence is becoming the hot bed for teenage parties and we were having all these issues, I want to know about that factual information because I’m all ears, I’m willing to listen to that and obviously, I’m willing to work with the Municipal Alliance and the police department if there is that type of factual information. But absent that, at this point in time, I think the ordinance works.”

All three councilmen expressed their appreciation and respect for the Municipal Alliance and the police department, and for the work they do. All three also said they will be open to hearing the discussion on this ordinance at the council meeting on Monday.