A resident’s complaint regarding the Feelgood Restaurant and Lounge took center stage at Tuesday’s Secaucus Town Council meeting.
For more than a year, residents who live near the Plaza area have complained about noise, public drunkenness, public urination, and property damage on Friday and Saturday nights. Feelgood typically hosts parties for young people on these nights, and residents believe the problems stem from these parties.
Residents, particularly those who live along Humboldt Street and Golden Avenue, have periodically brought their concerns regarding Feelgood to the Town Council and the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board.
“Not one person has called me with a complaint about noise.” – Dawn McAdam
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Resident Anthony Aiello, who lives on Golden Avenue, spoke during the public comment portion of Tueday night’s council meeting stating that he is still awakened most weekends by noise he believes stems from patrons leaving Feelgood.
“[Councilwoman Dawn McAdam] paid me a visit about two weeks ago. And I understand, Dawn, that you said [at the last Town Council meeting] that I was very happy with the results of what’s going on there. That’s an overstatement. I said I was pleased that I wasn’t awakened that night. I was awakened the next weekend at 12:47 in the morning from a dead sleep. There was noise in the street…noise in the parking lot,” Aiello said.
He asked, as he has in the past, why the police can’t ticket Feelgood patrons for excessive noise, public drunkenness, and other nuisance problems.
Town Attorney Frank Leanza said that public drunkenness is not illegal. Also, to ticket people for noise complaints, the Police Department would have to measure the level of the noise. The noise level would have to exceed a specific decibel for the noise to be considered “excessive” by legal standards.
“The law of the state is, if you’re going to find somebody guilty of violating a noise statute, that noise statute has to have an objective and measureable limit,” Leanza said.
McAdam, who represents the 1st Ward where Feelgood is located, responded to Aiello that she has monitored activities at Feelgood for several weekends over the past month from a parking lot outside and has not seen or heard anything that she would consider illegal or a nuisance.
“Not one person has called me with a complaint about noise,” she added.
But McAdam said she was not monitoring Feelgood on the weekend Aiello said he was awakened.
Feelgood owner Caesar Sanchez has made a few changes to his weekend parties to address residents’ complaints.
Last year he raised the admission age from 21 to 25 and over for women and 28 and over for men. He also instituted a dress code, hired additional security personnel, and has tried
to encourage customers to be respectful of the restaurant’s neighbors when leaving.
Video position re-advertised
The council announced that the town advertised earlier this year seeking video technicians who are interested in taping council meetings, but did not receive any responses. The previous advertisement was posted on the town’s municipal web site.
A new RFQ (request for quotes) will now be advertised again, but Town Administrator David Drumeler will also reach out to other municipalities that already videotape their public meetings to see if their video technicians might be interested in taping the
Secaucus meetings.
For nearly three years, members of the council have wrangled over whether or not to videotape the council’s public meetings for residents who are unable to attend in person. Earlier this year the council finally agreed to allow videotaping of official Town Council business, which includes everything except the public comments portion of the meeting.
This was a compromise agreement between the Independents on the council, who wanted meetings to be taped in their entirety, and Democrats, who had reservations about putting comments from the public on TV.
More board appointments
Mayor Richard Steffens made several board appointments Tuesday, which proved to be far less controversial than some of his other recent appointments.
Dan Conroy was appointed to the Planning Board. Louis Canavari, Joseph Morano, Arlene Kroll, and Michael Harper were appointed to the Housing Authority Board.
These appointments were supported unanimously by the council.
E-mail E. Assata Wright at awright@hudsonreporter.com.