Last week, Livingston’s Township Council and the Board of Education held a “Five on Five” joint meeting. The ten combined members of the Council and the Board, along with other township and school district officials, gathered to discuss shared business matters. This past meeting covered a wide variety of topics, ranging from how the township and schools can support what will soon be a Ukrainian “sister city” of Livingston, to how the building of housing complexes will affect the school population.These types of meetings do not happen often, but they are invaluable to our community. The work done by both the Council and the Board helps shape the quality of life for Livingston’s residents and students. But, for most things, they are cordoned off from one another, operating almost completely independently on major decisions.For many issues, this separation makes perfect sense; there is no need for the Council to have input on school curriculum, for example. But there are other matters in which there is shared overlap, and for those, decisions should not be made in a vacuum. Having the occasional joint meeting to discuss these topics is an important way for the people who make Livingston’s big decisions to ensure they are on the same page, or at least aware of what their counterparts are thinking so those perspectives can be taken into consideration.Hopefully, these discussions prove fruitful in the months and years ahead. At the very least, it will have been worthwhile to have both governing bodies gain insight into the goals and concerns of the other.
