Wyckoff December 21, 2011 THE VILLADOM TIMES I • Page 3 Township’s new mayor seen as De Phillips by John Koster It won’t be official until Jan. 1, but Christopher De Phillips has been projected as Wyckoff’s internally-elected mayor for 2012. De Phillips, this year’s deputy mayor, was elected to the Wyckoff Township Committee in 2009 and appointed deputy mayor at the annual reorganization meeting on Jan. 1, 2011. Wyckoff’s five township committee members are elected to serve three-year terms. Each year, the members of the township committee select the mayor from among their ranks. Active in the Wyckoff Education Foundation, which collects funds and makes donations to the public school system to foster enhanced education without further burden on the taxpayers, De Phillips has lived in Wyckoff for the past 10 years. He is a graduate of Georgetown University and Seton Hall Law School. He is a partner in the Porzio, Bromberg & Newman law firm, which has offices in Morristown, New York City, Princeton, and Trenton. He often explains legal issues in an ex officio capacity to residents at township committee meetings, commenting, for instance, on why the township committee cannot interfere with the decisions of semi-autonomous bodies, including the library board, the planning board, and the board of adjustment due to state regulations. De Phillips has also been active in the Wyckoff recreation program and has coached flag football and soccer. He is an assistant coach for the Wyckoff Torpedoes Soccer Club. The De Phillips family includes wife Patti and four young children. They are parishioners of Saint Elizabeth’s Church in Wyckoff. Wyckoff Township Committeemen, under advisement of Police Chief Benjamin Fox, have rejected a request for a one-night waiver on the closing time of Blue Moon, a restaurant and bar, and urged the administration to remind all businesses with liquor licenses that closing time will remain 1 a.m., with no extensions on New Year’s Eve. The restaurant had requested a one-hour, one-night waiver, but Mayor Kevin Rooney and the township committee members said that granting a one-time waiver would open the door to requests from other operations and they did not think this was a good idea. Chief Fox, contacted for his opinion, said he thought that it would be a mistake to waive the 1 a.m. mandatory closing time especially given the nature of New Year’s Eve celebrations. One after another, the township committee members agreed that the one-night waiver should not be granted. At the same meeting, but after the vote, Chief Fox appeared in person with members of the Wyckoff Police Chief, committee decline waiver Department to present the township committee with the AAA Award for Excellence that Wyckoff won for the second year in a row, due to traffic safety precautions, education, and enforcement efforts. In response to an unrelated issue, Mayor Rooney said that, despite a number of e-mails and requests from other residents, he was not permitted by law to respond to the issue of whether a ShopRite supermarket should be approved by the Wyckoff Planning Board. The matter has been before the planning board for more than a year. As mayor, Rooney sits on the planning board, but because the board is a quasi-judicial body, he is forbidden to use his mayoral influence to control decisions from outside the board or even to comment on his feelings about the plans outside regular meetings. “Whether it be a back porch on Mrs. Jones’ house, a Vista (group home), or a ShopRite, this governing body cannot conflict with municipal land use law,” he said. J. KOSTER