ROSELLE PARK, NJ — At the Borough Council meeting on Thursday, Dec. 2, U.S. Rep. Donald Payne Jr. discussed how the Build Back Better Plan would help growing families in the community improve their quality of life and Mayor Joseph Signorello III focused on a lack of paid family leave for growing families, a topic that meant a great deal to him.
“People think that paid family leave is some kind of liberal fantasy that nobody else does,” Signorello said during the meeting. “There are three countries in the world that don’t have paid family leave right now and it’s Suriname, Papua New Guinea and the United States — the most developed nation in the world … doesn’t provide some sort of minimum for mothers or fathers who just had a child.
“I find that a tragedy, and I think that the Build Back Better Plan is something that doesn’t get talked about enough,” he continued. “It’s so important for those of us who care about growing families to provide that paid family leave, and I just appreciate all of your advocacy there for those of us here in Roselle Park.”
Responding to Signorello’s passion regarding this bill, Payne applied his own personal experience and identified the importance of this bill and what it would mean for growing families.
“One thing that I am really proud of is, I’m the proud father of triplets, and they have finally gotten out of college,” Payne said during the meeting. “They’re done. I’m not. I’ll be working on that bill for quite some time. But what a great boom that could’ve been for me. For example, I’m a middle-class working man, and I could’ve gotten $900 back from the federal government that I paid in taxes for my children. That’s their school tuition, that’s food on the table. It’s for middle-class families.
“You qualify for that up to $150,000 family income, and it covers a broad range of families,” he continued. “It’s not similar to a handout. You’ve paid the money into the federal government and they’re returning it back to you. So I just thought that that was something that I was very excited about. There’s a lot in that bill that is going to benefit families and the quality of life — capping child care costs at 7 percent.”
Councilman Greg Johnson thanked Payne, particularly for his openness toward him and his unwavering support of Roselle Park.
“Congressman, I just want to say thank you personally,” Johnson said during the meeting. “You’ve always had an open-door policy. Your staff has been excellent toward me since I first got into office. I had a meeting with you via Zoom. Just a recap: You came to our anti-bullying (event), and now I’m in communications with your staff and we’re trying to bring funding toward 1st Ward and Roselle Park as a whole. I just want to say thank you.”