J Tak me about 15 minutes
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s all the meeting to order please stand to the flag
of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all I wish to announce that 48 notice is required under the open public meetings act with emailed to the Asbury Park Press the coar and the new co-star on December the 19th of 2024 that a copy has been placed on the bulletin board in the burrow office and that a copy has been filed with the municipal clerk as
a courtesy to the public this meeting may be attended via Zoom if for any reason the zoom portion of this meeting fails or is disconnected the inperson meeting will continue when action can and will and will be taken provided that there is an inperson quar MR no here M greenl here Mr nowiki here Mr Weber here mayor gboi here okay good evening ladies and gentlemen um before we get to our item number five workshops uh I
want to make a motion to to um table three different resolutions that we had hoped to be able to present this evening but uh each of these for different reasons need a little more work um those would be resolution 202- 77 which is the lease agreement for our copiers and printers and uh resolution
2025-the so I make a motion that we table these until subse Mr Noble yes M GW yes s nki yes Mr Weber yes mayor goosi yes okay I'd like to proceed with item number five on our agenda which is workshops uh and the first item is the CME projects and
our engineer Mr Malik is joined us this evening thank you Ben thank you mayor and Council um so as uh as you know you have authorized me for five separate projects uh in the last uh recent recent few meetings uh so one of the initial tasks associated with all of these projects is to um kind of present to uh the
the council uh our goals for the project and what we generally very generally what our scope of work is going to be and uh just make sure that we are on the same page that you uh can provide the feedback that uh that you think is appropriate so we can get into the design work so I'll jump right into it uh the first project we uh are working on is the uh Recreation Center improvements uh this project has two
grants one from uh M County which is $265,000 that's a matching Grant and one is a local Recreation Improvement grant that is $74,000 um and that's through the DCA uh the proposed impr M ments for this project are uh resurfacing of the tennis and basketball courts uh as well as some pickle ball striking on the tennis courts uh some drainage improvements at the uh playground and new playground
equipment and uh paper walkway upgrades no trees are to be removed I I know that was uh something that's been discussed in the past so the next steps uh are to conduct a field survey prepare preliminary preliminary design plans and revie those plans with the burrow uh before going out to bid uh any questions or or comments on on that one anyone have questions could you just go over the schedule on that when the construction will be anticipated come into
the spring and what does that mean to the use of the facility and then would we be restrained yeah so the uh schedule is probably going to be the uh design will be done uh between now in the spring and during our design process we'll have to uh reach out to the uh Rec Department um and figure out what the best time for construction is going to be and uh we'll we'll have to uh schedule it around that
I know there are some summer programs uh and then there is also some fall programs so so we'll have to see you know when would be the the least impact um for this work and if we can squeeze it in the spring we we'd love to do that um which is you know I I think that that's going to be our our objective to to try and get it done as quickly as possible um but right now it's just a preliminary schedule and we'll we'll fine-tune that as we do the design thank you
other questions I just so how long do you anticipate the actual um you know construction part of the an to be it's probably a two to three month project in terms of the actual Hands-On work yes questions Mr then one last question um and it's really more of a request um our rec director is Courtney papus I I don't know if you've been introduced formally to her
but I'd like her to be a very active participant in and planning as you move forward yes uh We've we've exchanged emails back and forth uh a few times regarding some work here so uh we'll definitely be in touch with that okay great thanks next project uh next one is uh Main Street uh the you know we have funding for that uh congressionally directed spending 1,462 79 uh that
comes from the federal government the proposed improvements are Street skate improvements including uh handicap ramp Ada ramp upgrades uh we've gone through some uh kind some Main Street committee meetings uh that uh myself and Mr Weber were involved in uh so we have some some feedback already from from those meetings uh we'll prepare uh we're going to do
field survey prepare preliminary design plans detailed grading of the sidewalks and and curb ramps and we'll have a public information uh Center that uh we'll we'll get some feedback from the public from local businesses to uh have have any of their feedback incorporated into the design um so right now we're we're just beginning the the process and uh this is this is a pretty big project so this is going to take some
time to uh put those plans together questions um yeah a couple um first the the dollars that we have in Grant are probably not enough to do all the improvements going to staged anticipated it it probably will be phased um it depends on if uh we can get secure some additional funding I know that uh another round of of the same Federal funding was applied for uh I don't think
that has been announced yet but uh you know we're hopeful that that that comes through and if not then we'll look for other avenues or um you know put put together a a phasing plan to incorporate improvements in stages and have we resolved or maybe not but I think there was a couple different options of the replacement of papers or repair and and or a combination thereof and so that will be part of the
preliminary analysis yes that will be I know um previously it was mentioned you're going to start from the top down and so we talked about lighting like if we do start the project when would it start it's probably a year away um before we start actually start construction uh because of the funding source it requires a lengthly federal review process um which can take several months um so I anticipate that that that's
going to be it's this is going to be a 2026 construction thank you I just want to add um kind to answer uh counc M's question at the committee level we talk about the papers like we ended up with the just replace all the pap I know other people went back and forth on the pros and cons and the cost analysis of that but um I mean according to fagio head of our DPW and he's amazing by trade um they don't they don't make papers like they shouldn't say
it that way the papers now are better than they were 25 years ago and you're we're actually going to get 40 years out of them whereas the ones that are there is but not between 25 30 I guess probably about that um so there's that and U yeah with the lighting we're going double lights the ones that go down right okay we like that um I think you answer my other question about a year a year away oh with the funding would we talking about maybe that other funding maybe we would find out
in February like May thisth that's very possible uh it it depends on you know when Congress actually uh issues that that memo of you know this is the allocation of fun and with a a regime change I don't know if it's going to be the same time or as last year or if it's going to be EXO issu I just wanted
to ask about trees a part of this first phase uh yes the street trees are incorporated into uh the discussions that we had and we want to incorporate that into our design and you know again on on funding we'll see exactly what we can get done with the money that we have um but uh that's that's definitely part of what the the work is going to be and then I'd like to just distinguish the the planning from the the actual hard
cost kind of lamp post that we put in and favers we put in and stuff on the planning your deliverable uh coming out in this project will be to provide a a vision for the entire Main Street as opposed to phase one yeah so we will our our project is going to be designing the entire Main Street and if funding is uh limited then we can incorporate the
improvements in phases whether that is uh a little bit of work through spread out along the entire uh limits or if we do uh you know one section at a time um we'll we'll go through that in the design process with the burrow with burrow input and um we'll we'll handle that one but yes we are designing the entire lry and one other quick question just regarding the scope of your planning will will you also bring
back to the the burrow um recommendations related to uh safety issues crosswalks um bike paths things like that yeah we will look at all that um the by paths are were were not originally discussed in the limits in the scope work however that can be included um but the improvements that we're anticipating are generally from the curb line to the buildings nothing
actually in the road um other than you know like you said safety improvements like uh crosswalks and things like that but we'll look at areas that that if we need to install crosswalks uh for example across Route 71 um then or across Main Street then we will incorporate that into the design as well actually a similar question this just came up yesterday on the environmental commission meeting complete streets um is that a concept that can be incorporated or that's maybe
just answer it you're not not doing that much in the actual roadway but are there things that can be done with what we are doing that can help get saf yes besides what you just talked about yes the complete streets um is a kind of a conceptual term for uh an an all-inclusive roadway that that accommodates all types of um uh modes of transportation whether it's pedestrians cars bicycles buses um so
that that is essentially kind of what we're doing by addressing the street skate because we are uh looking at all the the curb ramps and um you know improving the the walkway walkway for uh we're not changing number of lanes or anything like that right now um but we are looking at at you know design with that in mind yes exactly and B just for clarity um
we're doing a sewer program as well throughout the B Main Street is in a future phase so that's partly the reason why we don't want to be messing with the pavement curb across the roadway because we will address that at some point in time and we replace the S that's correct yes thank you sir next project sure the uh prominate extension um we have uh funding through a boardwalk preservation Grant
through the DCA uh $4 million 275,000 uh this has a 5% burrow match which comes out to$ 23,750 um and the proposed improvements for that are extension of the prominade from Third Avenue to the municipal boundary withon um the funding for that doesn't get us all the way there but uh again we're we're continually looking for additional
funding uh for this project uh and again this can be incorporated in phases if necessary as well uh the next steps for this are uh doing the field survey doing a permit review meeting with the D and the Army Corps of Engineers to discuss what permits are going to be required and uh preparing a concept plan and a presentation to the Bur uh for your feedback and at that point we'll have a
a more refined cost estimate and a a list of permits that we know we're going to need and a rough timeline of how long it's going to take to get those permits questions so again you're going to be um establishing the entire scope in your in your in your research so we're uh we do excuse me we are authorized for
uh conceptual design right now the detailed technical design with structural design and and all that is is not included we wanted to do a conceptual phase first to see uh what the permitting needs were going to be uh how long it was going going to take and also um how far we could get with the funding that we have uh so we may design the entire thing at once uh in after the concept is done depending on on the Burrows preference or
we could just design the first phase to uh utilize the funding that we have um but we'll we'll figure that out during the concept base but your conceptual will be the alignment of those whole so we will have a vision of what we're going to do the continuity to abon third so we will know basically where it's going to be and then and then the detail design maybe phased yes that's correct and when do we anticipate this
to begin uh so we are the uh construction you mean uh so the grant has a deadline of completion of December 31st 2026 um and that seems like a far a long way away but the permitting could take several months uh similar to The Main Street permited um although this is with the state not with the federal
government um so it's probably again a uh 2026 construction and it'll probably go in you know toward near the end of 2026 so are you saying that we have to have the construction completed by December of 2026 or that we would have to award a contract by December money has is supposed from what I understand the money has to be spent by 2026 So based on that Grant
Yes actually not a long time right right so so we also know that D is going to be doing the outfall project to Ocean Avenue from s Lake and so that construction could be in the same time frame so we should look at as well as other projects that are um progressing along Sil Lake there sure then I know you're still going to talk to us about the um about s Lake in particular um
buad there but just building on what councilman nki just said um please do keep in mind that we we almost have this ecosystem of projects surrounding s Lake you we not only have the potential restoration of the lake itself we got these outfall pipes we've got the extension of the carade we've got the the bulkhead and so forth we just want to make sure that they're all coordinated so Paul you're absolutely right but beyond beyond that we've got
four or five different projects so um uh I'll skip ahead a little bit but um Marty McHugh has been recently identified by the Civ L commission as a overall project coordinator for silven Lake related projects and he's somebody who should definitely make sure you're connected to it I know you've been introduced but he'll be coordinating at a high level those projects and be working with you as well yes thanks I
just had one question in terms of timing so we really don't want to infringe on the summer time for this project and can this actually be done in in the fall it depends on the whether we do the the entire project at once or if we have to phase it uh I I don't have a a construction schedule yet we'd have to speak to contractors to see exactly how long they think it it would take to do this work
um but that would be the goal to try and do it uh between fall and and spring um but we'll we'll just have to see again with permitting uh aspect uh is is going to take some time and that probably dictate the schedule okay very good thank you next project next is uh 54 Ocean Avenue this is an asset activation Grant through the DCA uh it's a $50,000 Grant which
is eligible for uh planning and design work um the proposed use of that money is for the design of of the ReUse of that the old the pump house building uh believe there have been several discussions about this over the course of the last year or year and a half um so the intended purpose is no building expansion no uh raising the roof of the
building um we are going to prepare two to three conceptual layouts of a public restroom uh and a small concession area some combination of that uh for review with the public and with the council uh part of the grant is a a mandatory public hearing to solicit input from everybody to make sure that the public has a say on what the um use of the this this building is uh so our next
steps are uh preparing the survey and a conceptual plan again reviewing what permits are needed uh because this is right uh near the the ocean and uh we'll we'll then have that public hearing after after the public hearing we'll advance to the final design and uh of the selected concept questions for I would just say we have a lot of projects that are happening simultaneously and I think really
instrumental here is how we communicate to the public and that we strategically plac making sure that we meet with the public not just on 504 and Avenue but as well as the promade extension the other projects that we're speaking of and that we get those on the calendar as soon as we can so people are aware and that we can actually inform them what those projects are and keeping them posted on the car Bas yes uh I can definitely uh set that up with with your administrator to figure out you know how we can either do these all at once or
if we want to stagger them um for different council members abent uh last one is the silven lake bulkhead uh this is a funded through a NJB Local transportation project fund Grant $2,442 600 the proposed improvements for this are replacing the bulkhead that is failing um we are are
going to be surveying uh preparing a concept plan and I've already uh attended a meeting with the silen lake commission um last week we'll be setting up a meeting with them to review the concept before we present it to the council uh and to the public um they have their own as as the mayor said they have their own team uh kind of headed by Marty mugh um and I'll be working with him to make sure that
the the proposed improvements that we want to do for the place in the bulkhead does uh mesh as well with the lake improvements that they're doing uh we don't want them to conflict uh so we'll be setting up that meeting uh in the next few weeks and uh we'll be preparing an estimate during the the concept phase based on that discussion and what the actual design is going to look like and uh again this is this is just conceptual phase so we'll have a a plan layout
and once that that uh design is kind of selected then we'll be able to give you a uh you know then then we'll have to do the detailed technical design um for the the wall whatever we end up doing whether it's a wall or a BM um and we we'll go from there questions you does this also include the discussion of Liv creating living Shoreline yes uh the preliminarily the intended design was to to
match what was done at silen Lake Park on the East End of the lake which has a living Shoreline with with a wall behind it um that was the original intent because you know it meets right up to that uh those improvements already and because of the limited amount of of grass between the curve line and the lake on the East End um the a wall is probably needed uh so that you don't have a a steep slope um going to the
the road and is is it yet to be determined I've heard discussion about these capsules that some of the dredge material can can be utilized yeah that's yet to be determined and that'll be part of the discussions I imagine that I have with Mar mugh and that that design team just just a Clarity for people that the liberal Society a project to look at the health of the lake you know they've been working with you know AB with the living Shoreline and now it's looking at the overall health of the lake and then that we can actually um do things to
improve the health of the lake um a lot of silt and perhaps there's some opportunity to remove some of the silt in the lake and reuse it along the walls and um and other you know things that we can do for access to the lake and beautification the goal is to make this leg healthy and so that it can be resilient uh for you know storm events but also that it's a healthy Aquatic Life for all the marine life and you know Aquatic Life that's that's going on there so it's really
a great opportunity for um restoring so any other questions for thank can we get to hang out just a few more minutes because in a few minutes we'll give the public that chance ask questions and be great if you could just he the answer sure um okay so we'll continue so we're good for see right now and we'll continue with a brief update on 319 maray um and as
Council we exits stage left um probably two important things we want to discuss artifacts and council president and I think they'll give us an update and then radiation plan hopefully you can give us John sure I guess I'll start so with the artifacts we do have to follow the state statute njsa 4A col 11-36 the sale for other disposition
of personal property and the governing body May authorize by public auction the sale of its personal property not needed for public use so there's a process that we have to follow and it would be an auction and I have contacted several auction houses and uh we're narrowing it down to a few at this point ideally we would do a preview and then an online auction and um of course the historical
society is invited to remove some items I think they have three or four that they requested but of course that would be for uh public use so that would fall under the state statute so um we have to do this before and kind of in the same time as the removal of the buildings because when the windows are gone obviously they'll have to be boarded up temporarily or something until the building gets taken down so we try to shorten that process as quickly as we can
so then after that we have to go into the demolition of 39 the demolition yes so um you may may not be aware um a a bid was um held back in December for the demolition of um 319 um it also the process um took the an application in front of the landage board that um to subdivide those into four lots to be
auctioned um in the future um the land use board did in fact agree to advance that and approve that subdivision um subsequent to all this um bids were then received um from a half a dozen eight approxim eight um bids and looking at those documents and looking at um get feedback from the public of concerns over the grading what how how the property would be graded other the land use did not require a grading plan to
be submitted to set the elevation of each lot um as well as some um other um items in the bid documents we're looking to reject those bids and re advertise it by ing the issues of what is the grade of a lot going to be establishing the grade um putting that Clarity into the bid documents and then re advertising it um and so we're anticipating that that could happen here very rapidly it's not a big effort um but um we're going to
have to retain our CME to be able to um do that as a town engineer and to administer that contract going forward and there's other things such as um air quality during Demolition and um you know various submittals that would have to be coordinated with the contractor and that we need somebody on board to be able to look at that information making sure that it's done correctly and that would be the engineer record and so we need to get that in place during for the Demolition and all of that has to
be done coordinated with the disposition of the you know artifacts of the relics um and so we are coordinating that um currently to make sure that we can do that as expeditiously as possible and hopefully have the demolition done here um you know in the next several months so hopefully before summer um and again you at 300 block um you know I don't think that it's going to be that much of a problem it's it's a relatively large uh demolition compared to one house it's it's a the church um but I think proper precautions can be
done to protect the sidewalks around the area of the roadway and be able to execute that um pretty uh seamlessly once we get the contractor on board okay thank you Paul um council president Noble just mentioned one other thing that's worth sharing with u with the public tangent related to this and that is um with the new development once we've demolished the church subdivided the Lots sold the lots have new construction hopefully for uh
residential homes um that will substantially increase the the the value of the lots and with that uh we have um effective February 1 just a couple days ago uh activated an ordinance has been on our books for a couple of years related to U development fees that that contractors uh pay into fair share Housing Trust so while we've had this ordinance in place we have
not yet been collecting funds effective February 1st those funds development fees will be collected put in a trust utilized for fair share housing investments in the future and this is somewhat simultaneous with uh us the burough being able to develop four new properties uh to an our tax mods so hopefully that's a win for our tax taxpayers and for fair share housing
okay um any other comments or questions no I I just would like to say that um to to anyone who questions the the timeline of all of this and where we are um in this Administration with rain um there there was not a proper process um prior to this uh in the last months of 2024 and I guess in some ways you can say it's set us back um so for anyone who feels that um that we're that that
this project is being stalled I think we are very responsibly trying to go forward to dispose of all of the uh the artifacts in the building and do it um properly and uh that we also want to protect the residents um who are in the area um in the neighborhood in terms of the demolition so we need to do this right and I think that we're setting out to do this properly as quickly as we
can okay thank you um our next item on the agenda under presentations and bids U no I'm going to do that with agenda questions I'm sorry um I was going to to say our next item is annual debt statement discussion led by our interum CFO John Barrett Mr Barrett had to step out of the room but he he assures us he'll be back in a few minutes so come back oh
yes anybody Julie just went okay how do we always forget about pass I don't know so as soon as she is back we will continue with the agenda but I wait for his return with public ladies and gentlemen you'll have a chance to ask questions about the workshops when we get the public comment in a few minutes thank
you for returning mtion you must be get okay so I'll make a motion that we temporarily pass on presentations and bids until our Intero can rejoin us and move on to approval of minutes second Mr Noble yes Mr Green yes Mr nowiki yes Mr
Weber yes mayor G yes I'd like to make a motion that we approve the minutes of our January 21st 2025 Council business second Mr no yes M greenl yes Mr yes wether yes yes like to make a motion that we approve the minutes of our January 21st 2025 executive session second Mr Noble yes M green BL yes Mr
NWI yes Mr we yes mayor yes okay item eight on our agenda as we wait for our interm a to return is public comments and questions pertaining to today's agenda and and those items only can I open it up to the public okay include the workshop yeah including the workshop yes yes
that4 Central Avenue I'll be serving the borrow with towards 6 seven and8
ladies and gentlemen my and members of the council my comments this evening are in regard to agenda resolutions 20258 regarding approval for the rebid of the church demolition RFP in 202 584 approving the contract for Mr Canon as borrow attorney unfortunately I must shed light on a disturbing and serious matter that concerns us all I have been saying since July of 2023 that there was a criminal Network at play Within the fox Administration and now I have irrefutable proof the fox Administration engaged
in practices that were not only unethical but also illegal first I must clarify the three Tor claims that I have served to borrow with tonight are in no way a reflection on mayor goosi or any member of this current Council body these claims pertain exclusively to the actions committed by Larry Fox and his corrupt Administration we were led to believe tnm drafted the RFP for the demo of the church in 2024 however after the last council meeting on January 2st
burough attorney Greg pannon and bur clerk Erica cus revealed that and I quote Larry Fox Meredith DeMarco and Greg farach wrote through RSP for the demo of the church it's important to note that they are not qualified LIC Engineers despite this they put tmm's name on the RFP after repackaging tm's scope of work without their knowledge consent or consent according to Mr Canon and Miss CES this fraudulent and plagiarized RFP was then put out for public bid and bids were received on this RFP which is both illegal
and a significant liability issue for our burrow to use Mr Cannon's words when Greg Cannon and Erica costus discovered this misconduct they failed to alert the authorities as required by an in violation of their oath and office and professional licenses instead they chose to keep this information hidden from the residents and discuss the matter candidly behind the scenes such actions are offensive unethical and criminal this is not transparency we as residents deserve these two senior members of the fox administration's failure to act in
the best interest of the residents has betrayed the trust of our community they led us to believe they knew as little as we did however based on the video evidence that is a lie our burrow attorney and bur clerk have irrevocably broken the trust with the residents of Bradley Beach their presence and continued participation in our municipal government after this egregious breach is hard to Envision I have provided a 26 minute video and type transcript to the burrow revealing these admissions directly from Mr Cannon and
Miss cis's own mouths Miss cus edited the video and deleted the Burrow's recording of their 26 minute conversation for some reason and I'll let the authorities decide what that reason was shockingly Mr Canon sat in the last meeting and many others and lied right to our faces on January 21st he sat silently and passively by as Council councilman nowiki unbeknownst to him gave patently false information to the residents when direct questions were asked about the status of the demolition of the church then literally minutes
after that meeting concluded they both in great detail and passion admitted the real truth about their knowledge to count him in no witkey to his horror and dismay they also did not immediately report what they knew to the authorities despite being admitting that they knew Fox DeMarco and farach had committed crimes putting our burrow at legal Jeopardy I have been in contact with the mmth County prosecutor's office the comproller office the FBI the New Jersey attorney general's office of accountability and integrity the doj and
our own Police Department I've provided them the video and the transcript in light of this I asked the council to table pending resolution on tonight's agenda to renew Mr Canon's contract until after the aforementioned law enforcement agency have had an opportunity to review the transcript in video our DPW waited 2 years for a contract therefore I think a few weeks for Mr Cannon to wait is not unreasonable under the circumstances to reiterate Greg and AR admitted they knew and allowed the borrow to put out an illegal fraudulent RFP to public bid with tnn's name forged on a document
they never drafted how much did we the residents pay for the 2024 RFP that we now know is a fraud not to mention now we obviously have to start over from scratch paying a real engineering firm to draft an RFP for demolition of the church because the first one cannot be relied upon and used and merely supplemented with the grading spec since it wasn't drafted by tnm a licensed engineering firm So based on the foregoing how can 20258 legally and responsibly be voted
on and approved tonight without first having actual an engineering firm draft the RFA RFP bid specs lastly as a point of order I would ask that for the courtesy of council no Wiki to recuse himself from both of these votes due to his unintentional involvement in the 12125 video conversation currently under review by the authorities I just mentioned about um Mr Canon and Miss cus thank
you okay are there other questions please Nancy M Park um regarding the workshop on the um re Center so I heard regarding the other projects and I get it only four weeks you guys are outstanding you're really
trying to grasp I can't even imagine what so thank you but for all the other projects mentioned whether it be because it was a condition of a grant or not there was go there is is supposedly going to be an opportunity for the public to address the other projects I did not hear that mention regarding the rec center and um I would like to request that there would be an opportunity for the public to give their input on
the center going forward in their ideas and their a and a thank you I think that is the Assumption the assumption is that when Mr Malik joins us for a public session we we'll actually cover all the projects like to I'm stating it as a fact now and Mr mik nodded his head in agreement what the record sh but it wasn't said very good yes
sir PA the champion for 11 and a half lra um in regard to the workshop and the disposition of the 319 artifacts um I assume that um the process of it starting from the beginning again will need somebody to reinvent what's actually in there because the last inventory U was really sort of a just
a pick and choose it really was not a very accurate one and also um the descriptions in that inventory were not really um precise enough for anybody to Iden I um um in my last visit week and a half ago to photograph the interior um I noticed a few items that are really quite quite interesting and valuable that we're not on that inventory at all so who is going to be in charge
of that I think it's going to be you I think you just get yourself a job I I'm just I'm just hoping that you know the process actually is done properly and that it doesn't rest on one person either it should be it should be some sort of a a committee effort here task force effort I think it's a brilliant idea and I think I agree a lot of things were not on that list so yeah and and council president Den Noble is actually leading the charge for the
council in terms of organizing the entire bid process one of the things we did talk about was needing to do the inventory and of course we'd welcome your support and help us that and I I know Mia took lot of pictures that day as well yeah we did um so I can work with her as well I'm I'm want little clarification on on the legal requirements of the auction um public use um you said that the Historical Society Bradley Beach historical society
would be considered public use what about um The Long Branch Historical Society Historical Museum I know Matt reached out to them I don't know if did you get an answer from them yet I reached to the Church of the presidents right that's the same group I haven't heard that that okay because obviously some of the items that had been promised to them they probably would be a good recipient of them I agree um and and they can partake in the auction as well
so they could get they could require it that way if there is an opportunity to to segregate some of the items uh for public use and we will considered doing that okay thank you so the process starts again thanks Paul other questions yes sir uh Thomas Jan 612 3rd Avenue mayor you mentioned the affordable housing
ordinance uh was that from 2017 yes it was so in other words from 2017 till 2025 we haven't collected any affordable housing fees for all of the new homes and major developments that have taken place in the B rele that's correct over two administrations that is very scary um but thank you for putting the sign on the building uh at the Bazi
Center at the Construction office letting everyone know um it's fantastic and you know but uh also I I did have some a few quick comments about some of the projects of Ben's taking notes um I'm I'm a 30-year property owner on Main Street I was never allowed to be in the uh committee that was set up uh by the previous administration for Main Street and I'd be happy to help I have a historical knowledge of the work that was done in
1997 and I I have spoken with the chief recently about uh delineating the parking spaces improving the site triangles creating ladder crosswalks at all non signalized intersections and then creating strategic loading zones uh not on Main Street but around the corners so um I would hope that you know if there is a committee I'd like to be involved in that um also you know you do have projects that were done uh like the perfect perk and 301 Main they did
a beautiful paper Drive walkway and it's you know to to say we're going to rip it up it's just really not I don't think correct uh one other thing I'd like to add is that any driver ways fronting on Main Street uh really should be done in concrete and not in Pavers so pedestrians understand that a car could pull out here that's one thing that know we haven't done before uh also for the uh Recreation Center uh I I I didn't hear any mention of the greenhouse and you
know it's pretty much an isore to do all this work and leave the greenhouse and not figure out if it's going to be a dog park or a pickle bow area or uh I I think that needs to be addressed you know by the town and and I I would almost hope that uh we should just do pickle ball and not do tennis there's other places to play tennis that would be uh my thought process on that and I really hope that there's no concession at the beach if it could be a very large uh Men's Room very large women's room
and a family bathroom uh all of comfortable size and service I I think that would be the best for the town but uh thanks very much I look forward to the interactions and the public comments um that have been requ Reed by councilman nki on these items thank you thank you any other questions in the audience yes you have one person Don Greenberg on the board hey guys uh don Greenberg 32 Parkplace Avenue um just question about Main
Street uh did we ever get a resolution on whether the we're going to get the utilities underground we have determined that it would be uh not only prohibitively expensive but it would probably grind our businesses to a h for numerous months so I believe we have I personally have moved on from uh making that request further okay and uh this is an agenda item
but while I have the mic um none of the uh Charter study commission meetings for February are on the website so if I could get those on there that'd be awesome yes they are oh I just got an email that they weren't on there I put every single meeting on that website the the night that you guys decided when you were doing them okay well then I will double check that I got not an email I got a text that they weren't on there they're on there thanks Erica you're welcome Don that's all I got okay there are
no more are there any more public questions or comments okay we'll move on to our uh what was uh item number six president presentations and bids our interm CFO Mr John Barrett is joining us this evening to present the annual debt statement speak mayor councel how are you I did make uh some copies here
just yes please thank you thank you may I apologize had I known there' be so many people here I would have made a lot of extra copies but I do have maybe uh six copies if anybody wants it you raise your hand first from first you go it's okay John would it
be okay for you to email it to me and if anyone wants to email me I'll send it in I'll reserve my com good evening mayor and Council once again and the residents of Bradley Beach um every year um at the end of the
fiscal year in this case at the end of uh December 20 December 31st of 24 uh we have to accumulate and Report our outstanding debt as at the end of the year uh by the um 3st of January and that's what they call an annual debt statement now what I'm going to review here with you and it's going to be on the website because I'm going to email it over to the clerk uh for the website um but this is a standard form uh there's nothing new about this I just felt that in speaking with uh administrator and the mayor that maybe the residents would like to at least
get under the hood a little bit and understand you know what we have to do as far as reporting requirements uh and also where we stand on our outstanding debt now that being said um you and I every everybody here can have a little different opinion uh say when we bought our first house and if you had cash you bought a house you didn't pay a mortgage or you didn't have enough cash and you need to get a mortgage and you've been enjoying the use of that house over the last 30 years or whatever the mortgage is uh similarly in municipal government um we
cannot go out U to operate uh or basically to fund our Municipal operations so salaries and wages other expense uh Debt Service that type of stuff we can't go out and borrow that um ironically the state government C the local municipality C so mostly uh what we have here in Bradley Beach is we have uh debt uh in three categories one of which is General debt or or general Capital debt which would include your roadways uh maybe buying a building um
any type of uh vehicle purchases uh in why City Vehicle it can't be a car it has to have a useful life of over five years and a similar you know kind of a a difference is I can't buy a a car but I can buy an SUV uh you know for the police department or Public Works um I can buy a car that's for sure but I can't go out and borrow to raise the money so what happens in the municipality level um we have not only do we have the general Capital which I'll go over we also have the two utility capitals for your beach and also
your sewer um with the beach and Sewer they are what's called self- liquida meaning that uh based on revenues and expenditure is that they basically uh we don't have to uh raise that 5% down payment that we do in a general capital budget so generally uh what you would see is in in a municipal budget you would see the oper you see in the beginning part from sheet 4 through sheet 11 you see revenues from sheet 12 through sheet 30 you would see uh operating expenses and there's a category in there called the capital
Improvement fund and if the town and this I'm just making up a scenario wanted to go out and and ordain a million dollar roadway Improvement ordinance you the municipality would either have to have set aside in the capital fund um or you'd have to budget for it in your operating budget say $50,000 or% of that million doll ordinance and once you do that ordinance we would uh at that point uh be authorized in the finance office obviously with your uh consultation to
go out and borrow $950,000 of that ordinance and combined with our 50 we have a million we go start to pay roads now you have certain things in in uh your finances that in essence are we called authorized but not issued so um as a CFO in trying to manage the cash management of the capital fund I need to know generally uh you know what projects you going to be moving on because I need to make sure that the burough has the money on hand to pay those vendors I don't want to single out our engineer but he likes
getting paid right from these type of things right um so ultimately when we uh work as a team with the mayor the administrator and the finance office we're kind of taking a look at what kind of projects are for 12 month 18mon 2year time frame so I can manage the cash uh and borrow the cash now there's certain areas that we can borrow the cash number one we can go out on the open market just like you would say for instance 30-year mortgage um depending on the useful life of the asset like a road or a building uh
as compared to you know a police or Fire EMS vehicle or uh you know SUV there's different useful lives and ultimately we have to pay back that money based on that useful life so if I had had an ordinance buying say $100,000 worth of uh SUVs for the police I'd have five years to pay that back if I had a million dollar ordinance for roads i' have 25 to 30 years depending on exactly what you were doing so in what what I want to stress is on that first page and I I think actually if it's okay
I'm going to skip the first page because ultimately that's the accumulation of the pages behind it so when we take a look at and of course the audience can do that as well um sheet two and sheet three or blank and then we go into sheet four which actually uh are the bonds and notes outstanding for your sewer Utility Fund and what I'd like just to go through I'm just going to run down this real quick once again there's no stupid questions so that only it doesn't just mean uh you know residents or governing
body at any point in time I'm always going to be available for any kind of questions that might come up but under the sewer utility you can see that item number two that we have at the end of 12312 for we have $674,000 worth of Serial bonds outstanding we also look at the bond anticipation those now the difference between a bond and a band is that a bond is per what's called permanent financing just like your mortgage but when you look at a bond anticipation it's kind of
like a I don't use the word home equity line because it's not really you know very similar but a ban is that we're anticipating going out to issue a bond permanent financing so a ban uh is one year in paper basically I I can't uh go 370 days I have to go 365 days and every year those banss get renewed and we're paying only interest in those unless we've started to go beyond that third year we have to start paying a portion of principal and once again the principle is based on your useful
life of the underlying Improvement that that ordinance has had now one of the things you see here on the sheet here is 18249 of authorized but not issued so there are uh there is debt that we can issue up to 184 82,000 in change um to fund those ordinances under the sewer ordinance um so right now majority of our money is in the bond anticipation notes um I would offer to you that utilizing the county mcia pool loan the
the mammoth County Pool loan uh program is the most economical way to basically raise money and permanently Finance um because we don't have to on a local level deal with a lot of the uh accounting and legal matters associated with basically issuing debt we just go up to the county of Mammoth and we say listen would you mind we'd like to float basically permanently Finance some of our outstanding ordinances um and then obviously if we look at the bottom of this sheet we have uh
basically What's called the self-liquidating calculations and not to bore you because we're going to look at the next one for beach but it basically takes a snapshot in time as to what the revenues have been for the last year in addition to uh the expenditures and uh if it is positive in this case line 8 says excess revenue of 4,798 49 then we don't have to raise 5% in a succeeding Year's budget in order to do uh Capital Improvements now we switch
the page over at page 12 uh and it has the Beach utility once again boring I'll just go over it real quick um we have serial bonds outstanding of 753 th000 uh we have Bond anticipation notes for those who are looking around page five at the top of page five um we have Bond anticipation notes once again short-term financing of 3.4 almost 3.5 million and then authorized but not issued of $2.4 million and of course the Beach utility revenues and expenditures are also
here as well um so once again their self But ultimately um when we have a self-liquidating debt that debt is basically taken off our net debt and explain that we get to the first page on Page 6 to 12 um it just basically gives us um that we have uh issued serial Bonds in this case we have three different categories uh for the general improvement from 2021 for the 2024 uh Library refunding bonds and the
24 General Improvement refunding bonds and anytime you see the word refunding that means that when we initially went out and issued the debt we paid whatever interest rate it was and then the interest rate mark Market went down and it gives us an opportunity through the local Finance board and certainly they just uh organized it so the municipality didn't have to go down to Trenton every time they want to refund an ordinance now it's on Zoom but it's pretty much as long as it has a 3% uh net present value of interest to us then we can do it automatically basically it's kind of like issue
you know you have a car loan at 10% your credit score changed now you can borrow 4% not to say Bradley had any problem with their credit score but in this scenario we would refund that car loan into a lower payment very simple like the mortgages now of course mortgage interest rates are up no one's refunding they would certainly uh do that back in the day um so in addition uh so we have $3.6 million of uh actual serial bonds outstanding and if you turn to page 7 of 12 it really breaks
out in great detail especially with the general Capital the uh names of the ordinances basically the purposes so in this case we have $1.1 million of uh issued Bond anticipation notes and we also have authorized but not issued and once again you see the big one at the end of uh ordinance 2410 various Capital Improvements for $1.8 million so right now Total Bond anticipation notes authorized uh not issued uh authorized
and not issued about $3.8 million our next page page 8 or 12 we have a capital lease for equipment through the MC Tool uh agreements and that's a nominal uh figure of about $37,000 for equipment that uh we have probably purchased over the years now the last few pages are empty but I'd like to bring you back to the front page most important page if you look at no other page or understand no other page this is the one whe it's member of the public or you governing body I'm sure you
know it but I just want to review it with you um one of the things if you look in that section that Center section underneath the uh listing of the names and all that good stuff is that we have what's called gross debt a deduction and net debt now gross debt T captures uh in totality we have $22 million uh worth of uh either issued debt meaning serial bonds uh temporary financing and bond anticipation notes and
also authorized but not issued we just talk about that 1.8 million in the general capital and the deduction looks at um how much of the uh in this case utility debt we have 14 .6 million uh because those funds are self-liquidating we can basically deduct that debt because those utilities are actually paying for themselves at their current race structure now other expenses and other things could happen during the year which would require some sort of adjustment in race but as we snapshot this right now that's fully deductible which
leades US with what we spoke about with the general Capital fund which has $7.5 Million worth of either issued debt of of bonds Bond anticipation notes and authorized but not issued so that's how we come to $7.5 million now the way that this uh document works is that it takes the average of the three years worth of assessed equalized valuations and at the bottom you'll start seeing in the year 22 uh if we took all the properties
that are not exempt like you know school that wouldn't be schools in this case but like the municipal buildings EXA from anything that's on the tax roles um it was it turned from $1.9 billion do and in three short years in 2024 it turned into $2.3 billion which would indicate that you know the the assess value uh of your properties have risen by over $400 million in that threeyear period of time now as as as somebody who's very emotional uh going to a lot of different town meetings about you know
hey my acception up does that mean my taxes are going to go up by that much well the answer is known we'll get to that when we talk about the budget and once we do the public budget sessions um so those issues can be rectified But ultimately in order to get um the the percentage mark of 35% they are taking the net debt of $7.5 million dividing it by the three-year equalized valuation of $2.1 million and coming
up with 3 uh. 358 per. now the state law allows us to go up to 3 and a half% of this assessed valuation now I would never advocate for that um I had a client West denford who had a sinoco uh refinery plant that went offline and they had a successful tax appeal so they actually had to refund millions and millions of dollars that were otherwise taxed and in that case um they were
over 3.5% so that meant every time that West efford in this case public information I'm not sharing you know for anybody look it up yourself but every time that they wanted to do a capital ordinance they had to go to local Finance board and and and sit through that and get the blessing and then they could proceed moving forward in this case you have local home rule now you could as a governing body and maybe with the the you know pitch forks and other uh you know elements of the public you could actually increase what I'm calculating uh up
to about $74 million of of debt that's huge right and and certainly I would not advocate for that so but I point that out because when you look at you know almost a third of 1% when you could go up to three and a half% that's a very low figure and and I just want to point that out it's not to you know boost anybody's ego or you know attitude whatever but when you look at that usually we're looking at over 1% for most municipalities um with regard to the outstanding debt now as I said in the beginning you could have a difference of
opinion whether you know you feel that you know buying or you know having a million dollars to build that road is great unfortunately we don't have that kind of money sitting around to do that we just do it right would we use our own money um but ultimately um I just wanted to kind of give you a briefing as to what your outstanding debt is uh you know from a holistic perspective it's very well balanced um it's not anything that's too heavy I wouldn't say that your debt service payments are what's they're called what's called conforming meaning we shouldn't have big spikes in our debt service
over the lifespan of these of these debt instruments so when you look at the amount that we're paying for Debt Service year-over-year it should be remained somewhat consistent if it wasn't conforming you know year you'd have a say $3 million I'm just exaggerated but you know huge Spike and then maybe go down to 200,000 and the state law allows um we we SP I apologize for going on and on but uh I had a l cup of coffee so what happen show but the uh the state law um uh when Governor chrisy came in and did the 2%
uh uh you know the tax everything's be you know limited by 2% well that year they cut state aid by 20% um and one of the exceptions is that you could have and I don't know if you did or not so I'm not pointing any fingers but you could have passed it on to the taxpayers because you have a loss of Revenue in the category state aid uh if you have a spike in your debt service increases year-over-year once again or exemption to that cap so when you look at that 2% cap understand something both from
elected officials and and obviously from members of the public that based on the cap calculations it could be a double digit increase But ultimately um things like pension increases uh State health benefits has gone up about 16% year-over-year and when you try to live in a 3 and a half% uh appropriation cap in this case a 2% Levy cap it becomes very difficult and that's why those tough decisions will have to be made according to how you see fit in joing the town um but at that point I just give it up to you if you have
any questions of me I'll be happy to answer them and certainly available by phone or sh any any questions John spirit I I have a at least one quick question um and I I don't mean to put you on the spot I don't know if you've got enough familiarity with the details of this but but I'm struck by The Fairly large authorized but not issued amount of bond anticipation notes for the Beach utility is that all tied to the yeah you
know that's that's a great question and I would love to be able to answer to you but uh but ultimately um if I were to have an audit I'd be able to look at those ordinances by see the utilities they don't they don't make you put the ordinances listed like the general Capital ordinances um so I don't have that information uh I guess you would have it better if you've in the past few years ordained uh improvements and yet you haven't pulled the trigger chances are that's what a major part of that is in essence unless we we want
to borrow that money uh before uh we start to dig the shovels on any project because we have a a limited time to in essence uh pay that or fund that to make it still maintain it taxfree that's what Municipal you know municipal bonds are tax-free income so if you were to say spend 100,000 on a million dollar Bond and in two years decide you know what I got to go raise that money I borrowed it from another funded ordinance um that 100,000 that example would be uh a
taxable so you would obviously pay a higher interest rate um on that taxable debt that you would uh as a tax-free instrument for the investor um so that's the only difference there but that's has happen here from everything I've seen you know the the payment and issuance of debt has been solid and and quite honestly if I saw that you had uh you know borrowed the 1.8 million or whatever you know this two uh 2.4 million of authorized but not issued in beach and it was sitting in your cash account well you pay an interest on it so you're not going to make that
interest and in fact if you make interest and have to pay interest is an Arbitrage calculation it's going to cost you more money um sometimes you hear like the uh um the um ibank is sometimes with the utility it's like hey ibank they're giving you half interest free and lower interest there the problem with the I Bank whenever it's proposed that's very labor intensive uh for the reporting of it to be able to draw down that money in essence You' have to pay a vendor have your engineer certify and send in it
becomes very labor intensive and and you as a governing body might be intrigued to say hey ibank that's that's cheap money but the fact is the back the back end of that is that you're having a lot of engineering uh in this case County whatever fees legal fees dealing with the uh um basically the maintenance of of getting that money in So based on today's interest environment um it's good to obviously look at short-term interest rates if we see some Flex you know flexibility or you know flux in where interest rates are billing um but ultimately I would also steer you I get paid
no extra to do this to look at the county mcia pool loan programs because they also borrow debt uh or issue Bond anticipation notes I've used M countyy for a few different great organization to work with and once again no uh transaction costs really that would be borne on us if we would do that ourselves the entire financial advisor Bond counsel and uh you know go through that issue your auditor would also have to be certifying your financials in the prior your audit and there's a fee for that uh so in
this case it's always good to look at somebody else paying those bills in this case uh Mr Joe Kelly who is the county CFO he's also the CFO of the Improvement Authority and uh he's very busy at times just basically helping all of our local towns in M County uh basically issue debt and pay for improvements so one other quick question on page seven of 12 they appear to be under the authorized but not issu and the total is 2.7 million but I can see you know two3 of
that or half of that maybe is um is U 24-10 something recent but some of the other States appear to be older in smaller amounts but is what do those reflect are those items we can clean up at some point yeah I'm sorry yes the the answer to that is absolutely yes what I would suggest and and I know we have uh Fred evue Who's involved as well I would basically strike a line you know and
take a look at uh anything above you know 2123 um and and to see exactly do we need uh to fund those so for instance let me give you an example and we're going to pull out out of the blue that top one of 138,000 of authorized but not issued I'm making numbers up here just for an example um you have uh done an ordinance for a million dollars that's what that ordinance is in the scenario and you've spent all the money you spent a million dollars on the Improvement at this
would indicate in this scenario that $138,000 of it has not been borrowed yet meaning you didn't go out to borrow now it could be a variety of reasons for that and sometimes the bond Council doesn't feel that that's a really good ordinance because of recordkeeping or they don't have the sof debt there's always something possible once again this is all scenarios to run in the numbers um so what you could do with that $138,000 if this was something that uh in essence uh was U not funded but you
spent it all is that you could raise a portion thereof in your operating budget as called a deferred charge um and basically fund all of these Capital ordinances that in this case um are still left unissued but in the scenario that you have authorized 138,000 to go borrow and I look in the books and records and you have you know 138,000 of Appropriations just sitting there that haven't been spent we do a cancellation resolution to cancel the appropriation cancel the authorized
but not issued that comes off your debt Service uh your debt annual debt statement and then you can decide what you want to do but ultimately I think uh just a curs review that anything from 2124 and above up to the 1605 which is then repurposed into to 1808 that's how that reads um should be considered uh and be looked at by Mr evue uh as to uh disposition of that and a simple Council resolution would basically
cancel that that being said if if you know you didn't issue 138 and I have zero dollars left then we have to talk about either issuing that debt to fully fund that ordinance or maybe carving up over three or five years and funding that uh in the Appropriations which would be considered outside the cap would be considered Deb service and once again an exemption uh to the tax 2% Levy count okay thank you for all these explanations I guess to to recap you
would say as as our expert and CFO you would say that um we are in sound shape in terms of our borrowing uh close to we're borrowing approximately 10% what we would be Max allowed to borrow without throwing any yeah absolutely I came up with 74 million I'm going to use 75 million so yeah we're at about 10% of that 3.5% that we can go up to I would not anticipate uh you know unless you really want to put electric
on that main street you were speaking about before uh you know at this point I think slow and steady wins the race uh and obviously a new mayor um would obvious you dictate as to where the focus of improvements and budgetary focuses are uh we running the town but ultimately that's on you you're the policy maker with the administrator I'm just got to CS being to make sure they're there for you well number one thank you for your presentation and normally we would not open this up to public comment however this is a unique
opportunity to talk to CFO so I'm going to make a motion that we do open it up the public question or comment second second um Noble yes Mr Green yes Mr NWI yes Mr Weber yes mayor gesi yes so any questions or comments 4 Hour CFO Mr you've already asked one question tonight I apologize it's nice to meet in
this form we haven't had this type of access to a CFO in a while so this is refreshing um I know um Mr Kelly at the M County MCA um how does he feel about lending US money without a 2022 corrective action plan and without a 2023 okay so um ultimately uh you would have to ask Mr Kelly that question um I deal with him personally on other matters for other towns um I would
anticipate that uh first of all we are very close not to thege great news but we're very close to satisfying all questions that the auditor had in order to get the 23 audit produced and from what I gather in discussions with him that prior cfo's financials held up to a scrutiny and we could rely upon that annual financial statement that was found at the end of 2023 and to be good balance numbers for our books of Records we're going to still adjust those once we get the firm audit in with regard
to uh a corrective action plan uh I I couldn't speak to that but U having been on a number of calls both with rating agencies standard for MS um and also with the county uh when to do this type of thing I have never I've never been asked by any of the entities have you filed your Collective action um and when we look at the um the available financial documents uh short of an audit being uh published by our auditor Bob Oliva uh we have to rely on the
next best of the annual Financial stat having looked at last year's annual financial statement I would tell you that uh your predecessor CFO some very um difficult books and Records in order to make heads or Tales up um and um and that's just what I'll say about that so I'm very happy that you had somebody who qualified credentialing and was able to make as I often say he's given a I say anybody who's g a lot of bad
financials or L tough financials it's like giving plate of a spaghetti to somebody pack it straighten box it's not easy to do um so I'm very happy and once we get the annual financial statement prod 12324 we had until the beginning of March to do that working on that in addition to the financial schedules so that Bob ol I believe has been reappointed um will actually be able to conduct an audit and not have questions that basically pre pre uh were here before uh I believe Mr gar was your
former CFO for about a year um this was from I'll just leave it at that I I'm not here to B anybody but he definitely great job of trying to get things together and I just had one more question since the topic has been about the church so uh one the church property is sold would the proceeds from that then pay the bonding that was taken to do the purchase do all the engineering and Demolition and everything or would it
just go into the general f okay you're asking a tough question because I'm not familiar with this how was acquired why is a Township asset on scario that I don't know specific fact but I think will speak to you if you borrowed a million dollar to purchase a building and later on you decide to liquidate that building first of all you'd have to basically take a portion of that that buil for you sold it for a million one scenario that million dollars would have to first satisfy that
debt because hey then would be paying debt on asset we don't own and the delt of the $100,000 in the scenario would be brought in as General Revenue it's called miscellaneous Revenue not anticipated or merma to the ACC uh in and once again I hate to think the other way where you sold it for 900 but paid a million and now you're going to have to pay a million dollars worth of debt But ultimately the focus if there's outstanding debt um then you would pay that debt first and then you would
basically take it in as Revenue now I I've had the fire companies and not to disparage any fire company because they're the heroes running into a building while I'm running out but in one Town of Union there were three fire companies and they said listen we sell that ladder truck that should come back to us we're the fire department like no the Township in this case Township unit bought the asset it's theirs you're housing it um but sometimes you hear like I'm liquidate some computers I go back into my OE budget and that's why
I'm proud I'm six with four me sometimes and can tell people no you're not getting that money um but that's how that would work if you sold the utility for instance you for inst you sold you can't sell the like say you sold a sewer utility if you had a water utility any outstanding debt would have to be extinguished and whatever profit there would be at that point for the municipality would then be taken as the current fund now you could uh that could go straight to your fund balance and you could have a fund balance policy that says you know we just got a $2 million for whatever and we're going to hold on
to that we want to buffer our our fund balance But ultimately it's a decision for the future governments that manage the finances whether they appropriate uh that fund balance as a revenue to the town so once again I just book it in where it has to go it's a policy decision what you want to do with it at that point thanks so much for clarifying thank for your presentation I just want to thank you for your hard work on your behalf and you making it easy to understand and talking at a level because I know
this is a very complicated thing and I actually understood like maybe and I'm not a numbers person and I understood like maybe a good 50% of what you just said so I really grateful and I want to thank um our Council and and marosi for making it accessible to us because this is something we've never experienc if I could I mean the mayor when I um when we first met in his office uh with your administrator he made that very abundantly clear um that he wanted this to be a transparent finance office because once again if someone would pull
back then you got more questions right like I'm not showing you page six it's on page six right um but ultimately um one of the things I'm planning on doing administrator is that once we do a a draft budget and we have obviously the input of the government body as to where we want to see the ship um I love doing public information sessions once again you come we all hang out at this table at 3:00 on a Tuesday whatever and there's no stupid question my my dad uh uh my mother was a teacher my dad became a
lawyer he I was born when he was 40 he went to law school at 46 as I joke and I hate to do it on a public record but he's dead not going to admit this but when asked why going to law school he he he said he said I looked in the crib and I figured I have to get John out of jail one day I once again he's dead and I can tell that story but um but UL there's no stupid question you were I've been doing this since I've been 27 5 it's not boring either like usually like this is the kind of thing where your eyes blaz over and you it's
you're very engaging and you made very pleasant and once we do that it's okay with you U Matt when we have that session um come with any questions it's not going to me you know you might come here and maybe you have a question back there you know it's 2 plus two but you're embarrassed or just maybe you're not a public speaker that's the venue where you can understand Page by page that there's really no smok and mirrors in these budgets um it is just basically what I got to do to to format it properly and ultimately the governing body has to decide uh but once again I'm here
to deliver a message to them they can decide whatever they want but if I if I say listen you're going to with a Ser utility maybe you got to look at the rates you're starting to Trend to not look very profitable and you might trip it to being non- liquidating calculation then they have to say Hey listen we have a lot of sewer infrastructure to deal with right so you know do we want to have to raise 5% which on the rate payers immediately or do we want to invest in the capital infrastructure and then pay it over 20 years those people
are enjoying it just like you and I are probably enjoying our houses sometimes uh but as I said there's no stupid question and I actually got it yeah it's all good thank you thank you all right I see no other questions so Mr Barrett we can let you us but thank you very much for thank you very much thank you very much okay uh we went a little out of order there but we are back on track with item number nine on the agenda uh ordinances and we have a couple of
introductions so um I would like to make a motion that we introduce U the amendment for ordinance 20 25- a which is an ordinance establishing certain salaries of certain officers and employees of the burrow of Bradley Beach in the county of Mam and the state of New Jersey and repealing any and all other ordinances inconsistent here with so I'll make a motion that we uh that we approve
this introduction and we can also have comment as you as you is there a second second Mr yes M green BL yes Mr noi yes Mr Weber yes mayor G the only thing I'll say for the public is that it's very specifically adjusting one component of our salary ordinances which is establishing new uh ranges
for the Community Development roles things like Fire Marshall uh the uh construction official and so forth so I will vote Yes thank you okay the second ordinance for introduction is ordinance 20259 an ordinance amending chapter 24 commissions and committees and chapter 270 Land Development and chapter 425 trees of the Burrow's revised General ordinances to enhance the operations and
regulations of the burough shade Tre commission and council president Den did you want quick comment on sure this is just updates um refining their ordinance is a little better Clarity uh has to do with their attendance of members maintenance of trees responsibilities uh so the longterm plan and uh great Canon you got the change I made you would indicate that shrub should not be in the permitted items
right in planting strips we can have grass trees and or mulch around the trees but no shrubs are permitted okay thank you so suming it up right there okay any other comments okay I'll make a motion that we adopt uh that we approve ordinance 2025 D5 and ordinance amending chapter 115 uh oh sorry got
yeah the ordinance 20259 which is focused on um amending chapter 24 commissions and committees chapter 270 Land Development chapter 4 trees of the burough RIS General ordinances to enhance the operations and regulations of the burough shade tree commission second Mr Noble yes M yes Mr n yes Mr Weber yes mayor gzi yes okay we have three ordinances for adoption the first is 20255 ordinance amending chapter 115
animals of the buroughs revised General ordinances to increase the annual dog license feed for the first time since 1987 we call we ordinance am any comments or questions about this n I'll make a motion that we approve uh 2025 have to open it to the public oh I'm sorry uh make a motion that we open this to the public discussion second Mr Noble yes
M greenl yes Mr nowicki yes Mr Weber yes mayor gboi yes okay public comments or questions you want me to stand over here um I just wanted to say thank you for doing this because like I said I'm not a numbers person and um I was talking to somebody about this who is a numbers person and they pointed out to me something that like went over my head about what you said last week at the
meeting when you were on zoom and you said how much was it per you said per year we could say just by Chang making these changes like over a period of years if you go back from like 1980 till now had this been done that translates to millions of dollars like over like I forget what the number was but it was a lot of money and I'm just so grateful to you I want to say thanks for doing this because that's going to translate to hopefully
offsetting increases you know just in general you know our taxes have many reasons to De infl and so this was a really great idea that you know many people may not have F of so Kudos been L just to just to be clear the the dog licenses don't raise that kind of money it's nothing like that to's point was if we look at all these fees across the board we're talking tens of thousands of dollars every
year at a minimum and multipli by how many years it's a lot of money so um yeah so I know we don't love dogs here but P more are there any there is a public comment on yeah Eva can you hear me yes yes yes
hi I apologize this is my first time dialing in so I had an unusual circumstance lies can you just give me your name and address please sure 216 Parkplace Avenue thank you so I received a notification to renew my dog's license I immediately filled out the paperwork and sent a check I then got a notification that my dog license could not be renewed because her rabies
vaccine uh expires in uh November and I'm sorry it expires in uh August and it needs to uh remain unexpired until November so they sent me the check back so I'm not able to tag my dog because I don't want to give her her shot 8 months early so now I will have to pay the increased fee and I will also probably get hit with a late fee because I didn't tag my dog when I was supposed to tag my dog even though I tried to tag
my dog I don't understand why the uh renewal period is only January to March shouldn't it be every year based on when you've had your dog vaccinated a statute statute yeah you answer your question when it's a state statute that every town does it that way because it's required by the state I just want to add I don't think there's any detriment to your dog to
get the rabies vaccination early and we do Run free rabies clinics that's part of the money that you're paying it's a it's a fee to the state and that helps fund these fre clinics that if we've done like years in the past they'll be one at the firehouse sometime like later this year it really has nothing to do with the cost of the vaccination it just has to do with giving my dog a shot eight months before she's due for a shot that's I mean that's the point of the state statute so the functional purpose for dog licensing is really to prevent
the spread of rabies that that's why they like that's the purpose of Statute so they're intentionally trying to make you do as often as like that's the way written that's the point we don't actually care how many dogs are in town but we do care if they have rabies that's the whole that's the whole hook licensing for the whole state and why they make everyone do it annually and it's some sometimes results like this that that's the point of the of the state right but but a vaccine less for three years so doing it annually doesn't make sense it's a it's a threeyear
vaccination you don't have to do it annually like I said you doing it early for your dog you'll be set for three years now yeah the I so what you're saying the the whole point of it is to check in with every single dog every year and make sure they have a Rab's vaccination if you got a new dog if this dog passed away that you know that's the point of the making the town touch Bas with you every year January 31st I understand I understand your point it seems silly and like it's a practical matter but but it's a it's a public
health thing that's the purpose of it so and we don't have really don't have any control over here other than administering it right I'm sorry I'm but no no you know I I'm a rule follower but this you know particular issue was bsome to me agree I thank you Eva even I agree with you I have three dogs and I went through this with one of mine a couple of years ago so kind of in the same boat that you just mentioned but next time you'll be on
track yeah yeah but I I I agree with you thank you all right thank you for your time you're welcome any other public comment okay I will make a motion that we approve the amendment and adopt close I'll make motion to close public comment for ordinance 20255 second and adop Mr Noble and adop right
and adopt and adopt second and yes Mr yes Mr yes Mr Weber yes may yes okay I would like to open public comment for ordinance 2025-the an occupancy tax on certain rentals within the bur of Brad second Mr Noble yes
um M greenl yes Mr nki yes Mr Weber yes mayor G yes public comment any question okay with that I will make a motion to close public comment and adopt ordinance 20 25-6 amending chapter 365 rental property of the bur's Revis G ordinances to oppose an occupancy tax on certain rentals within the B of brother Beach second Mr Noble yes M green blot yes
Mr nowicki yes Mr Weber yes mayor yes I will uh make a motion to open public comment for for discussion on ordinance 20257 uh and ordinance well basically our 5G ordinance is there a second Mr Noble yes Mr R yes Mr ninki yes Mr Weber yes mayor yes
public comments or questions on our 5G ordinance okay seeing no comments or questions I will make a motion to close public com comment and adopt ordinance 20 25-7 our 5G ordinance second Mr Noble yes M green yes MWI yes Mr Weber yes mayor yes I okay uh and
you're skipping ahead too I know I am item number 10 on the agenda Communications there are none mayor um there is one no uh never mind go to consent and I'll tell you that so we will move to uh our resolutions and starting with our consent agenda resolutions okay now could you just make a motion that you are tabling uh 77 uh right yeah 77 um I know you did it at the beginning of the meeting but because we're in the consent part just if you can
make another motion just to table it y okay okay uh I would like to make before we continue with the Cent I'd like to make a motion that we table 2025776924
KO G oh KO G is one of the Bands Jazz playing at jazz because the other ones are labeled Jazz best that was my suspicion but just double check and as usual your suspicion was correct okay um and I just want to point something out about I don't know the way things are running differently around here uh these
days PR JazzFest it's this weekend right there's a c it's free to you all it's free there's a cost you know but before the event happens you're seeing the cost right here right now which my memory is different so um Kudos and now we know who it's a that was my question thanks very much any other discussion among the council okay I'll make a motion
that we adopt consent agenda items resolutions 22569 through 20257 excluding 77 excluding the previously uh tabled item 77 second Mr Noble yes M greenl yes Mr n yes Mr Weber yes yes thanks okay we'll move to individual resolutions and the
first of those is item 20 25-80 rejecting all bids for the demolition of burrow property located at 319 Mar Avenue and authorizing the read vertisements bid specifications requiring the post demolition grading of the afor said property is there I make motion to um to approve this resolution is there a second second Mr Noble yes Mr Nicki
yes um Mr Weber and mayor gzi yes and scream GL sorry okay individual resolution
225-8187 to uh perform an evaluation uh of Ocean Avenue specifically primarily focused on establishing two pickup and drop off areas for handicapped individuals that are wheelchair bound um and as well evaluate our site triangles because uh we've had many concerns
raised about uh challenges in seeing oncoming Vehicles as people pull out of the East West streets onto Ocean Avenue so um anyone who looks at the resolution there's a $7,500 uh fee that has been uh proposed by iachan to perform this analysis for us any comments or questions okay I make a motion that we approve 20258 uh authorizing the award of professional Engineering Services
for Leon S aak second uh Mr Noble yes M greenl yes Mr NWI yes Mr Weber yes mayor yes do I need to motion again to table the next two um great what's your opinion on that t them in the beginning the other one was on the thank you that's what I thought
okay so we will move forward with item as B attorney I make a motion that we approve second Mr Noble yes Mr yes Mr n yes Mr Weber yes mayor gesi yes 2025 85 authorizing the award of professional alternate labor Attorney Services with Jonathan
Cen Cohen of Pia Cohen Law Firm I make a motion that we approve second Mr Noble yes Mr Green blood yes Mr Mr noi yes Mr Weber yes mayor gu yes resolution 2025-the
with Rudman and Roth as burrow labor attorney I make motion that we approve um Mr Noble yes M greenl yes Mr nowicki yes Mr Weber yes mayor guzi yes item 12 on the agenda announcements um there are no official announcements
today item 13A the administrative report sorry I know we're run a little l I would love to have you present late is early this is so uh and one thing U one of the things that we want to do Under the May directive is increase transparency and I can tell you that when you talk about
having a large uh Gap that you're able to borrow and you think well you'll never use that I can tell you from personal experience that if a natural disaster negatively impacts your community it's nice to have that amount that you can borrow quickly knowing that female will come in and and pay it off so before you know something bad happens you need to borrow $20 million 6 n months later you can pay it off but having that ability there is something that U you know don't don't take for granted unfortunately someday you may need to
use it um I want to bring everyone up to date on the the Union contract of loal 152 uh we continue to have meetings on it um mayosi um as many of you know is a uh recovering CPA uh he loves spreadsheets uh he has done a remarkable job figuring out folks salaries we have some folks that are on salary and also getting uh hourly wages we have
people getting stiens we have people with longevity pay we have people who we not paying the right amount to uh it is literally all over the place uh and um I sit there and just kind of let my jaw drop and watch him just go through the process with his spreadsheets to figure it out so um the last meeting we had um we presented basically to the uh to the union everything internally that we have fully transparent uh we're waiting to hear back from them hopefully in the next
week or two to finally uh bring something to the council for their approval if not the the last meeting in February hopefully the first meeting in March but it is certainly moving forward uh the other challenge of the Union is and this is unusual uh there are both white collar and blue collar employees in the same Union typically those are bated into separate unions um Beach lockers who loves Beach lockers Beach lockers are an important topic in this
town uh there are 597 Beach lockers uh available uh so far 351 have been claimed for a total of 8% and uh if you don't mind uh indulging me with little audience participation can anyone guess which Avenue has the most Beach lockers already taken Fourth Avenue Fourth Avenue you know why cuz it's the surfing Beach and everybody loves surfing close runner up is Ocean Park and
who knows which one unfortunately there's always got to be the one that's coming in last which one is the lowest close Cliff Avenue with only 12 but uh it's still a good competition um the other thing uh um you know councilman Weber mentioned tourism so uh after events like we're going to have this week uh I'm going to have our tourism director uh Amy Hall put together a
report uh how much was spent what happened how many people came so we can report that to the Council reports that to the public so um when you look at spending money on tourism you can't really look at it as a business hey we spent 7,000 we raised 10,000 we made 3,000 it doesn't really work like that but at least it gives you an idea not so much a quantitative but more of a qualitative analysis of was this a good event
should we do it in the future uh or should we entertain other events uh and that's a policy decision for the mayor and Council uh to take a look at um but we we should have that report Vi at the next meeting regarding the jazz festival and can I just add I know I just talked about the cost of the events it's on the bill list but it's being paid for from tourism so that's fees that other people pay it's not your tax money well is the point oh yeah this is all know this has to do with any of your property tax hours this is with through a tourism F trust thank
you all very much thank you counc thank you thank you okay thank you Matt um next on the agenda mayor and Council reports uh let's start with Mr Council okay I got to get my final notes for M okay I going to give you the and last time I I declined to give
you the first day biweekly report because my phone died but uh this will be the first so this will be one for February here for the period that ended today the squad responded to 15 day calls and Five Night Calls total of 20 calls 15 were for medical five were for fire the squad participated in the Bradley Beach bbca uh January Jam as well as providing medical OverWatch uh the squad thanks the bbca for their support of the
first day and fire department the squad also welcomes our newest Cadet Leah Kar there were no out of town Mutual Aid requests and the squad requested no Mutual aid for this operational period they fulfilled 100% of their assignments uh as always they're looking for volunteers they offer free training for qualified individuals uh there's an application on the bur's website and they have a Cadet program for folks between 18 excuse me 16 and 18 years of age uh
who are interested in serving their community and this was submitted by the president of the first date Eric Hunter the report was prepared by the secretary John Z just so you know what's going on with that um I am also the leison to the environmental commission and they met here last night uh I'll let everybody know they're focused on sustainable Jersey which if you don't know it's this program in the state of New Jersey where towns can I like to say jump through a bunch of environmental hoops and show
that they're actually doing some things sustainably and environmentally and they get points for demonstrating this and uh they can get certified if they get enough points and and and cross the finish line so to speak so I'd like to speak to everybody that works for the town this is kind of like a townwide thing so if you're a DPW or you're at Recreation or you're part of some other you know Board of commission in town I might be coming to you somebody from the um environmental commission might be coming to you and saying hey we know
you're doing this thing can you help us document it I'll just give you a great example went to the police yesterday and said the police the they do the drug takeback program uh twice a year you can go bring your unwanted prescriptions bring it to the police it's safe and secure and that's actually something we get points for as the state of Jersey so that's a just a an example and I took care of that one yesterday it was basically an email and I'm going to get the information back from the police department but um so for our administrator or anybody from other departments that's listening we're going to be
coming to you and we're going to be asking you because believe it or not you're doing things that help us get points for sustainable Jersey and we want to we want to get them so that's coming um it's actually in our first cracket our first it's like the next few weeks it's too so we'll be coming soon um I L on for DPW and I sat down and had a meeting with yio after he got over pretty goodness over last week and uh talked about a bunch of things I just something I think the public should be aware of um there are a bunch
of those ash trees on the 600 block of Brinley they get that disease is to Emerald ashore they're to come down so I'm telling you now nobody have to call and freak out that six trees are going to come down um it's five trees since 600 block and they um but they all have this disease they're not getting any better they might stay up for another 10 years but they're not getting any better and they're be a hazard and we'll get some new trees in there um and had a great discussion with uh with baj about
lockers and all sorts of other things um and I did the same same for Community Development I'm the liaison there I sat down with the new development director P Valentine and um I think it was already mentioned tonight but people should know there's a sign on the door at the Baza Center when you're go into Community Development and at the counter and they're all over the place it's a sign it was up actually probably over a week ago proactively telling people as of February 1st the town's going to be
collecting uh this fee it's to go to that affordable housing trust fund so it's 1 and a half% um The increased value if you're improving your home or residence uh and it's 2 and half% if you're improving a property and it's nonresidential so that's the fee that was mentioned earlier that we should have been collecting for the last few years but we're going to start collecting it now so um in my estimation I think more has happened in affordable housing in the last month in this burrow than has
happened in the previous 25 years which was the entire round uh round three of affordable housing um and you did deal with the salary ordinance toight all those folks work at um in the community development department but I just want people to know it's not necessarily four different people some of those can all be done in fact they could prob be done by one person but um it seemed like it's four different jobs but it's probably going to just go to one or two people so that's basically my report thank you councilman I'm going to turn to council
president Den NOA thank you mayor the Bradley me chain tree has a meeting tomorrow night so I'll cover that in the next meeting tourism as we all know is the jazz festival is this weekend Friday and Saturday there'll be six bands and over 25 musicians in total they have promoted the restaurant row via guest emails offer to help with reservations it's like it's going to be a lot of fun and it supports the businesses and it gives people a reason to visit Bradley Beach in the dead of
winter then after that um I did attend the Bradley Beach Board of Ed meeting on January 28th they were celebrating School Board recognition month a time when residents can acknowledge the contributions made by our local school school board members and the Bradley Beach Board of Ed is a dedicated group of volunteers fostering a supportive learning environment where students can achieve academic emotional and
social growth and over the past three years the students performance at the Bradley Elementary School on the learning student um the New Jersey student learning assessment njsla has improved significantly they have seen a 15% Point increase in mathematics and 14% Point increase in English these gains reflect the collective efforts of the Educators the
students the families and the board's commitment to their academic Excellence but beyond test scores the district has achieved several notable recognitions including sustainable Jersey silver CER certification recognition by the New Jersey safe roots to school program kindness certification for 2024 recognition by the New Jersey Center for inclusive education they launched
a dual language prek program they had the Imp implement imple implementation thank you of ADV for Middle School obviously I didn't go to bradle Beach Elementary um increase community outre outreach and family workshops inauguration of their first ever autism autism program enhanced High School Readiness programs to support students transition Beyond Bradley Beach Elementary
School and in addition to the custom cards and posters decorated by the students the board celebrated with the perfect perfect audit report I would just like to give a big round of applause to our superintendent Dr heidleberg our school business administrator David tzas and these volunteers that are members of the Board of Ed past and present the present members include president Dr Elizabeth
Franks vice president Bridget devain members Courtney wallon Noel Weinberg Caitlyn salutti Liza Flynn Felicia sa Rosanne Caruso Walker and April Davis thank you all for your work um may I have uh Dr Frank is in the office if if you don't mind she could come up and just give us a couple sentences we'd really appreciate it such a price
thank you thank you uh M no I I just want to thank you for your liaison and the support that you Board of Education um we really have been working very hard to improve outcomes for our students and uh we've been I think quite successful we have a great Administration and thank you for mentioning our audit we're very proud of it um with the audit you know they say unmodified opinions I'm like that doesn't sound very wonderful could we say A+ like as an educator so our
auditor agreed we could say A+ but um thank you for mentioning that and I just also want to take the opportunity um what I always say is it takes a village and Bradley Beach is such a wonderful Village we're we I always say we're a small and mighty school and there are so many people here we we partner with the historical Association Mr Nankin comes in works with some of our students the shade tree commission the food pantry bbca we have mentors um that come and work with our students and so I just really want to thank the community our
BBE foundation and I don't know whether everyone is aware of this but um we just started at Bradley Beach Education Foundation and one of the first things and there was a strategic plan that some of you were on a few years back and the big topic were our boilers we were all worried that our boilers were going to break down and it was going to be a big expense and through our BBF we were able to uh get in touch with I think it was
uh PNG or NJ JCP jcpnl um and we were actually able to get a grant for $34 some th000 to get new wellers so we saved the taxpayers lots of money that we were able to get this Grant and we were able to um you know Finance the rest of it that that was needed so um please know that we are very fiscally responsible at the same time as building our our academics and I really appreciate Jane all that you've done and you're really you thank you so much so thank you and thank all
of you as well it's really rep thank you and one other comment about Dr Frank she also requested a special signage on the school and our BPW and our chief of police have jumped on that and whatever signage you've requested we are in the process of working to uh to implement oh thank you and that really came as a result of one of our parents feeling like we needed more signage and you started to look like oh that's a
great point we were missing that so thank you okay uh let's go with Council uh feter Lake commission uh has a meeting upcoming a week from Thursday and on their agenda is the installation of sign on the Ocean Grove side of the lake prohibiting electric and motorized vehicles from the bridge the initiation of the contract for wildlife control
with Mike Campbell of Galaxy geese um this is now going to be the second year that they're using uh the services uh and the possibility of considering the installation of benches on the Ocean Grove side and that will likely be a fundraiser uh and finally the staining of the bridge with a darker color and this is to preserve the wood on the bridge uh so the next Fletcher Lake commission meeting is Thursday February 13th at 6 PM 6 pm here in
this room uh let's see um Recreation has a number of of fun UPC coming activities uh silver silver ball arcade is a middle school takeover for students in grades 5 through 8 Thursday February 20th it's a drop off event uh it's $25 per child which includes food drinks and unlimited play uh and anyone interested should register in advance through the
recreation department radio Bingo is the collaborative event by the Bradley Beach Ladies auil Auxiliary fire department and the rec department Saturday March 8th at 700 p.m. at the rec center tickets are $12 and they're on sale now must be purchased in advance you can pick your T tickets up in person and contact uh contact Rec director uh Courtney papus if you'd like to set up a time to pick up your tickets uh majan
is now meeting every Friday at the Bazi center from 1 to 3 the next senior club meeting is on February 26th at the AI center from noon to 3: open wreck is on Thursdays and Fridays for kids to come do their homework play games get crafty and watch movies after school uh this takes place Thursdays till 6:00 pm. and Fridays till 7 keep an eye out for Family karaoke night coming up March 28th with details to come summer
camp 20125 enrollment will begin in mid-march Bradley Beach residents get a week of priority and specific dates will be announced soon the next Recreation board meeting is Monday February 10th 6:30 p.m at the rec center all are welcome and then finally the Arts Council uh met Friday January 24th the council currently has two members and is looking to round out with five additional members
I just want to point out um John that one of the two members uh uh June Julian has environmental background professionally so there may be an opportunity to contribute to sustainable Jersey at the municipal level as well as potentially within the schools that would be cool somebody said they're interested in the environmental commission he's a musician so I cool please do please do um so um as I
said the coun the council is looking to get um obtain five additional members it'll be meeting this Friday at 7 p.m. to ident ify Community artists who can serve in a leadership role for the council once the membership is established and the terms are set the Arts Council will begin to identify programming in the areas of both Visual and performance art while there is greater interest than spots available the participation of Arts Council volunteers will be instrumental in helping its goals and provide active programming and performance for the community
and as Dr Frank said and I have here it takes a village so we need all the vol um the artarts council will coordinate with both tourism and the bbca to ensure programming that aligns with each of their missions both Paula Gavin and Amy Hall are participating in these discussions and finally I just want to share that uh councilman nowicki and I both attended uh the New
Jersey municipality's um orientation for newly elected officials and that was this past Saturday it was a full day of um um uh active listening that's thank you sh and councilman nowi mayor I just be out of for one minute please the PTA would not forgive me we have our auction March 30th and the whole Community is invited it's a great Community event it's uh at
the school March 30 if tickets are on sale you been graad HP um and just to remind it's been mentioned the Jaz but no one has said that it's at the grav Beach Elementary School and in our beautiful auditor so those two things I forgot to so I thank you in March 30th March 30th yes get your tickets early great thank you on my calendar got it Council thank you um the silv lake commission meeting is um here February 20th um two weeks from this Thursday um the fire department uh for the
month ending January 31st our fire department responded to eight day calls and two Night Calls for toal 10 calls four were fire fire alarm activations one was a carbon monoxide alarm activation one was an elevator rescue one was a natural gas leak two were power line sparking which we've heard a lot about that on social media now and one was a lift assist for a first aid call the department conducted one training for engine
operations there were no Mutual Aid requests and I'm happy to report we have one new firefighter application pending uh the department fulfilled 100% of our assignments to this operational period we are still looking for volunteers to the fire department and offer free training for qualified individuals anyone wishing to volunteer for the fire department May inquire through the Burrow's website uh the police department officers made one warrant arrest during the last twoe period in addition there were several motor vehicle stops
and summonses issued for various traffic offenses officers responded to and investigated five motor vehic crashes might be a little bit to do with the weather that we were having um over the past weekend an unknown person entered a parked unlocked motor vehicle in 200 block of Newark Avenue and removed contents from the vehicle this is being investigated by our detective Bureau all residents are reminded to please lock your vehicles and do
not leave any valuable items inside your vehicle and then lastly um just to build on what John mentioned on the bbca event uh the January Jam was a great fundraiser for our First Responders and this is really important because a lot of our um you know the V volunteers and um one is Municipal aid but the other part of it is um donations and so that was a great fundraiser so um and there'll be others so come on out bring your checkbooks um and also there was a recognition day for First Responders at uh
UVA this past Sunday and um if you don't um or you haven't just reach out if you see our first respond and just tell them thank you that's my report thank you councilman um okay so my report I'm going to try to keep this pretty quick but there are a lot of really exciting things happening in the burrow right now um uh I'm working very closely with councilman uh nowiki on a lot of different C Lake projects I mentioned them earlier when Mr M was
talking about there's a lot going on between the the upcoming common out extension the restoration work on and some of the other projects surrounding that that I've I've worked with that group as the Le for the past five years U councilman nowiki has worked with them as a resident volunteer for eight months or so probably right and a half oh is it that long okay wow a year and a half um and I think both of us would say that we're seeing progress like like Bradley Beach
has never seen before in this area we've got funding and I'll thank the prior Administration for a lot of that current funding for the um but just the entire the teamwork between Avon and Bradley Beach is is uh just awesome to to see especially after many years of struggling to make any real progress and I see Mr P in the audience I know uh Peter your wife has been instrumental and helping us achieve a lot of that progress um an's not here tonight is she no okay um but along
with that excitement uh as a few folks have mentioned fair share housing we're making some really good strides getting a lot of financing in order this council is uh amazingly committed to making sure that we not only fulfill our obligations but hopefully we will exceed our obligations in terms of uh affordable housing that this burrow provides to um to moderate and low-income individuals um local 152 making great strides on the contract uh Mr dhy I
appreciate your comments about my spreadsheeting abilities but uh that really is taking a village not only is Mr dhy uh doing a great job helping us to get organized uh our labor attorney Alan Roth has done a great job working with the the the Union's attorney and working through a lot of the logistics of the contract and most importantly the the union members have just been awesome um a tremendous amount of mutual respect at these discussions and great progress being made I don't want to jinx the process
but my hope is uh there are some you know technical things that the union has to go through to get approval but as of our last meeting a couple days ago uh the Hope was that we would have a contract ratified and ready to go uh in March so we're making good progress there uh another just really exciting thing uh folks who have read our uh newsletters saw our Outreach for volunteers for strategic task force members we have uh eight strategic
task forces identified we've had over 80 volunteers very excited about this not only for the task forces but for some commissions and committees in the buau uh Amy Hall is organizing that for us I don't have the list of those 80 plus people in front of me but within the next few days we'll be organizing that we'll be getting out getting messages back out to people to get those uh task forces up and running uh I'll just mention again the bbca event at at Uber restaurant for recognizing superheroes our First Responders
our police fire first aid OEM and our DPW workers uh a lot of residents attended and uh and made donations uh to the greater good but it was just a wonderful Community event it was exciting to be a part of that um the the I referenced earlier that we're we tonight hired iaki and the engineering firm to help us look at uh Beach handicap access especially what we're looking at are two specific
loading and unloading areas it's on a county road so we have to get County permission we have to get our ch for police's uh uh approval that is safe uh and also get engineering approval but the goal is to really focus on having two very meaningful access points for uh wheelchair bound individuals to our beaches uh that's not excluding others but two meaningful access points which will include not only these pickup and
drop off areas but um but things like greater mimat access on the beach uh right now we''ve had four wide M mats and that's not a heck of a lot of width for a 3-ft vehicle you got about 6 in on each side if you're in a wheelchair and you could fairly easily run off the mob man so we will be creating greater access to the beach area for wheelchair bound individuals um at at two locations to be determined um and uh I just want to give everyone
heads up we are the burrow council is uh engaged in conversations with an old friend I don't know how many of you might remember but a number of years ago four or five years ago we hired an organization called poost compliance and host compliance what they do is they evaluate uh in any given municipality in this case in in uh rley Beach uh how many organ how many homes are advertising short-term recs and the reason
this is a very important function is because we do have a a registration ordinance in place that anyone who's renting uh shortterm long-term whatever has to just fill out registration information for the burrow um it's it's very likely that not everyone has registered yet what shortterm what host compliance does is they look at short-term rental advertisements across 70 some odd websites and they will identify to the burrow who's advertising short-term rentals and we'll be able to match
that up against our registration forms to make sure that we've got everybody accounted for uh but it's going to be a very proactive process to make sure that we have 100% participation in uh complying with our ordinances so very excited we'll you'll probably hear more about that at our next meeting we'll probably have a proposal to actually hire that organization as we did a number of years ago uh and then the administration at that time canceled that contract but we're looking
at reestablishing that and finally and probably most exciting um our Bradley Beach Elementary School third graders have officially scheduled to uh come out to the Bur to uh municipal offices and learn about uh municipal government on February 27th and uh While most of my colleagues know about this you know they will all be officially invited to um to flaunt the uh the rules about uh get
Gathering as the as a quorum uh because we're going to meet these third graders and we're going to introduce them not only to the governing body but also to a lot of our department heads hopefully get them to experience what it's like to be on a fire truck and maybe a first aid ambulance and uh and probably learned a lot from our business administrator Mr dhy uh because you've got a young surve there yesterday who's pretty good in basketball and let them know that there's a lot of different career paths they can follow um so anyway that's going to be a lot of fun
that's scheduled for February 27 and that otherwise concludes my report and we can open it up to public cont yes right Rick B 116 nework uh I guess I have two questions for the VA um one on the bond and notes for the Utility
Fund it says other issue almost $2 million I'm just wondering what that other is uh get back to me on unless you know off the top of your head what that is it's on page four item number six on the top item number five to million 994 plus says other okay uh I'll find out get back to you I'll okay uh second thing is I know
it's been briefly mentioned in the past that you were going to be issuing statements and I'm not sure it's going to be uh whether it's going to be on a monthly or quarterly basis quarterly so we could expect to see them in April yeah okay that's all I have thank you sir other questions or comments yes Beth Kepler I for Central Bradley um
I want to start by saying in all my years of living here I've never seen the level of enthusiasm andc from everybody there's I mean not even just you know during the meeting but just in general when you talk to people around town There's a real levity that I've never experienced here and it's refreshing and it's really nice and it's clear where it's coming from and I want to start with that and I'm hoping that the further we get into um 2025 and
further away from the past then we can not look back but unfortunately um um I again have to read something um as the lead plaintiff in a personal Civ class action lawsuit I intend on filing I'm serving the borrow of Bradley Beach of Larry Fox tonight with the other for play the sixth one um as previously stated this lawsuit is open for any Resident to join this tor claim pertains specifically to the improper and illegal
impaneling of the burough of Bradley Beach Municipal land use board by Larry Fox on January 1st 2022 during the reorganization meeting regarding the seventh tour claim I'm I served tonight uh that I mentioned earlier I encourage you all um to listen for yourselves you can find the video that I was speaking about on my YouTube channel under my name Beth Kepler and you can watch the video dated 12125 for yourself I
can provide anybody interested um upon request for a type transcript um of that conversation and uh we've been lied to for a long time and not just by Larry Fox to provide some context on the sixth T this issue arose subsequent to the merging of the planning and the zoning boards and it's important to remember Larry Fox was viciously opposed to the merging of these boards into one single land use board upon review and comparison of the videos regarding the processes in which the 2022 board and the 2025 board
were seated I soon realized impropriety had occurred in 2022 and Contin unchecked through December 31st 2024 I've also posted relative expert excerpts from 22 and 25 Council reorganization meetings on my YouTube channel under my name Beth Kepler for your convenience by State Statute Larry Fox was required by njsa 4055 d-23 to nominate the land use board members and staggered the dates of their terms by service class and he did
not this procedure was correctly followed by our current mayor ALU vosi in January of 2025 and unfortunately Ely this was not the case in 22 Larry Fox's failure to adhere to this legal requirement has significant implications every decision and variance voted on by the improperly impanel 22 land use board whether passed or not is now subject to being overturned and legally challenged for example I remind all of you of the Injustice of the matter concerning our
neighbor Mr Allen Rapaport and the other neighbors on nor Avenue last year once again Larry Fox is illegal proper processes have left the burrow vulnerable to potentially extremely costly litigation lawsuits and once again burrow the burrow and its residents taxpayers are at risk of damage due to the intentional ignoring and subverting of State statutes and Municipal ordinances as a direct result of the L show to quote Mr cannon in the January 21st video Fox's wanton and willful disregard for municipal state
and federal Bloods has harmed and continues to harm this borrow its residents in addition to filing this t I reported this particularly egregious violation to the state government oversight body of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection we must hold those in power accountable for their behaviors actions and inactions to ensure such violations do not occur in the future that's how we ended up with Larry Fox and Lenny quo and they were allowed to Reign unchecked for decades I urge you my fellow residents to join me in this class action civil lawsuit to protect our
borrow our neighbors and uphold the principles of transparency accountability and adherence to the law together we can make a difference and ensure our community remains a place where Justice Integrity Prevail I'll leave you with these wise words from one of our founding fathers Thomas Payne who said a body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody but not be trusted by anybody that concludes my thank you for listening thank you are there other comments or questions I'm going to speak in a
real quick announcement and that is the freeze on Locker leting list has been lifted so anyone who's not on a lock of leading list and would like to join Mr dhy has made that happen for us so thank you forgot to say that ear and with that I'll make a motion to adjourn
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