to the municipal taxation and revenue advisory committee and the city of Kate May thank you Dennis come on up [Music] good thanks thank you just a few words i know u Aaron will be
happy to know that I don't have a PowerPoint or anything like that tonight it'll be a it'll be a very short presentation first let me just say a couple things uh I would like to thank this council and the previous administration for giving me the
opportunity to to chair this committee uh it's been a valuable piece of of work that I've loved doing and I appreciate the opportunity to do it i'd also like to thank the council for for listening to us as we made presentations to you
and also I would like to thank the council for actually doing some of the things that the advisory committee has recommended we do it's been a it's been a rewarding experience to the extent that so many of the things we worked on have become the policy of the city and
for that I do thank you briefly MTRA is this on you're on yeah briefly let me let me just say that MTRA is in my opinion one of the most important things this city has done in some time because it's given you the
opportunity to have an institution of of people who are interested experienced and competent to look at some of the things that you can't look at on a day-to-day basis and has given you some direction in that regard so I think it's a very important thing to do and which
is really why I would like to explain why I'm stepping down from MTRA and and that is because MRA is an institution it's not a person it's it's not people it's a it's a process and it's a process that I think the city should should
continue to engage in in a regular basis it's it's proved its value and it doesn't depend on me and it doesn't depend on any one person and it depends on the membership of the MTRA and that is actually the second reason why I'm stepping down because the members rec
member the membership of the MTRA to date has been a an all-star team of competent experienced and willing people who live in this town and want to help out uh we have had members of our MRA sit on council they haven't as been as
receptive to us as they were as members often times but that's because they wear a different hat but the point is I feel I'm feeling very comfortable stepping down from Entra because I know that there are people there in particular Martin Van Walson where are you Martin
right here who is going to take over as chair and I and I'm I'm very encouraged by the fact that we have a a good core of people who will continue this work so I thank you for this and I thank you for the opportunity to serve and good luck in the future i'm not going anywhere i
still live on Lafayette Street and I'm happy to see that park actually being built across the street from my house and I'm uh we'll continue on the planning board and of course with the taxpayers association but thank you again and thank everybody in this table for helping out and making a success
thank you thank you very much thank you again Dennis and uh going right into the meat of the uh the agenda here right on to our presentation of the USS Jacob Jones miles John thank you very much for
joining us thank you for having us gentlemen you can y and John you know that these can move towards you just speak into the microphones thank you i definitely want to speak into the mic i will okay need helps
got it is it stable it is thank you thank you gentlemen if you want to introduce yourselves and uh I'll I'll proceed so uh first of
all thank you Mayor Mullik and thank you all for allowing us to appear uh this afternoon still afternoon uh my name is Miles Martell i'm a home own a homeowner here in Cape May and have been for over
30 years and a very active member of this community for approximately 20 john can you help him with I'm I'm getting the uh ear symbol from a couple crowd members hold it really okay fine thank
you i'm sorry everyone um I uh Miles before you even say anything else anyone who doesn't know Miles uh was a speech writer for how President Reagan I believe right uh that's pretty close
thank you thank you i mean so a man who knows what he's doing when it comes to public speaking so no pressure now I'm going to actually be um using an outline here but uh I chair the project that's going to be the focus of this
presentation uh all of you uh on city council including Mayor Mullik uh have uh received a portfolio that contains uh considerable information about this project especially the compelling
history and I underscore that compelling history uh that has motivated us meaning our team and uh John I'll introduce more fully later and with us is Jeff Elliott um Pastor Jeff Elliott who's a founder
member of our team and I'm very pleased that he's able to join us given all the pressures he faces in his professional position uh your portfolio includes copies of the slides yes of my portion
of this presentation as a result and due to time constraints which I fully respect I'll be covering the slides somewhat quickly uh adding brief commentary as I do so we begin with a slide that captures the essence of our
efforts and this presentation so that's the essence tonight um in the next only uh under roughly 10 minutes um we're I'm going to be covering uh what I
regard and I think many of you already regard as a sacred and solemn obligation and when I use the word obligation I mean for our nation i'm not placing this on our community but I feel that our community can have a s a very
significant role or I should say a major role in capturing a significant opportunity and that significant opportunity is going to be covered by my colleague John and I'll be uh introducing John more fully when her his
turn comes in a few minutes uh so first of all I'd like to uh uh highlight a background synopsis of what brings us here this evening uh and I'll give all
of you a chance despite the fact that it's in your portfolio just to look at it quickly and then I'll just underscore a couple of points maybe I'll underscore the major point right now as you look at it it's really the second
bullet and it's um the most important point within that second bullet is that the first US warship following the declaration of war uh between the United States and Germany uh was sunk by a
German yubot offgate day during the Battle of the Atlantic and the rest you can read on your own but I really want to underscore that second bullet because that's the essence of what brings us
here tonight or this afternoon still afternoon and this represents uh but one and you'll see a few more uh the coverage of the paper that most of us are most familiar with the paper of
record that we're most familiar with the Inquirer um and this says March 4th at the top not that you have to see it but that's after the Naval Censorship Bureau released the story and interestingly
this is a collection of three headlines because we had very active very very active military action mainly naval going on in the Pacific against the Japanese but you can see a
subsync destroyer off Cape May as one of those headlines and those chaps in the picture those fellows in that picture that's underscored are the only survivors um thank God at least they survived because we
lost 131 sailors right off our shoreline uh they were rescued and uh um only one body was recovered we couldn't go to conduct a um a search and rescue effort
because the the the waters were so dangerous because of the Ubot i mean that's how bad it was right off our shores um moving on so this is just a sampling and we've
done extensive research very fulfilling research extensive very informative research of uh using newspapers.com some of you may be familiar with it but there are hundreds
of articles in papers uh throughout the United States that uh on the first or second page including uh papers from major cities that highlight what happened right off our
shores now uh that brings me to what really brings us all together tonight um and this really um is the major opportunity that John is going to talk about shortly but there are no plaques
um I give you a chance to to review it but there are no plaques anywhere there are no um monuments there's nothing to memorialize that um horrific tragedy
that occurred off our shores uh nor um are there any uh throughout the United States uh to represent um a loss of a ship except a small plaque in Portland Maine uh but no um commemor anything to
commemorate um what happened to all the sailors during the uh battle of the Atlantic and so that constitutes the opportunity that we in uh Kate May have to fulfill the solemn obligation I
referred to earlier now um this constitutes uh the um and you just heard me allude to this but it constitutes these five
points constitute the essence of our case this compelling case that I referred to at the very beginning and I'll just give you a chance to um review this and then um what I'd like to do is
to introduce John all right um so I'd like to introduce John who will be t this is a tag team match and I'm tagging John but first I want to say a few things about him many of you know John he's a
remarkably dedicated citizen he lives here in Cape May full-time uh and uh he's worked with remarkable dedication and talent as a highly regarded professional architect to help set the
foundation for capturing the opportunity that you just heard me highlight and John please thanks everyone for allowing us to present this evening i'll keep this as brief as possible several of you have already seen the presentation I'm about
to make but I do want to thank Miles because this whole idea was his he initiated it by forming a a small committee of us which has tripled in size but we've been working on it for the last 10 months so what you're about to see I'm going to show you the first
iteration of the design of the memorial which has developed significantly since then but the reason I'm showing you this is because in the first iteration are where the essence of the ideas that remain in the current iteration so therefore I'm showing you the first the
first shot at it so George Shu member of our committee was able to find blueprints of the Whitaker class um destroyers and if you take and blow up the front bow and cut off let's say the first 40 ft where that yellow line is
now pick it up and select put it on its side and tilt it 15° and put it in a pool of water this was the original idea including what you're seeing here which is that this would be the oh wait a minute what just happened
there we go okay so on the left side of the drawing is I'll show you the site in a moment but the actual monument itself would sit at street level the prominade is on the right 3 ft 4 in above the street level and we did some research on what torpedo penetrations look like in a
hall and this is a sort of replication of it so there would be a ramp up into it and a bridge across from the prominade into the inside of the monument so if you now were to take the deck and again about 40 ft back from the bow cut it and now take that and rotate it
90° the deck face is what would face the prominade side so on the left side of the drawing is the metal sheet that would be standing vertically but on the right side it's tilted back 15 degrees and what you'll notice here is that every four feet there's a a line
horizontal line being drawn those are the station points that were used to actually design the frame of the uh ship building so in the middle of the drawing is a section of the frame which would be at the height of where you would walk into the memorial except of course it
would not be in plan like this so on that sheet on that front deck facing the prominade would be two columns of names the 131 names cut out in one-inch cutout letters so that um you'll see in a minute why that is important and then a
little oculus circle 3 ft wide or 3 ft in diameter at the top so the site we're proposing is the site at H where Howard meets Beach Avenue the monument itself would sit on that uh area of Blacktop which currently has no function at all it's just a an area of Blacktop with the
bridge from the prominade i'll come back to this in more detail in a moment but a couple really important things if we were to in the upper right hand corner connect a line from that red dot in the bottom right hand corner of the upper drawing that's the sinking
site if we were to draw a direct line from the sinking site to the center of our site notice that that would be 43 1/2° east of solar south and the reason that's important is because we're utilizing the solar phenomenon to
recognize the fallen of this ship which I'll show you in a moment so what's interesting about that is when the sun on February 28th the date of the sinking is directly in line connecting the sinking site to our site you can see there's that same 43 and a2 degrees that
alignment occurs at 9:49 a.m every year on February 28th at the same time this is called the azimuth which is the angle of the sun in plan but in in elevation which is called the altitude which is important in a moment you can see to the right side of this drawing the altitude
of the sun at 949 when it's directly in line with the sinking site is 32.75° vertical so if we now were to take and cut a section through that first elevation that I showed you and again this is the first iteration of it which has evolved and now that 15° tilt
which would be on the right side of the drawing if you replicate that on the inside of the drawing with another 15° piece of structure you get this sort of triangular chapel-like shape inside on that left side of it would be a mirror that's 4t wide and 24 ft high and where
you can see between those two slashes on the right hand side is exactly where the the 4 foot wide panel with the all the cutout names would be 12 feet high so at 9:49 a.m on February 28th each year the
sun would cast the names and illuminate them perfectly centered in that 24x4 ft mirror so that the names are actually in light as opposed to being carved in stone so it's almost the the memory of the light of their life as opposed to the darkness of their death furthermore
over the over the course of the year as the sun travels from east to west and its altitude gets higher and lower in the in the sky dome during the day those names would sort of float around as ghosts inside of of this space additionally where the three-foot hole is at the top which I call the oculus as
the sun again at the same time enters through that Oculus would bounce off the mirror and illuminate on the floor a three-foot plaque which is the plaque that we showed you at the beginning which is the memorial plaque for the Jacob Jones that's only a draft plaque by the way we are hiring a uh a graphic
designer to make it a little bit stronger so if we now go back to the site wh here's the site but let's blow this up so these are the drawings that Paul gave me from the engineering firm who working on the prominade um improvement
but if we blow that up a little bit and just show you what we're proposing here the ramp that is currently there at Howard would remain exactly where it is in the center right of the drawing slightly relocate the crosswalk across Beach there add a new crosswalk on the other side of Howard which could would connect to a walkway that you see
through a a a planted area that would connect to a a stair that would penetrate through the seaw wall so in plan this monument would be sitting in what's colored blue a little pool of water only about a foot deep the ramp
that I showed you in that first drawing would penetrate from the left entering from the the new crosswalk walk and the little bridge from the prominade where on the prominade itself we would repave in that circular domain of 50 ft diameter to basically create a space for
this to be to occupy its location so that alignment is exactly in alignment with that 43 and a half degrees connection to the site of the sinking real quick sketch just we plan on doing a fully I would say executed computer
simulation of this in three dimensions so we can actually walk through it even connect to your phone and you can walk on the site and walk through it as if you were there but that's to be developed later this is just a real quick sketch of what the frame of this thing might look like notice that that telephone pole there on the left where the just to the right of the traffic
signals 42 feet tall are the very tiptop of the monument would be 32 feet and that pole will be removed D in conjunction with the prominade improvement to bury the electrical lines so that there are no overhead lines and therefore providing the conduit to connect electrically to the monument
itself just showing another little view of the site but I want to note that across the street is the makeomer which is 55 ft tall so with these two sort of I'll call them um gateway objects at that point of the prominade it sort of creates a bit of a
portal if you will into the commercial part of the prominade itself well interestingly when we presented this first iteration there were a whole group of folks on the call um including um Lorraine and and and Paul and and Zach and Zach's first comment was "Gee this
is great but it's a little big and it's a little bit opaque is there a way that we can make it a little smaller and a little bit more transparent?" So I was about to leave on vacation that day and I thought well I'll wait for a couple weeks and make a little sketch but I couldn't i stayed up late that night and just did a real quick little sketch of
what would happen if we really just let the remnants of the frame those station points that I'm talking about so you can see the dash line that is on the left hand side of this drawing would be what the original design was in terms of its size and opakqueness so
this would essentially be a an aluminum and stainless steel frame that would still have the 15° caned piece on the left with the mirror on it and just some just a little bit of the skin so we've removed all the skin and still potentially penetrating through the
torpedo opening and then the drawing on the right is what you would see from um the prominade again with the the name plaques and the the deck actually removed a bit from the frame so everything's kind of floating more and actually I I find this a vast
improvement because it's now much more of a piece of art and and far less literal less of a cartoon and much more of a I would say an artful monument in memoriam so what we're seeking tonight is we're we're hoping that you guys at
on city council might grant us the approval of this conceptual design so that we can develop it further and move forward continue with our cost estimating and our um fundraising because our committee would be paying for this and the idea would be that we
would come back to present to you once get it um fully documented and then of course the second piece of what we're seeking is an approval of the of the site location we looked at three different sites and this one ended up being the most promising one and we're more than happy to entertain any questions thank you i just have a
comment thank you for allowing me to be inside your head i mean it is absolutely amazing John it's beautiful um it's I think it speaks um to the commemoration uh and the honor that you're trying to give the individuals that gave their
lives for this country um so you have my support it's absolutely beautiful thank you Moren thank you i just have a comment i just think this is a an amazing project and a lot a lot that everybody can get behind um you were when you were talking you
know presenting this to me the other day you mentioned that you uh in your schooling to be an architect one of your classes was to explain it to me about historical monuments no we studied um uh pre-Colombian um architecture most of
which were uh solar temples and calendars so I think you know I don't know if you ever thought you'd actually use this never thought I would but uh I'm so glad you did take that course and uh it's this is going to be an amazing thing to experience thank you Shane what happens when you stay up late i know all
night i do have to attest that email came about 1:30 in the morning um but no I it's been really a privilege to be on the outside kind of part of this um just watching how it's developed um
seeing the you know the vision that you had the vision you know and then how having John put it all together um using the sun looking at all of the different details um it's been really a blessing for me to be part of that you're far too
modest you were instrumental in helping us select the site as you recall so if I if I may add I mean it's impossible to hear the story um without being moved and then you know what you
hope when you hear the story is well how could you possibly come up with a monument that could possibly convey that the emotion that goes in fitting with the story and that could honor those individuals and I see this and I say
"This hits it out of the park so it's really it's really stellar so I appreciate having had the opportunity to talk with you when you presented it i mean candidly you you told me that you showed me those initial plans and I was moved then just as I am now so um so
thank you appreciate it thank you Steve um anyone who doesn't know John is the uh chairperson of the uh historic preservation commission as well and so John I just appreciate everything you've done for the community i uh Miles this is as has been said but it I've spoken
about the USS Jacob Jones at a couple Memorial Day day events and it it's a little shocking how many people don't know about the USS Jacob Jones and I think it's such an important memorial and and story that needs to be told i I
just think it's it's incredible to think that there's no other memorial as well otherwise so it's such an important part of our history and um I think you really have come up with something really special um to to for for the difficult
task of you know memorializing uh that type of event so um I can't thank you enough thank you Mayor Mullik and thank all of you um and a special thank you um to the folks we've worked particularly closely
with Lorraine um and uh you may uh uh Paul the city manager um all of you have been especially uh involved in helping us uh take a the germ of an
idea the memorial the monument and bring us to this moment and so thank you so much i look forward to working with all of you uh in the future and uh I just want to let you know that we are are
totally committed to being as transparent going forward as we have up to this point and uh part of that transparency uh includes our openness to any input any guidance as well as your
active support um that would be most appreciated thank you very much thank you Miles john would you be able to stick around for a little bit um in case there is any public comment sure okay because we have to move on to the budget for a
moment but if anyone does have public comment I'd like you to be here if that's okay i can answer any questions okay great thank you very much Miles thank you thank you okay uh actually we have updates and old business which I'm going to ask
everyone to keep uh short if you can so updates and old business city manager just real quick I I know everybody's been waiting for an update on the ADA mats the second phase uh just got word uh that that they
should be delivered here within the week uh we're hoping to be able to start putting them out within two weeks schedule and weather depending and you know we anticipate being able to get you know to continue the mats as close down to Madison Avenue as we can uh with the
mats but we also want to go back and expand along some of the the existing mat and and add some additional larger areas that people can make a stop off and you know so that they're not if they want to stop they can get off the you
know kind of a little off to the side and and and enjoy and and stop so we're going to add a couple of those along the way uh also to increase that enjoyment that I think people have really enjoyed over this past year paul just to add to
that if you don't mind it um that came at a request from a few people who were in wheelchairs would like to uh enjoy the beach with their family i mean people are just so thrilled um but to be able to get off of the path and stop and
just be able to and family can surround them i I think it's a wonderful idea and also just to point out too that that we are adding the handicap accessible ramp um down by the cove where the steps used to be you see all the construction that's going on down there i saw them
starting that recently so that's wonderful so I just want a real quick update on some of the projects so obviously the prominade project restoration has is under underway uh the the amount of work that they have open and and they're working on is the extent that they'll be
working on uh before the the summer season they will have that all closed up and patched up and the whole that area will all be painted before the start of the summer season and uh you know then we'll be right back in September to
finish the rest of the prominade uh the trails project I'll send update photos for this week um is is there are on schedule for a miday uh opening for that uh the concrete trucks have started
pouring concrete on the Lafayette Street phase one area so that's going to have a sidewalk that'll connect from Lafayette Street out to the trails uh so everything is moving along with those and Ohio Avenue uh the reconstruction of the two blocks on Ohio Avenue is on
schedule and and that will definitely be open before the summer season so just a a real quick update on those construction projects thank you the only other update uh is the one that everyone walked through to get to the meeting today oh city hall parking lot just seems like every
time the little bit of rain today it was going to be paved today but um tomorrow they'll be out paving it uh they'll have um stripes either Friday early next week and uh we'll have those extra nine or 10 spaces uh we are also
adding uh we are going to make the I'll say the access way that's between the firehouse and the library one way out to Franklin and that will allow us to install two handicap parking spaces as well as two other parking spaces along
that section and and we'll dedicate those for for library parking uh in that location so that should all be done u paving will be done tomorrow line striping weather weather dependent weather dependent yes thank you thank
you very much uh city solicitor uh nothing tonight mayor thank you city council any updates or old business no okay on to bud budget presentation leon thank you very much for being here with us leon is our auditor and we
appreciate you being here no problem that was pretty interesting that was really a neat project thank you cool a little closer okay so tonight is the easy part tonight's the introduction which means that we're really starting the budget process even though it's
April 15th budget started a long time ago but now is when you formally introduce it and a vote to introduce it means nothing more than we're starting the process because we'll have the public hearing in a month and at that time we can amend anything that legally
allowed to change like you can't amend that service because it's cast in stone you can't amend the pension bills because they're already paid um hopefully they're already paid so the uh they're due April 1st that's what I was kidding about that um so tonight's the
introduction the budget itself is compliant with both of the caps the state imposes upon you it's also a no tax increase again uh it provides everything that the city's been providing it's allowing for capital projects more than you've been doing
that was one of the commitments on the uh extending the room tax another percent so that's all all in play um and it's ready to go now I know you just got your books so you'll be reviewing this um we can discuss the budget at many
times between now and the public hearing but no action gets taken until the public hearing if you do amend it and we probably have something it would say the amendment says that the public hearing has been held and it's desire the governing body to amend it as such so we
you can make all the plans you want between now and then but at no meaning can you take any action on the budget until the public hearing so I'm asking for Oops you got a couple things to to do resolution wise but that's where we stand right now um you're ready to go um
and again it's zero you're compliant with everything and there's no reason not to introduce it that's great um good work everyone working on the 0% increase i know it takes a lot of work uh Kevin your office
has been scrambling to get this all together the last few weeks and I really appreciate all your hard work on it leon thank you very much paul thank you for all your hard work on this obviously we have more work to do before this gets um uh approved um will this be available
online for folks to be able to see yes kevin has the electronic file so Okay so we'll post that on the website perfect yep okay council any questions okay um I'm sure you will this week as we get more time to review this
i'm available whenever you want yeah perfect thank you uh and do we have any uh question go ahead Mr mayor leon uh in general are there any things changing in the climate of the state or anything that we should be looking for the future on well you you lost one piece of state
aid just like every town did and I was just in upper last night they lost $650,000 of that municipal relief fund that's three half cents to them wow but you didn't have that much to lose so that's a good thing that you only lost a little bit but the the state appears to
be broke as you've probably read and heard different things um things aren't being funded they're worried about what they have funded can they make it so I don't expect any good news out of the state this year uh we'll see what happens after this election and what does or doesn't become of the uh
governor and lieutenant governor and the assembly um state health benefits which are you know is a is a big issue um the percentage aren't looking good for next year either did you get your midyear report there's a midyear report that came out did you see that
ship from yeah I know yeah so as I'm saying that the the state health benefits is way out of whack even though you're not in it but it's an issue that is causing a lot of aggravation in towns this is your first year out of it so that's Leon if I could just expand on
what you're saying for the public we the city did get out of state health benefits for exactly the reason um the last four years really have seen significant increases um 20ome% 17% it's big numbers yeah i
mean 27% in one year 17% in the next i mean very very big uh increases which would makes up a significant portion of the budget mhm yeah okay do we have any uh resolutions or on for this evening we
have a few uh uh do you want to speak to the cap budget usually you give it just a little brief explanation okay the the one ordinance that you're going to do and it has to be in this order and Erin has it in the proper sequence is an ordinance that allows you
to raise up to three and a half% increase this 2 and 12% is guaranteed 1% you have to do an ordinance for you know nothing's not up by more than three and a half% right now so it's it's a must to do this every town does it in the past
we've done this as a a casual res or ordinance that you don't really need it but we're doing it we do need it this year and we'll probably need it next year just like almost every town New Jersey does so all this is saying is that we're doing an ordinance to raise the allowable increase in appropriations
to 3 and a half% up from 2 and a.5% so it's a 1% increase overall okay so if council is ready we do have an that ordinance for introduction it's 558-2025 an ordinance to exceed the municipal budget appropriation limits
and to establish a cap bank for the calendar year 2025 do I have a motion i'll make the motion do I have a second i'll second do we have any any questions or comments council leon you usually say we're not exceeding anything we're not exceeding anything yeah we have we have
room left thank you for make getting Make sure that's in the minutes please uh any other questions or comments council roll call council member Meyer yes deputy Mayor McDade yes council member Bodner yes council member Baldwin yes mayor
Malik yes so we have resolution 15604 2025 resolution for the approval by council of the local municipal budget that's the introduction and this is for the introduction thank you do I have a motion i'll make a motion do I have a second i'll second any questions or
comments roll call council member Meyer yes deputy Mayor McDade yes council member Bodner yes council member Baldwin yes mayor Mullik yes and the next is 15704205 a resolution for governing body certification of compliance with the
United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's enforcement guidance on the consideration of arrest and conviction records and employment decisions under title 7 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 do I have a motion i'll make the motion do I have a second a second any questions or comments
council roll call council member Meyer yes deputy Mayor McDade yes council member Bodner yes council member Baldwin yes mayor Mock yes all right that's it for budget so on the budget any questions you know how to get me and uh
anytime you want great and if not I'll see you in a month okay and this will be uploaded under the um finance reporting portion of our website yeah okay and with the state and with the state yes oh by the way you're you're self-exam so
that means the state's not even going to look at this so between Kevin and I we swear everything's we swear that everything's okay in here and you're all set to go okay i'll just say to the public um as uh we're just getting the the this as well it'll be uploaded to the website so if you do have any
questions or comments on it please feel free to reach out to any one of us certainly our city manager and uh hopefully we can get your uh question answered public hearing May 20th and and we'll have the public hearing May 20th let me just double check that yes May May 20th
we're going to schedule that perfect all right Leon thank you very much have a wonderful evening thank you okay on to ordinances for second reading yes tonight we have 555-2025 an ordinance amending section 434 of the city code to establish limits
on recycling collection and require private collection for amounts exceeding those limits do I have a motion i'll make that motion do I have a second i'll second we won't bite i I promise good evening council uh ordinance 55525
i'm sorry sir can you please state your name peter Cole 1075 Michigan Avenue thank you i'm also president of the taxpayers association and I'm talking on behalf of the taxpayers association
tonight ordinance 5552025 is a change from the old ordinance which was for residential pickup of recyclables only i have to say that uh I was hoping that the last since the last time I was here
two two weeks ago that you might have thought of tableabling this ordinance but clearly you haven't so I'd like to go on and say that you know that the GPA is opposed to the ordinance and I'm just namely I'm
going to read out why we're opposed um both businesses and residents pay taxes businesses should not receive additional services at the expense of residents trash and recycling collections are business expenses that
should be covered by business not subsidized by taxpayers increased pickup volume will require additional recycling trucks trucks cost taxpayers approximately $1 million per vehicle
expanding services will increase the public works budget more trucks more workers higher payroll costs further burdening the taxpayers trash collection is the number one cause of workers compensation
claims expanding services increasing injury risks and insurance costs fairness it's a matter of fairness city services should be equal for all taxpayers regardless of the amount they pay in taxes now it was agreed by council some
time ago that with any new ordinance that has a cost to it the cost basis would be presented upfront and clear for all to understand that was my understanding at meetings
that we had at TPA meetings with with the city but that is not true in this case there's absolutely there is abs I believe it is absolutely wrong that a vote on this ordinance
should be taken without knowing the cost not only that it's been written in I believe in this uh ordinance today that there may be more than one pickup well more than one pickup means more
costs so I'm going to ask you how can you vote when you don't know how much it costs isn't it negligent on your part not to know this thank you very much thank Thank you Mr
mr cole um I I'll respond quickly and and allow other people to speak because I know there's others that want to speak i think every council member knows up here that with this ordinance we've managed to upset both residents and businesses which is not our goal
obviously but we've heard it from both sides we've we've heard you need to collect everybody and you need to collect more we've heard you need to collect less okay so uh we attempted we uh assigned two council members i won't
even say their names up here to work together to try to come up with a compromise that that included um many voices b people in the business community but frankly especially our department of public works and and our city manager to come up with the best
solution we possibly could um I think if you pulled every council member individually about their love of this ordinance I don't think any single one of them would tell you that they love the ordinance um but when you say that there is uh the cost
is unknown truly there's a budget and that that cost is in this budget I assure you for the trash collection is there an unknown cost perhaps we we we we could not predict exactly how many cans will be put out there and
everything but I can tell you it has been said at this table by multiple council members that we don't necessarily support increasing that budget um so uh we've asked the Department of Public Works do you believe that you would be able to do
this amount of pickup under your current budget and the answer has been yes they can't swear to that and know for for certain but what you have heard from certain council members up here including myself was that um I don't
support necessarily majorly increasing this budget and perhaps if this comes back that we we're unable to uh pick up within that budget then we may have to trim trim back and and that would be
another change to the ordinance and that would have to be discussed by everyone up here but I I want to answer your question but then allow others to speak because I know there's more people that want to speak so go ahead Mr cole i'm sorry just one more thing um why did you
want to change the ordinance in the first place good question uh not one single council member brought this to our attention actually the Department of Public Works did uh they they and if anyone didn't get to see it um they
presented a pi picture slideshow of frankly some of the mess that they had to pick up and as you mentioned uh the the current ordinance does does not uh have commercial pickup so the question
from multiple business owners why are they being picked up and why am I not being picked up and the truth is we didn't have a good answer and that that is why that is the genesis to why this ordinance is being updated good evening my name is Les Bear 1107
Beach Avenue i sympathize with council on this topic this is a tough one uh I've been on that side of the table and I know how that feels um I guess I would like to commend
council and previous councils for what you've done in recycling you're stellar compared to a lot of communities very near to you you've done a great job you posted rules
and people needed to adjust to those rules and they did took a while but they got there and your collection people do a wonderful job if it's not to standard it's not going to be picked up as it
should thank you i appreciate that however I think we need to take a step back and would it be good to enlarge the focus group to look at this topic beyond
council get representation maybe from some other entities that have a lot of input could have a lot of input to this it's it's a tough topic it there's no right or wrong answer but I'm a lot
older than most of you i remember seeing those pictures on TV of the plastic floating on the ocean coming up on the beaches we don't need that we need to pick that recycling up and put it where
it's supposed to be and to compromise that by reducing the number of containers you know what's going to happen with that material it's going to go in the trash it's not going to go to a private
carrier to pick up recycling many people are going to avoid that additional expense and put it in the trash in a plastic bag that we're not going to see none of us want that
recycling is being done away with in in a number of communities because of the expense let's not let Kay to do that i realize you've done a great job on your budgets over the last number of
years with no increases and I commend you for that not many communities can do that either you've done a good job but this is maybe not an area that you want to cut i mean if if the issue is with
commercial if it's with the the number of containers let's look at the condo associations for an example most of those folks aren't there year round so why limit those
organizations because when you cycle that for the entire year they're probably way below the average residents but yet you're cutting back on the number of containers for those associations i'm not sure I understand
that i'm asking you to revisit this to to continue to study this matter i'm not sure what the proposed effective date is for the ordinance but many of the associations have their budgets already
in place for 25 i would hope so and they don't have the additional funds to use a private carrier for something beyond the limit that you've set please table this and and let's
continue to work on it thanks thank you sir anyone else wishing to speak hello um Charity Clark from the Kate May uh Chamber so I wanted to speak on behalf of the businesses of Kate May
um you know I always felt confused why there seemed to be a separation between businesses and residential i feel like we are all here merged together and working together constantly to make this city beautiful the residents need the
business and the business needs the residential um and we all are taxpayers and when you look at commercial they're typically paying taxes on a much larger piece of land they're typically paying well they are paying taxes appropriate
for the size of their building and the size of their lot so I don't feel like there should be a separation and to the point fairness they're paying the appropriate amount of taxes for their property it is fair that they would get
all the services that residential property would get um and in fact the businesses in so many way subsidize um our budget to keep the taxes down for the residents our businesses bring in so much revenue that the residents are able
to take and balance out their budgets to keep their taxes down so I thank the board for going down the direction of including um commercial pickup and I think it should always be looked at in a fair way thank you thank you very
much anyone else this evening my name is uh Steve Smearro i have uh my family has three businesses on the 300 block on Washington Street Mall i am also co-chairman of the business improvement district um just to refresh you the
business improvement district takes a huge expense off of the city we do all our own landscaping we do all our holiday decor which costs bundles of money hillary here is in charge of landscaping
probably for the last 10 years she probably has 2,000 hours in that um we we did not have good lighting on the mall so we lit up the trees that still didn't work and then my my wife
Pam got the idea of going around to merchants and asking for donations she was asking for $2,500 a store and she got it and they put those lights up $68,000 and Mike B at the time was so
impressed he threw in some money for the Carpenters Lane so I mean we take our mall very seriously i mean Kate May is not just a beach town it's a destination town and you have the beach you have the
beautiful homes you have Mac you have carriage rides you have it all here and you have some nice shops and that's what makes it a complete destination and that's what drives the property values up and keeps the taxes low so just take into consideration that
um all the help we can possibly get we need and uh Kate May always wants to keep his best foot forward we don't need to see messes out behind buildings so try and take care of that recycling thank you for your time thank you very
much and the bid does do a wonderful job not that we necessarily have to say that but really it's uh and I think and I think each year you see the improvements really and Hillary thank you for to the bid and and Lorraine as as the liaison
thank you so much for that yeah pastor Pastor Jeff Elliot from Cape May Lutheran Church i was not planning on speaking tonight however uh I was for years uh from the beginning of the green
team i was a member and for years the chair of the green team here in Cape May and just not to complicate things but to say um something we should consider in the future of this plastic
recycling is being understood more and more by the environmental community to be almost a fallacy a a bill of goods that was sold to us but doesn't really work they put trackers on various pieces of plastic
and some end up in the middle of the ocean and some up in other countries and landfills but to say it recycling is almost zero with plastic and it's something we're going to have to look at as a nation as communities if it's a huge cost to
recycle plastic and it doesn't end up being recycled at all then what's the point of it just something to consider for the future and I thank you thank you pastor anyone else yes
yeah uh Bill Siger Vermont Avenue um business recycle collection and disposal at the expense or even partial expense of Cape May's residential
homeowners that just doesn't sound right to me from a business community and uh American perspective that you would take money from a homeowner to underwrite the cost
incurred by a profitable business and I want to request that you look at this holistically this is just a p a part of a much grander issue from the homeowners perspective
there are way too many organizations and taxing entities uh coming after homeowners all looking for a piece of the money out of their pocket and in Kate May most of the residents at least the
yearround residents are older and/or totally retired and their income comes limited from social security and retirement plans they don't a lot of these people
in Kate May don't go off to work every day they can't work overtime to pay for additional expenses so in the theme of looking at this holistically keep in mind the following facts on what uh the residents the
resident homeowners here in Cape May are taxed with the county tax first of all represents 29% of what a homeowner pays in their whole taxes
they don't get nearly the value in return because the city doesn't get nearly the value in return from the county of which we pay including the sales taxes the regional school tax represents
25% of what a homeowner pays we all know we've been fighting that issue for years we don't get in return the proportion of the the monies that we pay into the regional school tax we just don't have many students that go
to the high school from the city the district school tax the the elementary school now that only represents 6% of the typical homeowners tax bill
but over 50% of the students in that school come from the Coast Guard and they do not contribute 50% of their operating funds for that school so additional funds need to come from the
homeowner residents and the local city tax represents 34% of the tax bill now it's great news that we're going to keep that unchanged
we may be able to justify even as homeowners that we should be uh maybe making a little bit of an adjustment in there to take some out to set it aside for a rainy day and I'm going to talk about those rainy days in a second but
um it's not necessarily there to tax the people to move the funds from uh homeowners to businesses and this b underwriting business expenses uh by the homeowners is is a real
issue now what's the outlook for these different tax buckets of tax money well the county well we know we don't get as I said nearly what uh the return versus what this city puts into it and uh
there's there's no sign that we're going to get that in the near future the regional school tax tried and tried never have we gotten very far with um making an adjustment or even getting out of the agreement so that's going to
continue to haunt us plus the way the state is reducing school aid especially in the southern part of the state to take that money and give to the middle in the northern part of the state it's going to come back to the homeowners
especially in Cape May they're going to come back to this well again and rip money out of our pockets to pay for the high school it's coming and if you don't think it is get believe it it is excuse me mayor Mullik it's been five minutes
thank you i only have one more you're okay you're okay you're okay i'm okay thanks uh the local the local city tax um which is like I said the greatest burden we don't have a big uh tax increase coming but somewhere down the
road whether it's a year or two there's going to be a water bill come due and you know the rates are going to go up who knows if there'll be a special assessment to pay for what's going to have to happen with the water treatment
so going back into the same pocket over and over and I'm not talking about a business pocket where you can charge 25 cents more for a Coke or you can you know do things business-wise to offset
expenses but the number one way to offset expenses is not to have somebody else pay them for you again most of the residents are older they're set incomes you can't keep all holistically
all these different things coming at them we're going to be chasing people out of Kate May people who own homes having a a uh recycle pickup paid for by somebody else isn't going to save
a business that's on the brink like I said they can adjust what they charge so what do I suggest i suggest that council table what you have and reconsider seriously because I don't think it's been considered
seriously what the taxpayers association has proposed and that is one 96gallon can or whatever the size is per taxpaying address that that formalizes what the
businesses get right now as we said earlier we don't know what they get it's whatever public works chooses to service and how much they choose to take so if you formalize it that every taxpaying
address gets one bucket once a week that's it if you have more than that you're going to have to hire somebody to do it for you or take it to the city's recycling uh dumpsters that are absolutely free
so there's options to take care of this as a business owner rather than just having somebody else pay for this business expense i suggest that you seriously consider that and seriously consider implementing that for a 90day
period you don't have to commit to life for it you don't have to sign it in blood if you commit to do that in 90 days public works should have a real good handle on whether or not they can absorb every business in Cape May with
at least one container once a week and once they prove that they can do that and they feel confident that they can do that then maybe they'll consider moving up the volume but the volumes that you're
talking about first of all are a little complicated for a uh recycle person to understand and get through there i can't understand it so make it simple one gallon per tax paying address try it out
for 90 days see how it goes and then you can consider whether or not there should be any more absorbed thanks thank you Mr seager um just a couple quick comments um
one you could argue how the money is is used or whatever within the budget but I just want to be clear that in the budget this 2025 budget which I know you haven't even seen so um there there's no significant increase in our recycling
budget right so my my point in saying that is when when anybody says that you know we're subsidizing businesses or whatever okay I don't think that's necessarily completely true okay because the budget hasn't changed from last year
other than the normal percentage 3% or whatever it might be i don't don't quote me on that because I I I will find it um but my point is I think it look the fact is we want to collect
the most you you heard from the pastor i mean we want to collect the most recycling we possibly can we don't want people to start throwing things in the trash um to avoid recycling it um 96 gallons if anyone who doesn't know this you know that is the really big green
can that you you see on wheels okay so frankly I have five people in my residence some some of them are not as clean as they probably should be uh I could get away with one 96gallon can personally myself with five people in my
family so I I think it frankly is giving a plenty of uh gallonage to your resident nobody in Village Green needs more than one recycling right right um so I I the other buckets that as you put
it which I like u of tax um things that are on your tax bill we have no control i mean you know that I I I sympathize with it i have my my electric bill I start crying when I read it as well believe me but uh what we do control as
you said we've we've tried to keep as flat as we possibly can um so um just please believe us that we believe we we agree with what you're saying i mean we we want to make Kate May as affordable as possible especially for
those on a fixed income um we can't control all those outside things as as you know no but at least as the governing body on behalf of all these people you need to think holistically the whole
thing you don't have to bear their problem but you have to be sensitive to their problem so if by not doing something over here that requires a taxpayer to pay more or to see their
monies shifted where they don't believe they should be shifted you need to be sensitive to what who else is reaching into their pocket whether it's the school district the county i didn't even mention the state i mean that gentleman Mr costello who said
"Hey don't expect any help from the state of New Jersey." Well that's pretty big warning signal and and because of that and a lot of things I've spoke about I wouldn't be asking uh the
taxpayers to have their monies shifted around in your budget even not even if it's is going up but even reallocating it to uh to help businesses that make a profit i
heard comments about uh the businesses here make it a better place to live they certainly do and so do the people and so is the ocean and the beach and everything but they're not here necessarily to benefit from the funds
coming from the taxpayers through the city um your organization sir you get how much from the city each year $100,000 let's let's keep it to to C okay all right but I'm just saying everybody's uh looking for a a piece of
the pie here and let's just be judicious on the decisions we make on how it affects everybody so Mr seager if we we're and I apologize i thought you agree we are past five minutes pretty I understand you and I just want to make sure everyone gets a chance no oh okay i
agree just reconsider what you're about to vote on think about what the taxpayers proposal was but as the other gentleman suggested you think a little bit wider
than you have so far thank you Mr seager mr rous do you want to sit down no okay jules Rous 1010 New York Avenue i'd like to re reiterate re reiterate uh what Mr seager just said the TPA was very was
very judicious in our evaluation of this problem we we've spent several years now talking about recycling this isn't new to us and when we came up with a program of one for residential and one for commercial we looked at that as being
fair and equal and gives the opportunity for many people that have a small business that'll satisfy their needs as well and if they've got a particular time of the year like in in in May and June when they're getting new product in and they've need to get rid of a lot of a lot of cardboard they can take it down
to down to the public works it's easy to do but we saw I passed out photographs i know the city took photographs i think there were like 20 photographs that showed the the problem that commercial
recyclables has caused in the town you know for 30ome years this this this community had an ordinance that required commercial to take care of their own recyclables and the city picked up the residential it was not a problem until
the commercials pushed to have theirs collected and then it was done without any change in the ordinance and it just came about well that was not a fair and equitable solution it just happened and it should not have happened
and you should not have it should not I'm not talking necessarily this administration but it should not have been allowed to exist you created this the community created the problem by allowing uh commercial uh uh collection of
recyclables when you going when you go into business and I've been in a number of businesses and I've built built buildings and I've owned and managed buildings you go into business with the anticipation of making a profit and part of your profit is determined by what
your expenses are and if you're not going to be able to make a profit you're probably not going to want to go into that business well one of the the obligations you have is to dispose of your recyclables just like your other waste
materials and I you know I believe there's a part of this ordinance that talks about the the the grease traps this is an ongoing problem with a city with an increasing number of of what I'll call restaurants that are disposing of their their their waste in a in a in
an improper way i'll leave it at that it's got to be fair and equitable you're not in a position in my view to subsidize industry or business at the expense of the general taxpayer
we've provoke we proposed a fair and equitable way to do it and I think it should be taken under advisement thank you um Mr rousian I just want to say this to you specifically i as the uh president vice president of taxpayers
yes i I just want to thank the taxpayers because while we may not agree perfectly on this topic you've invited us to come speak to you uh have let it be well known that you disagreed but it wasn't like some secret or something and I just
I do appreciate that and I hope you understand that this is not an easy decision for anyone up here no we you know we have tossed around the issue of what does it cost the TPA had asked for oh two years
ago what does this recycling cost us we don't know i don't know that you really know other than the bottom line i don't know that you can I don't know that you have been able to separate commercial from residential um that might be
difficult to do in itself but there was a point up until 2017 when everything was being done to be collect only residential so we knew up until that time what our costs were beyond that we don't know but we've got
to be able to fund in a reasonable way the cost and for the public to know what that is thank you thank you anyone else this evening on this topic stacy Shan uh 928 Columbia Avenue
um I really feel that it should be equal for taxpayers and residents with one 96 gallon per business and resident and not increase the recycling i think you keep saying public works was here but if anybody watched the public work presentation they were overwhelmed with
the amount that they were receiving and they were looking for help in reducing that amount again it's been said you know recycling is a business expense that should be covered by the business last year you were picking up
businesses without it being in the ordinance so to say that it's not going to go up you really don't know because it's been increasing since you've been allowing businesses to be picked up public works is going to need more
manpower if there's more materials be picked up the city services should be equal and fair for all taxpayers regardless of the amount of taxes paid i you know one of the businesses from the bid I think charity was talking about oh they pay on
this lot they pay this no no that's not how public service um how services work for the city everybody is equal if you have a house in Village Green or if you have a big house on Beach Drive you pay different
amounts in taxes but your services are the same it's not like oh because you pay more in taxes we're going to collect you more that's not how it works the fire truck doesn't go to the house that pays the most taxes it's all fair what I'm concerned about with this
resolution is the paragraph in C that states "Notwithstanding the above the city manager and the municipal recycling coordinator shall have the authority to direct the manner of collection for
business owners owning and or operating or occupying properties within the Washington Street Mall Business Improvement District bid as set forth within chapter 505 of the city code for purposes of assuring safety and attracted attractiveness of the district
that's what concerns me right there that means that the city manager can change how many times a week recycling is picked up for the businesses so you're saying once a week now I I heard Mr uh
Meyer last on the first reading saying "Hey if you need more just let us know." No no so now that's a little caveat in there that don't worry we're saying this but if you need more we're going to stop by and pick yours up once twice three times a week if you have more recycling
that's where we can't have it increase that's why I'm saying once a week one can one can a 96 gallon per resident and business it's equal it's fair to everyone you know businesses make a profit and they shouldn't be uh relying
on the taxpayers to what have the recycling picked up three times a week because they need it it's a business expense and they should pay for it thank you make a com i just want to thank everybody for your
for your comments um there's a couple comments I want to kind of like refer to or you know go talk about real quick one was we should table this look at this we should look at this longer we
should table it well you know we've been working on this for six months ladies and gentlemen and we have to do something now before summer and you know and I think a lot of your thoughts were you know 90-day trial period this is basically a trial period there's not a date on this but we are all anticipating
looking at this in the future uh and and making changes um my comment about seeing what the businesses need is part of our information process there are some unknowns that we've discussed here moving forward
um I we need as much information as possible going into this trial period that when if we need to make decisions we will make decisions and uh I just want to thank take the opportunity to thank everybody that has worked so hard
on this i want to thank the public works uh Eric and Frank uh I want to thank all their employees that do such a great job keeping our streets clean i want to thank everybody at this table because I've I've I've we've had multiple multiple multiple meetings over the six
months i want to thank the members of the public who have invited us out the businesses who invited us out the phone calls and the emails that we received um and like the mayor said we're not making everybody happy here we're probably making everybody upset with this but with all the negotiation that we have done the 10 people that have been
involved I think we've come up to something that we are willing to push out at you know basically at the last minute we got to do something before summer ladies and gentlemen we have to have some kind of standards and practices uh in order and I think um this is not going to be the end of it
unfortunately uh we are probably going to see this again at the table in a year from now and we can make changes but if we don't do something now we don't know we we're not going to be able to learn the unknowns and I think it's unfortunately this is a uh a little bit
of a rocky road for us but you know I think every member of the city council can add or take away things from this and in the one thing the one clause that uh Mrs sheen brought up was added and taken away and then added again so you know there's been a lot of negotiation
amongst ourselves and I'm very proud of the the work we've done together in uh as much as we did um so just please bear with us this is this is a process and this is part of the process thank you Mr meyer kelly well you've already made up
your minds which I knew an hour ago but um I'm Kelly Carter Courier 398 Congress Street i don't like to speak but I'm a taxpayer i think we should just have one container try it and you know what if the businesses need more get their asses
in a truck and bring it to the recycling center like we do every week it's free and and try it and see what happens you know that's all and yeah it does look like a mess down in the town so but they have a lot of workers there and
they can bring it down and it's really easy to do they're very nice down there they even help you unload if you need it so anyway I came because I I've been gone for the last few months and that's
another thing having an ordinance like this doing it in the winter time when most of the city is not here i know it's a game have fun goodbye thank you Kelly anyone else mayor Mullik I'd like to make comment if it's okay we have just
to be clear uh we have an introduction and a second correct that's correct okay that's okay got a motion in a second yeah motion in a second thank you uh go ahead i'm sorry yeah so um worked on this we started this in September so in September we had a presentation by our
public works um supervisor um and assistant supervisor uh and it was clear that these gentlemen were out there collecting uh what was really beyond uh what was reasonable so we sat down and we started talking to them the experts
right i don't I'm not I don't pretend to be an an expert in recycling or how to manage what needs to be picked up when it needs to be picked up or what the scope of that might be um the one thing we've heard is that there's going to be new new costs there are no new costs
that was made clear when we were having our meetings what can you do with your current staff with your current trucks no additional expense to be able to manage and control what we can we took a look at ordinances at other local um
municipalities we looked at what was going on in the market in South Jersey with um other municipalities that were trying to contract on behalf of their community um and what they were dealing with and what we tried to do was come up
with the best possible solution but the the primary goal in my involvement in the in this was to help the public workers this was not to be a debate between residents and commercial although it's turned into one and so I want to bring it back to the reason why
we started this and that was to be able to give that group of individuals those employees some understanding of what their job scope was supposed to be reasonable and manageable within the scope and the parameters that they had under their direction no new additional
cost by personnel or equipment so that's the first that's the the baseline here at the last meeting we discussed the fact that um there's a lot of concerns about well are we going to be taking on more well quite frankly if you can't get your recycling as a business within
these parameters or as a condo association you are going to have to contract with someone to come pick up your recycling so there may be people who are deselecting out because they're not going to be able to be part of the program we don't know that there's a lot
of unknowns on the commercial side of this what we didn't want to do was completely abandon it because the experts in the field assured us look we can do this we can manage this they have the parameters if a business or an
association doesn't meet those parameters when those gentlemen are out on the street they will alert their leadership and they will get notified sorry you're over the limit you're going to need to make adjustments we sat at this table at the last meeting and we
discussed that we expect a report back in November from the public works leadership we need to understand what their experience has been tonight is we're in April we've been dealing with this for 6 months we have an ordinance
on the books that does not align with operational parameters that are going on each and every day in the city as a council member I can no longer accept that I've got something that says this is our regulation and our law and this
is what we have people doing in practice those don't align did did this take longer than it should have yes because we've been working at this internally to try and come up with some compromise but at the end of the day we can't just say
to the business community good luck that's not fair to them either and we can take the hit for that and I I'll take the hit for that but at the bottom line is you can't just turn around and say you have one can and figure it out with all due respect that's just not reasonable to do to a small business you
know um independent personnel or a large corporation they may not find that they're going to have someone ready and available to take on their book of business in a two-eek period we're going coming into the summer season think about what it would look like if we just
left this without putting some parameters around it now the businesses have known that they're going to have to probably make adjustments this document has been out there so I hope that they made some plans accordingly and for those that can manage under this
parameters we'll pick it up we'll track it and we will have a report back in November from public works and at that time we as a council and you as the public will be educated on what this program has looked like for the last 6
months but until that time there's a lot of supposition as to what's going up what's going down what's costing us more honestly we don't have that information we know what it costs right now to run public works doing what they're doing we
do know that cost that's what we know so again as the mayor stated at the beginning of this this is not perfect by any stretch of the imagination but the reason we started this was not to get into a war between the residents and the commercial it was to address a concern
raised by employees so that's what we set out to do so I would implore all of you to please allow us to go through this process to gather the data and I will make the commitment that there will be a
report back at a public meeting with the information eric Frank you will give us that information correct yes okay i just want to make sure because I can't get the information without them we can't get the information without them so again this
is far from perfect but it is not over so tableabling it is not an option because if we table it we have an ordinance and we're leaving and stranding a commercial entities in this city and that obviously would not be
fair to them either so thank you thank you very much any other uh council questions or comments actually I um if I may um struck by the the the comment that you
know you the city doesn't know how much money it costs to pick up residential recycling and the city doesn't know how much it it costs to pick up commercial recycling and that is spoton because we don't have it broken down we can't break that down but we know what our reality
is we know how much the city is paying for recycling for the work that is being done right now um and one of the you know when in in looking at that you know what we know in this discussion and
where we are with dealing with this ordinance is that the cost that we are focused on for 2025 in in the budget for recycling will address this ordinance um it's not going
to require additional personnel to be hired it's not going to uh require additional equipment to be purchased so our our decision cannot be based off of of that
analysis of how much is it for how much is residential how much is commercial but we can we have to deal with the reality that we have and that's that's what we are that's what we're wrestling with um I know from that
and the decision that I think we have all made is to provide some level of service for everybody in Kate May um you know there have been a lot of remarks a lot of comments about fairness and I think that my and um there's that
perspective and I think my own perspective is it it all what you find is fairness and your view of it is a somewhat elusive concept in here um it depends on it depends on your point of view and um I know that what we are
trying to do is strike that balance and in striking that balance do we have an ordinance that looks great and satisfies everybody the answer is no but what it does do is it does provide standards that we have that we do not have now um
standards regarding the amount of recycling tank that can be put out for residents as well as for commercial properties and guess what some of those commercial properties they may not be happy with these standards they may say that's not enough but these are the standards that um we are looking at and
believe that are appropriate and from this viewpoint is fair as fair as we can possibly get um it's also there have been look the the issues regarding curbside presentation we don't have any standard right now for curbside presentation you know I would expect
changes to be to be done and enforcement to um to be involved in this process so that the issues that we've talked about before when we have seen um recycling all over the place not uh containered
properly um or you know not bundled so it's blowing around in storms that this has to change we know this has to change there's an expectation that it that it has to change and um to me it's not just the end is not the passage of the
ordinance it's the enforcement of the ordinance as well uh the last thing I just want to add is I don't want to be repetitive but this look back in November is significant um to me that's not just window dressing on this whole this whole matter but we need to get
through the season because right now we are speculating as far as what actually is going to happen over the course of the season um but we're we're speculating based off of input from the people that are out there on the street doing the job and
telling us what they see what they do what they are capable of handling so look we rely we're relying on and those folks trust their opinion and we'll see what happens and in November we'll take
that information we'll look at it again and I think I know we're going to have a you know a thorough discussion i look forward to having a thorough discussion about that in November and see where we are and if we need to make some some adjustments at that point then we'll you know we'll be ready to have that
conversation thank you thank you okay sure please um I agree with what everybody said up here um we absolutely have to do something um just to also make it clear we are reducing the amount of recycling that we are picking up for
businesses so people don't seem to get that we we've received from DPW and your information was wonderful but we received quite a few spreadsheets um there are businesses that are not going to be picked up um there was a comment about the you know the Washington Street
Mall the bid area um that area is very congested um you take a look at the the the detailed information that we received from um from DPW on that um most of that is
pretty much in compliance um they do a lot for uh for the city of Kate May as well as the other businesses um so we are not picking up nearly as much as what we have there are some that are going to be dropped off but I want to look at a little bit of the history of
where we have been we used to pay for recycling back pre 217 218 and that included a lot of the businesses the city decided to take it on themselves um they did that the ordinance changed to what we are looking at now which does
not include the businesses but yet they were I'm sorry can't hear um but they were included in the commercial pickup and it stayed the same so I don't know what the intent was with that but we ab absolutely have to address this new ordinances uh this new
ordinance three things that I think businesses really bring to a a municipality is definitely job creation um where we can't look at this as a one-sizefits-all job creation community development um looking at what the
businesses do for the city and it also when a thriving community or thriving businesses um increase you know property values um you take a look at what's really happened in this city over the past few years um we I think this is a
really good compromise as far as what we what we looked at what we had in place what we weren't abiding to to what we um what we came up with and then looking at it in um in the fall i think it's going to be a you know a better light on what
we uh what we need to do and that's something that DPW is going to have to provide us the information on so Mayor can I say one more please go ahead i just want to say one more thing and um it's going to be a warning to the businesses there is going to be a limit
if you go over that limit I think you get one one pass on that uh if we will stop picking up your recycling and you're going to have to satisfy your situation with the city manager before you get it picked up again so this is a hard line that we're drawing here as
well thank you for that uh just I won't say everything that's already been said but I do want to just specifically thank Eric and Frank and your whole staff um one thing that I have learned and this isn't just to to butter your bread or anything but looking at the cost that we
pay you guys run a lean operation and and you run it professionally um looking back at what it used to cost us and what it cost us today you the people that we have working for us are really the value and we wouldn't be able to do it without you so really I appreciate all of your
hard work um I I'll just say lastly the that again this is going to be looked at in November i expect it to change i expect it to have some learning curve from from uh this summer um so we'll see what happens and but I I think I I'll say it again uh as many of us have done
that uh if this needs to change I I I see this in a reduction of collection not an increase in cost so I say that today and and would say that in the fall if this needs to change I would see it changed in a reduction of of collection
not an increase of staffing and trucks and all those things that the TPA um understandably have brought to our attention as as a concern so I agree with those concerns um with that we have a motion and a second do we have any other questions or comments council
okay roll call council member Meyer yes deputy Mayor McDade yes council member Bodner yes council member Baldwin yes mayor Malik yes okay moving on to the public portion on
resolutions only mayor anyone wishing to speak on resolutions this evening please come to the microphone state your name and address this is on resolutions this evening amen uh Stacy Sheen 928 Colombia um my
question is around resolution 165 um Stacy just before just one moment I want to add um to this public comment any questions or comments on the uh presentation on the USS Jacob Jones so
if you have any questions or comments about USS Jacob Jones while we we still have you awake here uh John and Miles thank you uh for waiting um please please come to the microphone state your name and address sorry Stacy
go ahead that's all right um again it's resolution 165 my comment is the heading is resolution as change order to reconstruction of Beach Avenue but inside the resolution it states Lafayette and Madison concrete and
things like that and I didn't think we could be putting change orders all grouped together that they should be split out so they go with the different projects and we know where they're where they stand mr city Manager do you want to answer that so that was and that's one reason why
it's a change order that was for additional extra work so we had an an emergency repair at the corner of on Lafayette at Madison if you're there was an accident where a vehicle coming out of Madison hit the fire hydrant and
created a large sinkhole and we had to replace the hydrant there and the sidewalk as part of that um that was work that we could not complete internally so we we had a contractor Marendino was working down on Beach
Avenue they're doing concrete work we asked them to provide a change order price to do extra work to go up and do that so that wasn't a separate project that and this money will be sent over to the police once it's authorized here to be passed through to the insurance
company of the you know as part of the claim but that's why it's part of that so it's but I guess my point is though you have a project that project should have its own change orders and if this project was the Broadway to the cove
the change order should include what happened on Madison and Lafayette contractually this is how it has to be done but why couldn't you just do a resolution for emergency work for this get it approved and go that way with it that way it keeps the projects in their
own little silo so we know what the expenses are well this is the expense of it right you're saving expenses by having them already here it's accounted it's line item in there and it's a really a very small portion in that when you look at the expense is is exactly
out of Yeah but the project was for you're talking about we're talking about it's a $4,900 charge out of a change order of 42,000 so it's it's a minor percentile i mean I understand what Stacey is saying that yes it's a true
but that 4900 the logistics Mr dietrich I think it's the logistics of the fact that you needed to do an emergency appropriation you had a contractor within the city able to do the work i I think it's just it's it's you know sort of the semantics of could we have not
had a resolution that just identified this contractor associated with an emergency appropriations i would leave that to you the city clerk and the lawyers i don't know all but I think that's the point but you know just for future isn't it over the bid threshold because No no no it's But the the idea
is when you do projects they're bid and now it's looking like we're putting more money into the project when it really isn't for that project and that's my point that Let me just I I I understand the point and I I appreciate it Stacy but just on the other hand of this the
city manager we had somebody you know have a car accident into fire hydrant public works gets water department gets out there really quickly turns it off but we have a mess on on one of our busiest
streets we have a contractor in town doing exactly the same work so we got him right over there and I have no problem him doing the work that's not my point the point is him doing the work it's that it's in the wrong basket okay there should be the beach drive work and
that's a project it has its own bid number and everything else this this project or this work is fine it just shouldn't have been grouped into that as a change order because it's really not a change order to the work that was done on Beach Drive we can't we can't I just want to make sure I'm clear we can't bid
it in time to Right and it could be emergency i'm not saying it's not that you had to bid it i'm just saying it shouldn't go underneath a change order project okay we could just change it to another resolution for an emergency appropriation deferrals right because when you go back in a couple years
you're going to think "Wow that took us that much that project was." And if this is going to be insurance keep it in its own separate basket for that insurance so Mr solicitor um are we able to do anything at the table on this right now or is it kind of what are under the
bridge future lesson i I would I would file this under you know right the form if that's the way council wants it in the future it can be separated but this is really I mean the and not to discount Michen's comment but the original contract amount was $500,000 this was
really a very small amount and I think it was for expediency and efficiency again so Stacy I say you know duly noted for future and we'll just do a resolution for an emergency appropriation but the thing is is I understand what you're saying then then why didn't you put it underneath resolution 164 same contractor doing
work it wasn't put there because that project was bid separately originally but that was an an original project bid separately with a different engineer working on it as a separate project so that that that was a distinct discrete
project here this was a small minor corrective work that we did and okay I understand your point i do understand your point but it's not this isn't my first time coming up here and saying that projects are being grouped together underneath change orders it
happened a few months ago where you put I'll I'll bring it up to you Erin i know you're shaking your head but I brought it up before because there was a couple change orders for different projects put underneath the header of one of the engine or not engineer construction
person that was doing the work so I'm just making sure we keep doing this this muddies the water when they do the bookkeeping and the audits when it comes around again and that's my point for Well first of all I don't know did we beach drive i'm assuming that wasn't
done with the uh beach utility right so it was just No okay so it was still under capital okay thank you anyone else on resolutions this evening also on the uh USS Jacob Jones yes good evening vaz Johnson A26
Lafayette Street um and I would like to comment on the SS Jacob Jones monument um certainly it's an honorable monument and uh I think Kate May would welcome
such a um well-deserved piece of art and um certainly sir you're you're quite a visionary with what it would look like it would be beautiful um my question is you said there were three sites that you looked at um what were the other two if
I may ask um John feel free to Yeah yes um the we looked at where Beach Avenue meets where Gurnie but there's no real space there there wasn't enough room to do much and the other was all
the way at the end of uh the prominade to the east at Wilmington the problem there was the encroachment on the dunes and the impact that that would have on the new seaw wall work with the army corps of engineers okay all right great
okay uh my next question has to do with um with the council uh what are the steps with approving something like this is it is it um broken down to approval of the monument and then separately
approval of the location or is it all bundled into one i'll give that to to our solicitor i think it's both there so it's bundled into one um or is it separate or can it be separate i think
it could be separate it could you know it could be uh that's a good location for it want to hone in on the design or that's a nice design i want to hone in on the location or both um but those are two decision points that uh council will have to wrestle with okay i guess I
would encourage it being uh separate because certainly the monument and how it's been presented looks absolutely beautiful and like I said um honorable and and necessary uh but I would like to
see um a separate vote on the location only because I think because it has to do with the prominade i think residents should get um should be able to voice their opinion on the location
since the prominade is such an important part to the residents i think they should have input if they choose you know some pe it maybe no one has a an opinion on it but I think they need the opportunity to express how they feel
about the location so if it could be two two different um I don't want to say issues or votes i I I don't know the correct way to say it i can tell you just from listening to a couple of the uh meetings that um one of
the first things that was basically said is look we want to make sure we have community buyin i know um Miles and and uh I forget who actually was test was actually trying to contact some of the survivors or those who passed uh family
members um which was was part of the important you know we have a whole committee working on that and it's been extraordinarily challenging but we believe we've identified all the surviving relatives wow that's amazing i'm actually talking about the people
that live in Kate M sure i I meant I I just they they from the very beginning was community buy in and input and um and and especially obviously the survivors or or surviving family members is what I mean i do think everyone would
agree that there should be a monument you know to um to our fallen heroes i'm not sure i I would like to hear from the public how they feel about um the location sure okay thank you so may I make just one comment we're planning on
creating a uh computer simulated three-dimensional model of it it actually is not on the prominade it's actually at the street level where that blank space is where Howard hits the prominade yes it's directly adjacent to the prominade but it doesn't interrupt the prominade
okay thank you very much thank you Ross anyone else on uh uh either uh public comment on resolutions or the USS Jacob Jones seeing none we can close public comment and move on to resolutions
oh we'll we'll have public comment right after this yeah absolutely yep on anything all right so moving on to the consent agenda is there anything that anyone like to remove this council anyone wish to remove
anything no seeing none do I have a motion um I just have to abstain from the February 19th amendments and I'll make the motion if that's okay do I have a second i'll second roll call council member Meyer yes deputy Mayor
McDade yes council member Bodner i abstain on the abstain on the uh sets of minutes from 2024 and vote yes on the remainder perfect council member Baldwin I I abstain on the one that I came late
to i think you're still counted as present okay even though you were late you were still there okay I'm counting that as present okay okay thank you though yes and Mayor Mullik yes okay okay on to new business city solicitor
nothing tonight mayor thank you city manager uh nothing thank you city clerk just a few uh reminder that on uh April 19th at 11:00 a.m is the Kowana's Easter egg hunt on the beach in front of Convention Hall on April 20th at 1:00 p.m is the Easter fashion stroll at
Rotary Park and May 7th from 4 to 7:00 p.m is the job fair at Convention Hall as well we encourage participation um city hall will be closed this Friday April 18th in um observance of Good Friday and of my shameless Merkantile
plug uh Merkantile renewals are due by April 30th there will be a late fee assessed as of May 1st so it must be in the office before May 1st um that is as an entire package with your proof of
insurance any required paperwork okay so if anybody has any questions please reach out to my office i appreciate it thank you and thank you for your help with that of course uh city council members uh uh Council Member Baldwin
nothing tonight Mayor thank you okay uh Councilman yeah just very briefly um Dennis Crowley is still here of course as I knew he would be so um Dennis I just want to congratulate you again on receiving the the proclamation um you
know it was I know how dedicated you are to Kate May and how hard you work and I had an opportunity to work with you and see it firsthand so thank you for everything that you've done for Kate May um and appreciate the fact that you've done so much and I'm sure a lot of people don't even realize it but how
much you have done to um work on issues regarding revenue in Kate May as well as in fairness so thank you very much i told Dennis at our MTRA meeting closing that he was he he was bold and made us do and go places where no one
ever thought we should or could um and it was all illustrated by graphs by graphs and tables and lots of lots of uh information so that will be missed and Marty is going to be calling on him I am sure to get some assistance at least in
the early days deputy mayor anything else uh yes I do want to announce that the community center uh open house is scheduled for Saturday May 3rd from 11 to 1 come out it will be a fun event um Casey's got a
bunch of things that she's working on so um um everybody if they could um come see the new community center it's coming together beautifully um the recreation staff has been doing a fabulous job and uh thanks to uh city administration for
their support on the project thank you Councilman Meyer yes Mayor thank you i just want to also continue to thank you Dennis for all the work you've done for the city you're very intelligent person uh I hope you continue to uh come to our meetings and share your thoughts and uh I think my favorite thing about you is
your personality i think you have a great personality um that being said I uh I just want to mention that in your water bills you're going to be receiving a flyer about the lantern flies and the uh tree of heaven please be on the lookout around your property or even city properties for Tree of Heaven uh
the city received a $20,000 grant we're going to try to find out how many trees we have in this town and then help you uh remove those trees with some funding u so that's it nice work on that Councilman Meyer yeah thank you thank you Mr manager for having those printed
um I'm not going to add anything thank you very much and we'll open it up for public comment um ma'am if you'd like to Yeah speak from there yeah you can sit there yes absolutely you can sit down if you'd like to stay right there okay okay just speak into
the microphone please just state your name and address for us okay okay my name is Irene and I live in North i know it takes Okay my name is Irene Reamer i live in North Kate May and I'm
honored and privileged to be invited or to be able to come and meet the city council uh it has been most enlightening and I've enjoyed every minute of it it has been very deep and I debatable
um not argumentative but very heated discussions and what I'm about to say to you is on a much lighter and happier matter and I hope you'll just listen
quietly okay what I'm here today to discuss with you is a matter that not only involves my family personally but also involves involves about 400 other families as well namely the current
dedicated beaches on the prominade the weladvertised prominade improvement project calls for the removal of those benches and their subsequent replacement with 400 new benches which according to
the city manager will soon be purchased in entirety as a cost-effective measure despite the fact that each of those dedicated benches was paid for by an individual citizen or family the city solicitor has advised that they are
considered public property i'd like to know how so because the city did position the benches on the proomenade and even took them down one time if I recall in anticipation of a of a storm possibly
Sandy in 2012 after which they were bolted into the concrete and became immovable to the best of my knowledge the city has not performed any other maintenance on those benches in all this
time mayor Mullik you we believe your offer last year giving bench owners the opportunity to remove their bench was not very well advertised and we never heard whether anyone ever accepted that offer we realize that many bench owners
do not live in or near Cape May and therefore may not have had access to our local newspapers to learn about the off offer also when you consider the weight of the bench and the fact that it is bolted into concrete plus the age of
most owners like us it was a formidable task as it would be today if we chose to accept that offer provided that offer still stands can you tell us if it does and if so how
anyone could remove the bench and when okay um so thank you first off let me just say this uh as you know we've had this communication um not necessarily us but uh as a council we've talked about
this for some time um and let me just make sure we're abundantly clear that we understand people's connection to the benches 100% um a lot of them are memorials to a loved one so we uh are certainly
um understanding of that um however we have a very real um problem of some of these benches really becoming um you know fall frankly falling apart yeah rusting and uh slats um being broken etc
etc we did look into and I I just want to be clear that I won't even say the council member because I don't want them to get upset again because it's like the recycling uh ordinance we assigned a council member to look at this deeply
okay and could we repaint them could we repair broken slats could we look into all this in a in a full way um and went out and even got quotes looked at uh sand blasting taking apart the benches sand blasting and repainting everything
and because as I'm sure you understand they have to be in pristine shape we can't have somebody sit up on the prominade and have the bench fall or break and okay so we have the city has that obligation um the expense of repair
and I don't I look I'm in small business if this was just me I would try to paint those things into but it's it's not and doing it um to code and to uh to the spec that is necessary this the quotes that we received far outweighed the cost
of a new bench so clearly at that point we start looking at new benches and and what can we do now as you as you said the first thing we put out there was that anyone who paid for the bench which
was at cost whatever it cost the city at that time is what we charged anyone who wanted a bench could take the bench home and no we didn't want anybody unscrewing benches up there by themselves what we would would have done and would likely
do in the future okay and by the way in in regards to advertising and things like that of course that was some time ago the attempt was actually and and we didn't do it right remember but what was going to happen was contacting every person that we had on record
individually okay now uh and then we just didn't do it right people were upset we understand that and frankly we weren't ready to move so um this time we have purchased the benches put that out there to the public but we've also said that we will
not touch the benches until after this season okay so we're not we're not touching the benches until after this summer okay at that time the benches will be removed by public works by the way this still has to be discussed by council in a very full way so I don't
want to answer this more than I really can now because this has to be voted on and discussed i mean I just want to be clear about that okay but what I can say is what's been already basically said is that anybody who had a bench is we're going to help people load their bench
into their vehicle okay and and take them home um now I realize that not everyone will be able to do that and I'm sympathetic but we can't do that we we can't deliver them to people's houses that's understood but we will we would
remove them and people could have them um uh what is left for discussion is if people want to do a new bench and and have the same memorial there is a cost there's going to be some cost and that's what we have to discuss certainly that
cost will be absolutely no more than uh the cost to the city okay the wholesale cost of the bench and again that's less than what it was going to cost to repair it okay i I know that sounds ridiculous but it's true that makes good sense the last thing that really has to be
discussed by council and how we do this is you know is there a small discount or some kind of discount to the folks who already had it okay now just realize just like this recycling thing I'm willing to have TPA members come up to
me and say "Why am my taxpayers funding someone else's memorial bench?" Okay so I just want you to know there's going to be a little bit of a balancing act that the taxpayers are gonna uh uh so but but let me just say this very clearly we want to do this as
fairly as possible and and we need to keep but we need to keep the benches safe clean and we want them to be there for the next 15 years and so on okay so just please understand that we the benches can't last forever and we all know this but no
okay you've you've answered a lot of the questions I was ready ready to ask you but I have um just another thing can I have your attention for just another minute or two okay have any of you seen or heard of the
book yes story behind the bench absolutely you have seen it okay last year at this time when the matter first came up it was kind of unheard of here um from records let's see let me where I see the book was created and edited by a
young woman Rean Gaash who spent many summers in Cape May and whose curiosity aroused was aroused while walking along the prominade and reading inscriptions on the benches from records obtained through an open public records act
request form submitted to the city of Cape May in 2021 miss Gayash contacted as many owners as possible regarding her proposed work the result is a collection of very personal memories and incredible
stories which prompted the inscriptions that appear on 93 of the benches our story is one of them and it epitomizes the absolute joy which five generations of our family have experienced since we first arrived
on Cape May Beach in June of 1969 the book was published in 2022 and is available now in several branches of the Cape May County Library and thank you for your time thank you very much we we appreciate it and we'll be first in
line for a new bench thank Thank you thank you very much and do expect us to be in contact with you directly as well thank you anyone else public comment this evening sir hello uh my name is Ed Dixon i live at
3507 Asbury Avenue in Ocean City i have come down at a special time um with this presentation of Mr crowley what one heck of a history of work for the K communities and uh also uh for this
dedication of that ship that was um torpedoed out and I have looked into that over the past years and they did a documentary uh on the military channel on divers going down to check out that particular ship so I am familiar with
that too and I'm really happy to see that being honored here thank you also I would like to thank you especially with this dedication on the ship for all the support you have given to our veterans the Memorial Day tribute
the 80th anniversary which is now the 81st anniversary of the invasion of Normandy June 6th then with the Independence Day and Veterans Day November 11th all great tributes to our military
veterans even today fighting in foreign countries for preservative freedom there is one idea that I would like all of you to consider i am here to ask the mayor and council of Kate May to
consider dedicating the month of August to our military veterans it's been a long time they have allowed us to live in freedom they have suffered and made many sacrifices for
their families and us it is the veteran not the preacher who has given us freedom of religion it is the veteran not the reporter who has given us freedom of the press it is the veteran not the poet who
has given us freedom of speech it is the veteran not the campus organizer who has given us freedom of symbol it is the veteran not the lawyer who has given us the right to a fair trial it is the veteran not the
politician who has given us the right to vote i hope that many Americans just like me would like to see one day on the calendar the month of August being dedicated to our military veterans
across the country this is part of what I want to accomplish i come down to speak to you about that in hopes that you might consider that what I'm proposing uh so uh that's all I ask uh and I was
again I was down here in special day and remembering that ship i mean that was really added to part of what I was trying to say and also seeing Mr crowley because Mr crowley dealt in Washington Township which I am a member of the VFW there in Washington Township so I may
have bumped into him one time or another and not realized it he's on Fish Pond Road right he said he was there a number of times but that's what I' all I'd like to do is ask you to consider that absolutely and if possible I didn't
catch your name sir edward Dixon edward at 3507 Asbury Avenue in Ocean City would you consider working on a resolution with our solicitor absolutely okay well we we'll look forward to seeing that resolution at this table and
uh I think we'd be we'd be honored to to to do that well thank you very much thank you very much sir you're quite welcome thank you have a have a wonderful evening thank you he'll give you his contact as well okay all right thank you sir
all right terrific when would be a good time to get over thank you thank you again sir hi Stacy hi stacy Sheen 928 Columbia Avenue mike one question about the benches are they the same benches that we have up there now that we reordered or they look
different uh they are a little bit different they're going to the same style of bench i think the color is going to change a little bit they're not going to be the blue they're going to be black side frames but it's essentially the same style bench yes okay
um my question is also are the meters on Beach Drive being removed permanently from the wall there's the sections that we've taken down there's going to be areas that they may not go up initially we are we have
um just like when we took some of the meters away from Jackson Street and the um around Washington Street Mall we brought us on kiosk so we have four kiosks ordered to uh you know replace some of those metered areas and they
will be uh I think ready almost June 1st june 1st okay my my question for that is um if you read a lot of the things like from Stone Harbor they actually put meters back I believe because people complained the meters
were taken away and they didn't want to do um the park the park mobile right and also if you look at the um Kate May County tourism report they also have in there that people complain about the meters being taken away so I don't want
us to make the same mistake that other communities made knowing that people didn't like it so that was my point for making that my question comes down to uh Leon mentioned about state funding for certain projects or be taken away have
we found out if any of our projects that we have slated are going to be any money is going to be taken away or is it still too early still too early i mean none of our current projects that are under construction have lost funding for sure
for right now yeah so an anticipated project I I don't we don't know definitively yet if any of our dedicated projects that we have earmarked for federal funding have been cut okay officially
okay is there a time that the council's going to put out what the capital projects are going to be for the year and what that cost is going to be and then my next question is does that include painting the water tower because each year it keeps getting pushed away
and they're not painting the water tower think we're five years behind now in painting the water tower which is to me something that's good for the entire community because it's our water versus maybe a million dollars to paint the water tower would be better than doing a million dollars for you know a park or
something like that and that's I know you probably are still deciding what projects you're going to do but I just want to put it out there in case it's spawn off the radar about the capital budget so So I'll answer in reverse order so the water tower was in last year's capital budget we just got final
quotes and we're we're going back and forth with the consultants so I anticipate in a near future council meeting presenting a proposal for professional services to prepare the bids and specs to paint the water tower so that is eminent and that is already
funded in 2025's uh or 2024's capital appropriation that was already approved i anticipate possibly at the next meeting presenting a list of capital projects uh for council to consider for the upcoming year okay thank you and
just so everybody knows every time that water tower is brought up is going to be brought up I'm going to keep saying the letters need to be moved up about a foot so everybody can see them because of the cell tower things yeah mr cole all right peter Cole 1075
Michigan Avenue on behalf of TPA and myself I'd like to congratulate Dennis Crowley on for his pro proclamation very proud to to be uh president of the TPA and have him as a
director good effort Dennis yes good effort carry on tpa member assigned to that committee originally that's right we assigned him right as you you were assigned as the TPA
well what do we do about that Dennis you'll still be assigned I think put somebody in one of your ranks no you're you're going to be assigned i actually that does bring up a point that um anyone wishing to uh serve on
the um municipal taxation and revenue advisory committee is welcome and certainly if you have a recommendation from the uh TPA please forward that to us anyone else this evening all right motion to adjurnn i'll make that motion
thank you have a wonderful Easter everybody thank you very much