a committee meeting April 21st 2025 700 p.m located here at the Municipal Building 770 Coopertown Road Deleno roll call please mr bartlett here mrs patrick here mr mcfaden here mr o here miss
Seuss here thank you also present Mr schwab our township administrator and Mrs lure our municipal clerk and Mrs russell deputy municipal clerk and Mr warren our police chief please rise for the flag salute i aliance to the flag of the United
States of America and to the republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all janice could you please read the sunshine and live stream statements
please be advised that proper notice of this meeting has been given in compliance with the open public meetings act in the following manner written notice has been mailed to the county times and courier post and published in the December 30th 2024 edition written notice has been posted on official bulletin board of the township of Delano
at least 48 hours prior to the meeting excuse me this meeting excuse me this meeting of the Deleno Township Committee may be transmitted via live stream on YouTube video the streaming of the meeting is not intended to be relied
upon I'm losing my voice and I apologize as formal public access under the open public meetings act if the technology is disrupted for any reason the township will be will proceed in person as an official meeting in accord with official notice apologize
thank you get some water okay we will move right into our 2025 municipal budget uh section this will be the public hearing and adoption uh right now we have resolution
2025-65 the annual budget self-examination portion can I get a motion please i'll move we approve resolution 202565 the annual budget self-examination second
motion by Matt second by Phil roll call please mr bartlett yes mr patrick yes mr mcfaden yes mr oat yes and Miss yes thank you moving on to resolution
2025-66 resolution authorizing municipal budget reading by title only can I get a motion please second motion by Kate second by Phil roll call please mr bartlett yes mrs patrick yes mr
mcfaden yes mr yes and Miss Seuss yes thank you we will now open this hearing to the public for uh 2025 municipal budget uh public comments will be limited to 5 minutes and will only be open to municipal budget questions only
janice could you please read the 5m minute uh information pursuant to provisions of the Open Public Meetings Act NJSA 10:4-12 the Delo Township Committee is entitled to permit regulate or prohibit
public participation in its meetings public participation and comment shall be governed by the following rules to maintain order and prevent disruption of the meeting each speaker will have a maximum of five minutes to speak and should limit comments to the matter at
hand the speaker will be directed to conclude the remarks once the speaker's time has expired no time may be yielded to a speaker by another speaker groups are asked to select to select a spokesperson
to speak on their behalf speakers will address the township committee from the podium and are asked to begin their remarks with their name and address for the record township committee members are not obligated to answer impromptu questions or address remarks from
members of the public during the public comment period speakers should expect the township committee to refrain from engaging in a dialogue except to the extent necessary necessary to clarify the speaker's comment the allotted time
for speaking from the podium is the method to address the township committee during the public comment period the township committee will not entertain questions or comments called out from the audience speakers and members of the public should at all times maintain proper
decorum and shall make their comments in a civil manner personal attacks obscenity derogatory or slanderous remarks will not be tolerated thank you i'd also like to take this time to please ask that you silence your cell phones or put them on
vibrate so the hearing is now open to the public if you'd like to come up please approach the podium and state your name and address and again this is the public hearing for the 2025 municipal budget what yes what time yeah just uh Yep go ahead
Richard if you want to give a summary please yeah from the budget message uh to let you know this is the annual municipal budget and down okay and uh the budget has an appropriation amount of
$8,48,972 which is a 2% increase from last year the non- tax revenues are 2,648637 which is a 7.9% decrease uh 1.6 million is the appropriated surplus which is 11.9% we've added another surplus from
deferred school tax collections of 250,000 the tax levy is an increase to 5,400335 4.9% the total assessed values in the community as 449,294064 an increase of
222,000 which is less than 4% municipal tax rate go from 1.202 202 per 100 value uh it'll increase uh to 10442 which is a 5 and a half% increase 4.8% and there we put in the budget
message the reasons that uh the increases dealing with uh the reduction in revenue and increase in operating costs and that's the the difference between those two things is the uh uh change in the tax levy which then is
deter determines the tax rate so that's the technical stuff and I think everyone has copy of the budget message okay so uh last call for public comment on the 2025 municipal budget
seeing none I will close this hearing to the public can I get a uh motion for resolution 2025-67 adoption of the 2025 budget excuse me mayor yes i'd like to make a comment before we go to vote sure
absolutely uh for the committee um with this year's budget uh there are a few things in there that I am concerned about that uh it's not only this year but future budgets over the next couple of years that we have in there uh this
is not going to be popular but uh as we look at our own budgets at home and uh we try and make adjustments uh we become concerned or we put things on the back table or uh say well we
can't do it now but we'll do it later one of the items on there is we're going to 16 police officers and uh there's a rule of thumb that for every 500 residents you have you have here talking
micro like all the way up there you go got it okay uh the rule of thumb is that when you have five for every 500 residents you have one police officer so our town has just shy of 5,000 so you round up to 5,000 residents uh so that
would be 10 police officers then we have a police chief a lieutenant and a detective so that's 13 uh and then with folks retiring things happen so we got to the point of having 15 police
officers uh that seems to be a magical number uh that seems to has worked and now we're going to 16 so by doing that we're adding probably another $130 to $140 uh per year uh to have the extra police
officer uh so that becomes a concern because it's not one time where uh we're making an adjustment and a police officer going to retire we have a couple police officers retiring or moving on that we have to fill that slot and then that 16th uh position would go away this
becomes a permanent uh expenditure so I'm concerned about that uh for the long term uh the other item that uh I'm concerned with is uh the pocket park on Vine Street and uh we applied for a
grant and if we get it great and I believe that's supposed to be $234,000 uh to fix up that park but if we don't get uh get the grant then we're going to go go ahead and spend that money uh to fix up the park and I understand next
year's a centennial and we'd like to have that park fixed up but again it's an expense uh if it were my home and I was looking at doing things you know I'd have to push that off because I can't afford to do it and then the other item uh which uh is in the uh statement the
budget message is uh we took $250,000 from our uh deferred school tax and there's an explanation in there but again we're borrowing money and even though we may not ever have to pay it back but at some point if we do then it
comes back and hits our budgets so we're borrowing money to balance the budget and I understand that but again uh it's a concern so I just wanted to get that uh out there in the open before we voted thank you Mayor chief did you want to
speak about your request for the 16th officer did you want to get into anything about why you feel that was important for the town you have the option not required but I think it kind of deserves some comment from you well the supposed rule of thumb for one officer every 500 is ridiculous simply
for the fact that I was requested and asked of you sir in January for a room that holds a deputy how many people does this room hold 150 how many 150 150 i'm here but you requested specifically for an increase in police presence for a
room only only holds 150 but you're saying that one officer can handle 500 it's ridiculous we've increased our calls to service exponentially over the last two years let alone what we're seeing with the increase in the amount of people who move into our town our officers responded to almost 11,000
calls last year officers were working in excess almost 400 hours in overtime annually for the last four years four years we were getting killed it wasn't enough officers because we were still having guys calling out sick
because they were getting overworked so we needed extra manpower gone are the days sir where we could go and utilize mutual aid we can call Riverside or Edgewater Park or Del Rand doesn't happen anymore sir because they're busy so then the response time
to get to these people's homes for when they have a problem increases which is not good for them it's not safe so we definitely need a 16th officer so we can have quality service that we provide to our residents as well as people who come to this town to visit patronize our
establishments but it was done for a reason and there was a study done years ago and I know you're aware of it at that time when that study was done in 2004 for a town at that time that only had about 3,800 the study that was paid for requested then for us to have
minimum of 12 officers that was in 2004 based off of that population so I don't know where you got that rule of thumb for one over 500 that's ridiculous it's insane it's not safe that's all I had to say thank you i also like to point out we may have 15 officers on the payroll but there's
never 15 officers available no I have one officer right now who has been away on military deployment since 2023 and then we have uh injuries i have a I have a sergeant out right now we have maternity leave paternity leave excuse two officers who have wise pregnant at
the moment yes one is due in June the other one is due in September and and real quick for that they're entitled to FMLA which is 12 weeks so we're So one any point in time we only have two officers on we have two man minimum if you remember we just went to two man
minimums in 2015 prior to that we had one officer working dayshift which was myself i worked by myself on dayshift for six years alone by myself by myself and then former chief of Santa worked the opposite of me then we had two officers working in the
evening and then when our officer was involved in shooting because he had no one to back him up we demanded that we be able to go to twoman minimum because we didn't have enough officers but the numbers you cited would have still had him in that same predicament not safe because he was
alone right and I lost my train of thought sorry it's one of those things where if these officers are working so much overtime they get burned out and then they want to leave and a lot of times they'll go to the prosecutor's office for a
nineto-five job and you know with this generation of officers you know they're younger you know more my age and younger they want the work life balance they don't want to have to work 60 70 hours a week they don't want to have to be forced in they want to be able to spend time with their family and not you know not get worried about get called in so
we never have 15 officers and I don't think personally that the safety of our town is something that should be considered in our budget cuts if the chief is asking for 16 officers then it's warranted and needed um and I trust his opinion and we're normally working with 12 right exactly we're working with
12 we're not going to have 16 guys on ever at once um and I mean we've put officers through the academy the last couple years because of the retirement and we've been lucky enough that they've been stay they've stayed on they they have great leadership they have a great committee behind them now and I think
we're moving in the right direction and we haven't had anyone leave in in some time now fingers crossed we did finally we have staff right and we had two officers that just did lateral transfers that actually wanted to come here and are excited about it right so um we're we're very lucky we have a great staff
right now so fingers crossed we're not going to have any more babies or go out on sick leave and No just kidding please have all the babies you want so um yeah so that was just my comment uh regarding that um that aspect of of Mr olette's comments um anyone else have anything
else they want to respond to or ju just on that topic you know if we have our two guys and they're out on a call like earlier today there was an MVA three cars at the traffic light they could be out there for an hour two hours three hours if there if there's
um a unwitnessed death they might be out there for two three four hours give you an example for a normal domestic call where someone is taken into custody my two officers are then tied up for a minimum of two hours minimum two hours
that's if only one person is signing complaints if there are counter complaints make it three you say why how is that why is that because of the amount of paperwork we have to do as far as processing and then if someone has to go and be transported to the jail now leaves one person in town while the
other officer goes to transport when you go to the jail you're standing in line like you are the at the grocery store you're sitting outside waiting to be let into a salary for and then once you get inside that said salary for you then have to stand and sit and wait until they bring you to the jail to transfer over custody so it goes from a 2-hour
processing we're doing someone has to get remanded to the jail it's another hour and a half minimum and here it is so someone's alone still in town that we're asking hey can you listen out for us if we have something so what we wound up doing is having our detective leave to go out and help respond to calls when
he's trying mind you we only have one detective so he's responsible so you guys know our one detective is responsible for 365 days a year 24 hours a day 7 days a week he's on call because I only have one detective so with the amount of cases he's on he's doing that by himself we try to aid in the system
with some of the processing but he's doing it on his own but then when we have someone leave like I just described he's in tasked with hey help back the office up on calls so now his workload gets pushed to the side so would you say all in all with the call you know
transferring to a facility and paperwork it's a six to seven hour process with the domestic i just I had to have they just had to have an officer come in two weeks ago because they had to take someone to the jail sometimes people do a thing where they say "I I feel sick um my chest hurts." Well now they have to
go and reroute to the hospital and then be cleared from the hospital to be admitted to the jail this gentleman was arrested at 1:30 in the morning he did not leave virtual hospital and remand into the jail until 1:00 in the afternoon i'd have an officer come in
and sit with him at the hospital because our county doesn't provide that service so then I had another officer again here alone so I had to call another officer in so he can sit with him right there's no one to 500 thank you i appreciate the uh
clarification kate did you want to say something um I just wanted to say that I was on township committee when we did that survey uh years ago and um the survey was actually requested by members of the committee at that time thinking
that we could reduce the police department yes ma'am and actually when that survey came back we didn't have enough officers on staff at that time yes ma'am so that's why we have continued to listen to our chief each
year yes and to bring on the officers that we need to make this town safe absolutely and I have always been in support of what the chief has requested because they have the safety of this
town in their hands and so they aren't frivolous believe me so um I just wanted to state that because I was on that committee when that report came through and some of the members of the township committee were shocked they thought for sure they were going to reduce the
police force at that time and that did not happen i mean nothing but nothing too if I can also add one last thing at our last meeting um we spoke about unfortunate event we lost someone dear to a lot of people in here right we had two officers that able
to respond to that incident not one because we needed two to properly administer CPR you need two people you need two people understood chief I thank you and I
appreciate you sharing the experiences and the things that take place in our town and the safety and security of our residents here in town okay uh yes and looking at dollars and cents and from that
standpoint may not be the right thing but again in looking at budgets and those type of things uh it was something that stood out and I think this is a healthy dialogue i appreciate it and thank you yes sir
uh when I became mayor I uh asked to sit down with you and talk to you about your department and you had just become chief uh so we could uh learn I could learn more about your day-to-day operations what your needs were um how your department you know operated and I think
we talked for three or four hours and it was really beneficial to me and I learned more about the processes and how our department works and you know I think maybe it's you know beneficial for other committee members to have that conversation if they have concerns and uh I'm sure chief would be willing to
sit down with you and talk more about it but at this point I think it's kind of a no-brainer and it's common sense that we need safety in our town and if that's what the chief's requesting I have no problem with that and I know other committee members are on board as well anybody else have anything
else okay again I will ask for resolution 2025-67 adoption of the 2025 municipal budget can I get a motion please i'll make a motion second i'm sorry who was that phil phil thank you motion by Kate motion by Phil
second by Kate to adopt resolution 2025-67 adopting the 2025 municipal budget roll call please mr bartlett yes miss Fitzpatrick yes mr mcfaden yes mr olaf yes miss Seuss yes thank you
uh next item on the agenda we have a special presentation regarding the pending purchase of 401 Creek Road uh we're going to do anformational update and um you can give me about two to three minutes to get set up we'll take a brief recess
we have PowerPoints available out there yes this is going to be a PowerPoint uh presentation and I'm not sure if you grabbed one of these on your way in or not but there is a packet so you can follow along with the presentation should we sit down or just turn around
we could turn around it's It's going to be exactly what's in here so yeah and I had already copied it all righty those are pretty good i think you got them open
i gave up did you you got to do it like right in the middle tear it open like a wolf anybody yep and then you can get the lights it'll be enough it's
what your head she saw your head i thought it was me go ahead future presentation are we back in session yes we are now back in session everybody can hear me right yes
okay deleno Township's purchase of 401 Creek Road let me just move this away from me okay this is a overhead drone shot of the property as you can see in the uh red here we have the outline of the
property this is the property line it's kind of awkward over here but this is uh the edge here along the I guess that's the west side you have some residential homes here and then it kind of curves
around down and over along the softball field so back here is an area of wetlands that is on the wetlands map this is the county property here and then the county trails right there obviously the creek and then the
Newton's Landing residential homes over here okay 401 Creek Road fact sheet 401 Creek Road is an 11.54 acre property currently zoned in our industrial zone uh I3 the property borders Leno Field of Dreams Park residential properties and
abuts the Rancokus Greenway Trail it was the only property not included in the earlier planning of the redevelopment of that area adjacent to the creek criterion Group a New York-based real estate company specializes in commercial outdoor truck storage purchased the
property in 2021 for $2 million currently there are two businesses in operation a machine shop and a power washing company the property was reszoned by Delanco Township in 2023 from I2 to I3 which does not permit warehousing that was actually uh an
initiative I took on when I joined the township committee in 2023 uh the warehouses had just been built uh right here along Coopertown Road and I didn't want to see any more warehouses built so I led that initiative spoke with township committee we all got on board
and uh we reszoned areas where there was industrial but there was no warehouses where warehouses could be built so if you had a warehouse you were grandfathered in if you didn't you were reszoned to I3 uh because of that reasonzoning we uh were sued by
Criterion Group and uh Pharaoh Point which right next to us is Stillex um uh because of that litigation we entered into a redevelopment settlement agreement uh in February of 2024 we settled that agreement uh in response to the litigation uh because of the
resoning in 2023 the truck and trailer facility carterion received their approvals from the Delanco Joint Land Use Board in October of 24 to build a truck and trailer repair facility and accessory outdoor trail trailer storage the plans include
clearing the lot of over 700 trees paving a large parking lot which there's nothing out there now as far as a parking lot to accommodate 124 parking spaces for trailers that can be double stacked there's 19 car spaces approved 10 vehicle service repair bays their
plans are to rehab the existing large building that's out there now to demolish the two existing small buildings in the back they're going to keep the small house in the front there uh and they're also going to have the uh installation of four drainage basins per
the New Jersey D storm regulations so that's basically what their plans consisted of and I'll show you in the next slide exactly what that looks like i also wanted to point out something that's kind of important that trucks are permitted to be dropped off by tow trucks during the hours of 7:00
p.m to 7 a.m so if a truck breaks down in the middle of the night they are permitted to be towed there after 11:00 p.m and before 7:00 a.m that's pretty fancy okay this is
their uh this is Criterion's plan for the truck facility so right here is the existing building it's I think I want to say it's 18,000 square ft this is the building in the front there that you see from the road when you drive by the DMV is over here the buildings in the back would be
demolished this uh red outline you see here is actually buffering zones where buffering meaning you have to have trees or bushes there that would be buffering on all four sides uh there's actually two drainage basins here this is kind of an older plan there's one here and then
there's one here drainage basin here and a drainage basin here as well this Pac-Man looking section here is actually um on the D website as deciduous wetlands so that is an area of
wetlands here not permitted to uh build on that or disturb that in any capacity here's the 120 I think eight parking spaces so this entire piece of property here would be asphalt with trucks this is an overhead drone shot
that I took over the weekend here here's the large buildings that would be the actual truck storage the truck repair part of it this building is staying these buildings back here you can't really see were gone so this whole area here would be the paved uh area where the truck storage would be the trailer
storage drainage basin drainage basin drainage basin drainage basin this is kind of a digital mockup of what the trailers would look like on that piece of property this is an over a drone shot and these were superimposed so you can kind of get an idea of what
it would look like which kind of looks like across the street over here okay so just to go over a timeline kind of regroup as how how we got to this point criterion received approvals again in from the joint land use board in October of 24 uh shortly thereafter
the township approached Criterion about purchasing the property in December of 2024 specifically December 16th we had an ordinance and a public hearing right here in this building ordinance 2024-26 adopting the ordinance for the purchase of the property miss
Fitzpatrick myself Mr templeton Mr bartlett all voted yes mr v Olette did not vote he voted no i'm sorry he did vote he voted no um February 3rd of this year resolution 2025-37 authorizing the execution of the
agreement of sale for the purchase of 401 Creek Road mr bartlett Mr mcfad and myself Mr olette voted yes miss Fitzpatrick was absent but would have voted yes as well is my understanding so that was unanimous february 10th of this year
Deleno is under agreement with Criterion they executed the contract for $3.5 million they counter signed as of February 10th we had 95 days to perform our inspections which call is called a due diligence period and our closing date is scheduled for June
10th two weeks ago April 7th we had an ordinance on public hearing for the bond 2025-4 authorizing the acquisition of land and improvements for 401 Creek Road in the amount of $3.6 million why is it 3.6 not 3.5 because we have to have
money in order to protect it for security uh when we purchase it if we need to put up fencing and also for our legal fees or any other engineering fees that would be involved probably the most important uh piece of this entire slide
here we got a uh written appraisal from a commercial appraisal company as of 10224 the appraised value of this property is $5.3 million 5.3 million we're purchasing it for
3.5 why purchasing 401 is beneficial for Deleno Township by the way this is our new seal if you haven't seen that yet it's pretty fancy the township will control the future of the property and its use the township will control the future
of the property and its use we'll control its destiny we figure out what's going to go there what's best for the community there will be no additional tractor trailers on our roads no truck and trailer repair and storage facility will be built we preserve the quality of life for the residential
areas in the immediate area of the property and throughout the township honestly it all boils down to a quality of life issue we maintain and preserve the Field of Dreams Park and Sports Complex our children and families deserve to have nice facilities that are not next to an in industrial truck
facility again I'll point out we're purchasing the property well below written appraisal value it's 5.3 mine is 3.8 you can do the math there's 700 trees that are slated to be removed by the current owner
there's plenty of wildlife that live back there we would preserve the wooded area located directly next to the county owned by Pennington Park and the Rancokus Greenway Trail which is visited by many residents and also residents from out of town all over the county come and visit that
trail there'll be no truck pollution and noise from a repair facility if we purchase this and also should point out there's no risk of contamination to the site and the sensitive areas along the Rancokas Creek from a truck repair facility that was brought up during a joint land use board meeting there was
concerns that tractor trailers leak oil leak chemicals how do we know that they're not going to be polluting the storm drains the the basins and right into the creek because that's where the storm drains ultimately go i just showed you the pros here's the
cons that I could come up with there's a minimal property tax increase to residents sorry go back uh we have some short-term property maintenance that we'd have to do you know as long as we kept the property and
loss of annual tax revenue of $23,317 also want to point out $23,000 is not what the township gets we get 33% of that the rest of that $23,000 goes to the county goes to the school and goes to open space so we get 33% of
23,000 a year in a property that's 11.5 acres and is assessed at approximately $650,000 additional benefits there's a potential land swap that the county is willing to do with us for the wetlands buffer and the adjacent county
lot that's important to point out again there's a little Pac-Man portion of wetlands right here the county trail is right here the county has expressed interest in uh taking on this wetlands portion so this will be carved out and
preserving it so that you know they have a nice buffer for their county park and their county trail this piece of property here it's about 2.5 acres right next to our event lawn this piece of property was not conveyed to us back when this park was done because there
was an eagle's nest here and federal law required there be a 500t buffer so this was the in the buffer zone so the county kept this piece of property although it should have made sense to give us this whole piece they had to keep it because of the eagle buffer well the eagles are no longer federally protected and that land is able to be conveyed to us if the
county wishes to do so uh we would love to be able to give them the unusable wetlands portion of the property for 2.4 acres that would be usable by the township okay this slide's actually taken from the New Jersey land resource uh website
D website showing the wetlands so here's the uh border of the property line of 401 and you'll see here this is what's called the deciduous wood wetlands it's located in the Thailands map here so
that is all what I was talking about as far as the wetlands you can find that online as well okay now I kind of want to get into um our budget what we just kind of talked about um and passed this evening i want to point out some um some changes this
year as to why you're going to have a tax increase and it's not because we're buying 401 Creek Road these are our normal day-to-day annual expenses that are going up revenues that are being lost so I'm just going to kind of go go over one by one here we have our salary
increase of 6.4% 4% or $200,000 because of our additional police officer and also our new full-time administrator breaking news Richard is retiring this year unfortunately that's the plan I think and we need to hire a full-time administrator to take over for him and
to to fulfill the needs of the town we need to have someone here full-time now there's a lot going on there's a there's a need for someone full-time so we have to budget for that uh of course health insurance benefits are increasing $80,000 for rate increases and then also
for the potential of the new additional employees our trash collection and disposal increased $35,000 we are going to enter into a new contract this year and also the rate of disposal is going up at the landfills we are investing in our parks and our
grounds and we've allocated portion of the public works salary uh to our operating expenses um and we also decided to pay our portion of what we used to use open space funds out of our out of our
operating instead so now um we have our open space funds that are not being utilized or being saved for the potential of us actually buying open space in the future so it's kind of like a savings account so that that increase is in our operating budget uh we have uh an increase
anticipated with our new library contract so public aids the library it's going to be paid to the school district of $21,000 year-over-year because of some utility uh sharing so we have asked for us to uh
incur some more expenses based on what they pay to operate that uh we also uh have our normal increase for uncollected taxes it's a state formula of $17,000 it covers the amount for those who don't pay the taxes so the township is the taxing entity it collect it's it's the
collection entity it's required to pay all the other uh taxing u entities of the county the school and the fire district regardless of you pay for that the township still has to pay your portion so they pay 100% so we have to have a reserve just for that we also
budget this year for our centennial we allocated $25,000 to the centennial celebration fund which is next year we needed some money this year so we could um give deposits to vendors and start that process so we allocated $25,000 what we didn't allocate and I thought was important to mention here is we have
a 20% increase in our utility costs here and as well as all of you um the uh Bureau of Public Utilities approved a 20% increase in uh rates so we did not budget for that so that's something that we uh have to allocate for and keep in
the back of our mind so on the revenue side we have virtually no increases in ratables this year why is that well we haven't had any new building there's been no new houses and no new warehouses that uh increase in the ratables was captured over the last few years so the
budget doesn't have the benefit of having that increased tax levy uh over the larger tax base to help moderate the tax increase now what's a tax levy you say the tax levy is how much we need to raise from the township uh in order to pay our bills so I believe our tax levy
is about 5.4 million something and change excuse me so we have to allocate that to all of you so that's what the tax levy is our New Jersey state aid was reduced back back down to numbers from
2022 so it was reduced by $42,000 our permit fees are down obviously if we're not building and we don't have any commercial you know residential building going on our permit fees are going to be down so that was reduced by $51,000 our other license and fees also you know attributed to the building down
by 10,000 and our delinquent taxes were lowered but to 24,000 or lower 24,000 now what's this crazy chart this chart is 20 years of tax levies the percentage changes year-over-year what
the tax rate is what the change was so back in 2005 we only needed to raise $1.9 million from the town to operate because of course our town was half the size back then so you can see year-over-year it increased as our population increased and our needs
increased and our needs for services increased so last year in 2024 we needed 5,150,000 okay this year we need 250,000 more 5.4 million so that's what it's uh looking like for this year that's what
our tax rate is last year was 1.147 this year it's proposed and obviously we just passed it tonight 1.202 or a 4.8% increase next slide this will actually show you what your
assessed value is so if your house is assessed that the average which in our town is 190,000 you pay the town last year you paid the township portion of your taxes was $2,179 this year your township shared portion is
$2,284 or $104.50 increase year-over-year so you're only paying the township $104 more than you did last year okay I just want to talk about some previous uh projects and initiatives that the township was invested in over
the course of uh probably over 30 years so the township has in my mind an obligation to protect the quality of life in town right so just want to point out a couple things 27 Hunter Burlington Avenue which is the distribut warehouse that's on the river right at the
railroad tracks it was slated to become a cargo ship container port facility uh the township spent money taxpayer dollars to fight the proposal to make sure our township did not become a port similar to what Gloucester City is today can you imagine having large cargo
liners unloading their cargo containers in our backyard that's crazy to me so the township fought to make sure that did not happen windsinger right over here where the solar field is it was a trash dump facility before they proposed
a recycling facility for demolition debris concrete asphalt masonry tires so if you go out to the Mount Holly bypass at the end there where 38 is that's what their facility is m Highway it is a concrete crushing facility they wanted
to put that right here in Deleno right over here where the solar field is um that was fought by the township the township did what they had to do to fight that and it is now a solar field 2005 as we all know Zerberg Mansion or maybe you don't know it was purchased by
the township for $2.1 million they purchased the property so it did not become a juvenile facility for troubled youth it was proposed that that parcel hold children that uh were incarcerated and were trying to be rehab
rehabilitated um township received word on Christmas Eve that year and they uh filed an emergency injunction to stop that from happening so they purchased it for 2.1 they uh went ahead and resold it and I believe it was for 1.8 for the mansion and then they resold the
carriage house for 300,000 and they were able to keep the land that is now Waterfront Park so it was kind of a win-win so today is home to 27 low-income senior apartments win-win right we also the
township also fought D to protect the West Avenue Dunes from continuing to be a dredged spoils dumping site that was a big project i know Kate was involved in that i think Fern was around for that um otherwise you were going to have trucks coming up and down that road dumping stuff from the river and it was just going to be a nightmare so they fought I
think Mr templeton was off in that as well to uh to stop that from happening 2020 township purchased 414 Rancokus Avenue which is the lot next to Gateway Park it's that empty lot there uh 60,000 for park expansion so you now have doubled the size of that park in 2020 as
well they purchased 200 Ash Street um that was that uh shoe factory canvas factory on the river I'm sorry on the creek uh we bought that for 200,000 and demoed it with engineering costs for another 210,000 uh the township has acquired
lots in many different ways for Hawk Island to prevent that from being developed a lot of that was privately owned so it had the potential for being developed so the township went ahead and purchased those properties so it could be uh preserved and now is open for public access and there's a beautiful
area back there if you haven't checked it out please do there's some great new signage back there too for the trails and then uh last year we have the historic waterfront park seaw wall which aka Zerberg mansion uh installation of that seaw wall has been completed and now we're in the second phase of the
park the project's been in the works for about 18 plus years uh several bonds were approved totaling about $1.2 million and that doesn't include all the legal fees design and engineering and permitting costs over the years so again you can see that the township has
invested taxpayer income for many many years to protect the quality of life it may not you know affect you personally might not be in your neighborhood but we are a community and we have to invest in our community to keep it nice and to keep people from wanting to to move here people want to come to a nice community
that has nice assets and has good infrastructure so what's the plan right that's the question what are we going to do if we purchase this property so I'm going to read this and this is what I can say about it the township is permitted to purchase property particularly in the rehabilitation and
redevelopment context to ensure that property is put to an appropriate use right now 401 is in the rehabilitation zone purchasing this property does not mean we have to hold on to it forever or even a year the township can resone the property to a more appropriate use
likely some form of residential use with no impact to the schools we do not intend to keep it in an industrial zone this is no different than what happened with Zerberg Mansion in 20 2005 the township prevented a negative use and eventually returned it all but the
waterfront to the market the township anticipates it will return most of this property to the market as well and likely retain the wetlands portion to allow for the county land swap as I mentioned and finally there's no intent to preserve or otherwise permanently restrict this property as open space
once you designated as open space you are married to that it can never be changed and that concludes my presentation thank you for listening and taking the time to gain a better understanding as to why the township thinks purchasing 401 Creek Road is a
benefit to our residents [Applause] uh thank you Carolyn for um that presentation um I found it to be very thorough and uh great explanation
does anyone have anything uh on the committee that they would like to talk about or bring up or comment on regarding that presentation and the purchase of 401 i think you covered everything
[Music] um that would benefit the town the entire town um and to limit any additional track uh
truck traffic and um even though the other side of that road has uh some different truck facilities this particular property is lodged between uh residential housing and our um fields uh
for the for our youth so it's not like it's really the same thing totally different lodging it in there so um that's how I feel i I think um it would benefit the town it's not like we're going to hold on to this purchase
uh to keep just to keep it i mean it's going to be give us a good return on our money and just like we did with the Zurbrook mansion which when we sold that for redevelopment we got a good tax benefit
from the town houses around it and it really didn't hurt the look of the Zurbrook mansion it's still a jewel in town and uh as Caroline stated there's 27 senior uh low moderate um affordable
senior units there that give us credits towards our affordable housing so that is a real benefit to not only the town but to senior residents who h are low and uh moderate income so um I just
think that this is a winwin for Delano to be able to decide the use of this property and it is a large sum of money and
um but it will come back as a return for us and it's not like we're going to be putting it all out at once hopefully the return will come back within a short period of time so I think that we have made other decisions in
town to preserve some lands to purchase some lands for the benefit of the residents and I think this is one of those um times when we're doing this so um I agree with it um I thank Carolyn
for the presentation because if you have any further questions um I'm sure she'll open it up for that but that's that's my take on the whole thing i also just want to point out from a financial aspect I think maybe the misconception is is that we're buying this for 3.5 million and
we're paying 3.5 million this year and you're being taxed on 3.5 million no when you have a bond you're only required to put down a a down payment of 5% so that's what's in our budget right now um and we only have to pay uh in the interest portion of the loan for three years before we're required to pay
principal and this is also uh a useful life of 40 years so it could be taken out and financed over 40 years if we wanted to so it is not a huge hit to the taxpayers uh because of this purchase it is uh amateurized 40 years and if we
wanted to do that we could again that's like I mentioned not our plan this is a very short-term investment um and uh I I think it makes sense you know if we were to you know it's a appraised at 5.3 million if we were to you know turn
around and sell it for 5 million what is uh what does that look like as far as the profit where does the profit go well the profit gets turned back to the township and put in our surplus and in my mind you would take a little bit of that surplus every year to prevent any more tax increases that's what we do
every year we take uh regardless of 401 we take surplus every year and put it towards our budget so that we don't have to increase taxes as much so that would only uh help our case that if we did turn around and sell it we put the the money back in our surplus there wouldn't be you know significant tax increases
because that would help offset uh future costs so I just want to point that out too matt did you have something you wanted to say yeah we we're looking to purchase this for 1.8 if I'm doing my math correctly 1.8 8 million below what it's appraised that number alone is a reason to do this the other
thing I was looking at over the last week or so looking at the where this is located on the creek and looking from Delano and on the stretch the main stretch of the creek from Delano through all the creek towns to once it narrows
down into Mount Holly you don't have any industrial facility like this on either side of the creek at all and there's a reason because it's not it's not meant to have an industrial facility of this type on the creek the only thing somewhat close to this is I think it's a
car repair place somewhere in Mount Holly on the uh south branch of the creek of barely a fraction of the size and that's it there just is no industrial on the creek you could fact check me if you want take a look on Google Maps drive it there's nothing out
there phil do you have anything uh thank you for the presentation uh as you know I came in at the latter part because this had taken started before I had come on to the committee uh after looking at
everything reviewing it seeing the cost that it's going to cost the residents I feel it's sort of a no-brainer i hate to use that term um but I think it's going to benefit the
whole township at large that's why I jumped on i I I honestly think it's a win-win so just to summarize like just the key points as in my brain why we're buying this we're buying it to reszone it to something more appropriate we're buying it under market
value significantly it's going to preserve the quality of life for our whole town we don't have a truck repair facility i don't know just seems like a win-win to me and this isn't a truck repair facility like you know Safety Auto no this is a fleet truck repair
facility where tractor trailers are going to be coming in 24/7 it's going to look like an Amazon warehouse of all tractor trailers out there just coming in to get fixed and and the argument that oh they're only going to come down Creek Road is invalid because they come from all three ways in
town we see them every day they come down Burlington Avenue or they they come down in Coopertown they're not just going to come in from Creek Road that would make too much sense but that's just not the way it works anybody else have anything else they want to say it was it was a great very nice
presentation uh well done the figures that you're sharing now uh wish I they would have come out sooner uh the
5.4 million on the appraisal 5.3 or 5.3 uh which was shared in executive but either through my own fault of not
uh seeing the appraisal itself uh you know the information uh does make a difference uh the having the voters of this town vote
to approve the 3.5 uh million dollar bond uh is important the uh when we went through our hearings and folks came in and you know said why doesn't go to referendum uh to spend that kind of
money and uh the residents of this town should have a voice and be able to vote for that kind of money and that kind of expens expenditure and uh if the voters
uh decide that yes this is a good thing to do then they have the opportunity uh through the voting process to say yes this is where we want our tax dollars to go uh if they say no then it would be no but again the presentation that you gave
this evening was uh very informative thank you um I just want to point out that I don't remember in any public comment session ever anyone ever bringing up the fact that it should be voted on in referendum am I anybody else remember that no no and on
that we are not a direct representative government we are represented our the public at large does not vote on every single thing that's why they elect us as a township
committee if we're going to put everything out where's the cut off with Okay I I understand it's 3.5 there's a lot of expensive things on our budget should we put on our on um a referendum or the ballot in November uh the chief
16th officer should should we let's what else do we have uh our EMS that's not mandatory in New Jersey emergency medical services ambulance service it's not a essential service according to the state of New Jersey should we stop paying for that now and put that on our
uh referendum or uh November ballot or whatever ballot our library that's a big portion of the budget that's not used by the entire town that's 119 $112,000 we have in our budget that's a big number that's
one of the biggest numbers on our budget should we put that on our ballot you elect us as the township committee to make these decisions if you don't like our decisions when we're up for election you vote us out that's what we're here for
we're here to make the decisions so you are not and we make the decisions after having public hearings on these things and we've had public hearings on these things and we as the committee voted on these things and including Mr let who voted yes to enter into the contract on
this thing on this purchase who's now saying this should go out to a public vote so we're speaking out of both sides of our our mouth here respectfully Fern where you're voting yes on the contract but then you're saying the public should vote on it that's my opinion right we are not a
school board set like the the school board is set up to where they if they want to do a large project they have they're forced to go out to referendum they are not allowed to have the same power that we have they're totally different things so for people to say like "Oh well we should just vote on it like we did the school." Not not the
same thing this is unheard of for for something to go to referendum like this in this type of situation for a township and let let me ask this question just by show of hands just unofficial poll if we were going to spend $6 million on a if
the town was gonna if there were taxpayer dollars we're going to spend $6 million to purchase a property in Mount Laurel would you want to vote on it just raise your hands if you think you'd want to vote on that as a as a taxpayer in Delano should we spend $6 million yeah
anyone you talk and I I imagine the majority of the how many people went to the Burlington County meeting and objected to a $6 million purchase that this county did with your taxpayer money to purchase a property in Mount Laurel for
the expansion of athletic fields at RCBC eight uh eight years ago that is still a piece of grass that they haven't done a thing on did anybody here go and object to that did did anybody No anyone in this room when the county spent
$415,000 plus demolition costs on a property in Peton on Route 530 for a temporary construction layown area in 2016 which is now just a piece of grass spent $415,000 plus a couple hundred,000
demolition did anyone in this room object to that because it doesn't affect you but your taxpayer dollars your county tax paid for it your county taxes also paid in 2012 1.675 million for a public works garage on Rancokus Road by
the bypass for a little over two acres and I don't imagine anyone in this room went to the county commissioners meeting or the freeholders meeting at that time and objected to that because it was for the good of the entire county
just like this purchase is for the good of the entire township not just a little section while we're on the topic of that uh on our Delano Township website we have a like a history board
timeline and on January 24th 2007 the Burlington County Freeholders voted to purchase three additional acres of open space on the Rancokus Creek adjacent to Newton's Landing in near Pennington Park they paid $745,000 for three acres which became
part of the Rancokus Greenway Trail so quick math that's $248,000 an acre in 2007 18 years later we're buying or slated to buy 11.5 acres for $34,000 an acre so only about $50,000
more an acre 20 years later is what we're paying for property in the same area anybody else i'll open this meeting to the public for comments and questions again we will be limiting comments to five minutes per
person uh one appearance only per person as well you cannot yield your time to anyone else please adhere to the rules that Mrs lure read earlier about our public comment session uh when you come up to the podium please state your name
and address and uh I will open this now i should point out this is session one there'll be a session two at the end of the meeting as well good evening Scott scott Bu 18 Pennington Court first of all I want to thank for the microphones
uh I remember on the land use first land use board meeting that I went to that involved this project nobody could hear anything nobody could hear what the group from New York wanted to say uh the board was really not interested in what the public wanted to say so thank you
for getting this straightened out carolyn great information and what's the plan really lays it out uh you took a lot of my uh you took a lot of my uh notes away that's for sure uh to the chief uh to
the ring uh it sounds like we all I we have a ring on our front door and we get all the messages um I think there should be consideration of adding to the police force because it goes off into the Willingboro and and very broad area that
we don't really care about but we get it on our ring and we need we need good police protection and we have it but probably anticipate more um I did a lot of research over over the past week when I found out this was going to happen and
something city feet on the on the uh on the internet now it includes both locations the one across the street and 401 but 401 is much larger and they say up to 773 now I'll say that 401 is at least
twice the size so I would say over four probably over 500 trucks just the fact that they're going to be d potentially double stacked uh and you've got the playing fields and the kids there uh that that's just a crazy thought that that can even come about the other thing
is they put on here reach US130 within a threeinut drive and enjoy easy access to I295 which we deal with when you're going through um and I don't know the road but but through Willingboro and
Creek Road creek Road is is a zoo and the whole intersection and of course the county won't spend any money on on the uh the jug handle i also found out going back to two uh 2015 uh there was an article it was two
years after the fire and uh there was an election going on and and Fern and Mike were up against uh John Brown and and Bob Dovy I guess don't know either one of them um but some of the comments
uh was you know the Shade Tree Commission came up and how's the Shade Tree Commission stand on cutting all the lumber down over here in 401 have they stood up and said anything for us um not particularly on the Shade Tree's behalf
that I know of okay i was just wondering um but but um it mentions in here Democrat Olette said he wants to maintain local services without being overly burdensome on some taxpayers yes obviously we want to keep
the taxes in check and continue to invest in public works and the police department he said money's tight but we still need to maintain our town quote wlette also said he would continue to pursue ongoing Field of Dreams project which includes sports fields and related
facilities which has been done um and savoring that I guess too there was the uh saving on West Avenue the property that it didn't get dredged which I guess is where that container was ship was going to be or whatever no that was the West a dunes you're talking about
um so it was kind of uh I guess Mike and and and Fern uh also stressed the dunes as as as a triumph not to be squandered i agree i wasn't even aware of the property up there um and we do need to
get our voices heard more up in Trenton so I I mean the history shows support for this kind of purchase I and and backing and and as you were saying too and I'm not even going to go to the rest of my notes but but I guess there is one question
um if this has to come up to a vote if it gets to that point what's the cost to the town uh rough estimates between 70 to $90,000 for a special election and that comes out of the yearly budget or however
factored in i mean that doesn't Well it wasn't factored in this year's budget okay okay and and I guess just my final point is I agree you are a board the same way as the land use board voted to
as far as I'm concerned lowered the standards of the property and allowed it to become what it what it what criterion wants it to be it is your position to protect the people of this town for what
is best for this town and hopefully you will do that well from what I'm hearing you will most of you will do that thank you thank you anyone else feel free to come up i think this gentleman's coming up
tim you can go after Mike O'Donnell 17 Emory Way um as a real estate agent and a real estate investor myself uh first off to the chief uh clients of
mine buyers look into communities one of their questions is how safe is the community what's the police force like i came from Cinnamonson terrific police force and one of our decisions coming to Lano was to make sure that we were going
to be protected like we were in Cinnamon but thank you thank you uh as a real estate person if we let this go it's an opportunity the seller has the right to
put it back on the market and go with somebody else if he wants to do that they have control of where it's going to go so as an investor in real estate I see an opportunity I grab it and here we
have an opportunity to make some money on a property why would we not take that chance that's it thank you thank you i think Mr kishler's up next Carl
tim Kishler 12 Harris Court i'm sorry hi Tim how are you good thanks my partner in here are and I are here once again tonight to join with
many of our Delano neighbors in support of the proposed initiative for the township to purchase the lot at 401 Creek Road acquiring this property would ensure that that its future use be determined by those who are entrusted to act on behalf of the entire Delanco
community failing to do so would allow this to be left up to an outofstate business enterprise with resultant commit that is likely to run counter to the best interests of those of us who enjoy living here as such the property tax dollars used by the township for
this purpose would be money well spent thank you thank you thank you Mr tarashi thank you i appreciate the comments from all of the board members and the slideshow given by our
mayor uh but I would like to uh respond briefly to the first speaker who wondered why this uh project was allowed carl could you just state your name and address for the record i'm sorry that's okay thank
you carl Terraski 55 Pennington Court i am a member of the joint land use board and when that application came before our board we are were restricted to the
zoning at that time which we do not place the zoning in any place it's the board of the township that places the zoning once that zoning was designated at that
time we had to work with the applicant within the boundaries of that zone and therefore
that is why they were allowed to do what they were allowed to do now that the zoning has changed it's entirely different and I certainly agree with the board's decision to uh further uh
proceed in buying this property and in doing so I was just wondering if there are any grants that were available to help us buy this space we did not come across any grants uh we had uh individuals reach out to the
county to see if they would be willing to uh go in on the purchase as well and they were not in any position to purchase any land so it was explored uh we didn't find any um obviously open space uh has their low interest loans and can offer grants but then we would be restricted to open space uh forever
so that's not something we would entertain thank you thank you and Carl on that point about um the land use board being restricted because you had that application the land use board never proactively did anything to change the zoning in their master plan re make
a recommendation to remove warehouses so the township committee had to do it and that's why the township was sued and we had to settle and have that plan go to the joint land use board in all fairness it's not the township the land use board should be making should be proactive in
making recommendations for zoning in the town that's what we pay our professionals for on the land use board the town the town planner or the land use board planner certainly that's that's an opinion that uh should be shared with the board and uh I do not
speak for the board itself i only speak for my understood yes thank you thank you Mr tashi anyone else yes please come up michelin Wine just state your name and address joey
Angelin Wine 316 Oakford Avenue could you just pull the microphone down thank you thank you um first I thank all of you for your time and dedication to this town um I attended every one of your budget meetings and I can't say enough
of all I learned from the commitment and dedication from all of you and your staff um it is amazing uh the process and the dialogue and conversation that you all had to prepare for this and the one
thing that came very clear to me was the the term strategic planning um when the when the information was given on the deficits from uh buildings and permits and how that has been used those funds were used to offset continuing increases
uh was eyeopening um I looked at this application i attended I think three of the four land use meetings um trying to educate myself better on the the way township government is uh run and I don't hear
much about strategic planning so I looked at this purchase as that um Mr schwab has been an incredible uh gift to me in better understanding budgets and I even tried to bribe him um to volunteer
to come help with the school district but he won't doesn't like the cookies I'm making um knowing the 23,000 plus dollars and knowing it's a 33 34% going to the municipality and hearing the discussions
during the budget meetings and thinking about the federal uh push for density housing the state push for density housing thinking about the impacts on our school district and then in turn listening to all of you talk about age
restriction I took a breath right because most of the public comments are negative towards our school system and and how we conduct business and I felt this peace come about me um there would
be no impact so probably hoping no nastiness the continued nastiness so I look at this as strategic planning it's way more than the 23,100 and some dollars with that 33% with the control of it
um the preservation on that property um is very emotional to me um it was disheartening it was very emotional uh with the last three land use meetings on the conversation of 401
and actually thinking about the animals the wildlife uh I don't trust nothing going into the waterway so I look at this as a positive and I look at it as strategic planning moving forward because we don't have the properties i
think on the budget there was a notation of 40 available lots but that doesn't mean for residential it could mean that I own my side property it to that could be developed but not necessarily allowed to develop so I didn't hear that word
for strategic planning and I think for me that's what I got out of attending those meetings um the one question I have and I apologize actually to you mayor if I I is is this parcel now in a rehab zone or that's what you're moving
towards because you had mentioned about rehab zone in your presentation so it is in a re rehabilitation zone that was uh part of the settlement agreement oh okay so it is in an area designated uh in need of rehabilitation
okay thank you very much to all thank you thanks Joan and I do like that word strategic planning um it is it's a good good way to put it um there's not a lot of land left in Delanco to be developed and I
don't foresee I don't have a crystal ball but I don't foresee 11 and a half acre opportunity ever coming before this township again um it is an investment is an investment in our township's future um whether it affects you directly or not I don't think it's an appropriate place for a truck facility it's better
suited for residential it should have been done a long time ago uh it's not just that side of Creek Road is not something that should be industrial you have the park you have the creek you have residential i'm being a dead horse at this point but it's just uh it's better suited for residential and if you
do build residential if the township does eventually decide to reszone it and sell it to a developer the implications for revenue would be in the three digits way over $100,000 in tax revenue would be coming to this town i couldn't even tell you how much it is because it's
something that the assessor would have to uh you know go into details but I did have a conversation with him today funny enough um he told me a a similar town uh in South Jersey um he just did an
assessment for 120 apartments the uh assessed value is $15 million right now the land that we have is assessed at $650,000 so um you when you do a commercial assessment you factor in rents you factor in expenses and and a
whole bunch of other things and that's how you come up with the assessed value so ultimately the township is making investment in the town for better zoning for better ratable for something more appropriate that would bring in way more tax revenue i just I don't understand
the the push back that that I've been hearing that this is just a crazy purchase it's it's really not i'm a business person i own my own business my husband and I have owned our own business for close to 30 years i'm also a real estate agent i also have a finance background many of the other you
know committee members have backgrounds in businesses matt owns his own business kate has worked in law for 40 years uh you know we we do have a good sense of what's going on we're not just Joe Simmo so you know when we've presented this plan to our professionals and when I told the tax assessor what was going on
he goes "Oh my god it's a win-winwin it's it's such a better investment for this for this town the ratable would be incredible and we don't have any low-income housing uh you know units to to pursue either so it would be a full a
fully taxable uh situation there so anybody else have any public comment yes Mr burke you only live across the street from us yeah we kind of know who you are thank you Madame Mayor and Mr immediate past
mayor uh Todd Burke 1506 Second Street and I say that again for everyone because I want you to know that I'm passing around a petition opposing this debt incurrence and I'll tell you why
first of all all I've heard is pipe dream real estate speculation with our tax dollars and Mr bartlett I I find your comparisons to what happened in Burlington County to be especially
specious because I can assure you that had I known about that I would have appeared at the appropriate committees to protest that as well and I'll tell you why because that's the problem this was not publicized well enough it was a
done deal before any of this was brought to the attention of the public and transparency is the key here all of the benefits that I've seen even laid out in this nice presentation are highly speculative what isn't speculative is
the bump in tax rates that we're all going to suffer and continue to suffer all of the benefits that you've listed are a pipe dream they're hopes you're speculating with taxpayer money this nice present presentation and it was
great should have been done and announced to the public before any agreement of sale was considered and that's the real problem here is that people other than Newton's Landing are going to be affected by this in terms of
tax bills and gain no benefit from it i don't see any impact that this truck repair facility is going to have on Creek Road that hasn't already been incurred by uh all of all of the people and all of the drivers on Creek Road
already because of what's been done the the the failure to preserve Creek Road and and Bridgeboro Road for years and years and years so I think that this property has been underassessed i think that uh that the land use board has been
uh wrong in in what they I don't know how they work and I admit that i don't know much about any of how this works but to assess a four mill a $3.6 6 million property as if it was and I don't care if it's commercial or residential at 2/3 of a million dollars
and again I repeat somebody fell down on that job what you're doing is you're lowering the tax base and you're increasing you're increasing the tax rates that we're all going to suffer from and that's why it is that I would like the public before this is done and
this is an extraordinary event it's a one-ofa-kind once-ina-lifetime extraordinary event it should have been brought to the public it should have had a presentation we should have had this kind of back and forth before this sort of done deal was jammed down our throats
at a December 16th meeting which according to my calculations is days before Christmas when no one was paying attention to what was going on anyway and that's the problem here so again I I think that the the the benefits are few
and speculative to say the least and I'd say that the the detriment is going to I don't view it as win-win at all i view it as lose lose quite frankly we're losing tax base and we're losing uh any any kind of hold on our taxes which are
going to which are going to go up anyway as a result of this particular project and that's why I've been opposing it from the beginning and that's why I'm still standing with my petition to bring a public referendum uh that hopefully will result in a public referendum to
discuss the nature of this purchase and we can really talk about concrete benefits not real estate speculation everyone that comes up is involved with real estate and thinks it's a great deal except no we're not out bidding someone
and paying 36.6 6 million for a property that someone else is going to buy for 5.3 that's a guess there isn't a bidding war going on over here we're paying almost double for a property your numbers are great but we're paying almost double for a property uh that was
sold at less than four years ago so in my mind it's not a bargain in my mind it's getting ripped off and that's what I think is happening here the $5.3 million appraisal is a written appraisal not speculation where is that where is that madam you can open that you can
open that it's public record it was a written appraisal see every time I'm told to Oprah that okay I find this stuff out a week or Well it just really is a week because Miss Laura is terrific about this stuff i find I find out about
this stuff be after things have been passed all right so there's a $5.3 million PR who's offering to to buy the property for that much nobody nobody other than It's not for sale nobody is offering to buy the property for 3.6 it
wasn't for sale it wasn't for sale the property was never on the market that's exactly what an appraisal is Mr burke then fine then don't buy it and don't buy it for $1.8 million under appraised value yeah don't buy it okay don't buy
it with my dollars if you want to buy it you raise the money and you buy it okay thank you for your comments with my tax dollars okay appreciate your comments and I think it's a bit disingenuous that you said December 16th nobody knew about anything were you here were you in this room that day yeah I was do you remember
that every single seat more than tonight was filled it was standing room only right so it's disingenuous Mr burke i acknowledge that so So what you just said was disingenuous that was after the agreement was struck that was the public hearing it was a public hearing no
agreement was February your facts are messed up Mr burke respectfully they're all available on the website you could look at the minutes you could look at the videos february if you quote to me looking at YouTube one more time all right i literally said for the first time so
insulting Matt it's insulting well perhaps it would help j your memory sir that's it's the meeting i think it's a great and you're telling me I say that to you one more time i have not said that to you that was the first time I said that to you right now anyone
else 1652nd Street as you can see common sense is not so common with everyone this was a real estate transaction i'm sure everybody has bought a house or rented a house at some point in time know you're given a certain amount of time so this was in
December 16th according to Mr burke which would been 11 months and a couple days away from another election so if it went to referendum we would have never made it we would have lost the deal as the town mr burke also said it was under assess underassessed last I checked 5.3 is over assessed and what we're purching
it for for 3.5 but everybody needs to be corrected every now and then well assessed value and appraised value are different things being on recreation last year at our Easter egg hunt myself yourself Mr
bartlett Mr mcfaden excuse me Kate Mr patrick are running through the woods after a child decided to just run through the woods now if this truck repair facility was there he'd be running on the truck repair facilities lot god forbid something happened to
that kid now I know we all sustained injuries trying to find that child which leads me to how many police were there ton of cops came brought in the dogs to find this kid we found him in in one of the ponds or creeks that were there on the
property so we don't need any more cops because we would have just found him without you makes no sense people keep on focusing on Newton's Landing this is nothing about Newton's Landing this is about the entire town the whole entire town gains things from this because the money that
we can make when it's sold well at ways what we're going to buy it for we get $23,000 in tax revenue from there which is about $7,700 our cut somebody that's going to come in and possibly build age restricted housing there is not going to affect our school
district which is maxed out from bad decisions from people on the school board most contractors that come in will build a house with 64 houses on it say on average $5,000 in taxes so $320,000 so just rounding up it's $100,000 the
township makes which is well over $7,000 this is literally a no-brainer i don't understand why people don't understand this now if this deal doesn't go through will the township be sued it could be okay so if it's sued who acrews
that money will go in our taxes possibly we're sued for hundreds of thousands of dollars or millions of dollars our taxes are going to go up without even gaining anything that's great perfect funny thing is I'm not going to call people out by name but I know for a
fact there's three attorneys in this room you would think they're smart apparently they're not they have the ability to do the research that all of you have done and I want to thank Mr mcfaden Mr marlette Mayor Seuss Miss Fpatrick I knew for a fact how much time
you put in this i'm married to you so it's affected our lives immensely i also want to thank Fern he's got a lot of time in this too passing around a petition without doing his research when he says "You have to tell him what the thing is worth." He could
have personally taken his resources instead of going around the town asking for votes signatures whatever it may be and do a little more research and found out about the property instead of basically wasting people's time you voted for this deal to go through now you're a senator so you're
putting the township at risk by getting your people to sign but being sued you're just going to take money out of my pocket not yours so thank you your five minutes is up yeah I'm sure it is thank you everyone
anybody else hi Bill here you go bill Malvich 304 Center Avenue hi hi i'm also a member of the Shade Tree Commission as well as a planning board joint land use board i just want to correct the record that I brought up
several times the value of the trees on that property there's some magnificent old growth trees on that property that alone makes it worth it to me to purchase the property i would recommend the town should strongly consider preserving a large
portion of the property as open space prevent it from being considered for affordable housing and the last thing I want to know is as part of the due diligence the environmental assessment that determine whether there was any environmental
liabilities on the property i don't understand what was left were there any environmental liabilities oh we're still in that process they're still evaluating the testing we're still in that 95day period they're still doing their testing okay
we haven't gotten any environmental uh reports back yet i voted against this the original proposal in the land use board because they had not completed the due diligence so I think the township needs to see that before they close on the deal so they did do a phase one and we
do have a copy of that so we're we're basing our uh inspections um based upon what their phase one did and there's some ongoing stuff but they did do a phase one is that available for review uh is that public record anyone no no it's not public record right now asked
and the attorney said at this time it is not um public record as part of the um transaction legal transaction it's not available for public record yet but we have a copy of it the engineer has a copy of it as well so they're doing soil
and groundwater sampling i'm not sure exactly what's involved in that i know they're going back and forth about what exactly needs to be done there okay our engineer is working on it Bill to actually do a full engineers report for
environmental um we I think their report had some flaws so we're not just taking our We're doing a very thorough because we're certainly not going to purchase something that has
some environmental issues without having taken care of have to protect your investment yeah definitely okay and then we have you on the agenda to do your grant presentation at the end oh okay if you could stick around for that thank
you thank you anyone else just a name and address please rob Dancer one Z6 Hickory Street uh good evening i realize that we're already at the end stages and there's really no turning back at this point i watched the past meetings and thank you Matt for the
time stamps uh it was clear that many residents had the same concerns I do but it was clear the decision was already made and public input was never going to sway it even if I had spoken up earlier I doubt it would have been would have mattered tonight is simply just my opportunity to go on the record in opposition from what I've seen this does
not appear to be a widely supported idea outside of the committee and the Newton's landed residents i understand there's no legal requirement for a public vote and at the time as it's a time-sensitive nature of a real estate deal but this is a one-time large expenditure um I've yet to see the true
urgency from the town as a whole that justifies this i've heard vague ideas for the property but nothing concrete if this is about storage or meeting space that was mentioned previously surely there are cheaper options than this while I appreciate the appraised value is 5.4
million and thank you for letting us know that tonight um and if the plan is to reszone it and flip it what happens if the market turns um I don't know if anybody's paying attention but things are looking a little bit more risky to go ahead with uh rush into real estate
purchases at this time um there's been no talk of any kind of contingency plan and a risk when it comes to that so that's a little bit concerning as well promoting this as a speculative investment was not what I was expecting to hear tonight at a bare minimum taxpayers deserve a specific
plan before you take our money if I recall correctly it was known what the properties on a Ash Street and Rancokas had plans for parks prior to acquisition i couldn't justify this kind of decision in my own household taking on debt equal to a third of our annual budget without a clear plan or accounting for lost tax
revenue in a time when families are cutting back it's irresponsible to increase tax obligations without intense scrutiny this is about hiring more police officers or fixing public infrastructure there's no clear benefit to the entire town frankly I'm not even sure if all Newton's landing truly
benefit benefits from this one thing I noted during the presentation was that the plans for the property appeared even less worrisome than I was envisioning um I keep hearing concerns about traffic in the environment but I've seen no evidence a repair facility would cause a significant increase in traffic if you truly believe there are still
environmental risks after the developers spend $2 million to address them that raises serious questions about how effective our existing regulations and other checks that we have in place are and what is your plan to to fix that i'm not totally against this idea i would
prefer that it went to a public to a vote for the entire town i also believe that we are purchasing this purchasing this without a specific plan presented to the public lastly I'll say this when I purchased our home one of the major factors that was was the open area next to our house it gives the open feel to
the neighborhood i spoke to our neighbor that owns it and is assuring to know that she has she does not want to see it developed however if something were to happen in the future I'm grateful to know that the township will take on debt to block any development in that lot and that will greatly benefit the quality of
life of Dancer household and our neighbors thank you rob one thing you said um that the uh owner of the lot spent $2 million to address environmental issues already in the December 16th meeting uh Fern said that he had spoken with the with the plan
about the plan correct there's a plan for $2 million Oh to do the storm water management that has nothing to do with environmental bases okay that's how much it would cost to do when they do the truck repair facility the storm water portion would be the environmental concerns that we're worried about what
is not already in existing regulations or codes or what are we just it's just part of a standard due diligence period when you visit no no no what I'm saying is the the environmental concerns that we being presented with why this is such an urgent matter oh are these not
already addressed in existing regulations codes anything well they're storm water basins okay but we're addressing storm water issues who's test who's testing the basins to make sure they're not being contaminated well right so this is So this is something that we should work with the state to
get laws on the books for or laws we already have on the books couldn't tell you okay so we seem to be saying there's a problem there's a problem but what about I'm sure there's laws but who's going to enforce them are they going to be out there every week well that that should go with every property in town
right sure so I I don't understand why this specific one is we're we're saying that's one that's one of the problems is one of the issues is is how close it is to wetlands in the creek again if if we don't have laws on the books then what are we doing about that we have laws on the books about everything that doesn't
mean that they're followed or effective and Ash Street and Rancokus Avenue did not have any kind of park plans when they were purchased they were purchased for standard min as I said that that's why I understood it that's why I remembered it because I could have sworn before we purchased those properties they were talking about in fact we just introduced the Ash Street uh park plan
last year and I'm still against the Ash Street purchase we spent $200,000 on that property plus another 200 change on demo and by the time there's a park there hopefully I'll be retired and in Florida yeah another $400,000 on remediation for historic fill because we
don't know what it is so it has to be remediated per state law yeah I I don't agree with any of these purchaser properties i didn't even agree with the I wasn't here at the time but the one on um yes we did get the waterfront park out of it but we also got a very overly developed block around that mansion um if I was here I
definitely would have opposed that as well so and I definitely agree that is a loaded block with you got the town houses on both sides of the mansion at the same time that mansion would never would have sold there's a house three four blocks to the east it's a full
block that's been on the market for I don't know over a year now i think they started at 1.4 that's for the market to decide though Matt correct the town 100% yeah okay thank you anyone else hi good evening uh Mike McNeel 726
Pennsylvania Avenue good evening um so first um I just want to say that you know this board or this committee rather um is very good at exercising foresight and sort of planning ahead um you know the steps
that you've taken with respect to affordable housing it's fantastic great work and it seems like this project and this proposal is another step in that direction joanne mentioned strategic planning and I I think that that's a
great descriptor for what's happening here i think this is a good plan overall um I understand that there's reasons why you know all of the public's questions can't be answered at this time um I just hope that eventually
um those questions will be answered um and I hope that all of these you know these pipe dreams as they've been described um bear fruit you know I uh I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I
I I I I think each and every one of you are excellent public servants and I think that this community is very lucky that we have you um you've done a great job for the community this plan um is just further evidence of
that so I just wanted to thank you that said I find it a little troubling the I don't know if I want to say arrogance or hubris but just almost this
entitlement that I'm sort of feeling to the public's acceptance of this plan right you're not entitled to the public's acceptance right you have to earn it right and this presentation I think is a good step in that direction and as long as we keep open these lines of
communication and this dialogue with the public I think things will go well so again thank you please keep up the good work and uh good luck thank you and and part of our our transparency was making sure that our meetings are broadcast
live and then posted to our YouTube site so people can go back and listen to them because we have nothing to hide i feel like we're an open book you can reach any of us at any time we're happy to answer questions and um you know we're trying to do what's best for the town
and um there's no backdoor dealings here we're trying to do what's best for the town none of us personally benefit from any of this so um yes anyone else and and you know to that to Mike's point there you know we do this all because we
love the town we're not making money on this i personally personally I mean just being on this township committee we make well below minimum wage if you factor in all the hours we do and the little amount of money I could maybe buy
a couple dozen eggs with and there there are former township committee people in this audience who I'm sure could could uh concur that Mr jenkins Miss Holland Mr templeton mike didn't get paid okay well he made his salary back
i think it's like less than $3 an hour if you put down the amount of hours we do and I'm not complaining about that that's what we signed up for that's what we ran for office for but we do it because we love this town and we try to do the right thing by this town we pay taxes just like all of you we don't have any time on office in lie of taxes we
pay a ton of money in taxes so anything that affects the residents of this town it also affects us thank you good points anyone else mr lore or was that just a bathroom break are you coming up okay
uh Steven Lur 2800 Colgate Avenue i just want to say that as a member of the recreation commission I fully endorse this plan uh that the township committee has and I also want to say that I I've been attending meetings for many months going all the way back to
2024 this has been talked about at several meetings and there's a lot of familiar faces here and I was at the public hearing it was standing room only and this was discussed um many times i just want to say that you know some say well this is a once in a-lifetime
purchase i I don't know if I agree with that but I would agree with that this is a once in a generation opportunity we probably won't have this opportunity again for this property you know this is this is a property that now is next to parks it's next to
residents it's next to the creek and I don't think we'll have this opportunity again for this property you know look I'm I'm I'm 33 i already have my plot purchased at Memorial Cemetery next i plan on living here and planning on dying here i don't want to drive down
that road 20 30 years from now looking at the tractor and trailers and the asphalt and going "What what could have been you know?" And I just want to also say that I was a little concerned when I was seeing some of the comments um
about when we start doing this well there's not that many residents that live next to that property so we shouldn't be doing this you know I don't live really over there so it really doesn't affect me we all live in Deleno you know I remember when the West Avenue
Nature Trails was under threat that's up where I live and there was the threat of the state coming in cutting down trees making it a disposal site you know there were many people on the other side of town you know that lived near Hawke Island that they didn't say "Oh well I don't live on that side of town so I don't care." And just like there were
many people in Colgate and Galer that didn't say that when Hawke Island was under threat for dredge falls well good it's on that side of town so I don't care you know when the mansion when it was going to become a a facility for adjudicated juveniles you know the whole
town um committee woman Fitzpatrick committee man I remember those meetings and everyone attending and there was a lot of fear um and I was really happy that the state moved forward or the township moved forward with the purchase of that property because I think the result was quite beneficial you know the
tax revenue we get from those carriage homes is a hell of a lot more than we would have gotten from a a state facility that probably paid no taxes to the township right so and we got a park out of it and we got carriage homes and I've talked to a lot of those people that live in the carriage homes that
come out during our carriage rides and they're really nice people and I'm very thrilled that they've become members of our community so I just want to say to the public and to everybody that we we really need to stop and think when we start looking at things in terms of I
don't live in that section of Delanco how many people really live over there i don't really It affects all of us this is one town and we're all Delo residents and I'll stop there so thank you thank you
last call for public comment and and just one thing back to uh let me close this oh sure i'm going to close this portion of public comment go ahead M and just to back to Mr mcneil's comment about transparency you know I would love if this room was packed every
single township committee meeting like it is tonight or like it was on December 16th the sad fact is usually we could fill maybe a row maybe two on a good township committee uh night of public in this room and for the people in this
room who are on school board I'm sure you could appreciate the same thing at your schoolboard meetings people come for the um student of the month awards and then it's us it's myself other committee members and some of the
teachers um there and other staff members and the rooms empty all of our boards the township committee the school board uh joint land use board we would all love if you packed the rooms and gave your input but the sad fact is the
majority of the time no one shows up heads are in the sand until something happens and then they're like "Well why didn't we know about this?" show up to stuff that's why I'm not being disingenuous i'm not trying to do anything but pay attention to the town
before I was on committee when I first moved here in 2004 I had an issue with something in town you know what I did i came to a meeting i spoke up i believe Mr oled was mayor at the time it was an issue with Sha and he got it addressed you come to us and yes we're still
having issues with Sha Tree 21 years later you come to us and we get your issues addressed but and you have to learn about what's going on in your town and don't just take words on a Facebook page don't take words from what
your best friend sister's boyfriend's teacher tells you come to us learn what's going on watch our YouTube page read the minutes they're all online this town does a great job about how we have all the minutes from every single township committee meeting back to 2005
or six online and if you wanted something earlier I'm sure we could pull them out of the archives but learn about what's going on in town get off my soap box now anybody else soap box okay we'll move on to comments and
reports township administrator Mr schwab okay let me see if I can find what I have here can you top all that yeah pull that down there you go um number one uh we just forwarded on to you the New Jersey American Water is
planning on making a connection uh across the creek at Buttonwood we have a gas connection there now it's going to be a water connection they've been talking to us for about two years about it they finally are ready to move and we'll get easement documents on that and
road opening permits and we'll find out more detail as to what their timetable is uh so I want to make sure everybody knew about that also those uh PSNG is uh working on gas system improvements in many neighborhoods and uh we posted on a
website and they've sent letters to anyone who is on streets where they're going to have the gas mains replaced and they're going to have new uh gas meters and gas services and that's going on and our engineers working with them in terms of the road paving uh and restoration
but all that takes time but that's going on for the second year row and the third thing I have is we got a proposal from Jersey Professional Management to do executive recruitment to uh recruit a full-time township
administrator so uh hopefully in the next few months uh they'll have somebody on so I can finally retire and uh I need approval from the township committee to authorize up to $8,000 for this project uh through Jersey Professional
Management and I'd ask for motion on that i'll make a motion i'll second the motion that you eventually be able to retire and we authorize the contract uh roll call all in favor Janice all in favor all in favor please of JPM's contract i I
Okay that's all I have thank you thank you for passing the budget got a lot of work to do not implement it of course get it done before you retire i hope I made you proud by explaining all that too that was fantastic that's why I can retire because she can explain it all thank you so much that seamless
transition thank you um uh department heads uh Chief Babel Warren the second good job good evening everyone um I mentioned at our last uh township meeting that we have two new officers
that are currently on FTO um six week period due to them already being certified officers um they were lateral transfers from other departments so they have two weeks left uh they're doing very well um unfortunately though um one of my sergeants was injured three weeks ago and I was told today that he'll
still be out in light duty until the beginning of May so two steps forward always four steps back um can't hear he's injured and I still have another officer that's still on leave um so but with successful completion of um therapy
he should be back in the beginning of May but now he'll be on death duty so but um for our numbers for as of today uh for the year as of right now we had 19 police cases with a total of 70 for the year uh there were 46 motor vehicle
violations issued to date with a total of 239 for the year uh with 148 motor vehicle stops this month to date with a total of 510 for the year right now as to date for today we have 657 calls for
service with a total for the year 3554 so we're on pace now to probably beat last year by a couple by about a thousand so if I'm doing that math correctly that's roughly 29 calls a day this month yes sir
it's not a good record to beat no so but um the guys are you know they're working they're busy we were able on a light note they were able to go out and participate with the uh Easter hunt last week so they were they were happy to be out there for that and have pictures with you guys in the Easter Bunny they
rested the Easter i heard I heard I don't think Danielle posted that yet well she did it but um but yeah so that's all I have to present tonight thank you thank you Mrs
lure yes thank you mayor two things to report on the first one is I attended the um mandatory community development um block grant meeting uh with the county uh community development office and the
township has um moved to the next phase of approval for its community development block grant application uh to continue the handicap barrier um the handicap curb barrier replacement program so as um long as that continues
for approval process there's two more phases um hopefully we'll receive grant dollars uh to continue the barrier removal uh for the handicap ramps second thing is that I attended the meeting of the riverfront uh solid waste consortium
that we belong to three towns Delango Beverly and Edgewater Park um our solid waste current solid waste contract expires this year so we have to um go out for bid for a new contract and um so uh we met and
um that process has started um the bid specs are put together the uh average bid advertisement should be on or around April 29th u with bid opening on Juled on or around July 8th and the reason
there's so much time in between solid waste contract bidding requires 60-day um publication notice um unlike most other publications which require 10 days this requires a 60-day notice in two
different newspapers so um I just want to report that that process is is ongoing uh for the uh solid waste contract um that it does expire this year so we will we need to bid out for a new contract and then the other thing is
I'm going to ask uh Beverly if she will please um report on some come some of the upcoming events that we have for Deline G thank you Mr uh this Saturday April 26th will be the town yard sale um fingers crossed we have some sunshine not a lot
of rain uh the maps are not printed if you still want to have a yard sale and don't have your address from map I suggest you get that into us tomorrow before they finalize the map beverly do we have a rain date for that um typically we decide as it gets a little
bit closer but it's okay so if we do we will definitely post that so maybe we'll make that decision on Thursday okay the next two events uh take place the following Saturday May 3rd and it's community cleanup day public works
garage from 7 a.m to 3 p.m and that's where you can bring tires TVs electronics um larger plastic items um just a good time to get things cleaned out if you don't sell it and also the township will be
hosting the free shredding event that we usually do in the spring and the fall and again that's Saturday May 3rd shredding is from 8 to 12 p.m and it's four tires maximum per household thank you very
much township committee uh Kate we are yielding our time if uh do you want to let Fern do you have anything you want to say and we'll let Kate go uh yes the only thing I have is the uh county uh introduced their budget and this coming
Wednesday evening uh it'll be up for uh public hearing for the 2025 county budget they'll have resolutions and then uh they'll vote on the 2025 county budget if you go to Burlington County
Commissioners uh go to their website and you can bring uh bring up the county uh budget that's being proposed for this year that's all I have mayor thank you Patrick oh boy i have three pages
no doubt you have been very busy i am very busy but uh I'm going to try and and cut it down a little bit um but so um the hen advisory board met and we reviewed the forms and revised them and we actually have um looks like we're
going to have two new applicants uh that need to comply with the ordinance uh Riverside Delano Bridge and River Road i spoke with um Mike from the bridge commission uh they're going to be advertising for full bridge painting
roadway repairs structural steel and fender repairs for our bridge uh the entire project is estimated to cost $5 million anticipated construction to start this year and painting in
2026 um there may be bridge closings andor traffic restrictions during that time uh as for the flooding issues uh and the signage we need to reach out to the county again since it's a county road and the bridge commission has no
control over it um Del Riv Da Youth Sports opening day is this Saturday 9:00 and the mayor will be throwing out the first pitch uh their next meeting is tomorrow night at 7:30 shade Tree met on March 26 uh
residents requests were reviewed and um there it's really a long report i'm not going to read all of it but we did review the applications uh there were let's one tree is going to be removed and uh the
sidewalk issue was discussed storm water management requirements are not um going to be put on the shade tree for the removal replacement on private properties and um tree planting replacement was also
discussed as far as the budget cuts the mayor and myself explained um the budget this year and why we had to cut just about every person was cut this year joint Land Use Board I attended their meeting uh we reviewed the traffic study
there were several editorial issues brought up um hopefully they're going to make those changes and emphasize the joke handle at Route 130 in Bridgeboro uh and the Rancokus Creek
flooding so that we can use that with the state and the county because the state is in charge of the joke handle and I haven't heard back from them in a couple months now uh Living Springs i met with Aubry Fenton regarding the
Living Springs con complex it's hard to believe that we are approaching their 15 years since the development was completed uh he will be in contact with our solicitor regarding documentation because they're reapplying to
NJHFA and EDA to refinance and refernish refurbish their property uh Matt and I have been meeting with U jpm in our search for an administrator to take Richard's place as he retires affordable housing uh someone
had mentioned something about affordable housing at 401 Creek Road actually we um we were so proactive on affordable housing that we do not have to build any affordable housing for the fourth round and probably the
fifth uh the seniors met on April 8th at the firehouse so the president went over the trips that are scheduled for the rest of the year erin Provenzano was the guest speaker and she did a presentation on the new PAS one form uh there was a
lengthy discussion with questions and answer period that was helpful to the group sewer authority we met on April 8th um there's no change on the Styllex property 989 Coopertown Road the inspection was complete waiting for the
results from the lab the trunk line project is finally closed um the escrow was was on April 8th and it looks like the bonds are going to be sold miday instead of November uh 1,000 Coopertown
Road phase 5 of the Stanker and Galto project is underway 480 and 500 Coopertown Road are looking into connecting to our system the operator's report is on file and we did accept a bid uh to uh TV
2500 linear feet of our system on Fenomore Delue Larchmont and Rancokus and Holly Street uh Gateway Park as you all know the park's decorated for every holiday and it gives me great pleasure
to do that but just a friendly reminder to people that the flowers aren't there for people to cut and make a bouquet out of they're there for the public to enjoy uh the crossings Caroline and I met with the HOA our engineer and the administration to go over items that
still need to be um completed before their bonds are released uh Carolyn and I also met with Richard to go over uh upcoming contract renewals the lead graduation i attended the fifth grade lead graduation as well
as Matt and Carolyn and yeah Matt and Carolyn and I it was a great program that our police department uh under the direction of Sergeant Daring presents to the students recreation met on April 10th the rec subcommittee for the centennial
met briefly in discussing dates uh the plan is to have a spring antique car show and um the main event would be in September a meeting with the full committee will be scheduled sometime in the near future uh I just want you to
know that Kenny Shedeker and Bobby Crabtree attend the meeting from public works and they report on the various projects that are completed on the facilities and fields and they're doing a great job the fields are in good shape and ready for opening day the Easter egg
hunt was uh scheduled for April 13th due to weather and as always it's a great event and the children love seeing the Easter Bunny and collecting the eggs um additional signage was discussed for Hawk Island no dogs permitted unless
they're on a leash and the park regulations were discussed regarding metal detecting i attended the OEM meeting um that was held at the firehouse eric Holidayiday spoke about an upcoming exercise drill that would be held with the river line along the
Rancokus Creek for the purpose of rescue and safety issues that could happen i believe that is scheduled for May 3rd at 8:00 a.m uh the state did not agree to do a backfire on Hawk Island since it would cause underground fires that could
potentially cause more fires flooding on the riverside side of the Riverside Delanco Bridge was discussed hoping to convince the county again to correct the drainage problems that exist um the coordinator discussed the courses he's attended to keep us up to date on the
various items that may need attention the environmental advisory board offered free trees and I was able to get a tree a rose bud to plant in my lot and uh as I had mentioned earlier the Dano jug handle I'm still waiting to
hear from the senator and New Jersey DOT with regard to my requested update on that issue and hopefully our circulation and traffic study when that's finalized that may help us to finally get some relief for that jug handle and thank you
very much for everyone for listening to my report that was exhausting you had a busy month i did thank you no I think it's important that the residents know how much time we put into this and what goes into you know this job representing you we aren't just up here you know
twice a month we have a lot of stuff that goes on in the background daily business has to be done and uh thank you Kate for that very thorough report as always as much as that was sold to me when I first joined Township Committee 3 years four months ago Matt just sign up
for it it's only two meetings a month it's nothing to do full time job yeah uh just real quick on Kate mentioned the Riverline drill um myself as deputy OEM coordinator and Mr verick hiding in the back corner as township OEM coordinator we are working
with New Jersey Transit that will be May 3rd you will see a lot of activity on the light rail bridge over the creek or as creek as a if you like to call it um there'll be there'll be a light rail light rail car up there the uh fire
department as well as our mutual aid companies will have some boats in the river there may be lowering of a uh person in a basket from the light rail car don't worry it's just a dummy um so so we will the light rail will
remain in operation uh on one track and they'll be alternating they'll be out there with flaggers um and so there'll be a lot of activity from roughly 7 in the morning uh when we start setting up out there till around 11:00 11:15 when we uh break down and do a post uh event
analysis so that's May 3rd and we're probably going to be closing off a portion of Pennsylvania Avenue and uh Rancokus Avenue where it bends over there but more information will come if you sign up for the township emails there'll be uh alerts on that on um
through our township email system and as well as through the alert sense 911 system and that'll be on the township Facebook and website as well it'll be posted everywhere so nobody will be surprised about it and the uh New Jersey Transit's also going to have the uh VMS
uh variable message signs out there on different approaches so everyone's aware as well thank you Matt uh anyone any other comments township committee on the reports okay moving on to the consent agenda consent agenda items are considered to
be routine and will be enacted with a single motion any item requiring discussion will be removed from the consent agenda all consent agenda items will be reflected in full in the minutes is there anything anyone wishes to have removed from the consent agenda okay hearing none um 2025 Arbor
Day proclamation 2025 Arbor Day is April 25th 2025 resolution 2025-68 adopting our new township seal resolution 2025-69 authorizing removal of fence and requiring installation of markers and
signage for the traditions at Newton's Landing Archaeological Preservation Area resolution 2025-70 authorizing disposal of outer police department equipment payment of bills current fund $124,677.58 payroll
$117,000 $117503 excuse me escrow trust fund $200 housing trust fund $3,423.84 approval of the minutes from February 24th and February 25th approval of consent agenda motion
please so moved second motion by Matt second by Kate roll call please mr bartlett yes mrs patrick yes mr smith yes mr yes yes approval of minutes from February
3rd motion please so moved second matt and Fern roll call please mr bartlett yes mrs patrick i abstain i was sick that night mr mcfaten yes mr yes
yes correspondence Janice there is no correspondence thank you all right round two of the public comment session again public comments are limited to five minutes if you'd like to come up to the podium state your name
and address this is session two jack Hayley 44 Pennington Court hello um just crossing my tees and dotting eyes and whatever on this about the uh fence at Newton's Landing yep this is the fence
in front of the farmhouse yes uh has someone been out to understand what that is about uh basically you got three sections of fence three directions parallel to the creek away from the creek and then in
front of the farmhouse is it certain that all that property belongs to the HOA and not to the farmhouse so it's in front it's by the pool the pool pool area is what we're talking about right and then the farmhouse is
next to it it's you're talking about the white fence right that runs in front of parallel to the creek right 90 degrees to the creek and then back across in front of the farmhouse uh it's it's like a trapezoidal foursided it is it's the
HOA it's in the HOA um Janice can you explain no what what I I I've been involved with this for years uh at one time that was all one lot and block the farmhouse was sold and is on its own
property now and I'm just curious about whether any of that fence is on the farmhouse property rather than the HOA's property mrs lure we didn't look at exactly the block and lots it's more the archaeological preservation area that
the NJ was requiring and that whether that encompasses excuse me one lot two lots or parts of two lots was not really um at question the question was um can the
can the property owner can can the HOA remove the fence that's um well the intent was to remove the fence and put it over to victory garden years ago that was the intent okay so the D basically opine that as long as it's as as that
there's some way to make sure that in the future as the time goes on that there's no disturbance of the ground it's not built over then yeah go ahead and yes go ahead and remove the fence and so the township
committee is is saying yes but as long as you put a sign and markers now if in fact some of that fence were to be of another ownership the HOA can't take someone else's fence down they'd have to go through my question basically yeah
the thing is is that property lines are not determined by the township they're determined by surveys so the HOA is being given permission or the fence is being given permission to be removed so if in fact the HOA was
moving forward with removing the fence that's on their property they can remove the fence that's on its common area property owned by the HOA if there's some of that fence is on the farmhouse which is owned by another
entity then that owner has the permission to remove the fence from their part but I just wanted to But we don't determine the property lines that's on service okay who's going to take defense down
not our purview the HOA the HOA requested it the HOA requested it they gave us a description a design and we and we approved the design pursuant to our attorney said it was fine but it is an archaeology area though it can't be
disturbed oh I understand all that my my only concern is that part of the fence may not belong to the HOA well I guess the HOA has to determine that at that point someone will have to contact the owner of the
farmhouse and ask if he wants his fence taken down or not yeah that would be up to the HOA to determine the survey lines and all that we were the township was was approached and was told that the HOA wanted to get moving on taking this fence down
but needed township approval well that's been what four or five months ago yeah we waited for the design and Yes yes okay so thank you anyone else uh Peter Fritz uh 303 Union Avenue hi
Peter hi uh this is kind of spontaneous but is everybody on uh on the U township committee are you all aware of what the ramifications are for that archaeological area do you know why that's right now fenced in yes you know
what's there and you all are aware of it okay thank you i just want to make sure that that's why we required the marker the line markers stay there and then to have to the signage as well so any future generations know what that is and it doesn't get lost in some paperwork somewhere
at the best of my knowledge there are 11 uh sites within Delanco that are considered either federal or state um uh historic preservation sites but they're very cy about what some of them represent and I
just want to make sure that you knew what was there yes we did okay very good thank you so much excuse me Peter yes uh you said there's 11 sites in town yes uh where would we find that listing because we downloaded it from the the the state
historic preservation office online and every August I believe they republished the list with any changes and so I I like to pull the list up at least once a year to look to see if they've designated something that we're not
aware of okay the reason I asked Mrs russell and I were working on uh the state cross acceptance plan and that might be uh information that we want to have sure and it's not too late for us to submit that so I'd like to get
together with you and get that list and forward it i'll see if they're still publishing it there a lot of changes happened after the u uh after the COVID um lockdown you know where the office was closed for long periods of time so I
don't know if they're still on the same schedule that they were before CO but um I can get the link to that list and send it to you thank you appreciate it sure thanks Peter anybody else hello everyone nancy and Doro 68 East
Ships Way i just have a general question on the um Creek Road 401 Creek Road what's the next step that I can tell people who ask me are we still on the same timeline settlement nothing has changed on our end nothing has been officially submitted to us we're moving
forward we're still in that 20-day estoppable period so okay thank you just wanted to make sure thanks mhm thank you anyone else session two is closed to the public moving on to discussion items we have a proposed ordinance to amend the township
code for Township Park metal detecting uh that was brought up there was an inquiry by a resident um that wanted to do metal detecting uh we took a look at the code uh recreation excuse me took a look at the code and um came back with some recommendations so that's
why it's in our packet right now so they want to uh do you have my packet can I have it um they want to Here you go thank you so they want to add right now it states
that um under chapter 2165-1 letter 4 under passive park property metal detecting is only permitt they want to add that metal detecting is only permitted at the west avenue nature trails that metal detecting is not permitted at active park property passive park property gateway parks
centennial park or historic waterfront park um it also states metal detecting is not permitted within 100 ft of any building or facility recovery tools may only cause minimal disturbance and digging may not exceed 6 in disturbed areas must be restored to their original condition articles found that are of
apparent historic or personal significance such as artifacts or jewelry must be turned into the township's municipal office that's how our code reads right now um they also want to change definitions um change Vine Street Park to Centennial Park and change Zerick Waterfront Park to Historic Waterfront Park so basically
they're asking for us to change those two names and also add the language that metal detecting is only permitted at West Avenue Nature Trail and that it's not permitted at those other active parks that were named uh any discussion would that rest would that restrict
um history board like occasionally we'll get requests to metal detect in some of the properties of the parks that we own i think it would restrict it i think we discussed that and we really didn't want
somebody um digging holes in the parks in our parks you're going to talk thank you yes thank you um yes the history board has received uh some inquiries about
getting permission to go to to some of the park properties and to and street ends and things uh to do some um metal detecting and we were going by the regulations as they exist now which are
not what you're saying at this point so um this this is new to us and we haven't had a chance to to give this much thought didn't know this was going to come up tonight sorry well recreation discussed this at length at their last
meeting and um they really didn't want somebody digging up the parks uh West Avenue is a different area the nature trails we kind of left that open for metal detecting but we've put a lot of money into the other parks and we would
prefer no one do any metal detecting i mean that's what was discussed at the at the meeting i'm their liaison so I'm reporting as that okay i wasn't aware of a change and so we uh I would recommend to the township that we um change that
ordinance to include this wording to protect the areas yeah and it's worth noting that the beaches in the river are not our purview that's not township land so people are free to metal detect along the riverbank uh as much as they want not something that we well according to
law but we don't have any purview over that we have had some artifacts that have been turned into the historic board that were discovered during a blowout tide on the on the beach sure and uh very happy to get the get the artifact
so that was good now um we've also discussed uh doing using ground penetrating radar at some point because we were trying to find a foundation of a historic building that was at theoretically located at the
new riverfront park kind of in the corner there and we were hoping that we would be able to to get that done before there were a lot of amenities that went in there you know concrete benches that kind of thing so I I don't know whether
this would be considered part of that because they're not looking for metal and they're not they're just it's like a lawn mower yeah GPR is different it's not something that would be under metal detecting so yeah okay the renovations are starting so um like in 24 hours
like literally they're starting that park is going to be under construction yeah i would definitely talk to Wreck about that too about the about doing something like that i would go to their next meeting okay we we tried to uh do something in December uh because we we had actually had some grant money that
was still left over from last year's uh uh history grant um but we didn't get around to it before the end of the year so we were hoping we'd still have a window but doesn't look like we have one
okay okay thank you thanks Peter um Bill would you like to come up and talk about the community forestry grant application mayor yes can we are we going to do Oh I'm sorry yeah um you can come hang out here let's do the motion to uh to adopt
this i was going to say did um did you want to discuss this further continue the discussion to the another meeting did you want to authorize this also draft ordinance draft or I'm fine with uh d having you know Doug draft the ordinance to amend the code for metal
detecting everyone else good with that yes no objections okay we can go ahead and direct to do that please and also the name change that too okay right okay good to move on mr matvich could
you talk to us about this uh community forestry grant please um under the community forestry act council is required to have a community forestry management plan in place had one in place now for about 15 16 years
it's actually due up for renewal this year part of that's going to be a new tree inventory the biggest part of the budget so we got a proposal from our licensed tree expert to prepare that inventory and community forestry management plan about 15
grand fortunately we really can't proceed with new grants until our last one is closed out so that's why we put the money in the budget just in case we don't have the time frame to get the grant complete
right so when we uh Kate and I were at the shade tree meeting um Kevin had mentioned that there is funding available for this and it's both basically a guaranteed um funding situation that we should apply for that yes so is that what this is we're
talking about yes okay so that's uh something Shade Tree would want to move forward with something you're taking on or Yes i'm preparing the grant application okay so um I would suggest that you prepare the grant application uh send it to us for a review and then we you know I would assume that the
township would want to move forward with that if we don't have to spend 15,000 out of a budget we could get a grant for it and there's really no cost to have that drafted uh anybody else have any objections or questions is there any funds match that the township has to do or is it five grand match we have to
match five grand yeah because we didn't budget 20,000 max grand yes and there's a 5,000 match correct i wish we had you know I wish the Sha Tree Commission gave their budget to us before we did our budget okay so we could have incorporated this yeah well Kevin didn't
mention a match initially and Kevin meant Kevin just said that there's funds out there for a grant he didn't say anything about a match and he said that you know should cost us anything match can be inind services huh so hopefully
we can volunteer enough time to make the match so not a cash match but in kind right so how so we can figure out how to do in kind at Sha Tree yes okay i value your time Bill at about 5,000 an hour we'll volunteer our time
actually I think the volunteer rates up to about $36 an hour now so for inventorying trees it could burn that through that five grand pretty quickly wish our volunteer rate was $36 an hour um could you just send us the information for that too the the link so
we could just look at it um and then whenever you you know I I would move to move forward with that application and for us to review it richard has we meet Wednesday night so um yeah there's the the grant uh there's two pieces to it
5,000 is for inventory and 20,000 is for the plan and then we have to match so we have to put 25% against the $1,250 against the 5,000 for the uh inventory and another 5,000 against the 20,000 for
the plan itself i don't know if you have to do any does it mention in kind in there or does it Yeah it does it does mention in kind that's there's a whole detail um matching funds are required can be met through inkind volunteer contributions and cash from the local
government or other entities similar to what we went through with the planting and because the size of the match and the fact that we had to pay our planner so much we didn't really need the inind we used all cash right uh so that's but
you need a project manager and you needed a grant manager the project manager which Bill is usually done as a project manager but the grant manager is a municipal employee as a primary contact for the the money side that we had to jump into at the end uh to make
sure that we got the money back it's a reimbursement project so you got to spend it all and then you got to give enough details so that they would uh give us the reimbursement what are the ramifications if we do not do this
well then we lose our accreditation under the Community Forestry Act which means we could be sued by anybody who has a slip trip or fall so at that meeting I had asked Kevin I think I don't think you were at our last
meeting no I was and um because we didn't budget for this and it was like $15,000 plus five or what have you and then he said "Well there's grant funds out there so there's no cost to do it." Um but I had suggested that we write a
letter to let them know that the funds weren't available from the township this year because they're not in our budget and to extend our um approval until next year when you can formally submit a budget that would include that and uh
Kevin didn't seem to think it would be a problem getting the grant to pay for the whole thing so if we don't have the funding since it's not budgeted uh we would definitely write a letter on behalf of the Shade Tree Commission to explain the situation and give us
another year approval to continue it next year try it yeah maybe you can try it and if they reject it then I don't know you have a contact there that you deal with yes cuz I know Todd Woff i don't know if
he's still there is he he's not there no okay okay well then you're going to Would you reach out to your contact and if you have any issues let me know and so we can do something here just stay in communication with us and we'll figure out where to go from there i figure and just next year I encou or later this
year I encourage the sha tree commission to submit the budget when it's requested so we have this in time november which is November all right we're putting it included this in this year's budget pardon i thought it was included in this year's budget budget until February february we were already We were past
that point it's due in November yeah yeah we didn't get a budget until February we were already This is This is a rolling grant i don't believe there's deadline right so you can put together the application and then determine what the numbers are and then you can decide
when you can Yeah when you can put it in so it's probably something to work on same time as making sure we don't lose accreditation while we're doing that and then maybe you because even if you get the grant towards the end of the year you can do the budget amendment chapter 159 for a grant the question becomes
what we use as the matching that's the only issue that is still out there if in fact because it's near the end of the year it's after November we can make transfers or or there's less expended or we've done a real analysis of the inind to make sure that we have the ability to
match in kind so I'd say you don't wait until January to work on this you start working on it this summer and see where we are so you're ready for either the end of this year or for the 2026 budget you started filling out the application in Sage correct we'll start working on
it now yep okay okay yeah just keep in keep in touch let us know how Let us know if you need any help yeah let me know if you need any help i'll be happy to help you out with it thank you thank you thanks for sticking around
okay no need for executive again so uh can I get a motion to adjurnn please just hold on one thing real quick uh this weekend townshipwide yard sale stop by the firehouse we're doing our Hogy Sale fundraiser we'll be starting selling at 7 o'clock in the morning until we run out even if it rains even
if it rains shameless plug okay not shameless at all anybody else have anything before I adjourn i believe the Boy Scouts they do they have their breakfast sandwich oh absolutely and then Randall's Rescue is doing a bake sale too at their building um uh at the
green building on Burlington Avenue and Del Riv opening day over at uh West Avenue as well del opening day they're selling breakfast sandwiches everyone pray for the rain gods to not rain on us Saturday please thank you all for attending motion to adjurnn please absolutely so moved matt and Fern all in
favor i thank you good night i have to pee so bad and that's a stream what well you drank like a whole gallon of water here Car yeah we can edit that out of the record
yeah we're down 12 that's what that stuff [Music] careful there