[Music] adequate notice of the February 13 2025 meeting of the township committee has been provided in accordance with the open public meetings act by posting written notice and agenda of the meeting on the bulton board in the Municipal Building 1000 rout 10 Township of Han
and by hand delivering mailing or faxing such notice to the following newspapers Mars County daily record The Star Ledger the Hanover eagle and by fing the same with the Township Clerk thank you roll call commit kahill here commit
farasa here commit francoli here commit Mahalo here and mayor Gallagher here five members in attendance if you would please join us for the pledge allegiance and please remain standing for our prayer led by Deputy Mayor Mike
Mahal I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all almighty God please watch over and
guide this governing body with an abundance of wisdom and understanding to help make the best decisions for our residents please bless our First Responders and Township volunteers who help keep us all safe also bless our Township employees and residents lastly
please let us pray for the men and women of the US Armed Forces who stand vigil over us always amen amen thank you [Music] my small okay good evening ladies and gentlemen the first order of business is the approval of the township committee
meeting minutes of January 9th January 23rd and February 4th may I have a motion to approve no moveed second uh Comm kill I believe you have to abstain from February 4th February
4th yes I'll abstain from that thank you okay meeting minutes are approved next on the agenda we have the public hearing and Adoption of ordinance number 1-22 and 2-202 proof of publication that the ordinances and the notice of
introduction for Ordinance one and ordinance 2 appeared in full in the January 29 2025 issue of the Daily Record in accordance with law I'd like to State for the record that there are two non-substantive changes to ordinance 1- 12025 on page four of the ordinance the
resident family rate rate line should read $489 not $499 and $293 not $299 also on the non-resident family rate line should read
443 not 400 76 ordinance 22025 was referred to the playing board for their recommendation in a letter dated January 28th 2025 from planning board chair petris it is stated that the Redevelopment plan referenced
in ordinance 2 is not consistent with the Township's master plan the master plan recommends development primarily for Office Buildings and Research Laboratories whereas the Redevelopment plan proposed by ordinance 2-2020 5 is
for a mixed use development for multif family housing retail office and hotel uses due to the different uses in the two plans the development standards in the plan are also different despite the inconsistencies between the master plan
and the Redevelopment plan the planning board's letter recognizes the site's designation as a Redevelopment area and that the Redevelopment plan helps to address the Township's obligation to to provide for affordable housing and agreed with the proposed
adoption at this time may I have a motion to convene the public hearing on ordinance 1-22 and 2-202 so moved second is there anyone in Chambers wishing to be heard concerning any of the ordinances if so please state your name and address for
the record and which ordinance you would like to address motion to close second all in favor I may I have a motion now to adopt ordinance 1-22 and 2-202 so moved I have a second
second on roll call commitment kill hi committe FASA hi committee man fenoli hi committee man Melco yes mayor Gallagher hi ordinance 1- 1225 and 2-202 so adopted next we have two ordinance is
for introduction I'd like to read their titles into the record ordinance 4-22 an ordinance of the township Committee of the township of Handover appeeling chapter 67 of the code of the township entitled substance awareness Council and amending and supplementing
chapter 36 entitled mayor's Wellness campaign under part A Part One excuse me administrative legislation with the formation of the mayor's Wellness campaign Municipal Alliance Substance Abuse Prevention sub committee ordinance number
5-22 and ordinance of the township Committee of the T Township of Handover authorizing the replacement and upgrade of the municipal building telephone room air conditioning system and further reappropriate the balance of $16,600 in capital account number
C-4 d-15 64- 2855 for making for use in making the improvements ordinance four and five and the notices of int introduction will be published in full on The Daily Record in accordance
with law the public hearing is scheduled for March 13th 2025 at 8:00 p.m. if any member of the public would like to speak regarding those ordinances they will be given the opportunity to do so that evening may I have a motion to introduce
ordinance 42025 and 5-22 so moved second a roll call committee kahill hi committee FR aasa hi Comm francoli hi commit M mayor gallager so introduced comment about this one okay you would
like to make a comment yeah okay mayor G would like to make a comment regarding ordinance number four what's very good for hen Township about the uh ordinance we just introduced 4-22 is we are taking the substance awareness Council Under the Umbrella of
the mayor's Wellness Campaign which is going to be more mean more programs more financing and more opportunity for young people and all the people in Han Township and the surrounding municipalities we created as a need from a need years ago the New Jersey
Coalition for education and Positive Choices which as a group we receiv received the Jefferson award from the governor of New Jersey working to address the needs of many many people and it's become more more important since the
covid-19 lockdowns uh there's a there's a lot of need out there a lot of people that need a lot of help and this is just going to make us bigger stronger and be able to offer more comprehensive programs so as far as this is concerned I'm personally very proud of this I know the governing
body spends a lot of time in this field and for as many people as possible so I just wanted to weigh in on the importance of this move Krista thank you I appreciate that okay moving on we have uh the approval of resolutions we do have a
last minute item that we will let to read into the record and I'm going to ask our business administrator Joe Georgio if he would read the title into the record thank you Chris this is docketed as resolution number 56-22 it's a resolution of the township
Committee of the township of Hanover appointing James R honor as the full-time assistant business administrator for a six-month probationary period commencing a ail 1st
2025 and ending October 20 October 1st 2025 and establishing his salary at $85,000 per anom in accordance with job group 10 under schedule B and salary
guide C of salary ordinance 82024 and to conditional offer of employment subject to receiving a satisfactory medical examination and criminal history record check thank you you're welcome so I'd like to have a
motion to approve as a consent agenda resolutions number 43-22 through 56-22 but does any member of the committee have any questions or would like to make any comments regarding any of those
resolutions I'm very impressed with the amount of uh should we call it refunds that we're getting on many of the contracts so uh seems to me with just the refunds alone we've got another Street or two we
can squeeze out of that hopefully hopefully I'll make a motion that they be me thank you second all in favor resolutions are so approved and congratulations to you congratulations congatulations James uh believe now we have to pay our
bills John you want to pay our bills in the amount of 10,171 6176 John's going to pay the bills he's going to tell syia to pay the all in favor to pay the bills and lastly we have four raffle applications
for approval Salem Drive School PTA 5050 eclc foundation for a 5050 eclc foundation for a Tricky Tray and eclc foundation for an off- premise raffle application may I have an approve may I have a motion to approve the
applications moot second all in favor so approve mayor Gallagher and the members of the committee that clears the agenda and I thank you very much thank you very much Christa you're welcome Brian would you like to introduce the next portion of our
meeting absolutely so we recently it's right here right over here I put a table there for you as well we recently finished a study on the on a
a gunin Parkway over on the east side of Hanover Township um there have been some issues over there the road is getting busier um I don't if for those of you who aren't familiar with it it's a it's a four lane road um I've spent a lot of time traveling on it myself
uh e e [Music] thank better yes very [Music] still not showing up you have something up there ch just my
logo e any it's not sure what's going [Music] [Music] that's what it is be a few minutes folks Talk Amongst yourselves uh so like I said we're going to go back in time a little bit happy to present VI a boards um thank you for the
introduction sorry I couldn't get started at one time here but um as so uh my name is Andy Jaa I'm a traffic engineer uh hired by the town to perform a traffic study for Al gonin Parkway um you know some of the reason two of the
reasons that we're really looking at this road uh first and foremost the road is scheduled for milling and Paving I believe it's 2025 correct me if I'm wrong um so it's a great opportunity to uh make some improvements as part of that Mill and paave program to try and
enhance the road if there is a reason to um part two of the reason we're looking at this uh just uh what the township represented to us is that there are some issues with pedestrians at a concentrated location that are crossing across this four lane roadway with very high speed so those are concerned with
um with safety of those pedestrians so it was kind of a two part study where we look at all of Alon Parkway from Route 10 uh all uh down Detroit Road uh what we did as part of this study we took traffic counts those traffic counts were performed in
September when school was in session uh we made sure that that calendar um we look at that calendar and sure that school was active when we took those counts uh we installed atrs for a period of one week so we took traffic counts on a Tuesday and a Wednesday and then we
there installed Road tubes across that road for a full week and then we also looked at Connected vehicle data that's available um to make sure that we had represented traffic account so looking at those three different sources we're very comfortable that we had represented a traff added for this
Corridor uh we also took individual uh pedestrian counts at the location where we were observing uh midw crosswalks and that is between uh the two buildings for neutr met that is located approximately at the middle of alanin Parkway between
Troy Road and Route 10 uh and again we were actually out there for 2 days uh we were a little concerned that if we counted on one day um perhaps we didn't observe him so we wanted to count two days and uh we observe a lot of pedestrians Crossing upwards I want to say around 100 to 150 pedestrians
Crossing in a single day uh generally in groups of 5 to 10 or so uh we also um we looked at crash data so we requested the crash reports from uh the police department we requested those
crash reports uh for all of 2022 2023 and through August of 2024 we reviewed each one of those crash reports individually um not necessarily just for a statistical reason to understand how many crashes or so but we really read the reports where you know the police do
a great job of sketching up what exactly happened putting in diagrams and really trying to paint the picture of what led to a crash occurring uh within this Corridor so we looked at all of the public intersections in the corridor individually as an intersection but we
also reviewed all of the crashes on the corridor as a whole that may have been occurring at driveway entrances or perhaps people are trying to change lands and those sorts of things and lastly what we did was um identify the speed of the corridor um we we were
provided with speed data from the police department uh where they provided performed their own studies and then we also did the independent study and generally verified uh that the speeds is well in excess of the speed limit for reference of speed living on Alan
Parkway is 35 mph uh the police um data showed the speeds generally around 45 to 50 mph uh and the data that we got showed generally the same thing so there's clearly a problem with speeding in the scor um so you know that's all of the
background data that we collected in addition when we were collecting that data uh we were on site we were observing traffic patterns in the morning Rush Hour the afternoon Rush Hour um and I just kind of made the Habit during the course of this study if I had business in the area I would just drive the corridor and see what's going
going on to see if there's anything that's happening at at other sporadic times uh so you know generally I'm just going to walk through those observations I'm going to start down at Troy Road Mountain Parkway this is Troy Road in general uh this
intersection experiences a lot of delay for I'm going to say about a 30 minute to 45 minute period um my feeling is that there's a lot of change that is happening because it seemed to happen exactly the same time uh throughout the day and it really did seem to be a large influx of vehicles coming to this
Approach at the same time um what we found was that the left turn lane would back up uh probably be about 30 to 40 vehicles in that left turn lane um that are waiting to go generally it would clear out but the issue is at an
intersection off the sheet at try Hills Road and B Meadow Parkway there's a traffic signal there where there's some backups that are happening at that traffic City so that backup uh that queuing from that signal would back up through this intersection and it would really prevent people from making the
left off of Al gonin and and heading that direction um so that is one recommendation is to take a look at the timing at that traffic signal it does appear there's opportunities to retime that intersection it looks like there's a lot of wasted green time that's on
some of the other approaches to the intersection we could better allocate that green to perhaps reduce some of the queing on chy road and that's going to have a snowball effect of reducing on Ain cuz they're going to be able to get out
there uh we did look at um traffic signal warrants for the installation of a traffic signal at Al gonin and try um it does meet the warrants really for 1 hour during the day it does not meet the warrants for any of the other hours that
we look at during the day typically you would not install a traffic signal Bas on meeting only one warrant during the day at the at this location uh and because we did observe uh some issues with the backup at B meow Parkway that was impacting this intersection there's
some other things really you would look to improve that operation to see that it improves this first before you would go through the time and expense and energy of installing a traffic signal at that location so that's Al Goin Parkway and Troy Road I think there's a lot you know
there's a lot of benefit that can be realized by solving some of the issues that um in general the only other location where through the crash data and observations that we noticed other than
the Midlock CW which I will get to in a moment but from a traffic operations perspective um at the intersection of Melanie Lane and Alin Parkway there was a crash history uh excuse me a large number of angle
crashes uh what that means is U really it's someone pulling out of Melon melany Lane looking to make a left turn towards Route 10 and you have someone who's on alanan Parkway and there's a crash at of curse uh from the crash at that we were looking at it appears to be related to
sight distance um and the other issue that we notice is that within the dedicated right turn lane as you're traveling on Alan Parkway towards Troy Road people would utilize that right turn
lane as a through Lane through the intersection um they shouldn't be doing that but I understand why it's happening just from a Layman's perspective it really is because there are two receiving Lanes on the far side of that intersection so if you happen to find
yourself in that lane you think to yourself oh I can just go through there's a lane there let me just drive into it but what that driver is probably not realizing is that someone who is on melon in the lane who was looking to make a left turn lane when they see someone in that right turn lane they think they're making a right and they
think they can pull out and that's where we see crashes occurring so uh we do have some recommendations uh through striping uh to help improve that situation so I mentioned the mid block Crossings at um the neutr med driveways
uh which is again roughly uh in the middle of Alon Parkway uh generally what we were noticing is that people were parking on one side of the road and entering the workplace on the other or vice versa uh
or it was a combin or it was people that appeared to be moving from one building to the other throughout the work day uh we did not observe uh pedestrians um kind of just in the general vicinity that we're walking the sidewalk it did appear to be generally
people cross Crossing to and from one of the buildings to the other uh when it would happen um we generally would find that they would exit this building somewhere along this space walk down the the lawn uh and really just kind of wait
here waiting for a gap in traffic where they can cross over and and and proceed to their destination uh or vice versa so we did look at insalling um we look at how can we improve that pedestrian operation how can we make
that safer so people aren't Crossing uh in the middle of this kind of high speed four-lane roadway section uh one of the things we were asked to look at is putting in a crosswalk at Leslie Court CU that is a um existing T intersection
an intersection between two public earthways um ultimately it's my opinion that if we were to have a crosswalk there I don't think that people would use it I think that people are going to continue doing what they're doing today uh which isoss Crossing mid block cuz it's clearly the most
convenient um we were uncomfortable with installing a crosswalk at this location across the existing four lanes of the roadway um the primary concern is that you you have four lanes there today you have speeding that is generally
encouraged by having the four lanes present there uh and and whenever you have four lanes of traffic particularly two lanes in either direction you always have the potential for uh Shadow effect um and what that generally means is that
someone who is STO waiting to let The Pedestrian Crossing Let The Pedestrian cross that vehicle in itself is going to block view of The Pedestrian as in the act of crossing and the other vehicle in the second lane may continue through the intersection resulting in a um resulting
in a crash um so we would like to reduce the number of Lanes from four lanes uh to the three Lane section that you have here [Music] so that brings us to the primary
recommendation of this project which is to implement a road diet within Elin uh Parkway so a road diet uh this is a safety measure it's uh being recommended um you know in a lot of different locations and really its primary purpose
is to take a lot of the pavement space um that maybe was designed just generically you know 30 40 years ago and it was built out there um and really taking a look at it and deciding what are the actual traffic bonds do we need four L would it be safer to have an
alternative uh out there in this case the road diet would involve reducing the four Lane section uh currently the road is 48 ft wide there are four 12T Lane four 12T Lanes on that
road uh we would eliminate one of those Lanes convert a middle Lane to a two-way left turn lane so whereas today there is no left turn lane if you're turning in and out of these driveways there would now be a two-way left turn lane to make those turn movements outside of the
influence of through vehicles um and we'd also be able to provide 6ft shoulders on either side of the road those shoulders have a lot of benefit uh primarily uh for cyclist uh and really providing um you know a shoulder that if you do
need to stop short you have a place to escape to and you're not popping the curve or going into adjacent plan now with the crashes that we saw out there we saw the the angle crashes at melan uh the other type of Crash that we noticed a lot of were Sid swipe crashes with
side swipe crashes that is when you um you have two vehicles that are traveling the same direction uh and you go to change lanes and you side swipe into your nebor in that lane you don't have two lanes that's something that can't happen the other another crash that we
that we noticed on here was rear end crashes uh as you would expect on a roadway that does not have a dedicated left turn lane uh when someone needs to make a left they're doing so from the through L for the most part people will pull around them but there has been there were rear end crashes that were
observed in the corridor uh again with having that two-way left turn lane we would expect those types of crashes to go down because you have the uh two-way left ter in the area now the road diet the way we looked at this um again from a safety perspective uh
the recommendation for the mid block crosswalk again the benefits of the uh the two-way left turn lane the benefits of the shoulder uh we did want to get comfortable that this would work uh just from a traffic Vol perspective we don't want to create intersections that are not functioning by reducing the number of Landes on the
road uh so just to kind of put it into perspective when you look at a high level uh when you look at a corridor from a high level planning perspective what you tend to do is look at the average daily traffic uh the ADT for the roadway uh based on you know Common
literature out there that you would start to look at normally for any roadway that has a ADT of 10,000 or less the fhwa would describe as being a quote great candidate for a grow diet to put in perspector the ADT
here is just over 5,000 it's about half of that threshold for fhw would consider this a great candidate um and even beyond that you can do Road diets from 10,000 to 15,000 ad but you would need to start looking at
intersection analysis in this case even though we're half of the uh ADT uh that fhw quote considered great we still did perform Capacity Analysis traffic analysis that each of these intersections in the corridor um and
what we found is that there's really no measurable impact on this and it's really it's indicative of the fact that the the the curve to curve space within this Corridor is not being used effectively so by providing this uh
striping enhancement we are going to more effectively utilize that conrete space um to provide a safer um a safer installation in the road the exception I'll say is that Al
gonin and Troy Road again uh um because of that left turn queuing that we have down there there is not this is not going to resolve that this is also not going to make it worse uh what we would expect to happen is that when that backup occurs for a half hour to 45
minutes on a daily basis in the afternoon that left turn queue is going to continue to occur and then it's going to occur within that two-way left turn lane that we're proposing uh so it's not going to create a situation uh where you can no longer bypass that and make a
right on Detroit Road as you can today so uh speaking about the mid block crossw um because it is relatively highe speed we do think that this is going to reduce speeds on the roadway uh but there's still going to be the ability for higher speeds through this section
of Road um in addition it is still an uncontrolled crosswalk uh meaning that vehicles are not required to stop at the cross off there's a stop sign there's not a traffic signal uh we do recommend the installation of rectangular rapid
flashing beacons um I believe you have them in town um and what these are these are these signs here there are The Pedestrian signs with a downward facing arrow and this is called the rectangular rapid flashing Beacon uh if someone wants to cross there will be a push
button present with uh with a curb ramp entering the crosswalk you would press that push button and would flash very fast grabbing the attention of the um of the of of of the motors in the roadway uh bringing them to a stop um so
you know these signs combined with this road diet uh and the signing package that you see here I think is going to make it much safer uh for PES across this section of the road uh than it is today uh the other thing we looked at with the mid block crosswalk is is the
uh the line of sight uh so as you're looking at Alin Parkway uh on the uh south side of of uh the Midlock crosswalk we did have a concern with a pedestrian sitting uh at
the curb ramp waiting to cross uh and they have to the motor generally needs to see look across this curve and across the topography in here which there is a fairly steep topography on that side of the road um so we did perform a sight distance analysis where
we kind of surveyed this area we did CAU a line of sight to ensure that you're going to be able to have that line of sight um there is some recommended clearing uh just in this general area that we do recommend to provide that line of sight but there's no topography
in the way which is important so this is brush clearing uh and if there are more mature trees it would be liming up the trees so that you can see underneath those um and that's all I really have I know if anyone has any questions I'll be H happy to answer
them all right do you have any questions no I don't have any questions but thank you Andy I'm sorry the uh the technology didn't work today but uh but you know again I did have an opportunity to look at the plan uh carefully and and uh it just it just makes sense it's you know
it just makes sense it'll make make it for a safer Road and uh it won't have any negative impact and as you said we're we're Paving and mailling anyway so this is this is striping and and a couple of uh uh you know a couple of pedestrian signals and and we should be good to go
so any questions guys yes John yeah uh regarding the U the shadowing effect that you described I think that's going to be particularly helpful especially since there's going to be not too distant
future red bus will be leaving we l Red Bus sports program in its absence there's been an approval for for Trucking Warehouse there y with the addition War trucks
more warehouses on in that location I think that Insight you have about the shadowing effect will become even more helpful to protect The Pedestrian yeah I think it's also to help just to that
point we and by the way we did include that traffic study um we were aware of that project and that was included in there with the striping enhancements that we're looking at Melanie that's going to be especially helpful to eliminate that shadowing really isolating that right term line to make it clear that if you're in this right
term line you're supposed to make the right um which is going to help eliminate that I agree Jerry do you have any input on this [Music] uh no absolutely I've been working with Andy on this project now for I think
it's been over a year since we started um identifying that there was an issue on this road initially we were just looking at addressing the The Pedestrian crosswalk and I know we were uncomfortable internally when it was just a four-lane road we were not going to support that at that point but having
this further analysis into the road diet not only supports the midblock crosswalk and address that issue but addresses all the other issues that Andy spoke about in terms of providing a a safer Road providing additional benefits to the cycling Community um and that
shoulder um and you know having those benefits without any U negative impacts to the capacity of the roadway so I I I support this what about the light over on B Meadow uh or at uh Troy Hills where it meets B meow there yes that is that's
that's definitely like you said that's where it's backing up what do we what can we do about that yeah we have a proposal from Andy to uh to review that timing and I think it's something that uh we want to move forward on that's an that's an easy um um uh Improvement to
make because it's really just timing we're going to further look into into that intersection to improve the one um the one leg of that intersection the Eastern leg um because that's a little bit narrow um we do have some other pedestrian uh activity um and we might
want to make that Improvement so that project might grow a little bit more thank you thank you very much thank you thank you okay moving on we have our monthly
report from Fred samel regarding fourth round obligations Fred please take the floor thank you mayor uh as everyone knows and we've discussed previously the fourth round affordable housing uh plan is due
uh from the township and all municipalities throughout the state by June 30th of this year in order to be compliant with the affordable housing legislation that was adopted last year uh by the governor and our legislature so the prior month and the first steps
that the governing body took was in January to be compant uh whereby the township committee calculated per the state rules the prospective need of the township and adopted a resolution we've since mayor filed the appropriate uh
documents in court and with the Department of Community Affairs and posted the information on the website which means that the township is compliant now with the fourth round affordable housing rules up through this date the next step is as I said to come up with that plan there'll be some
discussions amongst the governing body I've been working with both blae Jerry Robin wels Joe Burgess Joe Georgio Jonathan test our office and and Rob Ross we've been going through each of the parcels in town and applying it to
the law and we're going to have a discussion with the governing body and it has to be with the governing body because you wouldn't want developers right now to hear this you'd love for the public to hear it but you don't want developers to hear your strategies But ultimately there'll be a
discussion and that'll occur probably in April with decisions that the governing B's made in order to be compliant with the fourth round so that's where we are right now and and then also one discussion that's occurred previously
relates a little bit to ordinance 2- 2025 that was adopted tonight the be um the the be exension or the additional parcel of land after much discussion by the governing body and interaction and
comments from the public that was adopted and I I if it's okay I would like to just say just for the record on that um based on all of the input from from members of the public and the governing body that there was a number of things that also were were part and
parcel to that and that was there's going to be a $250,000 allocation made with respect to traffic uh that would be utilized by the township with respect to the property you you wish you could say millions of dollars but you can't legally it's
everyone's responsibility but for this particular project uh the governing body was able to secure that there will also be as discussed previously when the ordinance Was Defeated special needs housing there'll be a component of that and that's for um you know the special
needs that and they're very important to the community you also so there'll be one bedroom units and you get you receive actually two credits but nonetheless what's important is the existing all all over the state you hear about affordable housing and that's uh
family units three bedrooms things of that nature but in this case these would be for each unit instead of a family unit it would be one bedroom units and they would be for special needs with the appropriate supervision uh and management and in accordance with state
license Ing and they're just a very important use and they're one that doesn't generate um many other needs to the community as such as um you know traffic and things of that nature it's just an important care uh also as
previously discussed the both the land owner and the developer agreed in writing that they would not get involved or this property would not get involved in the the Township's fourth round affordable housing um matters that are going forward anybody could but there
this property will not be able to be as happened some places across the state uh to go to a higher density development it's approximately six units an acre and I think after checking with blaze that may be one of the the the lowest intensities residential development that
we've seen in many years we've seen uh because of affordable housing litigation almost twice the amount of uh units per acre and it's important to keep that in mind because at 6 units an acre and limited commercial development what that means
is there can't be any more when it comes to this property and this uh approval of this development plan they can't come back in and say well there's an affordable housing obligation and things like that that is the maximum it could
be less but it can't be any more and and I think that's also an important factor when when you look at this project and putting it in that perspective and and I also think what we've also heard over time is someone might say well why is it
so many units less but it's because also it conforms with the character of the owner of the property they they too wanted something that was that could integrate with bear and their uses in the future and that means and and of course all
the basically discussions that the township and its planners have had with the develop that it wasn't going to permit this to be high density development um as been discussed at 15 units an acre or something to that nature so and also mayor just for the
record there's no other litigation right now with bear there was also a significant tax appeal that was was uh Gone by the wayside as well for the other remaining or the the the original be property uh and that as well just at
the same time both of those things have have come to a conclusion and um going forward again uh we have the approval and the commitment uh from both the developer in writing and uh as
well from the the owner that that special needs housing will be at the option of the township not of the developer and that's something that was very important to certain members of the governing body and the traffic as well and that includes synchronization of lights and other other traffic
improvements that I I know that the administrator and mayor you've been on the phone with the County engineer numerous times to make sure that that gets done and I think it's also important to note that the project is not approved the project still has to go for site plan approval and that means
the public will be noticed the public can ask questions about Landscaping uh buffers uh they'll be open space on the property there'll be questions to explain traffic and what what the the impacts would be and and uh
you know egress and Ingress to the site those type of things this is just a Redevelopment plan uh to give the developer the right but only this right not a not to come in for other changes and things of that nature and that all
at the end of the day also ties into my affordable housing report because it's a big factor going forward I think ultimately it's also going to let the town have made decisions as opposed to so many municipalities that are going to feel pressure from from other projects
and and fair share housing um quotas and things of that nature that have come out and finally mayor with respect to the m Veil Veil litigation that the Township's part of with respect to affordable housing um there's been a number of
Court interactions they have not gone the way of the group they've been very thoroughly briefed we've read the briefs uh We've provided information when necessary and these type of matters when they're so significant they take a long time to land where where everyone wants
to get sort of a final decision there's been temporary requests for stays temporary requests to to hold the rules or appeal the rules and in each case so far uh the courts have denied such and said you have to keep moving forward but
to the credit of the group that has been U managing the matter uh they keep going up uh now to the Supreme Court and any higher court that they deem necessary but that's the status of that case as well because Handover Township was one of the first members to join that
litigation and that the governing body continues to monitor so that's my report thank you thank you Fred I I just have a comment or two about Fred's report Fred said many times affordable housing everybody wants and needs
housing to be affordable it it's almost a tricky term when you're dealing with these mandates for example in the third round New Jersey said we owed them 1,000 units and
we negotiated down from the 1,000 units but we call it high density housing because in order to get the 1,000 you have to have a 20% set aside which means you build 5,000 Han of a Township currently has 5,100 dwellings that would
have doubled the size of Hanover Township to quote get affordable housing many many people in our lives cannot afford very very good housing prices are crazy interest rates are crazy so I want to be clear we all want housing to be
affordable what we're challenging and having a problem with is the mandat set by the state for our Suburban communities because it's not realistic we still have quite a bit of units we owe and when you take that those units and times them by five that's a lot of
density and when it comes to the density we all talk about schools traffic water sore DPW police there's a lot that gets bed into this so I just want you to know that jumping into this challenge was a big step is it difficult and and are we
hopeful yes but we work very hard and hopefully to get a a very good desired result for Hanover Township but even with this project Fred just described we have the fourth round mandate information and with the acreage on South
Campus we could very well be obligated to build 1355 units but what we did was negotiated down to a complex that we feel is the best it could be for Han Township with
the reasonable amount of control that we have next step if the state challenges us we have no control so with 320 units and 80 that are low and moderate we believe that's the best we could do and when we defeated this ordinance the
first time the reason was we put forth five demands not recommendations demands and because we took a step back and defeated the ordinance that we introduced we have a much much better project and it it is because of the work
of every single member of this governing body and you'd be very impressed and and and and happily um impressed about um how much time we spent struggling with Fred with Joe with our professionals on
what we could possibly do so we're available to discuss this at any point but please when you hear at least this governing body talk about affordable housing we need housing to be affordable we're talking about this specific law handed down by Trenton which has to do
with high density housing and the fact that we're not really prepared to deal with this it's going to cost us a lot of time it's going to cost us a lot of money I think some of us are aging in dog years because we're just fighting and fighting and fighting we haven't come up for air yet I soed for two years
with John and the subcommittee for round three now we're round four so I just wanted to say that Fred and uh there's a lot more to say but that's about it for right now and and if I could add one thing mayor to what you said um and of all the different projects and
developments and there's always these development pressures when it's a desirable town right and a desirable location but this governing body and mayor you reached out a number of time to the residents that are most impacted right next door and those voices were
heard from a standpoint of very important discussions about setbacks height traffic and I don't think it ends with this because I really have to say I could stand by what the mayor said in this governing body if along the way any
of the residents who would been very um engaged and um understanding the process to to a great degree because it's easy just like you said one we just say no and then all of a sudden many years later it's a problem but if there are issues that come up along the way and
the development application the site plan this entire Township committee has been so engaged in the process I everyone is accessible to take any concerns about what's coming forward and you know maybe something that someone
didn't think of or something that the planning process didn't address to to contact Joe Georgio who the township administrator and let him know what that is because we took every single comment back and try to
figure out ways to to address it this this governing body did specifically so it's not just lip service you really you all did that and I know that door is open and it doesn't end because there'll be an appli there could even be a development and I've seen this governing body go back to
any developer and say that's not good enough so I just want I want to say one more thing about the just say no which in in in a way is very very naive and unfair to people that actually know better but if we were to just say no and
I said this before and we've all said it every one of us can say no we're not doing it and we can go to anywhere in town let see Gallagher you were a hero you said no you stood up but guess what the state can override us and they will so if we said no we're not going to do
it and walked out of here high-fiving one another Well shame on us because we we skated our our position to represent Han of Township in the best way that we can now before we move on and open up to the public this is so important and we're going to have many many steps like
this that are so important I would just like to ask at each member of the governing body if they'd like to take the floor for a minute and just State what was important to you and some of the pieces that we haven't covered John can you begin sure
um the plan that we just went through it was optimized we rejected the former plan that came into us we had major considerations there were five demands we call them improvements to the plan we looked at those the
opportunity um the attorney can speak to the benefit to hand over Township residents for this special needs housing they'll be given priority that's important we also to the mayor's credit we owe it to you to do an assessment of
the downside impact for failing to act if we did not act upon this and we've been evaluating this for 10 years 10 years we've gone through many many uses as to what potentially could be at that property and there was a consistent use
coming back again and again and again and that was called mixed use so I believe that the plan that got developed with the township committee is optimized in that it is mixed use there will be some commercial components to it but
from a density standpoint we've minimized the potential impact that could be in the south campus we took into account many of the issues that the residents of nearby neighborhood of erage wood brought to the attention of the committee we listen loudly to the
concerns about traffic management so I do believe this overall plan has been optimized and it will go another round and the next round with it will be in planning in terms of site plan so I I think we're in a better place than we
were 6 weeks ago when we first rejected um the original plan thanks John B want to take a minute yeah um many of my colleagues on know many of my colleagues on the township committee
know my feelings about this project and they're really directed toward Bayer Corporation but that's another matter uh Bayer being the owner of the lands involved in this but I will say this this Township committee worked very very hard very uh through very difficult
negotiations here uh you heard Township Council mention uh as a component of this thing that there will be uh housing for special needs um why is that such a value to us for every bedroom that we
put into a special needs housing we get credit for two Market units okay two Market units so for example to simplify it if there's a group home on this property and it has six bedrooms that's 12 credits that we can apply toward the
density house ing if you use the formula going out further as Council explained that being 20% of the uh uh requirement uh in order to get Market houses us it that saves us nearly
10060 Market units that we can bank that will not be built in Hanover Township uh this in conjuncture with other negotiations that the township entered into uh for taking uh 8 of the uh low
and moderate units and having them 2 20 to 25% I believe uh John designated for special needs that will give opportunities for special needs individuals who can operate independently an opportunity to have
housing will we get credit there yes for every one of those we once again get credit for two so we bargained as best we could uh we were hoping that our bar bargaining would reduce the gross amount of Market units on this property uh but
I think at the final analysis as the mayor was even going over uh this is down to uh the uh the most minimums that we could get uh with the uh developer in conjunction with the property owner
Bayer uh and eliminate the risk of some potential 1500 Market units that could be built on this property is there more work to be done regarding off-site improvements in traffic yes uh we're
concerned uh about uh uh our neighbors uh in the surrounding areas Heritage Etc and we're examining that now and I understand mayor we should be getting some additional input on egress aress off this property so um those are my
comments thank you thank you Ron Mike do you have anything uh no again I just thank the fellow Comm we uh we worked hard on this we came up with the I think the best we can get um is it is it what we wanted no but I
think it's the best deal that we could possibly come up with um and again thank you all for the hard work great job making I want to close this out so I'm going to take it a little bit wider and deeper because the fact of the matter is you can obviously tell we spent awful lot of time on this we spent an awful
lot of our effort on this every time there's a builder or somebody that wants to do something in the name of affordable housing um the big picture here is what Ace was describing where we have to build 5,000 units to get 1,000 affordables is called Builder remedy the state's solution is let's get the
builders involved let's get the builders involved with the courts so that they can force our hand and increase density in every town around us um that's the that's the core of the issue none of us at on this DS has anything against affordable housing we understand there's a need for it but there has to be
another way to do it and that's really the problem so I'm going to end that by saying we do have a governor's race coming up and this is not a partisan statement in any way shape or form I'm going to listen to each candidate and if they have a a reliable and and good solution to bring this back to the
legislature and to come up with some other formula other than what we're this madness that we're engaged in now that's the person that's going to get my vote and I and I truly hope that you all pay very very hard attention to that I know it's not the only issue in this state but it's an important one because it's
affecting all of our lives thank thank you very much Brian second okay can I have a motion to open to the public so move second all in favor I anyone from the public that would like to be heard please go to the podium state your name address and you
have four minutes that's high up can you hear me no no is it on is it on oh there we go I don't know how I could read and have this in my face at the same time um Fern walin Hanover Township
resident um good evening gentlemen on the township committee I'm here because every one of you is a republican who likely voted for the 34 count felon in the white house I'm here to explain to
you what this means to our residents and our town Donald Trump has shown himself on day one to be a dictator and to not care about the rule of law which this country is based upon some of you and some of the residents in this town are
probably still supporters of his and his administration but let me tell you what this means it means that if your family member gets cancer they will likely not get treatment they need because Trump has just put a stop to cancer research
that is funded by the NIH which is the federal government they will not get treatment because the cancer centers and our hospitals are partially funded by the federal government if your daughters or granddaughters get pregnant and have an
unviable pregnancy or a miscarriage they will not be able to get treatment be it an abortion or a DNC and will possibly die at the doorstep of a hospital that will not take them because of a total total federal abortion ban so yes that
will happen in New Jersey you or your mother or father who are on Medicare will have to find another means of insurance when they take it away because Medicare part one is a federally funded program along with
Medicaid for the disabled which you seem to care a lot about and low economic means let's move on to our town forget the firehouse and Cedar NS that we wanted to build they will not be able to afford any new equipment because some of
that subsidy comes from federal grants and let me not forget that the so-called Law and Order president who Flats the law at every turn will no longer be allowing grants for such things as video cameras for our police department and
other federally funded programs you know the money congresswoman Cheryl got for this region to remedy the whiy water uh whiy River flooding that will be gone how about our schools I can't imagine
running our schools without the money from the federal government for which Donald Trump just closed the Department of Education children with disabilities in this town will be the first ones to suffer New Jersey towns can receive
federal grants for a variety of purposes including Community Development disaster relief through FEMA that he wants to dismantle and economic development you gentlemen know better than I how much of our budget comes from the
federal grants and where will the money come from for these shortfalls because I don't have any money left over after paying for his golfing trips and speaking of taxpayer dollars Trump's best grift yet will be taking
our taxpayer dollars from the treasury and investing billions of it in cryptocurrency which crypto currency I bet you can't guess or maybe you can and when he does that and it fails for the
US government but he makes a killing and literally people will kill themselves when they lose all their money what then where will all that tax money be can we talk about vaccines for a minute you guys are old enough to
remember polio and small PX and measles and mumps do you want to go back to those days where that's a common occurrence because they just approved RFK a vaccine denier as our secretary of
HHS Fern yes out of all due respect yes uh the timer just went off oh okay no that's fine but thank you very much we will continue no I will continue Richard dun 59 manga Road and Cedar nolles New
Jersey okay I think I think Fern just mentioned about people dying because they may not be vaccinated well speaking of people dying there are people still dying in Ukraine we have a very large Ukrainian population in this town and we're proud
of it what happened to solving this problem on day one and what will be the solution handing over Ukraine to pu Putin you know Trump reveres and admires Putin a killer and a tyrant Trump aspires to be like him
and lastly we dare take up the cause of immigrants in this town and in this country who do you think picks our crops works in the chicken and meat factories who mows our Lawns and takes care of our seniors who cleans our houses and Office Buildings hardworking immigrants whether
documented or not so there I with there we ask has has the price of eggs gone down has the price of anything gone down no and we'll continue to climb with these new tariffs and you can't blame Biden for that so we will finish with
this we are here because someone has to take responsibility for This Disaster that is in the making right now that affects everyone in this community and we refuse as Democrats to take any blame for this we are laying the blame at your at your
doorstep you all on a dis all 5,282 of you and Hanover who voted for him and the 70 man across the country who likewise voted for him this power grab is unconstitutional but will the Supreme Court uphold that we don't know yet
we'll see this is all of our problem now but you gave Trump the the keys to the core or the combination to the safe we are literally on the precipice of losing our democracy when will your party stand up to this
Tyrant we will call upon each of you to reach out to your Republican colleagues and higher offices uh commissioner Bergen commissioner Weber the three Republican congressmen in New Jersey Chris Smith Jeff Andrew and Thomas Kane
Drew uh Jr draw a line in the sand and say enough thank you thank you very much anyone else John arario to Lexington Court Heritage Woods uh I'm not going to use this
platform for political reasons I could to use this platform cuz I have questions about what's actually on the agenda um and uh the questions I'm asking is
because very little knowledge is a dangerous thing especially when you start saying certain things um I understand and I can appreciate you know you guys doing the work that you
guys are doing on holding Trenton back and uh Mr Cahill you discussed you know we've got an election coming up with the governor and everything like that um but there were certain buzzwords that were being used that I'd like to
understand one is Special Needs housing what does that actually mean okay and the reason why I'm asking this question is is because my wife is a
educator and she works in schools granted not here overseas now I had to come back home because I had to take care of my 90 year-old parents so we've been residents
here for a very long time mayor I was at memoral when your mom was there okay so I'd like to know what special needs
actually means now I appreciate also the work that you guys have done and I can understand what you're saying about you guys getting credits meaning holding Trent Bay okay but you you serve I I
can't see it because the gentl said Mr Samurai Sam yes you also said um you know living in a desirable town
okay the amount of traffic that I've seen in this area over the last 50 years is become unbelievable you guys say you guys are doing studies you know about bear and everything else the last time I was at
one of these meetings and I spoke to I think this gentleman right over here [Music] Mr ESO I think it was okay um we discussed the amount of traffic that was coming through Bear Avenue people cutting through uh Heritage Woods to get
the Deerfield people using just the back end just to avoid whiy road so you're traffic studies you know I'm a little dubious on on what's going to transpire and quite honestly you know I
understand you guys turning around and just saying no okay and that doesn't help because then you get a push back from Trenton okay and then you solve absolutely nothing because then you've just lost but I I don't know what I'm speaking for anybody else in Heritage
Woods or in that area itself but you know you're you're losing the desire to live in this town okay that was one of the reasons why my folks moved here from by the way New York
City okay um so you know I I'd like to know a little bit more about what the heck is going on because you guys also spoke the last time I think at one of these meetings about UPS putting in another Depot somewhere in Jeff Road and the amount of
traffic that was going to be happening thank you very much for your time I appreciate it I'm going to take 30 seconds to address the traffic I'm an ask Ron to take 30 to 60 seconds for the special needs just to clear that up for you okay I joked it my Christen name is Thomas and I am doubting Thomas I've
read traffic studies for 12 years right most of them in my opinion are just about useless because they conclude with little or no impact to local traffic how is that possible I know as a fact when you come down whoopy road cuz this is my
backyard right this is where I live I live on Woodfield Drive to make the left on precip road peak hour is rated for 400 lefts an hour it currently has seven so instead of just saying that we're studying it and studying it and
studying it we went and asked for specific items that can make it better have it flow better and we have quite a few we have a partnership with the county now that we've never had we have colier engineering which is the best engineering firm you can possibly hire
working with us to look at the whole the whole area in total because if you look at this project you look at this project and you look at this project they can all find their way to make it look acceptable but when you put them all in there it's a problem and there's a lot of specifics that I can go over with you
Offline that will make you feel at least somebody's listening to you but the only other thing I'll say is Heritage Woods is a big deal but what's also a big deal is if you Google Earth that section of Hanover Township right there's three schools yeah there's businesses there's
two major condo complexes and there's thousands of residents and we all either go whipping your road that way whipping your road that way and it it doesn't work now so how is it going to get better when we build more so these
traffic studies with recommended remediation for some of these findings is is officially taking place and I'll go over offline with you several of them because I am not happy with having somebody just try to make me leave a
room and feel good when it takes me a half an hour when my daughter was cheering to go from Woodfield Drive to B metal school when I can get to my aunt's house and Bay own in 26 minutes so don't tell me there's not a traffic problem I hear you loud and clear and I'd like to talk to you offline if you can take a
minute I'd appreciate it special needs thank you mayor uh the gentleman asked about the definition of special needs uh and uh I think I also understood that your wife is a teacher yeah she's a um does she does
she teach in Special Needs well my my no because I had to come back home okay um my wife is actually English so she's in England so she's a head teacher of a primary school that deals in
Special Needs that's wonderful and she is also the chairman of allhe head teachers in the buau I'm trying to get her to run for minister of education but she said she won't have any of it because Parliament is a
farce and I said you know please you know why don't you just I mean you know what you want to do you're you know what let me let me help you with the definition you seem to be concerned with that uh for the purposes of the definition I'm going to read
something to you and I won't read the entire definition of special needs because we'll be here quite a while and U let me add a sidebar to this before I read this uh because most on this Township committee understand that I have a special needs daughter uh Down
syndrome and uh she for countless years uh has enjoyed her life through the group home environment hanb Township has about 12 group home environments in this town uh for uh special needs
individuals uh but by definition the purpose of the definition of special needs refers to individuals who meet the definition of disability under the Americans with Disability Act well that's fine you don't have to go any further if you're talking special needs
in that form I get but like I said special needs has can have a lot of definitions special needs can mean special needs for Bear special needs for somebody's back pocket okay this is
why I'm saying special needs is was very good I think we're very proud in some of the negotiations because uh hanb town will one of the first communities and has been one of the first communities in providing special needs with individual
living opportunities that means they can have their own apartment they can operate on themselves they can go and fr they can be part of business correct Etc we have many institutions in Hanover Township for special needs employment Horizons algro school I can go on and on a name them to you of course uh so I'm
very personally very proud of what our Township has done and what my colleagues have supported and special needs in this town done more than most of the towns in the state of New Jersey but happy to beet with you anytime if you want to go further into the definition of special needs no no that's that's fine I just
wanted to make sure that special needs met special needs not something else no okay well thank you very much we are available to you thank you very much thank you sir anyone [Music]
else hi good evening uh Diana I live in Diana Murray I live on whiy whiy um and it actually my question Falls uh very closely to what the gentleman was just talking about um special needs and
education um specifically public education um I'm very concerned of the cuts that might be coming down the pike with the new Administration and I'm specifically concerned for our town which I think um having lived here you know for 15 years
has done a great job um with children who have an IEP everybody knows somebody who has an IEP everybody knows somebody who has a special need and a lot of these programs are actually funded um in part or somewhat by the federal
government and then of course our taxes make up for the rest of it do you have a plan moving forward if um those funds are gone as it seems to be I'm paying a lot of attention to this um if the
federal government all of a sudden decides to no longer fund these programs that we and so many small towns across the country use um to protect these people that require protection children um I'm also concerned about the
elderly we have um you know elderly with uh Social Security Medicaid Medicare veterans benefits there's so many things that um the federal government actually does for us and I'm hoping that you've thought about as you watch the news
unfold what do you plan to do to cover to cover this if there is a hole here is that something where we're going to have to increase our taxes um this is just a really terrifying to me because there are so many areas where the federal
government does help and I don't want to see what's happening right now you know effect the only thing I'll say is that it we have two very very good Liaisons to our school systems we have Deputy Mayor Mahal and Brian kahill and Brian
kill served on the board of ed much longer than I did M so anything that changes we have two incredible gentlemen that are going to find out almost immediately share with us but we don't know right now what's going on okay we
will find out of course it will become our problem if there's a problem I know and we will be available to you to share it with you unless you hear it first but we are involved although we're independent we have liaison to the schools and they're very very active
will you also be leaning on the Republicans who you know might have the ear of the government a little more so right now than other parties will you also be able to lean on you know our Republican assembly people you know what you know to sort of talk to them because
although yes of course I'm worried about my town specifically I do worry about you know the other towns across the country this is a big a big issue and I'm hoping that everybody does their part to make them aware that this isn't
easy to just do this to cut parts of our government you know so I know I'm sure Mr Mahalo and and the other gentlemen will do their best but they don't control what's happening right now but you do have some influence in terms of talking to elected officials and I'm we
do talk to people quite a bit whether or not they listen to us or is another story they make believe they do but uh we're we're on it these are our kids too and and we did move here largely I moov here for the schools right and like the gentleman said my mom taught here for 30
years so we're going to be involved in anything that changes okay for the better for the worse and we're going to have to try to have some type of a solution okay well let's hope it's not higher taxes thank you anyone else de Linson C NOS um
my comment I guess is not really so so much for the committee but for the crowd um I know several of you have gotten up to to speak to them about speaking to the legislators about what's
going on and yes they do have some influence but we also have influence we should be writing to our legislators also because they don't want to hear just from one or two people the more people they hear
from makes a bigger impact that's all thank you thank you very much uh Chris ainson MAV Cedar NOS last time I was here I asked about the um accidents on rale in front of Walmart I was wondering if you learned anything
since the last time I was here perfectly honestly no I have not but I I did commit to looking into it to see what what the actual traffic stats are I believe that's what I said the last time not necessarily acknowledging that there's a specific problem there um but I will try to get those statistic
Statics it just seems like the same spot every time and it just seems like a tragedy like waiting to happen right okay thank you anyone else hearing none seeing none motion to
close so move second all in favor I gentlemen do you want to for those forego our comments cuz we have a lot more work to do so motion to adjourn all in favor and we're continuing in confence
meeting in conference to May thanks for coming out