Okay, I'm going to call the meeting to order. Roll call, please. Miss Dolan here. Miss Bisca present. Mrs. Mcnite here. Mayor Morgan here. Mr. Kogan here. Mr. Kamisky here. Let's salute the flag. 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. So public union, bal council, bing province, county union, state of New Jersey. Adequate notice has been given in courts of 19 PO 1975,
chapter 231. That annual notice of revision was made in conformance with section 13 of the act. Okay, before we do go ahead, I want to get the uh proclamations out of the way. So uh Annie,
come on up. really fast. How many years have we done this together? Okay. And whereas pediatric cancer is the leading cause of do by death by disease in children and whereas twothirds of pediatric cancer patients
will have chronic health conditions as a result of their treatment toxicity with one quarter being caused by a severe life-threatening. And where is approximately nine 95% families dealing with cancer experience
financial hardship whereas only six new drugs have been approved by the FDA to specifically treat childhood cancer. And whereas hundreds of nonprofit organizations at the local national level, including the Brook Healy
Foundation are helping children with cancer and their families cope through educational, emotional, and financial support. And whereas researchers and health care professionals work diligently dedicating their expertise
to treat and cure children with cancer. Whereas experts truly believe curing cancer you have to focus on the cancers that are biggest beliefs like diffuse intrinsic pontine vioma dip.
I have her do that every night. And whereas experts also believe that cure tip can lead to significant advances in cancer research and need and whereas too many children are affected
by deadly disease and more must be done to raise awareness to find a cure. And therefore I Alan Morgan mayor of the federal province county state of New Jersey to hereby proclaim September as pediatric cancer awareness month in New
Jersey the province of New Jersey and then encourage all Americans to observe pediatric cancer awareness month and support this cause and so deeply impacts our family and community across the
country. Thank you very much. Thank you. I want to thank everybody for their support. Last year we didn't have as many people here. Next year I'll bring more bags, but there's just a couple here. If people want them, you can look me up and I will hook you up with some bags. Um, I just want to thank Mr.
Swanson, who I just met this evening. He's a he's a cancer survivor. and he just handed me some cookies produce box which is hand painted. So I greatly appreciate it. I'm going to use it at our fundraiser in September along with a
handful of these guys. So thank you and to everybody in town. I've grown up here since I was little. Lived here since 1969. Lived a few years in Berkeley Heights, but the province has always been home. It's a great place to be and raise your kids and you're blessed if you live here
and so thank you for all your support. Where's Where's my crab? Are they here? Oh, there he is. 10 years already. Whereas Educational Child Care Center located at 755 Central Avenue where the
Providence is a unique familyowned child care center whose mission is to create a place where the whole family is welcome, nurtured, and can grow and learn together. Children at Spout Wings are challenged and motivated
to learn with daily opportunities to discover the world around them and share the arts classrooms with materials and equipment carefully selected to encourage their natural curiosity and
desire to learn from their surroundings. And whereas Scrapplings has been serving New Providence, New Jersey since 2015 and was founded by longtime residents of New Providence, the Shahed family. Mo Shahid, former teacher along with his
Mera, and for over 30 years experience in child care with over 20 years of those directly in the classroom. and Jonathan Niran who served as high school teacher while in the peace course in Liberia.
And whereas since opening the Shahheites and the and the wonderful staff of 40 employees, many from New Providence and surrounding areas have proudly provided care for over 1,000 local families. Many of their students begin
as infants and stay with them through their afterare program at the local elementary school levels. And whereas Sproutings has expanded its offerings through partnerships with local businesses including ethicare
collaborations with the Jersey Aquatics and now with Summit Speech School. Some enrichment activities Prattings provides for its students include swimming lessons through Jersey aquatics gymnastics
lessons to Rendico gymnastics and tolerant music and whereas Frings is also a member an active member of the New Providence business community. Mosha Heath is a founding member and president
of the adult soccer club. And Jonathan previously coached soccer at the high school and he was one of my Cub Scouts at one time and he's a Bucknell graduate. Yeah. Uh sprouting soccer scholarships to
graduated seniors at MPHS fundraisers throughout the year to support local organizations as well as Moms Helping Moms and St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital. Now therefore, I al province county union state of New
Jersey hereby honor Sproutlings for its 10th anniversary and congratulate them for making a difference into the Providence community. Uh we just wanted to offer a heartfelt thank you to
Sorry. A heartfelt thank you to the Burough Council, Mayor Morgan, um our wonderful teachers and our wonderful town. Uh it was 25 years ago I was here receiving a proclamation from Mayor Al Morgan.
Um but it has been an absolute pleasure uh serving the new Providence community and uh watching kids grow and now getting to see my children grow up in town is a really special thing. So thank you and uh we'll see you around the
block. you know, child education are so very important in in life now. So, what you do is amazing and I'm in awe of what you do and u it's good to see kids grow. See,
thank you. Congratulations. Thank you so much. Good job. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you. I remember hearing the uh application at the planning board and I can't believe that
was 10 years ago. That's amazing. Great job. Keep up the great work. Thank you. I can't believe how hot it is in here. We didn't pay the bill. Okay. At this time we have a presentation of the sustainability
committee. Doug or John. Good evening. My name is John Keane. I'm on the sustainability committee and I have a presentation here uh for us for the sustainability committee. Uh the new Providence Sustainability Committee is
requesting support for a six-month pilot with green bucket compost. through. Can you talk into the mic? You might need to bring it closer to you. There you go. Thank you. Sorry, Mike. Our TVs were working. Now they're not either.
I can hold these. You're welcome. We'll wait. Whisper. You're experiencing technical difficulties. like the TV. Yeah,
I can push it to turn it off. There you go. Yeah, hit me. Do you need to go the other side though? You were too efficient. You did it too early. Cost cutting things turn go to sleep until you need
them, then they turn on. My son's phone does that every 30 seconds. Drives me crazy. This one. That's my favorite TV. that. Yep. Okay. So, next slide, please.
So, the new Providence Sustainability Committee is requesting support for a six-month pilot program with Green Bucket um compost. You can see on on the uh slide up there, the reason we chose Green B uh Green Bucket is because it's
the most economical. It's the easiest to use for residents and the burrow. We're looking for the burough support of the six-month program. The the idea is consistent with the burough's go green theme and there is no cost to the
burrow. We looked at six um six facilities or fix six firms that we could deal with. Four of which we couldn't deal with. They don't they don't are not in our area. Java Compost has been here in the past. Um, but we also looked at Green
Bucket and I put down at the bottom the four that we couldn't use. Um, if you need to know where they are, I can tell you they're mostly in South Jersey. Each proposal was evaluated by structure, cost, and sustainability.
On the following slide, we looked at how we used or we used EPA's guidance to assess the sustainability benefits to each proposal. And if you look you can see that there are two things that happen with the compost. One that comp
that green bucket does is they turn it into u to energy into bio bio gas whereas Java transforms it into organic fertilizer. So we also by doing this we eliminate or
partially eliminate CO2 gas. The next slide indicates our involvement over the years with uh the students. So Suki Grover was involved with this project four years ago.
She since graduated from New Providence, went on to the University of Penn and graduated there this year. Two years ago, Evan uh Pelunis joined us on sustainability committee and he's been instrumental in working with us this year. Um Matteo
Aasta uh worked with us but he worked with the students along with Evan for a uh a program to generate or to determine interest in the burrow. He worked with uh Leah Bramley who is the
uh head of honor science but she has since left. So their beginning um got a little bit way laid towards the end I think because of her commitments. the results. On the next page, you can see that over 75% of the respondents
expressed interest in central deposit location. We chose not to do that for a variety of reasons, but you'll see later. 58% of the respondents said they would pay for home pickup. The survey, the results, and the questionnaire in the appendix in the back.
The approaches we used was the central drop off point was the first one. And there we looked at several places. Minister Gun at St. Andrews was willing um to allow us to use his property, St. Andrews property uh should we choose
that meth method. Summit also uses this method and I put in the notes that they estimate that they have um diverted 23 tons of compost as a result of doing it that way. We
chose a residential pickup for a couple reasons. It's more convenient. It's simple and right now in Java does about 11 households as a result of Suki's work and we think we can do much better on that. Uh the proposal on the next slide
is only just to show you where things go. So it starts either at green bucket or at Java and it goes through a processing unit still all in New Jersey if you know this. So why compost? compost decreases the refu
stream as we saw um that Summit has a big piece. It reduces it reduces the cost of tipping fees for in this case New Providence lowers the carbon footprint cuts methane uh emissions and fits into the Bur's theme of go green
and there's no cost to the burrow. So the next slide is the comparison slide and you can see that green bucket is by far uh more economical than than Java.
We have been in contact with or I have with Olivia from Greenbucket for over a year working on this and in this scenario um we can do better in cost depending on how well we do in this. So,
but that's why our recommendation is green bucket. The following slide is what you can use. If you look at both of them, you can see that they're similar in what they will take, which is remarkable from looking at this several years ago where you
wouldn't they wouldn't take meat, they wouldn't take some other things, but now they do. Um, how does it work? So, you get a bucket. I have one in the car, just saying. Um, you fill it with the scraps from the acceptable list, put out the bucket
either once or twice a week, and Green Bucket comes by, picks up the bucket, gives you a new liner for that, and that repeats depending on what uh uh program that you decide to sign up for. Green bucket is in the following
residential um locations that Netherwood is playing field for those that are looking first looked at said Netherwood where Um so they're all involved in this. How are we going to do this? So we are going to
target the following places with the help of our students and um with the help of the bureau messaging this. So the cost will be in kind and um we think it it's it's very
doable and very good for the for the burough. So any questions? Is it is it is it just like a five pound bucket like a a five gallon bucket like five gallon bucket? I mean you can get multiple buckets should you choose? Okay. And do it you leave them outside
or you leave them inside? Your choice. I mean I'm I put mine in my in the garage just because um I don't think I would want it outside. It's small enough, you know, and I don't think you're going to need a 64 gallon to small enough you can just tuck it in
the garage. It's fine. Does the liner prevent smells or decrease the smells? The top prevents smells. It's it seals very tightly. So, you can't smell it once once the top's on. I just want to comment uh that I've been on sustainability committee with you for
three years. I think Kathleen before that, Matt and I, Diane, as long as I've been part of this, uh you guys have tried very very hard to get anything um relating to composting. Um, as you mentioned, Suki, all the research
she did, uh, the students, the high school students that we have, uh, working with us now, sometimes they go rogue, but that's besides the point. But I think we've gotten to a really good place where we're ready to to launch this pilot. So, I'm fully supporting the
effort. I know how much work you and Doug and others on the committee put into it. So, thank you. I think this is a good start to see cuz we're going to actually find out whether people want to compost or not before taking a a central location. Speaking of whether people want to do
it. So, you said you did a survey. How many like how many responses did you get and how was that like the survey was done by the students and it was done towards the end of the school year. the result of which in as Alex all alluded to the um they needed
to be word smith a little better than their survey indicated. So uh it it fell off because it was late of the year. I also think and this is my own opinion that uh Mrs. Bramley may have been distracted because she's now in another district.
So I think it fell off in the in the last month but we had 31 respondents. And were were they all from the high school or They were student respondents. All 10 from No, no. The respondents were residents in the in the burrow. There were 10 students that worked on this
project though. I believe it went out in the weekly folders, right? Yes. So, so I was weekly folders through the through the high school. So, it's basically residents but only district. So, parents of school children, right? So, what you're asking basically
is our approval or the burough's approval to get on board with a lot promoting residents to compost at home. Yes, but I mean the sustainability is under the opaces of the burough. So we could go out and do we can't do that.
I'm just trying to make sure I understand the ask and and again it's just if someone's interested in composting, we'll have the information for them. They can sign up for it through whatever means you have in terms of the green bucket. Correct. Okay.
So one one more question. So you need 50 households for for um green bucket to No, no. The the pricing that I put in there is the pricing for today. Okay. So no, my question is um is there a minimum number of households that you
need in order for Green Bucket to come to New Providence? Well, they're are they're already coming here, but Oh, okay. Because I'm a member. I mean, they they pick up already. The the pricing was an incentive pricing. we fully expect to be
far in excess of 50. Uh, and at that point I'm negotiating now for a lower price than what was quoted in here because I anticipate that it'll be substantially more. It's not going to be less. So, so I the only thing I I've mentioned, John, is once we get pricing, I think we have to get Jim Tesa
involved. Yeah. Once we get past a certain point, right? What do you mean? Um, well, on behalf of the bureau, you can't you have to go out to bid. No, no, we would come back to you. Yeah. I mean the idea is that we come back and report anyway. Sustainability committee can't just select the vendor. We just have to go
through the formal process of what John has done already. Right. So what happens after the six months? We do an evaluation. Why don't we do this? Because we're going to put it be putting out a RFQS, right? Why don't we do that? Add that in
there and give it a sixmon try and and see what it goes. If there's a lot of participation, that's great. If there's not, then, you know, we'll reassess everything and see if there's any uh Have you had any problem with animal control?
No, because they're in Well, that's the big thing because that's what the board of health was. Now, I spoke to the I spoke to the board of health in in Westfield. Um um Miguel Vasquez and Westfield, as you saw in there, is a participant in this program.
So when I went through the program with him, he said, "Yeah, we're fine." Because there's a top on that. So there's no there's not a problem with with animals getting in there. And my best example is my sister in the Thousand Islands who had a porcupine tried to get in her same bucket could
not get in. So yeah, I just know kids, you know, try to put the garbage can lid down all the way. But I think we try it for six months. Actually, just one more question. Can you just confirm there's no cost to the burrow?
There's no cost to the burrow. Yeah, residents sign up on their own. This is a resident program. Who do the residents pay? Do they pay directly? They pay green bucket directly. The bureau is not involved in this at all. And that includes all the marketing such as the publications and the sustainability publication and education
brochure. Who pays for that? Uh TBD at this point. So that is a possible cost of the burrow. Don't know TBD. It shouldn't be. It shouldn't be there. There should be uh stuff from stuff from the place. You would think, right?
You know how how it works. So, I'm just going to add that I'm currently one of the 11 customers for a Java compost. Um the five gallon bucket lid is, as John said, super tight. It's just down
the steps in my basement. Um, that's where you put the I have something on the counter that I collect the scraps in during, you know, until that's full and then I take that bag and I put it down in the five gallon bucket and it really I was surprised that there essentially
no odor. I mean, if you're going to open the bucket after a few days. Yeah. But keep it shut. And then I only put it out when they come to pick it up. I put it out on the on my front walk and they come and take it right under. You keep it inside in the B. Yeah. I mean
I mean I keep mine in the garage. Yeah. And um there really isn't any odor. Um so anyway, I'm a big fan. Um our garbage um that we have to take to the curb is less much less than it was before.
Um so that's helpful too. I think Kathleen, the only difference between Java and this green bucket is you you could from Java you can get the compost back or you can for the soil. That's correct. You can sign up for that plan. I don't do that. But the other thing is it
sounds like um you can buy it from Green Bucket, but they don't make it a part of their program. Gotcha. Yeah, I think that I buy I bought the the bags that I can use on my countertop from Java. Uh, I don't know if Green
Bucket offers those kinds of things for sale, but um, anyway, it is very convenient to have something in your kitchen to collect all that stuff and they're available elsewhere as well. So, I guess we'll get that information about how that works. Exactly. Yeah. Okay then. All right.
Thank you, John. Okay. Uh, I would only put in a plug for free cycle on September 14th. Mark your calendar. Look forward to it. What time? Yep. 10 o'clock. 10. What time? 9:00. All right. Thank you, John.
Yep. Okay. Andy, Marie, you're up. The reason I have Andy and Marie here, they're town engineers. And uh I know a lot of people had questions about storms and flooding and what has been done cuz
it it's come across like we haven't been doing anything over the years and I wanted you to give a report to explain to everybody what has been done in previous years and how many years ago we started all this. Uh no problem mayor. Thank you very much
mayor and council. Thank you for having me. My name is Andy Hipllet. Marie Ruff. Marie actually serves as your veral engineer. I used to, but you guys took my picture off the wall and now it's her. So, thanks for that. Just for a baseline, I I just think a map is a little
important. So, we brought a map over there. That's a map of the Berlin Providence. The bottom line, the blue line is the Pakic River. So, that's your that's your border. It's really to the north, but north is facing down. The yellow lines that go around kind of in a in a box, that's the border is New
Province. To the left of that map is Summit. Above you is part of Summit Berkeley Heights and and to the right is Berkeley Heights. Across the stream is Chad. The other lines on there, the blue line, the bottom against S. The purple lines are Saltbrook. They are all FEMA map
streams. Off of those, there are more streams than ditches that you know about that cover. And the the kind of the important part of showing that is is you're the bottom of the hill. The river is the bottom bottom. Everything comes through
you to get to the river, which eventually starts to head and goes down towards the Atlantic Ocean. Obviously, if you just do a little map search on New Proidence, about 24% of all your structures in town fall in areas that
are subject to flooding. It's a very high number because you have so many streams and you have so many waterways. Another little fact about um New Providence, which is a fact about all of New Jersey, when you have a waterway that's mapped like the Salt Brook or the
Pacific River, you have no jurisdiction over it. So what you can do with it is very little. FEMA andor the D controls it. So if you want to do something to it, you're controlled by the state of New Jersey and then you're controlled potentially by FEMA. The other thing I'll say is is your map waterways have
even more restrictions of wetlands and flood hazardies that the D controls on those also and there's a little known kind of New Jersey fact though it's known but we don't like it. I don't like it myself and that is in New Jersey whatever was built here was built here
way before I was even alive and now it's built. The state of New Jersey and the D says that if you want to make a drainage improvement, so we go on to projects, which we'll talk about, make a drainage improvement, we have to prove that the improvement does not increase the downstream water surface elevation more
than 0.1 foot or the upstream more than.1 foot. So the heck analysis, right? I know. So in my in my heyday when I was a little kid as an engineer getting out in it, I was a hydraulics and hydrarology engineer. I wanted to be in the cube kind of covered and don't bother me. I've obviously come a long way since
then, but when you do that analysis, you have to prove to the state you're not changing. So, for instance, when the Division Avenue bridge was done by the county, when the South Street Bridge was done by the county, the county working with everybody had to prove that they were not going to change the flooding upstream or downstream. Didn't matter
what the flooding is, it is what it is. You can't change it. So, whatever town we work in, whatever town I've worked in, wherever I've been, everybody's always like, just put it in a big pipe and send it out to Sag River and let it go. You're not allowed to do that. You could ask for it. You can't do it. The
state will never give you a permit to do it. It's not it's not applicable to anything. And the reason being is let's say everybody in the upper river basin sent their water downstream said we're going to get out of town. We're going to put in this big ditch. We're going to put this big pipe in, send it downtown. I wouldn't want to be Puquanic
or Pompton Plains because they're at the end. If you go to Pompton Plains, Quanic, you think you have flooding here, go look at their flooding and they they know this restriction. So if you tried to do it, they'd be the first one objecting to D and going, we ain't taking any more water.
So when we talk about projects and what you've done in your providence and how you've approached it, you need to understand the baseline that even though it it's somewhat defeating, no, it's it's not. You have a little control, but you have very little. The control you
have is you can keep your water moving, but you can't increase the flow. So could you store it in town? you could your ordinances allow that to be done and we'll talk a little about that. So I'll get in a little bit of like background past that.
So our burrow is 3.71 square miles 3.69 is land. So you have 002 it's water. The salt brook has three branches. The one on the right is the west branch. the one kind of in the center center.
This one here along South Street is the central branch. Everything else is considered beach branch. The east branch goes all the way up into summit. They're all mapped by FEMA. So FEMA's mapped those so they know what they are. Um all those purple lines and the blue
lines are are all have flood zones associated with them. If you pull up the FEMA maps, you'll see that a large portion of your downtown is in a flood zone. You can't change that. A large portion of South Street, parts of Maple, part of Central, they're all in flood zones. You can't change that. You can't move that water any faster. You can't
move any less. Those zones can't change. They're restricted by D and by FEMA. So, just a little basis of what New Province has done. Some of this is before I got here, some of it's after. So in 1975, a mayor and council that none of you
were here passed this the first storm or ordinance ever in this town to try to control storm water, at least try to give some measure over it. And you've built on it over the years. In 2006, you passed a new storm ordinance or modified it to say, you know, the one in 75 wasn't good enough. We're going to start
controlling all development. So anybody who builds in town has to meet a standard of not letting any more water off their site than before they built. Didn't matter whe it's woods to pavement, you have to make the difference up in storage on site. In 2021,
you made it even harder here. In 2024, the DP who ultimately has the control said to New Providence and everybody else, most towns were well behind you. They had not done this. That's not good enough. So now when you build, you have to reduce the runoff from your site. So
for instance, if I again if I have a wooded property and I turned it into all pavement, I had to ensure that the runoff off site is less than what it was from woods. So that has all over town, whether you're a residential property like when Matt built that man puts four seaf pits in and he still holds me to
that today. When you do that, you're holding on your property and sending it back into the ground. So now you're you are very restrictive. You not only passed the storm ordinance in 2024, you passed an illicit connection ordinance to keep it out of your sanitary sewer. And you passed a tree ordinance to protect
trees. Just that little bit I mentioned there put you ahead of almost all the towns that surround you. Put you ahead of most of the towns in the state of New Jersey. You've done more than most towns do because it has a burden on your residents and on your businesses, but you've done it anyway. You've had multiple projects since I've
been here. The ones before me, I don't know. Brookside Drive over by a Salt Brook School. You did a complete stream cleaning of that. You did lining of that. You improved flow that that stream had less flow. Again, not increasing or decreasing it upstream or downstream,
but bringing it back to its regular channel. In 2014, we did Pineway, Ashwood Road, and Brook Hollow Lane. They were streams that were completely encumbered by trees and debris. You went in because you allowed to take that back out and bring it back to its original
condition. You improved flow to the Pacic River and portions of the Salt Brook and you allowed monies to flow and those projects were grant projects. You didn't pay for them. You paid for some of it, but most of it was grant projects. In 2017, um you did the Grove Terrace and
Clearwater Dam overflow diversion. So what most people don't know is if you come across division through the divisionary bridge, go past the old Ping Wang property where you took the green houses down to increase flood plane storage area, you go around past the field, you go around past the JCPL
substation, and then you have to get under the tracks and go towards Maple Street. That can only hold so much water. It's an old crossing. It's way before anybody in this room was in this town. We were stuck with that opening. Somebody way before me decided that
opening is not enough. It's flooding everything. You then have a clear water dam there. Most people go, "What is a clear water dam?" Bernardet Marie and I know because you have a damn safety permit for a dam that never holds any water, right? That entire area is made to dam up 10 ft
high, crossro field all the way to Ping Wang property. The whole railroad tracks, you could have a big dam. So if a if the skies opened up and you had this storm we don't ever want to talk about a massive dam would form there. Part of that was this other project which we improved the overflow for both
the dam and this area going into the tracks. It now goes another couple hundred feet down through a meandering stream. We redid the channel with gabon baskets and we redid the trash rack to catch debris before it went under because there's another spot it goes under the stream. And it gives you two
locations across Maple Street. In 2024, we did the Maple Street project. Obviously, not a sol not endall solution because the stream backs up, but that helps get water and and lower storm events to the stream, which is kind of
downhill just of the railroad tracks. You also have, since I've been here, I've had a mandate mayor, as you know, we talked when I first came here. All capital projects which is when we do a reconstruction that has curve and paving and all NJ DOT projects need whatever upgrade we can to improve drainage on
our streets. That's more to improve localized drainage and you we've done that since 2006 and that's over 20 roads. DPW by mayor and council direction inspects and cleans every inlet every year. Does that mean we walk out of here and find an inlet that's
clogged? We could because they get clogged. So if somebody in this room sees a clogged inlet, tell DPO right away. to clean it out within 48 hours. But if you think about there's a few thousand inlets. So they inspect everyone each year and at least check
them once a year. You're way ahead of your your your towns around you. On top of that, we work with them and we inspect all the outfalls. So you have um a couple hundred outfalls in town. We go inspect the outfalls as per required by D to make sure they're free and clear of debris and make sure they're not having
erosion and scour that's going to then clog up downstream things. So, you're keeping your water moving. You're also in compliance with your TRA permit, which is your D permit. Who governs everything we're talking about? Whether we like it or not, they govern it.
Okay. So, significant rain events. That's where we'll get to. What happened? Andy, I don't necessarily care about everything you just said in those three pages. I got a rain event. So, here's here they are. And we can talk about them in no order. Date order doesn't matter.
September 21, Hurricane Ida, 7.43 inches of rain. July of 2025, we just had it, 5.5 in of rain. So that was 3/4 of Hurricane Ida, that storm, as odd as that storm may
seem. August 2024, 4.9 in of rain. May of 2019, this one surprised me because I didn't actually know it. you in that month of May 2019 you had 8.69 inches of rain. It's the most rain you ever had in one month. The only time you
had more rain than that was this one which is 2011 hurricane Irene was over it was about 10 inches rainier which I was here then if you were here in hurricane Irene this municipality was destroyed. It was there was debris everywhere. It
was destroyed at that time. We work with Jim Johnson. DPW did an amazing job getting streets open back then just like they did in the last storm, but that was probably the most rain I think you've seen since I've been here. In 2025, as we stand here today, this
number kind of took me by surprise. Through July, this town has seen over 31 inches of rain. Does anybody know your average rainfall for the year history? About 15 29 inches. So, you have five months left in the year. You have hurricane season to come
and you're already over your annual rainfall. So this year could become your wetest year ever. Now I can't control rain. You can't control rain. We can't control climate changes. We can't. There's nothing we can do. The only thing you could do knowing that data is to keep your water moving and
keep doing things that you've been doing. The other thing I will say on this data just as a baseline, a 100redyear storm in this area is about 8 inches of rain an hour or eight inch rain in 24 hours. And I hear from multiple folks, a lot of
you call me, Andy, we only had five inches of rain. That's not eight in 24 hours. That's not a 100 year storm. That's not exact That's not exactly how it works. So it does when you when you get to the media and get to nj.com, they talk about 100 year storms, but when you get to a geeky hydraulics guy like myself, it doesn't work that way. So the
way it works is that's a good baseline. Then some guy like me has to get in the room with a heck one or he two program or or a rational method program and say what was the volume of rain that would be your inches and then what was the intensity so your August storm was five they say
there's no gauge in the province you had 5.5 inches of rain or 5.55 inches of rain in two hours you might have had a little more up on South Street a little less on Union a
little more on division. When you have the deerfield flume overflowing at that rate, that's well exceeding a 100redyear storm. That's so far beyond it. That that's a design that was done way before me. Obviously, I wasn't even an engineer when that happened. That was designed to take a
100-year storm plus. So, that area saw well in accessible 100-year storm. And you from a burrow perspective, that's you're now talking about we'll call acts of God issues. So, it's very it's very difficult to deal with. Anthony Cast here real quick. I just want to make sure we clarify this
real quick because I know this is going to be a question. You you said there's nothing you can do. Um and you said climate change and whatnot and and I I just want to make sure and clarify that you what you mean by is from an engineering perspective there's
nothing that you can do about climate from as an engineer there's nothing I can do about climate. the first thing. So, so in other words, like somebody planting more trees and doing other things in relation to climate change is not what you're talking about. I just want to make sure that we're clear on that cuz
So, I I'm again I'm not I'm not a weather guy, but I'm also have engineers. We don't learn about things like planting trees affect climate. Maybe maybe that could argument. Yeah, maybe that could be maybe that could have maybe that could have effect or not. It's not I'm not here to debate that. What I will say is whether it's
unpredictable, right? Okay. We don't know how much is going to fall or not fall. Okay? Literally 10 miles away from here where I live when you guys got flooded in that storm in July, I got this much rain. 10 miles away. Zero. So, it's very unpredictable.
Again, with the baseline, you can't do anything to improve your situation unless the D says it's okay. And their restrictions are really stringent because you may want to move the water out of that map. the next downstream town doesn't want it and the state
doesn't allow you to do it. So, all you can do responsibly is keep it moving and everything I'm mentioning here in your projects, that's what you've been doing, keeping it moving. Can I ask you how how do you quantify how you're not affecting downstream? But so, I could do that. I have that's my next thing.
Okay, good. Good. Because I I know we talked about sediment and things of that nature, right? that that kind of grow over time. Uh that could affect the flow. Um but how do you quantify like what you just said earlier about getting back to your original, right? Like you
can't you got to get back to your original. You can't you can't make it worse or or more. So I I'm just in my mind I'm trying to wrap my head around I'm an accountant. I'm not an engineer. Like how do I how do I quantify how do I how we don't
affect downstream u anymore by doing something. So if you take New Providence land mass to 3.69 square miles that gives you a hund well I'll just round it 103,000 103 million square feet 103 million square feet of land area.
If I took the 8 inches of rain of the year storm and put it over that that area and again it's intensity and volume so it could actually be worse. This number is conservative actually storms are actually more than that. If you put it over that area and convert it to gallons, 100year storm is 514
million gallons of water. So you're like, okay, I don't know what that is. So in my head myself, I was like, I don't know what that is. How how big is net life stadium? That's what I was thinking. Metal stadium is 778 million gallons of water. So six 100year storm will fill
60% or 65% of Metife Stadium. I don't know about you, I've been there many times. That's a really big space. So storing that, I'm not saying it's impossible, but by having an ordinance that makes everybody who develops stored on their
property, you're chopping into that number. What you're never going to be able to control, and this is unfortunate, is what comes from here in Berkeley Heights and what comes from here in Chadam and what comes down the PC River
from the likes of Mendum where it starts to here that backs you up. Yeah. So, what happens is when the Pic River gets tons of rain upstream from Mendum up from Mendum down to here and backs it up, your water has nowhere to go. You can't get out. You're stuck. Hurricane Irene was perfect
example of that. It backed up so everything in town flooded because it had nowhere to go. The August storm, it had plenty of places to go, but it was too much for the pipes and coverts and stuff that exist. And you can't make them any bigger. Yeah. You're not allowed to. You already store your water in your
properties. Now, you're not going to go to properties who are not developing and say, "Hi, Andy. I know you developed prior to our regulations. We want you to put storage in your property. You can't even do that as a government that I know of. You can't I don't Everybody else since 2006 has put stormware drains on
our property. Matt, you're my example cuz you and I when you're resident, we argued about it and we had a discussion. He's like, I don't think this is right. I'm like, well, so why should you send more water to the neighbor next door? And and you can't. So you've been you've done it. The D didn't pass this rule
until 2024. You did this in 2006. It was like cutting edge back then. People around you, cuz I rep towns here were like, they're crazy. They're crazy. They're going to do that. Nobody's going to require that. Nobody's ever going to comply with that. And you've been complying with it for all that time. So, it's actually been successful. So, from
a volume perspective, the numbers are daunting. But if you deal with it one development at a time, it's not as daunting. The thing you can't deal with is the intensity and volume of that 100year or more storm. A lot of those storms I mentioned just because they're,
you know, hurricane Irene who was 7.7 something inches that was well over a 100redyear storm because the intensity took it up into the two 300 400 year storm. The other question I get from a lot of people is Andy 100year storm is supposed to be once in every hundred years. That is not
what it means. So what it means is some I'm not making fun of you. You asked me a question. some accounting or being counter said, "Let's do a probability on this." Not what engineers do. We just listen to what they tell us. It means that the probability is you're going to get 100
year storm once in every hundred years. They're finding out that that's probably happening more frequent. Nobody's changed it yet. The D has made some changes to the storm ordinance, which you have, which we adjust for intensity and volume now. So, your new ordinance is now in line with that. So, your restrictiveness in ' 06 is now even more
restrictive with the amendment. So, now going forward, everything's going to be more restrictive. And that's a positive. It's not a negative. I think what what you brought up that we're 3.9 or seven square miles, but most of the water that we get comes from
up top from Berkeley Heights up to the top of the mountain and from Summit down along the back of Springfield Avenue there where it goes into uh the Ping Wang area and uh Grove Terrace. And we get it from Berkeley Heights from the
Autobate too. Correct. Your area drain used twice as big as area farms and all up there. So correct. You know that 3.7 isn't exactly accurate. So the problem with this last storm, it hung at the top of the
mountain and went down in the Scotch Plains into down to Route 22. We all saw the damage it did there. And we were actually on the fringe. I mean, Berkeley Heights got a lot worse than we did. So the berkeley stack out a lot more. It
goes the other way. So actually goes away from you goes more towards the bar. But still they still send a lot of water to your leg. Should have got basically nothing. Nothing shot nothing. Andy just quick question. So you mentioned maintenance is probably our best approach. Some ordinances is a good approach. Any projects you're aware of
downstream of us where they try to widen the river, try to do anything? No. They can't. They can't. They're not allowed to. No. No. So when they did when they did the river road bridge by the shell station, right? They went through the same effort 0.1 foot upstream 0.1 foot downstream. They can't change it. It was the exact same elevation. I mean you
have to fix that that bottom of that beam elevation and you have to model the hydraul detail now the hydraulic grade come across the bridge and see how high it jumps up and make sure it doesn't jump up downstream. It floods somebody. You can't it's you the effort to do it. I always tell folks if you want to hire
a hydraulics guy to do a heck one study for you. I'll do it for you to show you that you can't change it and you're going to pay a lot of money to do it cuz it's a really expensive model. It's 1,000 feet upstream and 1,000 ft downstream. That's how you have to create any consortiums where towns get together downstream and try to any kind of major. So there was one and we were involved in
Roselle Rosselle Rosselle Park and Cranford I guess the Cedarbrook I I don't downream. So there was a 10-year federal project there about 20 years ago. And what they
did was the Cedarbrook had filled in. All the bridges were substandard crossing it. And first downstream did it first, then upstream did it second, then Roselle did it third. And they brought the stream back to original condition and brought the FEMA Max back to where they were because the stream had filled
in. The sides bank filled in, the bottom filled in. They fixed all the bridges. The section in Roselle which we were involved in was $10 million. When we came on board, the plans were half done by another consultant and he had been working on for 10 years.
We got on it and by the time the D issued a permit to bring it back to original condition, it was eight years later. So the design process for approval took 18 years. And if it wasn't for political pressure, the project would have been killed by D because the D felt at that time that the
environment and the salamanders and the turtles were more important than the flooding in Roselle. The houses shouldn't be there and and political pressure got them to change their mind and say we can bring it back to ro condition and it's done and it has helped limit the flooding back to what the flood maps say today. So the maps
the maps are good. It was a good project but it's pain it's painful. Well, they tried the green book project, too, years and years ago after hurricane. They said they weren't going to build anything on the north side of 22. You look at it now, it's all over developed.
And I think that's half the problem is all this overdevelopment, this high density housing that they're shoving down our throat isn't helping anything here. It's horrible. Correct. And you know, I don't know where where
it where it ends. I I really don't. And one thing I will say, Congressman Kaine was out year and a half ago, 2022, two years ago, and Bernardet and I walked around with them and it was a project of four towns,
Long Hill, Berkeley Heights, New Providence, and Summit to to dredge out the uh the Sake River to snag it, I would say, more. Well, it it went all the way to the final and the previous Congress to this one
noted down. So, I mean, we tried and I got to I got to say the congressman tried too. He just we he kept on top of it. It just was knocked out knocked out of the budget. Right. You have a you have a and this
may be too much of it. Please stop me. I as an engineer, especially as a hydraulics guy, back when I got out of school in 1990, they were proposing a project in observer back then. Yeah. They've proposed it three times since then. And what everybody's found every time they model it is they're going to
spend now what is amounts to more than a trillion dollars. And don't fall off your share to increase and improve for a two-year storm. Yeah, that's hard to justify. trillion dollars for a two-year storm. Why is
that? Because our environmental groups, DP, EPA, will not let them make the stream wider and send more water because name the animal, name the tree, name the insect, you're going to destroy them and you can't do it. Not for me to argue. That's what happens. So now you got this battle of flooding, meeting environment,
and the state has a control. Again, I don't want to tell you what to do. You have no control. It's an agency in Trenton that then ultimately has an agency in Washington. They do. They have the control. In New Jersey, it's the D and they let you do very little. Andy, can I ask a question? Um, when you say
that nothing can be done to affect the current water management system because we don't own it, but other people have been able to restore it to its original condition. You're allowed to bring it to its original.
You're allowed to bring it to its original condition. How is where is the original condition documented? Like how do you know what the original condition? So in new in New Providence, you're luckier in some other communities. Your streams are mapped.
Our streams are mapped. They're mapped. The federal government's mapped them. FEMA's mapped them. You have cross-sections. You have elevations on them. You also have 25% or so are concrete lined. So the concrete line ones are the channel. So that's the channel. That's the original condition. When you look upstream of the concrete line channels, you can see your bottoms.
Their bottoms are actually where they should be. So, they've been pretty good. The little estuary ditches that run off it that aren't Salt Brook, they require permits to clean. You can't clean them. It's hard to determine original condition. But, they're just going to move a little more water to the Salt Brook if you clean them. Not saying you shouldn't clean them. It's just there's
a lot of them, but your your bottoms of stream are good. Where you get stuck is your banks start to grow with trees. And you know, that's something you can do. But we have this other agency in D called the Wetlands Group. Their opinion is you can't touch anything there. So when you go down the
D and submit an application and go, we want to clear the banks of our streams because they've encumbered. They go, that's really good. We know Flood Hazard says you can do it. We're not so sure. We need to review that permit. And I I've very rarely ever get that permit. And the cost to get it is very
expensive. And and they have no time frame. Wetlands is a whole different group because they make you look at things like threatened endangered species in the distance of the top of bank to homes and whatever is there. So it's it becomes a very big negotiating
process and it's very expensive. So Andy, you know the maintenance we're doing. I'm sure you're going to recommend some other things we might be able to do. Yep. Um so I'm curious. Yeah. Under So my next thing is what what we can't do and what we can do. So
just a couple things what we can't do. First, we can't increase the water surface elevation downstream. So we can't actually just send all our water somewhere else. You can't dredge your streams without a permit. That's what you're talking about. But your problem is not the bottom of the stream. It's the banks.
And you need a permit for that. Not sure if we can get it or not. It's an arduous process. Very expensive and does have an effect on the surrounding homes. And you have to remove the material. So the material can't stay there. So it's got to go. 99% of that material goes out as impacted materials because of runoff
from streets and roads that has contaminants in it. You can't create large detention structures. Let's say we wanted to store Metife Stadium. We wanted to store Metife Stadium here. One, I'm not sure we have anywhere to do
that. Have million hundred millions of gallons of water. But number two, if you're going to do it, you're going to be destroying significant amounts of environmentally impacted areas. And you have to go to the D first flood hazard, then wetlands, and then the wildlife folks, and they're going to go, "Wait a
second. There's what you name it, it's there. They're not going to let you just wholesale do it. It would be a massive individual permit, which you'd probably go through a process and never get it." You can't change the Pacific River. There's nothing you could do about it. I know it's frustrating. I know it backs
up water in your town. you can't change it. So, when that floods, you're flooded. No matter what happens, it comes right back up. There are things you can do. So, keep the word moving. I told Alice when I came here, when I came here back in 2006, Al pulled me in his office
upstairs and said, "Here's my go." Because I was younger then. I need to do two I need to do two things. You'll be successful here. When I give you a road project, get it done. And on those road projects, make sure you put in drains to keep the water moving. And that's what we've been doing all this time. to keep it moving. In addition to keeping it
moving, you could go into a stream, which you already do. Your DP does it. DPW does it. They've been doing it since 2014. You see a down tree, you take it down. Now, you don't have enough DPWs to walk the streams every day, every week. That's what you have residents where they live there. If they see a down tree
blocking the stream, call the DPW. They'll take it down. You have a process where you take the tree out and remove it. You've done it since 2014. The other things you can do is keep your outfalls free of de debris and keep them open. Every year they're inspected. Whenever we find a problem, they're cleaned. If somebody has one that we
haven't got to or one that's gotten clogged in, let us know. DPW will clean it out right away. Um, the other thing you do is continue to enforce your storm regulations, which is part of it. Your boards are a part of it. Your building department's a part of it. Your DPW is a
part of it. Since 2006, you've been reducing runoff from News and you've done a great job of it. you've cut somewhere into that, you know, 500 million gallons of water I talked about. Everything helps. It all helps. And the best way to approach it without exuding
literally tens of millions of dollars from this mayor council is to do it on a case- by case basis. So if somebody comes and builds behind bar that development that I say I'm not fond of it, but whatever, it doesn't matter what I think. There's a big detention system there. That's reducing the runoff from that
site. So whatever you saw at bar before, there is now less water coming off that site. Expensive costs money. The people that come in and buy the units pay for that cost. But you're doing it. You're doing it with every little house. You're doing everything. So those are the things that you can do to help yourself.
In fact, D actually had them reduce the size of the footprint of that pro of that project. Correct. Because of the wetlands. I think it was like a reed grass or something that all of a sudden was on the endangered species. They of course didn't reduce the number of units unfortunately but it did reduce the
number of bedrooms which was positive for the burrow but right so you asked me to come here and kind of summing it up this burrow since I've been here since 2006 and we met you gave a mandate to make this better and you've made it better
every you spent you spent millions of dollars to do this in in addition to that you spent millions on your sanitary which is a whole another discussion but that does play into this because those two systems are on top of each other and you continue to do it. You've passed all these ordinances to make it harder. You've done more than your communities
around you. You're doing everything you can do that the state of New Jersey is allowing you to do. You can never do more than they allow you to unless somebody above us and that'll be governor hire changes those regulations and there is no indication that's going to happen. Only indication it's going to get that's going to get worse.
So that's all I have. You have questions? I so he mentioned me a few times because I did have a project I don't know seven 16 17 years ago but um you know and at the time I I didn't know any better right I was just wanted to do
my project and and I didn't care about what happened with my neighbor right again I didn't know I was young homeowner um and I didn't like you at all believe me I remember
and I had spent I had to spend a lot of um in engineering and architects and planning and all that stuff and and honestly, you know, my project came out amazing. My yard is amazing. My neighbors are very happy uh with with
how that worked. Um and and I know you could sit here and talk about this. I you know, this is the same enthusiasm that Andy had when I met him for the first time. And this is how he talked when I was trying to get my project done and I was getting upset because he's he's literally probably one of the most intelligent engineers I've ever met in
my life. One of them hydraulics and hydrology. I don't know about electric voltage same thing. Same thing. I don't think they mix. But he's very passionate about you know his work obviously and and you know he knows he knows his stuff. So I really do
appreciate you you know taking the time out of your day to come here. Um, I you know, it's funny, you know, now I was thinking about this. I actually was cleaning my driveway the other day and I just was watering the dirt and the dust, whatever, and I got it to the street and I was like,
and then I went in, I wait a minute, you know, that's all going to go into the sewer system. So, I went back out, I swept it up, and to be honest, it was it was like two dust pans full of d, you know, of debris, right? Like just dust and dirt and whatever. that is what is
happening to every single driveway, right? Every rainstorm, all that stuff gets, you know, washed away. So, I would encourage, you know, little things like that. Like, I'm like, I'll never let that sit in the in the street again. I'm going to sweep it up and make sure I I don't let it go into the landscapers out there that blow all all
the grass and debris into the storm system. Yeah. I I walk my dog three times a day and I'm constantly kicking leaves off of the off the grates, you know, to make sure that, you know, they're not clogged when it rains. And and I encourage people to do that, you know, just little little things like that. I did I did one quick question.
You said 24% of the burrow is subject to flooding. 24% of burrow structures are subject to flooding. Subject to flooding. Not in a flood zone, but subject. A lot of flood zones. Some of them are in next because we have tributaries that come off flood zones that are not mapped. So they're
all subject to flood if the once the salt brook backs up they back up. Right. Right. So they're subject to flooding. So someone subject to flooding might not necessarily and I don't know if you know this but may not necessarily need a flood insurance but someone in a flood zone would you can still get it though. Right. Right. Right.
And if you're I'm a s again my little dorky world of engineering. I'm a certified flood plane manager because I love the hydraulic side. If you're if you're in next to a stream or in the province next to a next to an area that has a ditch, I would highly advise you to get the flood insurance outside the
flood zone. Zone X insurance. It's cheap. It covers you. You're covered for any water coming from that stream. Not from this guy, from the stream. All right. Good idea. Marie, why don't you sit down? You have You're a food. I I think Andy and I
appreciate the the the presentation and better understanding of of the streams and what our limitations are, but I think for a lot of people in the audience, the frustrating part is, you know, what can they do? Um the street backs up. Obviously, it's because the
river's too high, there's nowhere for the water to go. Um and you you mentioned case by case basis, so any I I know you both know this town inside and out. any any potential locations you think we need to hit and start investigating sooner than later.
It goes back to the basics of take your unchanalized version of the salt brook, the ones that are not concrete line, but the concrete lines you can look at too if they have debris in them and follow that purple line, start there and make sure it's free and clear. And I I would tell you my suggestion would be the
budget burn that and I tal say I budget some money every year to be a little more proactive instead of reactive. Right now you look at it once in a while but it's a lot of reactive but you have people call in and they say I have a tree down we go take it out you can budget money be more proactive
the difficult part again you look at that map right so let's just hypothetically say this is like the smaller version of the town down the street if I clean all this and clean it really darn good everybody down here's getting more flooded yeah right
if I clean all this and clean this all the way down to the OOLP bridge It's just going to back up there anyway and back right up there anyway. So, you have to balance your You don't want to just clear something upstream and flood somebody downstream. The state doesn't allow you to do it anyway, but you have
existing streams that you can keep clear and keep them flowing. What I would recommend is being a little more proactive with budget monies for it. Thank you. Okay, Andy, I have a question. Um, I know you said, you know, the D, the state keeps knocking out the project to dnag Pacic
River. You also said that it's it was a lot of money for very small impact, right? How often is that looked at? Because I I mean we see trees across the Payic. We see stuff and you know it seems like it should be a concern but there's but
never it's it's state New Jersey does nothing with the Pic River and and and you know what's funny? You look at the map Union County ends at the stream bank. The river is totally in Morris County, right? But Mars County has no
jurisdiction over care less because all along their river is all a bunch of wetlands. Yeah. So that just fills up. They don't care. What happens? How what what happens with the Payic River and and streams of that magnitude. It always falls on the the
municipality or county that has that bridge that all the debris hits. Yeah. Right. So once it hits that bridge and backs up, that county or municipalities go in there and clean it out and let it keep going. That's that's what happens. That's got to date goes back to eternity. The state of New Jersey has this plan to take care
of streams, right? They never have. They have no plans of doing it. They're all reactive. I don't know why it it's our value and resource in our homes and our businesses if we do it, but they don't. I don't want to. Okay. Any other questions up here? You
know what? Let me open this to the public and only only about an engineering question for Andy. I don't want to go into anything else. Does anybody have a question? Yes. Come on up and uh give your name and
address. Um I am not an actual speaker so I can't believe I'm doing this because I s um I don't My name is Josephine Char. Josephine I have the microphone closer to I live on I'm Josephine closer to you. You just move it.
Okay. I live on Woodrest Drive. Okay. Yeah, I I appreciate your presentation. Um I know the town has done a lot of stuff. I've lived here 33 4 years, something like that. Um and I think that um it would be great. It's great that you explained all this, but
sometimes um like I would love to know how I can talk to you about my situation and things that your the town has done that maybe have impacted my street and that there's no one like we don't know who to talk to and so right. So, I would love contact information before I leave
here. My whole block was going to come, but this meeting was um schools are starting, colleges and all that, vacations and all that cuz we feel like this great project was done on our block and on Maple Street that we were all so very excited about. And I will tell you
that I I don't care about the big storms. I I know that there's not much you could do when it's an IDA or something like that. I care about the regular storms that now we get water that we didn't used to get before you guys did a project. So maybe there's
some tweak that could be done so that we don't get water every day. I just had that ho guy back. I spent uh tens of thousands of dollars years ago so that I would not have water. I have never had water. I didn't even get water for Sandy. I am getting water in my like a
pond in my backyard every time it rains. And it's been ever since Woodrest Drive had those storm sewers. And I think it's because all the water from behind me is now going into the storm sewers. So my water can't go there anymore. It there's no room in the storm sewers anymore. I
think that I mean I don't know. You're an engineer. I'm not. But can you talk to me and come to the block? Yeah. Yes. Because we were great. Like and you know and we were so when we saw the storm sewers I remember coming out and talking saying thank you. Thank you. This is so great. was out there with you
cleaning out the uh the sister. Yeah, I called you, right? Yeah. Because uh cuz we were I called and he cleaned out the uh under the under the train where it goes and you Yeah. You remember me? So, but I I'm telling you that Woodrest Drive has gotten worse since
those storm sewers came in and I think it's because Why do I have no effect on you? We get I would love to see Right. It's just happened from then and we just want to see what we could do because it's Yeah. It used to be the Johnson house that only got, you know, everyone knows the Johnson house, right? The one on
right on the train. But now it's it's spreading and we just want to stop it before it continues. Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else? Yes, ma'am. Hi, Kate. Hi. Hi. Good to see you all in person. Put a
face to the name. Very good to meet you. Thank you for being here. Thank you for preparing this. Um, I just want to state for the record, Kate Alec, 31 31 West Third Street, off Livingston, not near the river, not near a waterway. Um, am here tonight in the spirit of collaboration, partnership. How can we
help each other? How can we be the eyes and ears for DPW? Appreciate the efforts in the past month. This is not for political gain or an attack. It's from this moment forward on the record. How can we be a team from an engineering perspective because I follow the rules. Um, again, like I said, not in a
waterway, not near not near the Pacific off Livingston. I am experiencing 8,000 gallons of water standing still in my backyard for five plus hours on a regular summerstorm. Not an Ida, not an Irene on a regular I could name I could
probably make your list probably three to five hits longer. What I'm understanding based on the DPW work is that there's significant blockage potentially in what goes around my house and pushes out to wherever it needs to go. But from an engineering perspective,
what I what I want to understand, we've we've put $50,000 in mitigation on our property so that when it comes in, it's easier to get it out. But are you saying basically that DPW and the the the drain maintenance and all of that for someone where we are is our main line of defense
for potentially um getting the water back to what I heard it was before I moved in six years ago potentially. So we go back before you moved in because I know about that situation. So between third and fourth street there's a line that runs between the homes and that eventually goes to the
salt road. Keeping that line free of debris is your first line of defense. That that's a DPW issue. If you see blockages, you know, you should call them. I don't know how often they check it. So, I didn't know you check the in, but I'm not sure the pipe. Once the salt broke backs up,
you got no line defense right up that line just like that's what I'm hearing based on where it's all coming from. um engineering perspective, if I were to put in sewer pumps that can pump out 6,000 gallons of water in an hour, would that at least Can I do that? Because that's keeping
the water moving, is can it handle it where it needs to go? No. Okay. No, there's a big that's a big question. So pumping out that much more those pumps, that's you couldn't that system probably exceeds the cost of your home. So that's a very big system. We're saying that
if you did, you're sending a territory flood. are still going to keep backing off. So, it's like pumping uphill, right? If you pumped up another hill, the shoe come back. Well, that's what I'm dealing with with the to your point, homeowners do renovation, they have to put in a big something, but my something has nowhere to go, right?
So, we're all we're all on the same page about where where we are. Okay. You know, the four homes between Third Street and Fourth Street, I mean, going back to like 2006, 2007. Yeah. There was problems then because remember 11, we had Irene got just decimated where you are. Yeah. And there was just nowhere for Yeah. And so what I would just like to
really plead um at I'm gonna be emotional and I'm really not an emotional person um to to the Barrow Council is to protect people who don't know that they're coming into this risk because I didn't know that
when I spent $580,000 on my house and I have watched my little girl stuff float away for six years. Um, and I'm out $93,000 and I'm stuck because my property value I don't know what it is. Um, we need to protect people and I know
we can't slap flood zones and I don't want you to slap a flood zone. Then you're really I I don't even know what that would look like. That's where I get out of my educational abilities. But I'm pleading with you, there has to be a way to protect potential buyers, young families that are coming in who know they're in a flood zone but didn't know
they were going to be their floorboards were going to be floating down the river. We have to do something to protect potential buyers. And if that doesn't tell you that I'm here for so much more than myself, I don't know what else will. I I understand what you're saying. Yeah.
Actually, the state law says the real estate owners and the homeowners have to tell you this story. And they didn't. No one told me. I know. And that's why it's not an attack, but no one's going to tell. I know for a fact that people are taking water all the time and they're going to lie when
they sell their house. I can't because I've blasted it all over social media at this point. So if you hang, we can talk about Yes. I don't want to There's a term in flood plan called repetitive loss. If you're a repetitive loss for flooding, the state has a program called
Blue Acres which we can help you with. And Blueacres pays you to full value your home. Not the full value. They bought it and we and I don't want to leave and the home has to be taken. You should see my home. Alex saw it. We've done amazing efforts to to mitigate it on our side. That's that's
But I needed to hear that because I need to know that that's where we are, unfortunately. And please, let's protect other it doesn't matter if you're young or you're old, but people need to know the risk. We have to figure something out. I'm a comm's PR person for big pharma and tech, and I'll help you do it. Thank you.
Thank you. I know that uh we had that pipe uh cameras, right, Bernard? We did. Yeah. Okay. Yes, ma'am. I'm Molly Greb and I live at 123 Woodland Road. Um similar concerns. Uh
we live moved here four years ago and we are in a flood zone. Um, we knew the inherent risk in buying in a flood zone, but what happened on July 14th was not the usual flooding you think you're going to experience. We saw our kids lost all their toy toys, both cars. It
was horrible. Um, I'm not going to read this whole thing that I uh typed up anyway, and I'll keep it simple. So, we are at the bottom of Deerfield. My question is, what is going to Right. It's Thank you. It's been cleaned out. We see the trucks up there. We're grateful for that. But moving forward,
is once a year enough to clean it out and check on it, or can we do that more? Because I want to live here. I want to raise my kids here, but I can't have that happen to my house. Cuz I live right up the street. Yes, I know you give great candy bars on
Halloween. Yeah, I'm noted for that. But um yeah, I I saw your house. It's just horrible. The fence, everything. And the outflow pipe though is behind her house.
And I guess the builder put in the swale back there when they made that whole development. It goes right from the flume through Peter's house unfortunately and and down through Mike Barry's house there in between and you know goes down that swale.
Yeah. And I know the water that comes down there. I mean I get water from Greenwood coming down Greenwood and right down into my house. Oh, I I know what you're talking about. Uh, how many truckloads
of silk did they pull out of there? I I I I mean, it was like 30 30 trucks. I mean, huge amount. We've taken trees. And I want everybody to know that we've already spent almost a half a million dollars on
remediation up there on Deerfield and the flume and and and all that. So, we're on it. But, uh, the other thing I I I I want to say is that, and I think I told you, Peter, that um, you know,
we're trying to get FEMA funds, so you can personally put in a claim. As of right now, um, I talked to my, uh, governor's rep. He got back to me and he said the governor hasn't done it yet.
Um, I I I talked to uh Senator Bramnik. He's going to have the governor's chief of staff call me tomorrow morning. Uh, Governor Kaine or Congressman Kaine was up at the site and he's doing whatever he can do. But this isn't a
congressional thing. This is this is from the state of New Jersey. The governor's the only one that can do this is to ask Washington. So, we'll see where it goes. But we're we're we're pushing the buttons. And if I'm doing it, Berkeley Heights is probably
doing it. I know Planefield, Scotch Plains, all those. And uh Congressman Palone and Congresswoman uh MacGyver, they should be like uh Tom Kaine going over and telling the governor, you're
going to do this. So, we know what's going on. It's just, you know, we got to get some action. But to your to your point, it might not be enough to do it once. We have to evaluate that. And as Andy said, maintenance goes a long way. So, but we'll get to it.
Okay. And it this has been going on since Andy when when I hired Andy, what 2004 or whatever? Clean multiple times. Yeah. And I said, get the water moving, get the streets paved. So, thank you.
Sure. Yes. Hi, I'm Nikki Witchend Doll. I'm Crest Road. Um, my question is more engineering related. So, when we moved in 21 22 years ago, there was a covert built um, I'm on the Crest Grant water
line. Maples right behind me. Um, and they built a covert apparently worked great because they got flooded prior to that. um worked great for 18 years, didn't have a thing. Um and then all of a sudden we had the
range you talked about prior to that, we didn't get anything. Then up to four years ago, we got it in September, four years ago, whenever that was. than in August of last year and then again this year. Why is there such
a change all of a sudden between getting the heavy rains before? We never had a problem. We didn't have a drop of anything. Now we're walking arm in- arm out of my house. The water's pushing us so bad that we had to be like rescued. So, right. So, the cover that's there, I mean, we can look at it, but the
culverts there can only handle so much water. Right. So, once you get past that, it can't handle it's going to back up. Yeah, I understand that. This I mean this is not a great answer. Literally as a freshman in college in engineering school one of the first things they told us in hydraulics was as an engineer understand one thing. You
can't predict rain. The weatherman can tell you they think what's going to happen but it's unpredictable. There's no weather really is unpredictable. I get that part. So years I had nothing. Then the last nothing. That's crazy. Nothing. So nothing.
You know what it is Andy? It's the rate that it came down. I just can't handle. We had rates prior to that that were worse and we didn't get water. We're getting water now. So, I don't know what's happened by the train station. Let's come look at it.
We've hired We've hired an engineer. Something Maybe something is maybe something I don't Let's look at it. Okay, I'll give you a call. That's the covert where they had the one pipe and that bumps up to me. I had that, excuse me, same thing. And same thing,
we had two sister pipes put on each side to handle more of the flow cuz it it used to back up really bad and and it worked. Anything. So, yeah, we can throw a camera in there and see. I don't know. All right. Thank you. We'll see. Thank you. I know Andy's been giving out his card,
but the action line is is also a real good way to get to him. So, it's the best way. It is the best way. It like Alex said, communication wise, then it's actually uh documented and we can get back to you. Bernardet sees it every day and she can get to
Andy and get to you. Yes. Hi. Hi, my name is Jackie Sang. I live at 362nd Street. Um, we flood. I I back up to the creek. My backyard is green
acres, so I maintain it all. I make sure it's cut, the trees are taken care of. I make sure of everything. Now, my question is to you is that which way does the piping come out into the creek
from the street? Is it on a 45° angle or does it just shoot straight out? because of course that's how it's going to back up if it just shoots out straight. I don't I don't know. I don't have to look at second straight. I don't know. Um you know pip concrete pipe if it's concrete pipe is straight.
So for instance if my husband's a sprinkler feder so he's gone back there. He's seen the piping through the hole of where all the water shoots out from the street. He said it goes straight out instead of going on a 45 to go with the flow. So it
could pull the water when the stream goes, but apparently it doesn't. So, you know, that's a good thing to look at. I could I definitely believe that. So, we we can go look at that. Yep. So, I know all week long there's been a gazillion people all over my lawn checking it, looking at all the drainage, and honestly, all the drainage
has been cleared, everything. We've never had drainage issues, but thank God my insurance the way I made it, I made sure I had endorsements under backup a sewer and back of a sump pump. So that's the only way I was taken care of this year. And it runs I'm assuming it runs
probably right down the side of your house. Correct. So basically with you guys also building the two town houses, million-dollar town houses, and you're putting that drainage underneath, I've noticed the change.
I have conquered rapids coming down my house from the new uh two town houses. So now I have water all three. I don't get water in my house from the creek. I get it from the front where the street backs up. So apparently
something's not driving there is that's like where it mainly comes in from. We can I can go ahead. Let me say the Yeah, it looks like go it goes straight down your property line because that's the area between properties and hits the correct. So, there's something there that's I don't want to say it's clogging, but definitely I don't know if
the pipe size is not the right size or something, but I think that's something that we need to look at. Look at me. Thank you. Yes, sir. Conor Gton. I live uh on Char Road. So, similar question to her. Uh
which Charwood? My Charmwood. Charmwood. Yeah. by Jim Mat. The new the new Charwood. Uh the new high numbers. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. So, I know my my next door neighbor is Joe Muglia. I know you've probably dealt with him a bit in the past.
Um and this seems to be more of a more recent issue. Now, we've always had flooding, always had issues. It is what it is. I understand that you can't really dag the river. It's a bit of a frustration. Um I know Joe's written to you. He he's he's told me uh that we
want to Joe and I have agreed and I know he's told you that we're fine with you increasing the size of the pipe. I don't know from an engineering standpoint all the water gets to the river at some point flying down Runny and Gordon and
it goes through our property as well as through the storm drain that goes that goes through the property. Is there an issue with increasing the size of the pipe? Well, you'd have to rip up the street and everything else. It's No, no, it's just just just the back like the backyard in between because all
of the drainage comes down from Gordon, all the all the storm drains lead into the singular storm drain at the base of Charm Road because when every time it floods or there's there's a every my rate is if it's over an inch an hour, I
need to stay home. I need to My mom can't go out. My sister's a resident. She's going to be a doctor. I like I need to stay home to I guess protect the house. No one else in my block really gives a My my French. Um Joe's too old. I have to stay out there at that
storm drain removing the three leaves that pile up. 263 Charmwood Road. There's four storm drains on Gordon and Charmwood. They they all have the
protective grates. Joe mentioned that uh the TPW tried to come around and put a grate on the main mouth and he said if put it on I'm just going to rip it off. Thank god it there is no great there because that is the central
area that everything like diffuses back into the river. I have to keep that essentially clear to allow the the water from the storm surge to push into the river. When it goes to the left side of your driveway, correct? It's in between my house and uh
Joe's house. Does the exit pipe is that below the river line or above? Sorry. The exit where where it enters the river. Are you above the river line? When the river gets so high, you know, it's not we don't really have a river issue because we're
Yeah. The the river is like I don't know like the the full backyard and then maybe a little bit more and and it goes down I don't know two three feet. It's really just just from the curb volume eventually goes right down your driveway. It it'll it'll all just build up. It'll
go into the garage. It'll go into the the front of the house. Nothing happens on That's an area we may make an improvement to either add another inlet and take away your pain of having to clean that inlet off the Yeah, let us look. That's something we can look at as a as a project cuz cuz like either that that pipe would
need to be bigger or if there could be or more volume to get in. You might not be able those inlets can only take so much water. So instead of getting in there create a citrus to get in there or to fail not being your driveway that would take your let let this is one we will look at. Yeah.
Remember use stop line for action. That's okay. Now you have the card. Thank you Danny. Dan. Yeah, Alin, go ahead. Alan Swanson, the Overhill Road. I I had a Payic River uh question. Um and you
talked about one of the first lines of defense being removing debris. Do we know I mean the Payic goes a long way, goes borders between Morris and Essex County, goes up to Patterson and what have you. Do we know that
downstream the efforts to maintain a clear path and that the debris is regularly cleaned out so that I mean I know it's a slow moving river but if there was a if there was a debris
problem because one of the main issues with flooding is of course when the debris comes up to the bridges and then it creates dams but um I'm just wondering if there's is there any state. This is a state issue. The state of New Jersey takes zero governance over it.
Even though they're waterway, they've never done anything. They don't clear anything. If the bridges get clogged up, they rely on the counties and just the only thing that's done downstream because we do rep some of those communities are is they they are very much into the Blue April program. They're buying hundreds of homes to
create area for areas to flood and they raise the homes or take them down. So, the areas flood because they have no they the complaints you get down there. Yeah. now total wink part. Yeah, they're buying lot they're buying hundreds of homes and taking them down because there's nothing they can do
again other than money for lawyers. The state provides no benefit. They have they do not help at all. They can't help the state's health. They never have help. I'm just I'm just wondering if there I mean we talk about you've mentioned about regional issues in the in the past with regard to these kinds of issues and I want I'm just
wondering if if there isn't a possibility in terms of advocacy to create some kind of a debris commission you know for doing it with four towns. That's right. We tried doing it with
four towns and they knocked it down. The only one that doesn't have to report to the D are the Army Corps of Engineers. And I was told by that by the guy, the rep, and they weren't giving them funding to do
anything. So, we tried the regional thing. The state won't let you go in there. So, that's where we're at. one the one one other thing um a lot of talk of individuals talking about the culverts
near their houses and what have you. I'm I'm wondering if from the town standpoint if it wouldn't be uh helpful to those residents to provide some kind of a professional service that would
come out and answer some of their questions particularly those people that are in the flood plane areas and things that what what can they do on their property and what's the potential in their property? I mean, I understand that, you know, when you get a storm like we had, it might not be
obvious where we have that, right? So, if somebody if somebody's in a flood plane or they're in a flooding area, we're certified flood plane managers. So, we're your certified flood plane manager state. It's not a man required program. Again, it's something you've done years ago at most towns don't do.
We can help talk you through the FEMA system or help talk you through what you can or can't do. And just from an engineering perspective, we can tell you what you can or can't do around the stream or pond or whatever. Just have the calls. Put on the hotline. Somebody come get these calls all the time. Okay.
So the these people that are talking about specific issues, they could they could contact you. You're welcome. This may council welcomes that. They what we want people to do is go on the website, get on the action line and have it sent on the website so we can coordinate with with
our engineering company. Nobody should be calling the engineer himself. Just just get in touch with the burrow and the action line and we'll coordinate with the engineers. And the burrow's done this this process for 20 years.
We go out and people call us all the time. We give them advice. We try to help if we can. If they tell us there's a situation, let's take the Charwood situation. Just looking at it. I think there may be a solution, we'll look at it. A solution we'll present at American Council and go here's our project for you. But if I don't know about I again, if we don't know, can't help.
Is there perhaps a public I I I live up in Tall Oaks. It's probably about the highest house in the in New Providence, so it's not an issue for me. But but is there can that be sort of publicized to be sure that people know? We just told we just gave the process. Okay.
Thank you very much. Mr. Mulligan back there. I'll keep it quick. Good evening, Mr. Mayor. How are you? Very good. Thank you and thank you for the good presentation today. Just uh I I'll start with a question if you wouldn't mind. I
Oh, I'm sorry. Dan Mulligan. I live at 20 Woodruff Court, which would it's off Livingston would be numbered Seventh Street if they kept to the number scheme. Right. But the question would be you you mentioned before about the new development and how they are basically
uh net you know positive as far as the water flow. How are they doing that underground? Underground. So unless they put an above ground base in they keep containment underground. They can do ground wells on Sixth Street. You know about five years ago four new homes were built ones
I will never ever be able to afford. God bless them that can. But these homes are built 4 feet or so higher than the previous homes and it impacts the water flow, the the drainage, you know, from storms. So, we've seen a real negative
effect since those homes have been put into place. I'm guessing they don't have any containment that nets them positive, right? Because I know they were, you know, I don't know. They would. Yeah, I think they would. Which house did they have? Which um there were uh
we're in Woodruff Court off Livingston and there are six street uh where the four new homes were. Got it. Yeah, they don't have them. Six. Yeah, they do. Right. Sixth was the new street, but uh seventh would be us Woodruff and eighth I know
also gets flooded. So, we're all impacted and I I know you know the council my experience with them is not great, but tonight you not long I should say. But everybody seems very bright here. Obviously, my pitch would be Don't grow with my image.
Any new, you know, uh, homes or that are built, we we had one home that burnt to the ground in our culde-sac. I hope that they will be a net positive effect on the, uh, on the water. Yeah. Any new building like that, they're going to have to uh, do that.
That's state law, too. It is. It is. We were we were I want to make sure that this this this idea is understood real well. So let's say there's an existing home that burnt down. That existing home had a certain footprint. It had a certain driving
footprint. And let's just say that house in a in a 100-year storm. Just think of a solo cup of water that came off it. If the new development proposes all the same impervious area, no change, they don't have to put anything site. They're allowed to discharge. That works. They
always discharge it. If in fact they're a major development, which means they'll take like four homes built at once, they get deemed a major. Now they have to reduce even if they were had that solar cup, they have to actually reduce it to an amount less than that, which is so much the two the 10 and 100year storm.
So is it within the burough's you know providence to you know make restrictions that for any new home singular or burnt down home become net neutral or net positive on a water flow example
is that something that the council can be can do anything is possible the burden to the individual homeowner is tough because they had something was there if it's now if it's now a a woods and there's no home there. There's going to be a big big market. So, when there's
an existing home, you rip it down. How and again I'm not the counselor. How much burden do you want to give those homeowners when their house down now? They're putting in know I'm going use Matt again. I apologize, Matt. Four se on a piece property is 20 30 grand. It's not It's not It's like they're
spending $500 to do it new home. There's a lot of transition of homes, too. and and people, you know, taking them down to the studs and rebuilding and and anything they add new, they have to store 100% of that. 105%. Right. So, one for one, you you're allowed to
keep doing what you did before, right? But anything more above that, you have to put it in greater than 300 ft. An increase of 300 feet. And and um and and I think it's duly noted. I we absolutely should look into that for sure. Um, but there are other
things, correct me if I'm wrong, that could also change, right? You know, the the location of the house, the location of the roofs, right? Like all different things that could change. Actually, the weather the water goes downhill this way or downhill that way depending on, you know, there's a lot of different things that could have changed
in relation to the impervious coverage not changing, right? So I unfortunately I'm not sure if there's things like that that could be governed. But to your point, I think looking at the overall guidelines in terms of total impervious coverage and what we're doing now in
terms of if someone's changing that regards that just got adopted are really restrictive and that nobody's really seen that impact yet. They're really restrictive. They're really putting a cost on new development and redevelopment. Every town
state, state regulation, town. Yeah. And we, you know, the obvious uh opposition to that is we we all couldn't necessarily buy back into the town if if everything got so expensive. But but we got to protect our homes. I think you heard enough people here tonight
that and I did send uh you a letter today to the council and every about our specific situation. So, I appreciate a response to that. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for using the action line, Dan. So,
should have called me. I would have helped you. I'm sorry. I was home today. What helped you? So, I'm Peter Goldold. I live on 39 Deerfield. So, the Deerfield Flume is in my backyard. Goes under my driveway. We've been there for about 20 years. We're upstream from the berries and the
gribbons and the vowens and theers and in 20 years we've never seen the amount of water that we've seen recently and in recently it's within the past couple of years. You mentioned the 2011 storm that
was supposed to be the big one. Flume didn't overflow, right? I agree. We've seen the flume overflow more in the past four or five years than I've I've seen since we've been here. I do want to say that the support that the
town has provided and the accessibility and the just the action that I personally have seen is tremendous and I wanted to thank you all for it. the work that's been done on the Deerfield flume. Now, you were talking about you have to
move the water. That's only part of it. The part of it that I really wanted you to talk about, if you can elaborate a little more on, is the benefit of the retention and having the water stay in one spot until the flow is slowed down
and then it can dissipate at a more reasonable rate. So to prevent the overflow of the flu, to prevent the flow downstream to the to our neighbors, we got three and a half ft of water in my house. That's never happened. Right. So
the amount of work that's been going on in the past two weeks, spectacular. The flume and the retention basin behind my house is night and day from what it used to look like. So, could you take a
couple of minutes and talk to us or at least explain to us how that retention basin being excavated and having all of that soil removed, how do you expect that is going to affect future flooding
integr Yeah, they still have some more work they have to do, but they're getting there. I know when we look at that basin, we say, "Wow, it's going to store a lot of water." You know, it is, but not millions of gallons of water. That's that basin was
made to do the following. A lot of words come from offhill. When that water gets to a certain velocity, it starts bringing everything from rocks to trees to people's sheds. You name it, it's coming down. If you get to that basin, if you look at the end where it dischargs and heads towards your house, there's a big trash rack and there's a
wall. It's supposed to catch all the debris in that basin. So, the basin is supposed to catch the debris and then let the water go over with no debris in it. So, when it gets to the flume by you with a trash rack, there'll be hardly any debris in the 54
in pipe and the 30 pipe will take all the water. Right. In the last few storms, what has happened is the basin's gotten full of debris or it's it's been encumbered by soil and debris. So now the full force of the water and debris is going and that's hitting that outflow structure as you saw trash is broken.
Oh yeah. Once that fails, it's going over. So the maintenance of that I think Bernett and I looked at Marie that maintenance bringing it back to its original condition is the solution. Now, I can't predict
the next storm and the debris coming down. Once the debris fills that basin up and and it starts going downstream the debris, then you got a problem. I think the burl's commitment is is they basically get it back where it was. They're fixing both trashs as long as the debris doesn't go to the bur. That I
appreciate, but so let's look at the last storm that we had on July 14th. Had the basin been excavated to the point where it is now, do you, in your professional opinion, believe that there would have been water that would have overflowed the flume?
I wasn't here that day. I seen some videos of it. I don't know the flume behind your house. I don't know how much debris was or wasn't in the time it was going over. So, I saw videos of it being wider than the floam, which tends makes me believe that the
basin was already full and it was not contained inside the channel anymore. Once it's not contained, so if it was done like this, I I believe it would have worked. I don't have any way to prove that other than see and I'm I'm just asking for your your opinion because from what I've
seen, and I'm I'm an engineer. I'm not a hydro engineer. But from the amount of water that that basin now appears to be able to be a to hold, you know, I already now have PTSD every time it rains and my neighbors are
having the same exact thing, right? So, can we have hope that the work, the hard work and the expensive work that's been done by the town to restore that basin to what the original design basis was in the 50s will give us a reason to be able
to sleep better at night. Yes. So, we put it back to original. Some of the trash still have to be fixed. It's back to original. I want the design couch for it. But I believe it was designed for 100 year storm plus about 25% reserve. If a storm
exceeds that number, it wasn't designed for that. So if it exceeds that, no. If it stayed within that, it's going to definitely work. Okay. So we can hopefully sleep a little better knowing that that work has been done. And again, thank you for doing it so quickly and so efficiently.
That blue one's made in what 73 because we had a huge storm that wiped out all of uh Deerfield in the early 70s. I remember that rich I spoke to because we had I had an English teacher that lived on Deerfield. I remember he
was wild. So I think so there the flu came first. I don't know when in the 70s the basin with the other trash. So the big basin was meant to catch a lot of debris that was clogging up the flume. Right. That's why that was kind of okay. Okay. Okay.
There's work to be done right now. So, thank you very much. But again, now thank you, Peter. Is there a calculation we could do to to to say that that will fill up surveying if we get so many inches per hour that will fill up in x amount of time?
I was just curious. Hi, Liz Martin, 75 Ridge View Avenue. I have a question about the action line actually since you keep promoting it and I filled out a very detailed action line, sent pictures and this was my response. When the when the river rises
from large amounts of rain, the water from the river backs up storm water pipes and then it says ticket dismissed. Where does one go from there? So, I've done what you have asked by filling out the action line. No one came to my house. No DPW guy came by. Who am I?
Like, right now what? I don't right. But but you keep saying call call my who am I calling, right? Fill out the action line. The ticket says dismissed. That was pretty much the feeling I got that it was dismissed. Like like everybody else, I've seen the changes in the past
four years where before we didn't have water. I I live close on Redu close to the river, but the water's not coming from the river. The water's coming from the storm drain that the town is supposed to maintain and make sure that the water is flowing away from our homes. My husband is out there in waist
deep water in a lightning storm clearing debris because we have these tiny little drains that the the like the engineering part of it doesn't make sense. Like you have to be able to let the leaves flow down, I guess, or something without
clogging it all up to back it all up. Well, I I think the state mandates the size of the holes in the grates, right? And they don't want some debris going in there because then it's going to clog up the pipe, right? The the entire state of New Jersey fights itself. The environmentalists
want one thing, the engineers want another, the government and politicians want another. The state mandates that great or curb piece, not letting garbage in the brain. Because if you let garbage into the brain, it ends up in the state river. it ends up in New York Bay and
like go all this stuff. But but if you're in a known flooding area, we can come out. I don't that I didn't respond. That's not me. But we could come out and look at it. We could give you our cards. You guys don't want to do that. We'll come look at that. It's a known flooding area. We could take that that cover off
and let garbage, right? But unless I came to this meeting tonight, my action line response I feel was inadequate for the situation that we're in. like we had water on our first floor. The only thing I would say again I don't control the action line remember
in the pro you have engineering you have DPW you have staff in the pro hall and I would just tell anybody because I have an action line in my town where I live if you get an action and you don't feel resolved you can just go and click again and say I got your axon kind please can I see the engineers and if you see that
then we'll come okay great then I will fill out another one be be vigilant I should say because there's a lot of departments here it's no use I mean you know we could be as patient as we can, but you know, DBW has limited resources. There's only 14 DBW members and you have two of us right
here. So, just be a little vigilant. We're trying our hardest. We'll get to We'll get to you. Great. Do you want a card? I got I took a picture of your car back in my row back here. That's great. Anyone else?
Howdy. Uh Brian Gardner, 25 Noah Drive. Uh I was very lucky uh to not have direct flooding impact. I have two engineering questions for you. One is you've we we've talked a lot about the the limitations of the the the flow rate, the runoff, the retention. Is
there anything that the town could do either directly or through citizen advocacy to increase absorption throughout the town so that we don't have to have those those downstream effects? So let me go back to earlier. So back in 2006, the burrow passed an ordinance
that said if you build this very commercial residential and you create new impervious area, you had to store that store on the ground. So that's sending now since 2006 you've been putting all that water on the ground. So go further in your question if I look into a little more.
Could the burrow do more and say if you're putting your driveway in it's got to be gravel or something that's more absorbent? You could. You know, I don't that's you have to be careful because you have a and you have a town that is what it is today. If you start backing into regulations that make people start moving in this
area, you might not get the result you want because the soils going in Providence are more of a clay type soil and a silk type soil and a sandy soil. So, if you were down in North Carolina where my uncle lives, we can take the water and cover it right in the sand. It'll go away. If you're in New
Providence, we've seen with situations like Matt's again where he puts four seed pits in because one won't handle it and the water goes down really slow. So you don't have good soils that are highly absorbed to take the so you might be putting a burden on people that's not going to solve it. I don't think you get
the result of that. So what I'd say is what you've done so far from 2006 forward is taking effect takes a long time as it redevelops it and gets better. So you aren't changing the impact of groundwater significantly over a 20 year period. you have but even even trees ground cover
anything that like individual residents could do proactively there there's nothing that helps absorb it I mean it never hurts that tree right weeping willow is a great tree to have plant up right you could put in trees that work everything makes a difference okay
so I would say if you can make a difference like having more greenscape do it it's going to make a difference it'll make it might just make a difference on your block but it's going to make a difference okay very cool thank you and then the second question is um understanding the the the 24% issue and and the long lead time and all the stuff that you're
talking about and and and pairing that with the increasing frequency of these storms, are are there things that we should be thinking about now even if they have a 10 to 20 year lead time because we know it's just going to keep getting worse so that we should be starting now
other than to you know petition the state of New Jersey to come in and clean these streams. I mean, I think you've talked to your congressman and senators and the governor's been here and unless they want to take a project on, you know, your your combined school and
municipal budget is far below what it would cost to do these projects and streams. I mean, short runs of streams are tens of millions of dollars to do what you need to do to make them expensive. And again, the state's probably going to do anyway. Should have flood street. So, I would say contact your senator, your congresswoman, your
assembly member, your governor, and say, "Listen, we need help on your committee." I think that's the best thing you can do. Yeah. Because I mean, I I think mayor, you you made a good point that that that a lot of good work has happened over the last 20 years. So, so what I'm curious about is what is that next 20 years worth of work and and and even if it takes a decade to get a funding request
through, better to start now than later, right? I keep the water moving. So how keep it moving by keeping your machine clean, you know. So part of 25% of your salt work is concrete line. You can't do that anymore. You're not allowed to do that, right? So you're not permitted. So we would love the concrete line all move faster.
State yours won't allow it. So that's why it doesn't go. Yeah. Because then you're just increasing the flow downstream. Velocity is everything. So there's the way you do it anymore. So I don't know what other you can make other than say that governor if you get the Pacific River faster really big storms, we have a problem. All right. Thank you.
and and we are right I mean that's we talked about those are the things that we have been doing right we have been engaging you know um okay anyone else seeing no one thank you Marie thank you appreciate you coming tonight
because you answered questions that I certainly couldn't so you can let us know we'll follow her and we'll go visit the people that have questions we'll get back to you sounds good thank you Okay.
Yeah. I want to take a picture. Okay. We have a uh second reading on ordinance seven. Please read the title. Amending chapter 147. Motion. So moved. Second. Okay. What this ordinance is is
increasing our uh fees for the licenses. Uh if anybody wants to address this ordinance and this ordinance only, please raise your hand. Seeing no one, I declare the public hearing closed. Roll call, please.
I Okay. Need approval minutes. Uh July 15th, please. So moved. Second. All in favor? Yes. No. So be it. We have uh a lot of correspondence.
Okay. State New Jersey Pig underground storage tank. Um it's uh taken care of. Uh Rachel Wood 1489 Springfield Avenue regarding emergency management notifications
during storms. Uh Union County Utilities Authority Union County Utilities Authority solid waste tipping fees effective July 2nd. types 13,3 C and 23 and 27 have gone up
to 130 $1302 per ton. Actually, they really over the years they've been very very uh minimal. Yeah, minimal. I you know that was one of the best things we ever did.
Okay. Um, Patrick of Berkeley Heights, introduction to Oregon for affordable housing set aside. Uh, Chris St about requests for uh, road closure communications. Um, Jim McCarthy about a homeless person
at the Murray Hill train station. Apparently, they called 5 hours later, nobody was there. So um if you see something like that just call immediately and police officer will be there. Okay. County units an office of the
order report and recommendations board of adjustment 18 homes oval. Another one for 15 Woodland and another one for 31 Primrose. another for 66 Salem. Lot of building
government keeps been busy. Uh county union uh human services power transit system for the seniors. I know we're all over that. The province Board of Education a special meeting in August
14th. Uni County Emergency Home Repair for seniors. Anybody uh impacted by the storms and their seniors. Um the county will give you loans to uh work on your house. So
uh and Carrie Kandria about uh televis public meetings which we did do. Okay. Um any comments, communications? Nothing. Okay. Uh let's go to council
business. Uh uh thank you mayor. Uh the first item under administration is an authorization to solicit RFQS which are requests for qualifications for professional services. Uh the bureau will review the
qualification statements only from those individuals or firms that submit a qualification statement which includes all the information required to be included as described in the sole discretion of the bureau. The bureau intends to select a person or firm that
possesses the following um professional financial and administrative capabilities to provide the requested services and agrees and meets to the terms and conditions determined by the bureau to provide the greatest benefit to the taxpayers of New Providence.
Uh second is resolution 2025-210. Uh this is a resolution approving requisition R2501714 for Fovionics imaging technologies in an amount not to exceed $10,000 to to for document microfilm scanning ESCJ
co-op number 65 MCE SCPCPS that's approving the second phase of document file conversions and it provides for the removal scanning cloud storage and ultimately the destruction of the paper construction documents
affordable housing. Thank you, mayor. Resolution 2025-211 is a resolution authorizing agreement between the Bureau of New Providence and CGP and HLLC for affordable housing
administrative agent general services. Uh so basically this agreement um brings on um or continues CGPNH to act as our administrative agent um for all issues relating um to affordable housing
including applicant services, income certification, administrative agent resale fee um and the like. Um basically we are not to exceed 13,300. Um but that does not include units for sale which cost more. So, in general,
the maximum amount of the contract does not exceed $30,000. Diane activities. Thank you, Mayor. Resolution 2025212 is a resolution authorizing the application for the 2025 Kids Recreation
Trust Fund Grant for the Burough of New Providence. We are seeking approval to apply for the 2025 Union County KRTF grant for various improvements including um Warner Park soccer goals and lacrosse
goals, Oakwood Park fence repair on the baseball fields, various parks, um swings and chains, locks for equipment bins, um etc., and additional equipment replacements. the matching funds for the award of this grant will be approved in
the 2026 capital budget. Um, we apply for this grant every single year. Um, it just makes sense. We get between usually like 50 and uh $30,000 a year. Um if you remember um some of the things that we
got um we got $50,000 last year um uh 30 $50,000 uh two years ago for the the pickle ball courts, 35,000 for um Lions Park playground. So uh we're very conservative with what we ask for and um
you know look for exactly what we would need. I mean we we've done a lot of work, right? in our parks and our fields are some of the best in class and and it's nice to see now we're just we're just trying to maintain them and and keep some some new fresh equipment around. So, it's good stuff. Yeah. And um if you guys remember every
year Allison in spring goes around and checks all the parks. So, there is a running list of exactly what needs to be done to keep it in tiptop shape to uh to increase the value of our fields, but also to keep our residents safe, the little kids. Okay. Resolution 2025213 is
a salary resolution. It's approving salaries for youth and adult programs, after school supervisors, basketball officials, and senior instructors. Resolution 202514 is a resolution approving partial payment number one to Current Elevator
Technology, Inc. in the amount of $85,000 for the project commonly known as Elizabeth Barabash Manor Elevator Replacement. So this is the first payment for bonding, insurance, engineering, drawings, surveying, and equipment. So that's exciting that
that's getting underway. That part of our affordable um we I believe Bernett, we got a grant for that. And um so we got a grant and it's also part of our affordable housing. So the elevator itself is not $85,000. It's
only the first payment. Thank you, Mayor. Resolution 2025-215, resolution authorizing contract for municipal management software from Spatial Data Logic. This is an annual contract renewal in the amount of $26,900.
Uh resolution 2025-216. This is the one that everybody was talking about today. uh resolution of the Bureau of New Providence authorizing emergency repairs and remediation to the Deerfield Road and surrounding areas as a result of the July 14th storm. So this
is we heard uh the gentleman say all Montana construction uh doing storm restoration on Deerfield Road um and the Deerfield Flume which includes cleaning all down trees, shrubbery reposing, clogging, dangers removal of debris from the trash racks, removal of accumulated
rock, debris from waterways, sediment, etc. Uh woodland builders emergency replacement of the trash racks at the flume and Maple Street damage by the storm as well. And then of course, Kier's Engineering just for the inspection of services for emergency
work pertaining to that storm. Uh resolution 2025-217. This is a resolution approving the final payment to Northeast Roof Maintenance Inc. in the amount of $60,532.50 for the project commonly known as the partial re-roofing of the municipal
center and memorial library. All done with that. Correct. Finance. Thank you, mayor. We have resolution 2025-218, resolution authorizing the payment of the attached bills payable list amount
of 20,138,155.7. Uh some of the significant items on this list, uh first first up, board of ed, which is the August tax levy for $9,354,86. uh the depository trust which is the payment of our um bond anticip uh
anticipation note. This is principal in the amount of $9 million. Uh we have Tilcon New York 485,367 that's annual road paving again depository trust another ban pay uh this
is the ban interest now uh 382,499 uh Horizon Healthcare for our August healthcare payment 147,496 the library got their appropriation for August of 104,957
Um the library roof repair like we were saying that went out to Northeast Roof Maintenance 60,532 and our recycling uh for $33,418. Resolution 2025-219.
This is a resolution authorizing the first amendment to the contract with professional property appraisers for municipalwide reval of all real property. Uh what happened here was the contract was sent to the state of New
Jersey division of taxation and the county of union for review. They each had additions that needed to be added to ensure that the bureau is meeting all statutory requirements per regulations before the director will sign off on it. Some of the significant items um
included here are standards for reval. uh the completion date is to not be later than November 1st of 2025 and then assessment notices will not be sent prior to November 10th of 2025.
Um, under quality of principal and employee statement, uh, what we're seeing here is that supervisors shall have four years of practical and extensive appraisal experience in the appraisal of the particular type of properties for which they are
responsible. Two years of this experience must be in the mass appraisal field and occurred within the past 5 years. So, we want people that know what they're doing, obviously. Uh, neighborhood map. The firm shall create a a neighborhood map prepared for the
municipal tax assessor that will indicate all neighborhoods and or the value control sectors in the municipality. And um under taxpayer review procedure, sufficient time shall be allotted to hear and conclude reviews on or before
December 15th. Resolution 2025-220 is a resolution certifying the 2024 annual audit. Uh the governing body of each municipality must certify by resolution to the local finance board that all members have reviewed the
comments and recommendations in the annual audit. I know that every member of council here was given a copy of the audit for review. So I took a look at that. Um, resolution 2025-221 is a resolution approving the corrective
action plan required as part of the annual audit. The auditors did make three minor recommendations. I see that Jim Ta is here. He's already provided them with a corrective action plan. Um, the three items were human resource
related. Nothing, you know, significant or very impactful. um had to do with our um the employee savings plan or what we 403b or deferred whatever you they call it on the municipal side. Um but the
rule is that anybody over making over $5,000 has to be included in that employer plan. And uh what happens is that a lot of the part- timerrs, you know, they might be at $5,05,
you know, and not have been included. So, you know, I think we are putting plans in place maybe to track that a little bit better going forward. So, that's that. Um, resolution uh 2025-22
is a resolution refunding or applying overpayment of taxes to certain property owners. There were three uh properties that had duplicate tax payments. So, that's going back to them. Okay. Nine. Thank you. Thank you, mayor.
Resolution 2025-223 is a resolution of the Bureau of New Providence authorizing the bureau to participate in nationwide settlement agreement with Purdue to resolve claims involving their role in the country's
opioid crisis. Um, as we've had over the last couple of months, there's a variety of agreements uh related to opioid and um we this resolution allows us to opt in uh to apply for that settlement agreement.
Okay, we have public safety resolution appointing Mike Gillamini for as a permanent patrol officer. I got to tell you, I can't believe it's been a year already. Unbelievable. He's done a done a great job.
Okay. Uh resolution appointing Mark Martin as class three special. He will be uh located. He'll be the sleo at Robert School. Okay. Authorization to hire two police
officers to fill two retirement vacancies. Chad Wilson, uh, Sergeant Detective Bureau gave us his, uh, retirement and same with Greg Scarverson. So, um, we wish them well. They've been great,
great, uh, employees all these years. And but now we need to be proactive and fill those seats. So there's uh going to be an opening at the John Stanler Union County Police Economy and so we the
beginning of September so we can put them in there. Um and um they'll be graduating in June of 2026. So what would it be?
uh without being the full staff. Okay. Uh we have written employment resignations from Mark Grant and Maryanne Deno for crossing boards, but we have two new
ones, Micah and Bimbo Jr. and Elizabeth Rafar. uh resolution uh uh for Warner public Whitman Wilmer Whitman public safety group. It's a long night
for fire department gear and raffle applications. Uh RA 1245 for the Rotary Club and RA 20 or 1246 for the MPHS
bandwagon. and they've been properly prepared and reviewed and go to Alex for public works. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Uh resolution 229 is a resolution authorizing the application for the 2025 Greening County Greening Union County grant for the
Burough Open Province. This is authorizing the application to uh uh apply for a $3,000 grant from uh Green Union County. Uh every tree purchased by the municipality will be matched by Union County. Uh it's a great great
program. Uh this not only the trees are coming they will be tree for tree but they will also be uh installed by the forestry professionals with a one-year maintenance guarantee. We apply for this every year, don't we? Uh I'm not Is it this grant every year
or I remember 2,000 in years past, but maybe going for three this year. We get some every year. So, okay, we'll go to council committee reports. Um, couple things I just want to I just
talked about retirements filling the vacancies. So, we'll be having to do interviews, which is so much fun. But um now one thing I I I do want to do is thank
everybody the first responders during the fun. You know, I don't think people realize how lucky we actually were. Nobody got hurt, nobody got killed like in some other
municipalities. In a lot of ways, we were fortunate, but we did have a lot of home damage and I just, you know, my heart breaks for them. And, you know, I got a little water stuff I can just vacuum up, but I
I I I've seen some of the devastation out there. It's just unbelievable. Um, the DPW was outstanding. I mean, you saw those streets at night.
There were there were boulders. There were logs, trees in the street. Nobody could get around anywhere. They had every single street open by 5:00 in the morning. They worked all night. Talk
about unsung heroes. I mean, and anybody that has anything to say about the way it was handled or what what people do here is it just doesn't understand how and why
government works the way it does and it takes a long time to figure it out. And you can hear from Andy how strict the state is with touching any waterway whatsoever. I also want to uh thank uh
Bernardet. How you managed to get all all these repairs, you know, coordinated and done was incredible. I also want to thank Jimmy Tesa, the council, and Bernardet for being great
financial stewards of the bureau. You know, there's a lot of towns around us that had to go out for emergency bonding to clean up. Because we do what we do here and what we've done over the years, we used the money that we currently
have. And I think that that speaks volumes about how we run this bureau and how financially sound we are here. And I guess the rating agencies understand it too because we kept our AAA bond rating. So I want to thank
everybody and I can't talk about National Night Out because I heard it was great but I was on vacation. So but I'll leave it to Kathleen. Thank you mayor. I'm just going to talk
about the diversity committee. Uh we met last night. Um, we talked through the potential actions we can take to support diversity and enhance our multicultural climate here in New Providence for the remainder of 2025 into 2026. Uh the next
thing coming up is Hispanic Heritage Month and some of our residents and um uh committee participants have um joined up with residents from Summit and Berkeley Heights and there's going to be a joint event held at the Berkeley
Heights YMCA on October 11th and the diversity committee would like to be supportive of that and so we will be bringing a request um to council to be allowed to have a table at that event. Um and
I stop for a second. Yeah. I thought we didn't have a diversity committee this year. I thought it was a next year thing that we were gearing up for. No, we have it that the people haven't been officially appointed. So, who are you to committ?
Um well like I said nobody's officially appointed but we have um you want the names of all the like how many like I don't need we have about uh 10 residents. I I think what they did that is that if they haven't been appointed they're not
covered by our insurance unerstood but this is happening out the but they're representing the providence no I mean they're not they're not the diversity committee is not actually the
ones working with summit and Berkeley Heights on this it's people that residents who are participating as unappointed members of the diversity committee. That's not what you're presenting to us. No, I'm just You're saying that I would like the diversity committee to
have a table there. I've offered to staff the table for the diversity committee just like we did with unity day. Um, you had a members, right? Well, I mean, we have to make a decision. Do we want a diversity committee or don't
we? Because otherwise, we're not going to do anything this year. That doesn't make sense to me. What doesn't make sense is that this should have been done where people are appointed so they're covered by the insurance by the insurance because we're liable.
Well, then we can do can we do a midyear appointment? Oh, of the people who have we revised our procedures last year to to appoint our committees to to actually go out to all the committee chairman, right? to engage the the committee
members and others to try to uh re reup for the next year. Right? I think what what happened in years past is we've had plenty of committee members who just stopped going and the list became cumbersome with people who weren't even doing anything. So we we updated the procedure to have
that kind of all hashed out by the end of the year so that we can appoint them for the year and then go forward at the beginning of the year. So I this year was going to be like a transition year like it was you were going to go out kind of. Yeah, we did. And we were I mean I've been reporting on it
and I think I think you're recruiting for next year which I think is great, right? I I we just the committee doesn't exist right now. Shonda we didn't Shondaanda it's but we didn't appoint we appointed her. Yes.
Okay. My my apolog. Yeah. Well, I think Okay. So, in this case, I would like to suggest that we make an exception and ask for a deviation from the procedure so that we can get people I would like I think we should take that back to be honest with you. I'd like to
talk to you a little bit more about that. Um and what you've been doing have momentum built now. I would hate to see people kind of walk away from it. Yeah. Yeah. Listen, we we we thrive on volunteers and as a community about it all the time, right? So, let's just table this and
then we can, you know, have some discussions around it. That's a great idea. Sure, we can talk about it. I was just giving you an update as to where we are. That's it. Thank you, Diane. Thank you, mayor. Um, I want to echo
your sentiments about um the burrow employees, our burough employees. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your professionalism, your dedication, and uh all the work that you always do for our bureau. Uh community activities has a bunch of things. Um I know I'm a broken
record because I always say go to the source, go to our new us um on community activities. Um there's still a week and a half of summer left and there's still some spots in uh summer camps. So, go to the website, call the uh department if
you would like to um uh try to sign up for those. Uh the fall brochure is available on our website and registration opens this coming Tuesday, August 19th at 9:00 a.m. for our fall um classes.
Um, uh, uh, John mentioned, I don't know if I'm taking Alex's thunder, but, um, the sustainability committee, um, in conjunction with the recck department, uh, the free cycle fest will be held on
Sunday, September 14th, 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. in the community pool parking lot. Donation drop off is from 9 to 12. I think you can always find some great things there. Um there was uh some storm damage at the Dorso Center. Our
insurance uh company came out and looked. Um so there's a couple things that have to be done there. So in the meantime um they're working with the insurance company, but the staff and all programs are located in the wreck
department. So it's a little tight, but they're making it work. Um, and one other thing that I wanted to talk about about uh communications. Uh, there was some uh chatter about communications after the storm like uh
we've all talked about. Uh we didn't realize how incredibly um quick and how much damage would be uh would happen in such a short period of time. So, um, and just going from memory, Chief Hen, um, Bernardet, Alex,
who else was on the call with us? Was it Lisa on or Matt on the call? Maybe we had a we had a, um, a phone call, um, about communications in and around the storms. Um, and we had discussed that,
uh, actually the burrow has been proactive. we're looking for a new OEM coordinator and um that person might be able to have a little bit different coordin uh communication efforts. So that is something that we have been proactive with. We've been talking about
um it was something that we recognized you know after the storm. So just to look I think you saw a big change between the first storm and the second storm communication. Yep. Yep. So and that's about it.
Lisa, um, summer's been a little quiet with some of the committees. Um, but, uh, beautifification is still trying to get something on the on the calendar, but, uh, yesterday we did meet with public safety. We met with the fire
department. Um, John Will and Drew. Uh, John, Will, and Drew presented a um, Yeah. Well, I he presented a a nice presentation just on the staffing and the challenges around
volunteers and getting volunteers. So, um just a lot of insightful information that was presented there and still a lot to come down the pike. So, stay tuned there. Um and just, you know, this is something that just has been in, you
know, been a lot of chatter around town is is the proliferation of ebikes, right? And um they're not little mopeds like that we used to help us in high school. And they're not, you know, manual bikes. They're they're ebikes.
They're they go fast. Um they're silent. Um I think they're being ridden without a lot of regard and without a lot of safety in mind. So, we are talking about not just doing some education around the
ebikes and how to be safe, what you should do, how parents should be talking to their children about them. Um, but maybe perhaps looking at some type of an ordinance that but that's down the pike. But it is something that we're looking at, something that we're researching.
Um, looking at some surrounding communities and how they're handling it. Um there is nothing coming out of the state on this. They haven't um added any kind of guidance on ebikes at all. Um their their their
stuff is still around mopeds. They actually did they uh sent Chief Hannah a 51 page today. Yeah. Right before you came in. It literally had to be about an hour after I talked to it was it was right before you came in. So,
our man Alex Andrew Diamond are going to be going through the whole thing and come up with some plans. I guess I was a little premature. Well, no. Well, you were accurate up until about an hour or two ago, a couple hours ago. So, and um
Right. I mean, to be honest, right discussion with them. I mean, these kids are going around taking the governors off the bikes. You know, they're they're supposed to be at a certain speed limit. They're going like 35 miles an hour. If you if you go on YouTube, there's a kid that pulls out of a gas station. Yeah.
Up in Montel. Pulls out of goes down and hits a car broadside and lands on top of the car. Just unbelievable. And we have pictures just even from New Tor being ridden on the sidewalk, you know,
where people are walk, you know, it's it's getting a little crazy. So apparently the guidelines are no no bikes on sidewalks now. Well, the bike should not be on sidewalks. Yeah. So we'll see. So yeah, we want to be proactive there
and put something in place before something Yeah, you just missed. Lucky you. That's all that's all I got. Operations normal. No, quiet committees are quiet in summer. Just two things on my end. uh
sustainability committee. Um Doug, John, Allison, uh we owe them a lot of gratitude for put and all the borough employees that that submitted information. This was our last uh resort at trying to get the silver
certification. A lot of paperwork, a lot of things we submitted in time thanks to Doug's leadership. So, we're hopeful, but we know we learned a lot from the process. if we don't get this uh we're much more prepared for the next
application. So, but thank you John Doug uh and everybody else involved. Um also I think we we're thanking the DPW uh folks uh for the storm of course. Also, I want to thank Bernardet and and and the DPW the the special storm pickup
that we had that just doesn't take Oh, let me just put together an Excel spreadsheet that I think we were also waiting for the D to approve the skiff that's going to take that all away. You have to make sure that that is not contaminated material. But I know that
was extremely wellreceived by the community. It took it seemed like it took a long time to put together, but it really didn't. and yeah, so thank you on all those fronts. So all I have So you stole you stole a little bit of my thumb there. I sorry.
Well, I did want to talk a little bit about DBW and the storm cleanup. And I also wanted to share I wasn't going to do this, but I think it's I think it's important to do it. Um not everybody was happy, right? Uh, so we received a couple of um correspondents and I will
not read them entirely, but I just wanted to put them on record. Uh, the person, there was three different people that sent correspondents and they didn't even put their own name, the full name, their address, or any of their information. There's a probably a fake email. Um, but I thought this was
important to to for the public to hear. Um, Cassandra M, I'm wondering just how good you are for this town. talking about one of our employees, you just used our taxpayer money to clean up for people who are getting help via their
insurance, which is not entirely true. Uh, I think it's best that you retire and let people who can properly take care of this town and those within it. And I think we can all agree nothing could be further from the truth. Chris Kirsten L wrote, "You are costing
the town money for funds the homeowners are getting from insurance." Again, not true. Make the homeowners clean their own stuff with their own money. Shame on you. You overpaid moo. I don't know what that means. I hope that's really not
terrible word. Uh, Cheryl C, I can't imagine cleaning up what homeowners are already being paid by insurance to do themselves. You are truly an amazing person by taking the lead to join this abuse of taxpayer funds. Yeah, I just
wanted to I it's terrible and shame on that person that did that, right? And I just wanted to a put that in record for two reasons. One, um I think it's disgusting that somebody would actually say that to one of our employees. And two, I want that person to know that
everyone up here uh appreciates, as we all just discussed, how awesome our administrator are is, our our full administration staff, uh our DPW, everybody that has done an incredible job uh of helping the homeowners clean
up after this storm. And and what I wanted to talk about is like when you you know after the storms when we we go outside we're like wow look doesn't it looks like it never even happened. Well it didn't just go away by somebody you know twinking their nose right
you were in my neighborhood. But people are out there uh and and our our DPW worked overtime on their weekend, right, to help, you know, our residents and and uh and just like Alex said, you know, and you guys all read it, you know, it's it's it's a big task.
And so, thank you, Bernardet, for coordinating that. Uh thank you Ralph uh and his entire team for really just not only for this storm, but you they're they're there all the time, every storm. They're just great. Uh we don't appreciate them enough. I think I think
it just we just think it's wonderful that we have beautiful streets sometimes and I would just tell you in my world in facilities management nobody ever writes you hey you guys did a great job. It was very nice to hear the resident say how appreciative it is. But and I think it's
fair game to say maybe we're responding slow, maybe we're not doing it, but personal attacks, emails, uh, action lines like that are completely unacceptable. And I hope we can find a way to figure out who did it so it doesn't happen again.
Uh, National Night Out, I did want to um say thank you to all everyone that coordinated uh, that event. Uh, it's a great event. I love it's really I mean just walking around and and saying hi to
all of our police, right, who's led by our our incredible chief Dan Hen. Um, talking to all of our fire members, right, led by John Singerelloo. Uh, and our EMS, you know, members, you know, led by by Susan Deouise. Like, you know,
she's been working in this town for over four decades. I mean, it just every time I go, it's like these these are the backbone of a great community. These are great people. I love I just want to shake their hands and say thank you and and I really do enjoy that event. And I was able to wolf down two free hot dogs
by the lines. Oh, and Rita's ice prior to to the planning board meeting. So, I that was nice as well. Uh, and speaking on that, the planning board uh did meet uh on August 5th. We talked um about Toll
Brothers 121 Chandler Road. Uh that was a carryover from the previous meeting. Uh the engineer for Toll Brothers discussed the revised plans that they had made based on a lot of the feedback and comments and questions from the
planning board. Uh we had about another 90 minutes of questions and comments and concerns about the revised plans as well. Uh, and we ran out of basically ran out of time for for the public to to ask comments. Um, there was probably
half of the amount of people from the first one and it was national night out and whatnot. Um, but there was still plenty of people in the room and I really do appreciate that and I just hope encourage people uh to to continue to come to the planning bar meeting. Uh, the next few steps are very very important. So, we're going to hear from
the planning the planner of Toll Brothers. We're going to hear from uh the architect of Toll Brothers and we're going to hear from a traffic uh expert. Um and the public will get their chance to ask questions of the engineer at the
next meeting. So, you know, and then know I I can say this all time. At the end of the day, it's the more questions and the more concerns that are expressed, it's you know, and listen, this is something that's being forced down our throat, right? We all know that um you know it's not the greatest
situation to be in as a town, but um you know, we want to make sure that we get the best outcome for us. And so having more people there asking more questions and and voicing their concerns um I I think will help us get the best result that we can. When's the next meeting? The next meeting is September 2nd,
Tuesday, 8:00 PM right here. So late. They started a um you know back in the day people used to commute from the city and and uh we started them a little bit later. Sorry, can I add a couple things since I
forgot that we only have one meeting because you have chat with the mayor on September 5th, right? Um and coffee with council will be back in September. That's it. Thank you, mayor. Uh just a few things.
uh Payic Street Bridge replacement project. For those of us who have been watching the progress at the bridge, work has been consistently progressing since January. Initially, we were informed that the bridge would be closed to vehicles and pedestrians for approximately 12 months in order to
complete the project. Based on the most current update uh this afternoon, the contractor is projecting a late September, early October reopening of the bridge. The most significant unknown variable at this time though would be the impact on which would impact the
reopening as related to utility work for gas and and um water. So those are things and again that's not a project that the bureau controls at all. Um the updates I get are from either the contractor or Union County. Um and um we
we do have very little um input on that but you know they were very nice in providing me that for for everyone today. Um because if anyone if you guys are like me and seeing the concrete port it's like oh wait we're close. Um railroad crossings. So the crossings
at both Livingston Avenue and Central Avenue and Southgate and Foley Square have yet to be paved as we are working through permitting with New Jersey Transit. Uh New Jersey Transit requires a permit for any work including paving that occurs within or adjacent to its right of way which is the property it
owns or controls for railroad operations. And in our case that is 25 ft in any direction of the tracks. The permit allows for safety of trains and passengers, safety of workers and the public, protection of infrastructure, maintaining train schedules, compliance
with regulations and liability. There's um the application is about 20 pages long um for the permitting um and we are not permitted to be inside of that right of way for any reason to do any kind of work until their permit has been issued.
So, we understand totally. I live up in there. I cross those tracks every single day. It is not great. Um, but we are working to get to a resolution with transit. So, um, I just want to let you guys know that summer hours for burough employees is coming to an end very sadly
on Friday, August 29th. Uh, the burrow will also be closed on Monday, September 1st for Labor Day. And then we will resume normal hours of operation um that week, Monday through Friday, 8:30 to 4:30. Uh the building department will be open from 8:00 to 4:00. And last but not
least, school begins on Thursday, October 28th here in New Providence. I would urge drivers to be extra cautious and observe posted speed limits near and near schools in downtown. And please leave additional time in the morning to drop off to ensure a safe and quick drop off. August 28th.
August 28th. I think you said October. Oh, sorry. I'm It's late. It's late and it's hot. We know what you meant. That's all I have. That's it. Okay. This is an opportunity for any member of the public to be heard about issues and a not separate topic
scheduled for public hearing tonight to help facilitate an orderly meeting and to make to permit all to be heard. Speakers are asked to limit their comments to three minutes and they only speak of one company. Uh, please state your name and address for the record.
Yes, sir. My name is John Kane for Midell and I just wanted to pile on with DBW what a great job they did. I happened to be over two days later or a day later from the storm um Brook Hollow Lane and there
was a manhole coveret that was off and I called Bernett's office. I was talking to a friend over there. Within 10 minutes, there was somebody over there. Normally, the water just picks up the manhole cover and drops it back so it sits right. And this guy came over, took
care of like that. It was perfect. Awesome. So, it was great. Thank you. That's by design, by the way. We talked about that the manhole covers coming off. If they didn't if they Alan Swanson over Hill Road I, as usual,
I wasn't planning on saying anything, but you always bring something up that gets me up here. I I want to talk about the ebikes. Um, I have an ebike and I and I like riding
it quite a bit. I It It has a governor that says I can only accelerate, use the accelerator up to 20 miles per hour. I could change it to to 28, but that would not be legal in this state. It
would no longer be considered a bicycle. My point is there are laws on the books. If I ride down the car street with my car and my back light is out, the police will pull me over and say, "You have a
light that's out on the back of your car and you need to fix it." When a child under 17 rides around a bike in this town without a helmet, nobody says a word. When a child over 13
rides on a sidewalk, nobody does anything. The issue isn't controlling the ebikes and getting licenses for the ebikes. If you give a license to a 14-year-old to ride around a bicycle and say the
parents have to have insurance, that's not going to change their behavior. What needs to be change their behavior is what forces us to fix the headlight or fix the tail light. somebody pulls us over and says, "You have to fix that."
That's the solution. I mean, I was at the Sierra Club executive committee meeting last Saturday and they have a resolution to go to the national office to basically ban ebikes. This is the Sierra Club.
Good idea. Who? Huh? I'm sorry. But they basically it's because they can't because all these people are not obeying it and they're just riding around and doing all these things. And I guarantee you when I ride my bike
around, very few people are doing much stopping at red lights before they turn, things like that. And nobody's saying we need to ban cars because people are not
obeying the law. I I've I've been here for years talking about, you know, enforcing some of the laws related to the to to bikes and I've primarily brought it up in terms of bike safety and helmets and and what have you and lights and things like that. But but
the ebikes I first of all, you can't get insurance for an ebike. Um but it's just that's where we need to go, the route we need to go. Summit Summit passed a Summit passed a law of not allowing you.
I'm sorry. I looked at Summit's ordinances according to this new manual that they 51 pages from the state. Summits is wrong already. So what what is the 51 where would I get
that the 51 page thing? I don't I don't know about that one. I know a chief and we were discussing it today. This is from know what sidewalks is the you know the whole deal. So uh he's gonna go through it with Andrew
Diamond and they're going to come up with something so we can have a new state. Somebody's not doing something we we can uh think of. Thank you. Great. Thank you. Oh, sure.
Just to mess with you, very Ryan Gardner, 25 No. I just had a question on the New Jersey Transit right ofway thing. Um, and and the the paving of that is is anyone looking at the signage and and and pavement painting by the
Murray Hill train station? because I I don't know if you if you know the the intersection when you come over the train tracks and come down, you don't stop coming down, but the other two ways stop and and the way that it's signed right now is not the most clear in the world. So, there's often like there's a lot of near misses there. So, if there
was an opportunity to fix the signage and and the road painting, this would be the time to do it. So, I don't know if if there's been any consideration of that. I can have traffic look at it. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it. Anyone else?
Okay, we call the public hearing close. And Jimmy, I'm sorry we made you stay here all night. Lamar, too. Lamar. Okay. I need a motion for items 1 through 20, please. So moved. Second.
Roll call, please. Miss Dolan. Yes. Miss Blesca. I. Mrs. Mcnite. Yes. Mrs. Joffrey. Yes, Mr. Kogan. Yes, Mr. Kamiski. I report motion for a German. So move second. Yes. All
in favor? No. So beat it. Thank you all for coming