for so I get a phone call from my head okay lights they ready all call the order Wendy you ready yep okay uh this is the March 6 202 5 uh burough council meeting concerning the
budget this is the second night of budget hearings um at this time I'd like to have the clerk read the statement of compliance this meeting is being held in accordance with the open public meetings law duly announced advertised and posted in the municipal building the meeting will adjourn no later than 10 p.m.
unless the majority of the council members that are present vote to extend the time all right the Pledge of Alle Council Pell would you lead the pledge Alle thank you I to the flag of the United States of
America and to the for stands Nation God indivisible with liy and Justice please remain standing for a moment of silence thank you be seated the clerk please call the roll mayor Camala pres council president
McAn councilman Pignatelli here councilwoman Rose here councilman Sally Annie here councilman linski here councilman talamini here the motion excuse Council
councilman M simp second second all favor who did the first motion you all right at this time uh have a motion open to the public second the public wish to address the govering
body no not seeing any motion to close I'm moved a second second second all favor all right moving right right into the business here our next presentation is going to be for the DPW budget we've got our super superintendent Anthony marelli uh Anthony at this time I'd like
to Y the floor to you and you can take us through your budget presentation um thank you good evening everyone um I just want to say with me is assistant superintendent Craig oberheim uh he's responsible
for uh a lot of the road uh projects and is in charge of a vehicle maintenance facility and uh I'm just going to start with a brief overview uh department sumary and um just give you some
information about what uh Public Works is uh it's we have 22 I want to call labor staff um and that includes myself Craig uh um the other uh assistant superintendent and
the workforce right now uh we have and we we're carrying one seasonal right now uh you know that helps uh he there 40 hours a week but um is considered uh temporary part-time um so Public Works is made up
of seven divisions and uh that we have streets and Roads and I'll just go right into what where you know streets and Roads is exactly what it is it's uh we try to uh just
have um you know Pleasant Drive clean roadsides and um we're responsible for all the maintenance that occurs on road and roadside uh we also maintain some areas that are consider their you know the
entrances to town um their state property and the reason we're on there is because they have a maintenance program that they'll come out once maybe twice a year so um the first thing you see driving into Oakland people get off 287 or coming from Franklin Lakes uh
there's state property and some County property that we maintained and few years back well more than a few years but we've gone and tried to leave it to the state to maintain their own property and like I said they don't they don't really they're not very receptive to
that we end up with line of sight issues on the ramps and things so um the the road department uh maintains most of that and although we are seven divisions uh depending on what's going on every
day uh buildings and grounds guys may be helping us with in the water end of it uh so it's a it's a fluid Department although people are charged and tasked to specific budgets uh own budgets um
the for salaries and wages they we do move um into Department could you just give the residence an idea how many miles of Road you're responsible for there's um approximately 60 uh burrow
owned roads and 17 to 20 um County Lane miles uh so that's uh it's it's quite a workload for for the men and that and um we have road then buildings and grounds is responsible for their primary
responsibility is is the rec field the Recreation Complex but there that's a a three-man division but they're also responsible for uh the outer soccer fields the outer ball fields uh and and
this building there's you know including the out buildings like 13 buildings so when they're not Senior Center three firehouses uh and um you know all the maintenance you know any any uh routine
maintenance they could be on a ball field and get called in for you know a light you know or or any anything in the building um then uh storm water management is uh there's one one
full-time employee that's really um either you know inspecting catch basins or and and these we have two certified Masons that make the repair on the infrastructure of the the storm water facilities and um we're operating right
now storm water under a new 5year permit right 5year uh permit and where it's our the duties is basically operate and maintain our own storm water pollution prevention plant and it it um it's
everything from cleaning Bas and tops to uh you know roadside Swale repairs and and cutting back um the detention ponds and Basin and things like that um let's see
uh um we we operate our own water system inhouse it consists of uh seven production Wells six storage tanks approximately 700 mil of water M 600
fire hydrants thousands of of um line valves and you have 5,000 um homes all of them have a curb stop in water water service most of them and we're responsible for operating water system and that is a
24hour day 7 day a week operation weekends um we have employees in um checking pump levels making sure everything tank levels and and pump rates and everything make sure uh everything's where it's supposed to be
as far as Wastewater goes uh Barrow just did an amazing project and they decommissioned three Antiquated weight wastewater treatment plants um that were at the end of their useful life and
installed a pump system um there's three pump stations that replace the the old sewage system the package treatment plants they call them and um the the waste is sent to Northwest Bergen
utility authorities and where it's processed but so we installed these these plants and it it doesn't mean that this the the operation of Wastewater went away that the Wastewater is also a
7day uh a week 247 um operation 3 365 days a year uh weekend checks take between three and four hours um we we we maintain the pump station yes yes and the infrastructure anything piping in
the ground um and uh things things are working did did that workload pretty much stay the same like from going from it it changed um it it actually it's it's it's cleaner work
it's nicer work you know and um it's a lot of um you know the system's new so there the the it's it's new to us as well so um the operation it it's uh it's state-of-the-art it's maintained if
there's an alarm um the operator will you know it's if it there's a higher alarm because a pump didn't kick on it lets lets us know um our operators will go out and you know remedy the problem um quite quickly as far as um that
project's pretty much complete but there's some some Capital items that um we're going to do in the sky view in the Oakwood um treatment area we have we're waiting on some finishing details from Boswell and to in that one area there is
we are going to do a um we did we smoke tested the the system um and video tested the system and um found some breached manholes where nothing's going out but um Road level um we have have um
storm water coming in and that's not good we don't want to pay right every we're paying we're paying for what we send to Northwest Bergen so we have a a project like I said it we're ready to to to go out and we just have we're waiting
on some finishing touches from Boswell and um we'll tighten up the collection system and uh so everything you know I'm thankful that that that was a great project and absolutely necessary and the installers have any type of warranty or
guarantee for 6 months a year or whatever they well there's a the project comes with a 2-year performance bond uh there may be some individual system components that have longer warranties associated with that you know on the on the pump so if a storm water a store I
mean the catch cover is leaking we wouldn't have to pay for that right well I think what Anthony is referring to is the collection system itself that was already in place not the transmission system that was put in as part of the project yeah yeah the the it's what it is is is the the the storm water is is
um infiltrating the waste and and it it's just it's something we have to capture because we're paying for it you know and and we can see it in our in our flows when it rains you know where we have it's we have more you have no idea what what it's
happening yeah yeah we we we pinned the locations down and now Boswell's working on um the final plans and expect to go out to bid to to remedy the problem okay right if you recall a few years back uh we undertook a similar project for the
sky view Highbrook part of the system uh this is specific to the Oakwood you know all the uh the collection system that we're going to on that what we call the Oakwood Pump Station the um so that that's the um in
a nutshell the waste water um and solid waste is is we contract that service out uh and we've just recently had some meetings um to for shared services and um I don't
for recycling though not the discussions we're having is for solid waste and the entire outsourced collection so garbage and recycling oh yeah just so just so the public clear we're talk about garbage garbage right
yeah garbage and um and the recycling contract and and that's where you'll see um within my budget uh the greatest increase um and like I it's it's contractual so um we're you know we're
rich is in touch with his his counterparts and in other areas and they're going to try to put something together um that may save save us all money uh within the the solid waste budget there's a line for comp for
composting and the Public Works operates the borrows Compost Facility that's located on the top of Skyline Drive all the yard waste uh grass leaves and things that we collect from the borrow buildings along with anything the
residents put curbside is taken up to the borrow Compost Facility and it's processed there just from decomposition and and air rating and uh it takes to turn the process over
about a year and a half and we turn the material into a uh Not Top Soil cuz it's not screened but it it breaks it down and and makes it manageable we sell it or we have to pay down all the way um we we haven't had to pay yet to to get rid
of it and you know we move it around we use some of it when we're working in different areas to to uh you know that we excavate and in our parks and um so we try to use as much as the material as we can and it's that's under
a de uh P permit so we can only have um like a year and a half's worth of material on site at a time but it's it's been working out we have a project that we're waiting on the contractor uh once the once the material goes through a
year and a half process then we bring in a tub grinder and that piece of equipment really it's 4 500,000 and it's a nightmare so it really doesn't pay for us to own one so um we pay hourly once a year to have all the material once it
decomposes to A A A reduced amount we'll grind it once sometimes twice a year and we have um our 2024 we usually do it around the holidays and the contractors real bus is a little behind but that should be
within the next couple weeks we're going to process that material uh in addition to to those um those functions uh we also provide labor and assistance for most of the Burrows
committees um for uh you know shade tree where we are do we do the pl the plant tree planting for a shade tree and removal anything that we could um reach safely with our with our equipment some of the stuff um
you know they have some money in in in the budget there for contracted services for for uh you know trees that are too large or in a in an area where we can't easily get to them uh we yeah near yeah
and we're anything in the wires um our our insurance doesn't let us doesn't let us touch so good so we have to have money for that we have um uh a tree planting project coming up the shade tree has uh
I believe ordered or is about to order some some trees uh shade trees that you see throughout town and we managed the arborist contract and he's the um the specialist that can go out and identify
trees and you know we can go in and remove them but without leaves I I'll be honest I don't know an oak from a you know I need the leaves on so so we we we have that and and he reviews the permits and and things like that uh and within
capital I requested a an irrigation system uh it's going to be either I'm not sure if it's if they settled on Sky you or Public Works um I'd like to keep it on on our property but um an
irrigation system to to set up a tree farm and you know maybe we can save save some money on and um growing our own trees and and things like that um oh vehicle maintenance I didn't touch
on that yet Craig um runs that Division and he um maintains 250 about pieces of equipment and how many vehicles 75 75 vehicles with um Craig and uh his
assistant Mike faul and they do they do do a great job um the the places you know there's days where it's like a jiffy with vehicles coming in and out and it's um you know these the men over here know the Ser the service and um he
does a phenomenal job and I want to thank him Kevin and Scott for helping me and sue for putting this budget together you know I'm sitting here on I'm I'm talking about it but uh these guys really uh really helped out with with most of it Anthony can you just touch on
snow plowing I mean that's something o really does really good job about yeah the snow isn't just um you know when it snows uh we you know we hook up our trucks and get out there Craig and Scott monitor the snow you know it I don't
love it it gives me anxiety but um he he's you know he's he's a good guy to lean on um he makes sure the equipment is tested and retested before and after every storm so we're we're monitoring you know we get alerts on our phones you
know week before it snows if they can predict it predict it accurately um that's when the wheels start to start to get in motion where where the larger equipment we're putting putting the spreaders back on cuz our our equipment
that we use for snow is also Daily equipment for the Water Department road department um so storms are monitored closely uh when we can we brine we we make our own Brine and uh it's that has been
terrific and saving us a lot of a lot of money um on salt and it's it is salt water but to me you know it's it's better for the environment and we can get out there up to 48 hours before 48
hours before a storm and if you guys if if you you you get questions on you know why they you know I try not look at the social media but um they'll they'll ask um you know questions like why why didn't they brine well brine although
it's a salt water you know it's made from salt and water it's salt water it does freeze so if it's if the temperature is below 27 25° the road temperature we can put brine down and it and it'll freeze so there's some windows
that have to line up perfectly but for the most part we we brine before a storm and what that has done it presentent it prevents um freezing be you know when uh traffic is driving over the snow so we have three
900 gallon 3 900 gallon 3 900 gallon tanks um on our they're salt SL brine trucks and we can get we can brine everything in8 hours 8 hours we can hit everything
and uh that includes that every road that includes the school um all our parking lots so we can get it takes about 8 hours to get the brine down and uh if let's say you know it starts snowing um one we have brine down
that has that has knocked down sometimes 2 Ines of snow where historically we would have to go out and and put down maybe you know if it's bad enough 100 ton of salt and um brine has has cut
down um the the salt uses the salt use dramatically and uh usually uh after brine you know eventually roads start turned to slush we'll we'll go out there 12 trucks right 12 saw trucks 12 no 10
10 Salters I was just checking 10 Salters 10 Salters will go out we'll try to get a thin layer on the hills and and school routes and higher elevations and uh
uh that usually uh takes 2 and 1 half to 3 hours and then the fund starts when we get over 2 and 1 half 3 Ines we start to plow and that is we may like I said we do um the county roads and County
reimburses us for the salt that we use and uh our vehicle maintenance you know it's an hourly rate but it it it covers our maintenance on the vehicles the fuel the body in the vehicle and um so and
and and probably most importantly it provides the level of service that we want to provide to our residents you know I I can't tell you how many times here over the years I've heard people tell me that they know when they're in Oakland uh if they're driving on Franklin AB if they're driving on Route
202 uh and that's really a credit to our DPW because we are the ones out there salting and plowing the county roads here M before you move on excuse mey uh I know we built up a trust and the event that there's an unusual amount
of slow slow snow can you touch on that a little bit sure so the residents know uh sure so with the state permits and we probably set up 15 years ago or so uh it originally started out being called the the the snowstorm Reserve that was
expanded via State legislation uh after uh Irene and Sandy to a storm response Reserve so if we had flooding we could also tap this fund for Recovery efforts and response efforts uh but principally there it is used uh the basically the mechanism is
so that you can even out your year-to-year funding operation funding for uh snow removal any unused balances get swept into that Reserve account and it provides a pool of money if you have a very bad winter a 2ft snow storm and
your expenses are really through the roof you have money there set aside to be able to handle that uh and that's worked very very well for us over the years uh to the extent that we've um purchased a vehicle or two
uh uh Anthony and Craig had come up with an idea to actually uh we basically refurbed to uh refurbish yeah to okay dump trucks uh salt units uh that saved a considerable amount of money overall uh and we you know prudently use that
money rather than needing to uh you know budget it through Capital because worked very well for us and correct me if I'm wrong if we did overexp and we did not have that fund that money whatever is $50,000 gets automatically put into your
next year's budget right off the top at the start if the if the budget overall has an overe expenditure yes uh that would have to be captured in the subsequent year budget but this fund helps us to avoid that correct correct which is great
yeah thank you good um I just wanted to touch on um like goals and and this is something that is that goes without saying we just try to provide um coste effective and
and an outstanding level of service to our residents and priorities I I I'd have to say um right now is I I love the focus that this council is has given on the downtown area uh you know we've
walked with Engineers Rich uh mayor Cala and and Craig we we've been out there um numerous times just walking on the downtown area and and every time we we go through you know we can see
something different and we it could be something as as simple as redundant traffic signs unnecessary traffic signs and uh you know the the new the new park in Bush Plaza looks great uh and you
know PE people um seem to seem to really enjoy the new look and um I the whole department is really excited about um you know what this what it's turning into um small small projects become big
and it and um it's really you know it's it's things you know I I'll drive through and notice and you know some people maybe not aren't looking at it the same way but um these little these little changes and and you know these
smaller maintenance areas um that although they're they're more maintenance um it it's really changing how things look and uh the future down there looks I mean this could be this could be something um you know you guys can continue to grow this and it's it it'll be really
something but understand we've done a lot of work already this year you know soon as this year started and just just in um signs you know street signs we've we've I I have um budget that was
historically for street signs like ruers and and um I've used up um since January most of my stock and that's purchased through police uh the traffic signs the the oneway the stop sign speed limits
we've gone through um and and changed quite a bit cleaned what we could and I still have a a list as long long as my arm so um I want to throw this at you guys uh for at at for the mayor and councel I I'm just about depleted I can
I can I'm given I think $22,000 off the top of my head and and um I probably encumbered or spent um 3/4 of that or I'm about to and my stock on the police end the traffic sign is is getting
depleted and I I believe Scott reached out to um to the police department and I think he's going to meet with um traffic officer Burns is that him now one thing I hope we don't do I've driven through towns where the street sign only gives
the name of the main road not the crossroad yeah and that burns the heck out me I am name Street we we lose a lot of the um do we do that no no no please don't our our our problem areas are the
college streets and you know I guess someone goes to Ruckers they they want to yeah but um but yeah we reached out to police and uh collectively we're going to go over our inventory and and hopefully put together a more aggressive
program um but and but that will require a little more money but I think it I think it brightens things up and and it's not a whole lot of money but it's money well spent and we've also been working with our partners at the state and the county on the county roads and the state replacing those 287 signs so
you know we're working with all three jurisdictions trying to really clean this up those the cluttered areas where where um you get off of 287 and and um we've made made some changes and and made kind of a sign board and put the
signs on them with decorative caps that match the welcome to Oakland um signs that we recently installed so uh you know that was a that's another project that these guys were um they they enjoyed doing it because it it's you
know you change the speed limit sign and you changing his speed liit side but an I have a quick question for you sure I know you want to get done so the every else can get um last year we went to the shared services agreement with Bloomingdale right it's not the budget this year so from your end complaints are going to
come to you how's it working Bloomingdale sh for Street for street sweeping how's it working are we getting complaints from residents are you happy with their performance no they're they actually um the state in true fashion changed the storm water regulations and now every every
street in town has to be umor every has to be swept three times annually and the contract that we had stated two times and but we were doing um certain Road a certain other roads um more often
the school routes and things so we kind of traded and came up with a program without refiguring the number on the contract the the dollar amount and the service from Bloomingdale is phenomenal um and you know if if we find if I like
if the baseball parades coming through and they're not scheduled to to sweep I call them and in 10 minutes they'll come through if we have uh you know broken glass from a a trash truck or something they'll come through and say hey forget about this one you know can you go over
here and it's never a problem and um their the level of service is is terrific so that was that was um you use there as a win yeah absolutely thank you hey if you weren't glued to your TV watching last night's presentation the the library
uh and senior senator both thank you for your service oh you figur you should know that thank you appreciate it um good we provided the individual uh budget fly item sheets uh I think we
sort of sort of recap some of this last night uh you know there's anything in particular that you want to talk about can certainly do that otherwise it's just provided there for your information what's your biggest need for this year um we I I just want to keep on the
the the vehicle replacement um you know program that we have we've had uh and I mean I I really don't have anything that is what Pro I I can give
you a list of projects that we've we've we have ready to go we have drainage on Jerome a um a capital project drainage uh water M on West Oakland and a drainage uh
combo um water main project on Harvard um so I we we have our our road a great Road program every year that pscg unfortunately has come through and um we get and well they come they'll
come through and um you know they we they ask for our forecasted roads five years in advance and sometimes they you know they'll come in and but they what they will do they'll they'll a road that they tore up if it was resurfaced within
the 5year moratorium they're going to repave it curve to curve curve to curve and anything where they they did any main work they'll um from it's from Center Line to curb on the side that they Mains on they're usually opposite water but we have some great projects storm
water we have um some um some drainage issue failures that we're we're working on plus some proactive things that before they become a problem and before we redo the road we're going to move into some of those um some roof work on
um actually this building um we're working on um plans for that uh burrow Hall hopefully Company 2 um in 2025 um and and water quality
accountability act we have to keep current on we can't have a water man in the system that's uh over 75 years old I believe so and it's good to get the old pipe out that's prone to leaks and things like that so we have um you know
we're there's a lot of a lot of projects happening and um you know that's it's going to be a busy year but it's but it's it's good stuff Rich Could you um touch on the increase in the uh permanent fulltime sure um as we talked
about 100,000 right so as we talked about last night uh the budget includes a cola for everybody uh okay okay that's certainly not that whole increase uh if you go back to the summary sheet from last night from the main presentation you're going to see reductions in almost
every other uh DPW salary and wage budget it was really just reallocating staff amongst the divisions who kind of took a fresh look at all right who should be allocated to buildings and grounds who should be allocated to Solid Waste storm water and and whatnot um so
really it was sort of Shifting people over a little bit in the allocation to storm water I'm sorry to streets and Roads so you're seeing a relatively large increase there uh but you're seeing decreases pretty much across the board in the other uh salary DPW salary
and wage budgets yeah we took a harder look at where these people are actually working and spending their time and and trying to charge them accordingly like I said it's a fluid Department people yeah so but it's it's you know we're trying to capture it every year the best we can
didn't we uh revisit our Road opening permit yes we did why don't we expand on that a little bit and if this is from Lessons Learned going forward yeah that we've we've added some some things um and it's for some of the other utilities
uh where one utility and one specific utility had a blanket Road opening permit that um and what the permit the permit fees are basically if if um a contractor you know anyone who digs in
the road or you know in any of our our paved paved surfaces we have them fill out a permit and the permit cost should cover if they do a you know less than perfect job on the resurfacing or the
repair it should give me enough money to go in and and um fix that inhouse um and that the our our our Road opening permit was old and it no longer covered the
cost and one contractor in in one utility um their annual fee was $500 and they're working all over town so um and I I never really had a problem with them leaving anything unfinished if
I make made a call if something was not satisfactory they do come back but we we change the ordinance to to in ways that benefit benefit us and and protect us um so it's no longer a $500 a year the the
holes the their trenches are measured and whatever the cost to repair that area that's each spe specific permit not not a blanket permit anymore for the for their for their for a year so and um the
um yeah it's it's just it's a it it took some it took some um refiguring we looked at on other what other towns were doing and and kind of plucked what the county was doing and and created one that suits us and it's and uh you know
that so we just started that uh using that in January and it's already you know now when they come in they're they're going to Cur go yeah oh yeah and they they um instead of I I mentioned Public Service um if they make a cut a trench they're
responsible from the center line and their cut now it's Total Restoration moving forward of the roadway so yeah that that that was important I mean because with all the public service work we wanted to capture that so that if they're going to instead of just Paving half the road we to make them responsible for the entire road yeah and
also so we had obviously we had a bumper crop of Paving last year between the county out 202 and break Neck Public Service fixing their trenches down in these areas and just so the residents know we're currently getting ready to meet with public service in the next several weeks to fix the roads that were
just recently done so right and done a lot of Paving yeah and we just um we we just opened the uh we well we're about to uh find take a final look at Boswell's paperwork on our 2025 program
and we have um another pretty aggressive program this year so it's it's great there you know there it's it's starting to um the roads are looking good yeah definitely and then just what's the difference between a Street and a road you know
what as old as I am that was there before me but at a at a point when when um uh like during development once it um you know there's roads that aren't fully dedicated because the the you know the
the construction's not done for a new development things like that so it's um David right what he said but yeah it's um there's and and I I think years ago it was had something to do with the road with
and so I'm just teasing had an answer for you let us do some research don't fact check that CH will tell you an effort of time do we have any other questions uh do we do we just want
to Quick go to Quick go to Capital and if I can start uh DPW equipment then Anthony alluded to this uh pickup trucks uh to Replacements that's usually kind of normal what you know one or two depending uh
the tire balancing tire machine balancer Craig you want to talk about that at all Tire balancer and tire machine that we have now is 15 years old and it's excuse me with a lot of the stuff that's happening now we need to the
larger size tires yeah can't fit the the tires on it's page useful life yep right definitely Street and Road improvements uh again as Anthony just alluded to uh a fairly well
funded Road program uh in total uh with you know some specific emphas emphasis on repaving yoav uh we have a $200,000 grant for that the annual Road repair program uh would rely on a little over
$300,000 in existing unused uh funding from prior year uh Road program allocation uh then $100,000 for downtown improvements uh that's a plan that we'll be sort of refining as the year goes along in terms of uh you know the scope
of those sidewalk improvements other improvements um and then our annual allocations for storm sewers and general sidewalk repairs uh we'll have a project coming up that we're uh talking about we'll probably focus on a little bit more heavily in the planning work next
week uh to go on on the next phase of uh reinstalling sidewalk on Route 202 going north so the soft crost $330,000 is that just engineering or basically good part of it
uh engineering for the most part legal includes design construction inspection and the like um it mostly formula driven typically will allocate about 20% any money that's not used for those purposes can also be used for construction okay
so um it's not like we just have to cancel that out if it's not used for the soft cost we can use that for you know pay a contractor as well and the the downtown improvements is $100,000 that um that that that doesn't
come out of open space or no that would not no be for so so councilman I had asked during the budget meetings that we put in $100,000 for downtown improvements as obviously were getting this downtown project moving so I wanted to have some capital in there
so we continue pulling off the park okay but I'd like to see rather than look at an improvement from um from 287 down to shoppr right I mean let's do a couple of two or three
blocks Improvement that we can see rather than you know try and do the whole downtown right that's what the intent of this was start F let's do some projects that we can do right and there there can realize
seeing it rather than just say no it's $100,000 yeah for what right we talked as well about um speaking with adjacent Property Owners uh about taking on a portion of that work in front of their particular properties as well uh I think
this you know kind of extending down from the park uh you have the building right there with Enterprise then you have the burrow parking lot right so that that's sort of an easy lift to redo uh the street Frontage there in front of our parking lot uh as you get further down there are some issues there with uh
utility polls and you know and other things that's going to require some further discussion but that was the impetus there to sort of keep that momentum rolling and you know keep showing some improvements Russell to your point uh regarding open space funding we did use some of the open space trust money as the match funding
for the uh Bush Plaza Park okay [Music] okay yeah the senior center uh boiler is original so um we've made some minor repairs again that that piece of equipment's at the end of its useful
life ball HVAC um same thing there's multiple units and um you know we want to upgrad upgrade those we do take advantage of any incentive programs um to replace with more energy efficient equipment um
we we do that when we can um company to roof I mentioned before um that's probably original from from their addition and part of it even before that uh before crate creates an interior problem we like to capture capture that
um Senior Center the partition divider that's for the main room um to so they can have two two classes or whatnot at the same time without disturbing each other they have one now don't they there's no no
there isn't one there now um it's it's not it's for the hallway but that's it it doesn't divide the it doesn't divide the room the big room thought I saw a a no yet and and these these are all being
funded through our uh fund balance uh fund balance the capital Improvement funding and the allocation that we're putting in this year's budget to go to the capital fund so we are paying cash pay as we go for all this year's Capital project no new debt yeah great and the
the last item the irrigation I spoke about the tree farm um try to you know do some some green things and and grow some of our own trees and get them out on the streets questions I have one question on the
Water Utility draft it says rents what's rents that's the water bill that you get every quarter they're considered rents in terms of the terminology for utility oh so fees you could use that interchangeably with
fees all right so David would you like to just uh take the governing body through the water uh utility uh sure on the revenue side we're pretty consistent in terms of the op operating Surplus uh if you look down towards the middle of the appropriation you'll see similar
numbers uh we tend to try to use that Surplus to fund all of our Capital Improvements um the rents are actually going up quite a bit this year I think the they're up 11% I think the actual uh ordinance that you passed in December had them going up by a little over 10 um
that is to start funding The Debt Service for the pfoa treatment plants that were put in uh we've got the projects it's all done but now we have to start paying the debt down and I want residents to understand um the
the nomenclature for escapes me for a second but it has to be self-liquidating has to be self-funding self liquidating is the correct term it is a a utility has to be self-liquidating that means that we you know bring in enough revenues to cover
our expenses that's what I want people to understand whatever we we whatever the cost is that's what we pass along correct yeah thank you you're welcome um i' going to use some miscellaneous is
mostly there are some small fees and things for uh new new connections and things that also go to miscellaneous for the most part that's interest Revenue um so you can see the budget's up quite a a bit year over-year even even with as high as that revenue
is up over Year we're still probably not where we need to be Anthony mentioned earlier the water quality accountability act replacing the 70 anything that's less than 75 years or older we're not there we' have probably have to continue to increase our capital and capital
outlay by another 3 or 400,000 a year to be able to do the miles of pipe in times of that in terms of that time frame and we did do quite a bit of work down in the colony right so I yeah in down pleasur land we we changed um all the
all of it down there um we we have a a constant project there's usually something every year it's safe to say that our water is still much less expensive than going to a violi or any Private Car Absolut I think it's important the residents
understand that even with the increase uh violi is seeing that same increase for the same thing you know if you're if you're having Viola you've got the same increase for treating the the water that we had to do locally
uh on the Appropriations you can see that salary and wages are up um again on Anthony as a whole they're not up that high but we reallocated you know some of the people who we knew were spending more time on water to the water
department well it and it also includes the bulk of the salary for the additional employee that you authorized uh in January and that's specifically related to the operation of the past system uh which is taking about 20 25
hours a week uh to operate those treatment units uh some of the other costs here like David mentioned Debt Service uh and some of the OE stuff is also related to to p uh we have yet to have to replace the media uh this
granulator called G granular activated charcoal media uh which is how the treatment systems work uh when that happens uh um and we don't know the exact timing yet we'll we'll get an indication on that by the I guess it's
the pressure in the system pressure in the filters the pressure levels will increase and that'll let us know that the filters are becoming they're becoming saturated yeah right and to do all three I I think the quote that we got to do all three 100,000 about
$100,000 to replace and dis properly dispose of that media which is saturated with Pas okay uh so you know we'll be work working on a bid package for that uh we'll structure that so that we can use it when necessary uh the plants have
been operating for about a year now right and can't do it on a rotating basis right you'd have to do all three it all depends it all you know they they have different flow rates uh you know so it they may not all achieve breakthrough at the same time right and
I don't know you know we had a dry summer I don't know if that accelerated it's going to you know it would seem we're pumping more water where you know um you know so it's it depends it's like flow flow based and we've been operating
the systems for a year and hadn't had to do it yet but we did it will happen in 2025 so we we're preparing and we got those numbers and um you know we're going to just try to work it and Alternate pumps and things and try to if there's a way to extend it as as much as
we can have we took to other towns that that like are ahead of us with this we have um there's towns that are you know the water quality and things that are doing it more often and we we're talking to um Boswell's team daily and and we're
right where we should be and the systems functioning properly it's properly it's moving removing the pfoas and you know we have we're at zero detect on on these things now so um it's doing what it's
supposed to anything else on the water budget sewer utility uh sewer utility uh again we are now at the point where we're starting to have to budget for the improvements that we made in terms of
decommissioning the treatment plants and putting in the transmission lines to take the stuff out to Bergen Bergen um so you could see significant increases in in the rents again that's the fees uh we are done paying the off the ACO um so
that line item will come out but we've got quite an investment out of operating Surplus into the capital fund uh to pay for the inii um for the last piece of system that we want to do there so that's what you're seeing on the top half and down below you can see the real
real big increases are down there in The Debt Service um you know that's going to be starting to pay for this year that's just the interest portion of the debt service for the loan that we'll be taking out with the ibank we'll get half the interest payment this year and then
the principle and the full interest payment next year you know so it's it's going to be significant uh we've got a meeting with the residents on Monday Monday um to kind of go over you know what the status is and you know where we are and it's about where we projected it was
going to be 3 or 4 years ago uh we put the bills together this afternoon um and they're up so it is what it is anybody else have any questions good I want to thank
superintendent Craig thank you so much for coming and presenting today and no further questions thank you the let's take a quick three minute recess 5 minute recess
thanks e e e e e e e they used all your time so they used all your time
seat about it bring it I'm sorry five new trucks you're good next great job thanks so much you need a live version you got it thank you
did we need a rich St okay um let me turn this on and we started go okay all right guys in control you're ready all right going to call the meeting back in back in order uh this time we've got members of the fire department uh Chief in carv you want to introduce your team and we jump
right into yeah I'm the chief Vincent in Caro first year as a fire chief is my assistant chief Don Johnson he's been an assistant for four years well Al I have Chris hoitsma first year as an assistant
chief also an ex-chief from fairon fire department tell us a little bit about the fire department how many members yeah we um we have currently 55 volunteer firefighters two Junior Firefighters and 14 life members we've run out of two
firehouses company one and Company two company one there's a total of 31 volunteers company two there's 25 volunteer we um we respond to all different types of calls we help we U
sorry we volunteer respond to all different type of calls structure fires car fires brush fires accidents lost hikers mutually a to other towns we also work with a conjunction with the police department
DPW OEM first aid Squad you know we assist them storms lift assist um we available 24/7 of course January 1st through December 31st of last year we ran a total of 432 calls
that's 3,340 manh hours volunteer man hours volunteer uh we run weekly drills not only calls that we go out to we run drills we do training last year we ran 30 um we had 33 drills
we attend the academy the fire academy 55 times um we also provide education to the town what do we do Safety Town National Fire Prevention Week in October um fire prevention the during fire prevention we
go out to the towns a couple of guys get together and we visit all the private schools public schools educate the kids all about fire we also participate in the junior Police acad Academy week that the police department holds we uh take the kids for
half a day and we introduce them to the fire department show them what the fire department's all about putting the gear on playing with the tools jumping on the fire engines we also work with the recreation department we support the kids at the rec field Indian Hills High School football games we go out there we cheer
them on we support everybody during the holiday season we also bring Santa around Santa comes to Oakland put them on a fire engine and we drive them around town was in conjunction with the Toys for Tots that's true Toys for Tots want
touch on that bit Toys for Tots inv that uh Toys was I don't know who um mark his name but what is it Mark Fox yes so we've worked with Mark Fox uh
over the past few years to assist I guess in the storage of all the toys prior to the uh the day of the pickup um we've actually done runs to go pick up the the toys from the various schools and locations and then
we've also helped uh once they sort and package all the boxes and so on down by company one in the back Firehouse uh we assist in bringing them to the train stop which is a right five push pla there so it's been working out really well it's one of the bigger stops they
have on their uh kudos to to to Oakland residents for bringing the toys there that they bring I mean I forget the number 3,000 I think 4,000 toys last year the biggest stop I think saying and they don't stop in
every town they stop in towns like us that you know participate the most so kudos to the fire department and uh public events helps with it too I think and uh and and the residents thank you all hey chief uh just uh if somebody if
a resident wanted to get involved and become a volunteer in the fire department how would they go about doing that just talk a little about the training involved and what it takes to become a firefighter well you have to go to become a firefighter you have to go up to the academy you got to train well how do you first if somebody want involved yes yeah if you want to get
involved you come down on Monday nights we're at the firehouse every Monday night or you could shoot me an email email is fire chief at Oakland nj.org to get involved we're always looking for members volunteering is hard I mean it's a lot of hours we do put a lot of hours
in um you come down fill out an application you get fingerprinted you get a physical everything passes you go up to the academy up in Mawa and you spend three months up there two nights a week taking all different courses up there you got to take a test and you become a
firefighter Monday nights every Monday night we drill I'll give you some numbers uh last year we drilled 30 times 33 times that's 1,816 man hours volunteer hours we went up to the academy 30 times that's six with 632
hours we ran 287 calls during the day last year 2200 hours at night we ran 124 calls 12200 hours in total we participated in 624
events 7,760 volunteer hours so only about firefighting you know fighting fires we help the community a lot we do stuff we train and we drill we help other towns Mutual
Aid thank you you have anything I just want to also thank the mayor and Council for last year for passing the resolution on the engine we're replacing a fire engine I know was short notice we got it in in time we saved the town a lot of money quite a
few thousand do with the price increases nowadays so that was great thank you we all want to thank you thank you very okay so uh next couple slides just the uh budget detail on salaries and wages uh and AE for the fire department
uh even though it's all volunteer there is uh some expenditures there that fall under uh and must be categorized as salaries and wages uh those are the officer stiens and the uh clothing allowance which is uh a point based system maybe you guys want to talk very
briefly uh about that and what the officers uh or what the volunteers must do to qualify for that well we have a point uh qualification so every time you um you go to an event it's we give two points per hour so we have it's 140
points per year that you have to meet to make your clothing allowance and your low sap we also get low sap and that's that's separate done separate right and the fire calls how many fire calls you make you have to meet your
percentage of fire calls per year and per you got to make percentage drills also okay and overall there's a $5,000 decrease in that overall souring weight PL okay uh
opting uh operating is up about 7 a little over $7,000 uh if you look at the specific line items it's equipment equipment equipment vehicle maintenance equipment maintenance equipment testing uh and maybe you guys can just delve into that
a little bit I mean vehicles are getting older equipment is getting older need need to be maintained need to be tested um of course everybody knows cost of living has gone up everything is just going up I mean about cost of EG up price you can talk
about the filters and you know every the fire apparatus is getting more and more expensive with the outside vendor their hourly rates are expensive so it's the cost of repairs you know you say fire truck on it and the cost of a repair goes up probably you know a lot more
than what you'd see for your regular car so what everything the ladders have to get tested every year the hose that's on your apparatus to make sure that it's ready to do the job it's supposed to right even the air packs got to be tested every year the air the air systems got to be tested pumps pump
pumps hose ladders ground ladders everything yeah they come out they pull all the hoses off the fire engines and test them put water in and make sure there's no leaks or anything that's an all day affair they usually come up with at least 10 guys and they test all our hoses and then if something fails that
something that would have to be replaced okay okay [Applause] Capital turnout gear turnout gear going back to um turnout gear of course we need to replace turnout gear
every why don't you tell the residents what turnout gear is yeah turnout gear is our is our fire gear uh fire helmet gloves boots we call them bunkers pants and our jacket they're expensive
they're not cheap and they get worn out from wearing them every day you know wearing them going on calls going to fires they do get worn out they need to be washed um they need to be replaced and they also have a finite life correct correct they have a 10-year life on them
so every 10 years every 10 years firefighters getting correct okay I'm interested in the line item for thermal thermal can cameras ask that too is that a replacement or is that a um I know we have two yes we have more to do yeah yeah no we have more than two but
we need to buy two more I mean I'm trying to get everything up to date these are older cameras um that we have batteries are going dead need to replace them there's money there's maintenance on them so we have to replace some thermal cameras buying new cameras though yeah correct
we're also making them more where they're all the same brand same manufacturer how many do you have right now we have total of six and that's two per equipment or yes pretty much two per equipment but then you also want to have the chiefs should
have their own um more than Crews going into a fire you know therm Imaging camera you go into a fire completely black you have your camera you can see the shadow it traces heat so this is this is equipment that
does get used on a regular basis correct correct and we go into a house um the resident smells something behind the wall you can put the camera against the wall point it to theall wall and you can see if there's any heat behind the wall we could use it for lost hypers cuz it traces heat you're in the woods you can
see if somebody was in the area I didn't know that what's the average lifespan of the equipment excuse me average lifespan 3 four years okay yeah mean it's it's Electronics too with batteries and stuff like that you know fire fire
scenes you can drop it depending on where the guy has it clipped or something like that you know it's just like another tool yeah electronic wise is you know it wears so it's not like they're put through a just a daily in a car or not so it goes through a pretty
rough uh rough life so the way it's used so this um how many did you say you have 10 six six I mean 10 years right six um $10,000 right so uh is it two are going
out and two are coming in or are you adding this I want to add we're adding need that somewh well and then we're going to we're going to get rid of the older the older units so you are replacing yeah we're going to replace them the older units we're going to keep them in reserve keep them just in case one goes out we're going to replace them
okay which are not going to be good cuz they're black and white also the images on them are are poor the batteries okay they're on their way out have they have they gotten cheaper or have they gotten more expensive they've got they in all actuality they've gotten
a lot cheaper yeah I remember back in the day when they first came out it was probably close to $25,000 for One camera right and the technology you know was this big bulky cumbers thing yeah you know and now they've gotten to the point where there we have you can get small
handheld ones you know different sizes and stuff like that but they're definitely a lot cheaper than what they used to be okay what's extraction equipment that's a rescue too cutter electric cutter battery operated cutter what would you use that for just s of
rather MVA motor vehicle accident if you need to lift something somebody's pinned on their car you need to lift the car you can use that also for draws life draws of Life correct yes and this is a battery operated which is nice you don't have the cord you don't have to bring the
cord you go down in embankment you don't need the cord you don't have to pull the cord just got to make sure you slug in after use exactly yeah they're lighter of course the older ones are heavy as the older guys can lift it but I I I was told a
couple years ago um the uh danger that firefighters face with EV with electric vehicles vehicles that they they could explode or you got to do it just right and um I remember when we got the U I don't know if you call it the utility
truck where you can uh go on online to the manufacturer of the vehicle and get a schematic to know how to take everything apart so you don't have that Expos right yeah we have a software that does that we have iPads and the cheaps vehicles and we have a software that we go on and we plug in the bid number the
type of vehicle or the license plate and it'll tell us what kind of car it is where the cut where not to cut if it's electric where the batter is located if it's in the hood underneath stuff that you have to be careful with when you're doing an extrication you don't want so it's not just just not house fires or building fires even on accidents if it's
a electric vehicle you really could put your men in Jeopardy it's very very very very dangerous absolutely Chief can you just talk a little bit about the training that the fire department went through that Tesla provided to us yes so we set up um a training with Tesla they um they zoomed in it was a two two night
course and they explained to us all different uh batteries that the Tesla hold where the locations of the batteries are the problem with Tesla is you don't know which Tesla it is because the models there's no emblems on them back then I don't know if the new ones have emblems on them on what model it is
um of course before you start cutting you got to know what you're cutting including firefighting techniques the firefighting um there's still an issue going on there's still I shouldn't say an issue um if a Tesla cats is on fire you could put a lot of water on it it
could reignite it could burn for a couple of days that's a problem that we're all facing right now with the metric Vehicles not just Tesla that's pretty much all true they're actually making things where there's containment units even junkyards are buying them where
they're actually putting them in like either pits and leaving them there because it could be a couple days even a week later where the batteries could start up again so that Tesla car the ugliest thing I've ever easy there a
budget about one those nice Tesla dump trucks or the dumpster trucks yeah the dumpster trucks yes yeah what I call I agree with you one ugly ugly ugly Mr C could you just now talk a little bit about the firet truck partial funding and why we have that program and why it
allows us to buy equipment without bonding sure uh so a number of years ago probably more than a number but I don't have an exact uh date for you probably coming off the heels of buying an apparatus we decided you know what let's try to get ahead of this uh
and start to do PES youo financing for the purchase of fire apparatus um because you know even though each one stands alone it is essentially over a 25 30e time Trend it is a completely recurring expense right to to keep up
that stock uh so the same way that we uh Endeavor to uh not incur debt for replacing other uh you know other pieces of equipment dump trucks police cars and and the like uh and given the fact that you know these things have such a long
lifespan we don't need them every year fig well let's just Reserve funding every year just to you know put a consistent level of funding uh build it into the capital plan and we've been very successful in doing that uh we use that to purchase a ladder truck uh for
close to two M uh was that 1 Point 2.3 I think it was right it was 1.3 or a little bit more 1.3 1.2 that was 1.2 now they're over $2 million uh but I it was $1.2
Million uh and and we replaced the chief's vehicle with that and we almost reached full funding for the uh the one that we replaced in member uh just needed a little bit of supplemental funding to avoid a large price increase which sort of gets to the state of the industry where there's been a lot of
consolidation amongst manufacturers prices have increased um I know it's something that uh pretty much every jurisdiction in the country is grappling with in in one way or another and this is a service that we have to provide well if you're going to have a
fire department you want to have apparatus that meets the the needs of the department and fulfills the mission right so uh so the idea here is to limit the the tax impact limit the shock to the budget have a consistent level of funding and
just Reserve money build up a bank balance so that when we need to go out and buy apparatus we have the money on hand to do that and that being said with these increases in the industry uh we are proposing $200,000 again this year that's been the
historical amount that we've put in uh and knowing that you know we just added some supplemental funding last year what you'll probably see next year is an increase to that whether it's 225 or 250 um we're going to take a look at the replacement schedule uh try to put some
cost analysis to that some cost projections uh and come up with a revised amount that we need going forward okay anybody else have any questions no questions I want to thank all the Chiefs for attending this this hearing today thank you so much I think it was enlightening for the community
and really shows the service that you provide so thank and thank you for we appreciate what do appreciate everything you do for the time thank you right [Applause] next and here's the big difference these guys carry
guns we should make you empty the clip before you came in keep talking way while what's that spot camera will be on what's that camera will be on all right so uh we're joined with members of the police
department uh we have acting Chief Keenan you want to introduce uham sure well just for those of you that may not know me my name is Tim Keenan I'm in my 24th year here at Police Department January 1 I was named OIC upon the retirement of Chief
szeri um I'll get into a little bit more uh we're a young Police Department last year we had five retirements only one of those was a patrol officer the rest were uh two sergeants a lieutenant and a chief so all of those spots have been backfilled this is acting Lieutenant
Steven Brock who has been in position all of 10 days maybe so just like Chief szeri did with me brought me to these meetings in the past just to so I can start learning the process here's Steve he gets to enjoy a nice evening with you guys tonight
so you guys it manager dies um so I'll talk briefly about the breakdown of the police department um we have our administrative Command Staff which is four officers it's a chief a
captain two lieutenants we have one Lieutenant for patrol purposes one uh Lieutenant for administrative purpos pures the breakdown is that is essentially the patrol Lieutenant monitors the four Patrol squads the administrative Lieutenant oversees a
detective Bureau and does a lot of work with the records department um underneath them would be the Patrol Division which is the backbone of the police department currently um not including the trainees
we have in the academy and the two trainees that are currently going through the fto program we have 14 officers assigned to the Patrol Division the two officers that are currently in fto training are both doing well they're anticipated to finish their
training and be Road ready and count towards Manpower right around April 1 the two recruits in the Academy I think they're on Pace to graduate June 18th at which time they'll start their fto training which is typically 3 months
so figure around mid-september to October first Delby Road ready and count towards Manpower uh we also have the detective Bureau right now there's two officers in there a detective sergeant and a detective we have a traffic Bureau which
um is a new traffic officer it's officer Joseph Burns um we have the communications division which is our dispatchers we have three full-time dispatchers who work Monday through Friday 8 hour shifts on the weekends we have three part-time
dispatchers um our records Bureau we have records Clerk Miss Rios I'm sure you know information technology it's Vincent D and uh we recently started the sleo program we currently have six
SOS they've been extremely well received uh by their schools by the parents and by the kids we have one at each of the Oakland Elementary Schools Valley Middle School and this is the first year we have have one up at the high school so they have a total of 25 in the
department uh 27 total 27 yeah 27 total so before we uh before I go into what um the actual things that we do I wanted to touch on our goals and priorities for 2025 because it kind of explains where
we're at as a police department we have 12 officers that have have currently less than 5 years experience which um is something that we're going to focus on trying to get them the training and the experience that they need to help themselves out in their
careers as they advance so the first goal that we have is we are accredited by the New Jersey State Chief of Police Association we want to maintain that accreditation it's a three-year accreditation cycle um Lieutenant O'Neal now acting Captain O'Neal does a
fantastic job as our accreditation manager uh what the accreditation doeses is that it ensures best practices are being followed by the police department which in turn reduces liability to the police department and the burrow and uh being
tracked by a certified board is beneficial because we can say we're doing exactly what the Chiefs Association is recommending that we do the second goal is that I want to improve the communication with the residents of Oakland we have the social
media accounts I want to have the department be more active in posting police plotters so that the public knows what we're doing obviously we can't post everything that we do some of it wouldn't be appropriate but this way the members of the public can actually see
what the police department is doing as far as significant arrests that are being made or Public Notices such as the age-old one of lock your car at night and bring your keys inside um little PSA almost every single
vehicle burglary is an unlocked car they hit the door handles if it opens they rumage through take whatever they can and they leave if it's locked they move on to the next one so that's why it's in every I think OCC newsletter and is yes it's a good one and then uh the last
goal is really we want to commit to investing in training and development of the younger officers because not only do we have a large group of younger officers in the department we have have newer supervisors as well and this goes back to over 25 years
ago when the burrow hired in clumps all those officers a couple of them stayed a little late a couple of them left on time and it calls the vacuum up towards the Command Staff so we want to make sure that even these younger supervisors
now are going to be well prepared for when they in the administrative roles so now we can go a little bit into what we actually do I'm not going to read every bullet point I know you guys this is night number two for you guys I don't think you want to read every single
bullet point so what are the main things that we do obviously we enforce the criminal law and motor vehicle law now last year in 2024 the officers conducted just over 4,000 motor vehicle stops in the bur of
Oakland that result resulted in 4,239 summons as being issued and from that and also from uh responding to calls we had 70 arrests for the year those numbers are about
average they're a little bit less than the previous years that's attributed to the five retirements through last year and uh training the new officers and being lower on Manpower while as we work our way back up thankfully a couple
years a ago uh we sat down with the governing body we mapped out their future retirements and we were able to hire proactively however there's still about a 9month gap from when you hire someone and send them to the academy before they're actually Road ready counting
towards Manpower so even though we hired early we're just kind of like maintaining versus being ahead of the game but thankfully we did that otherwise we'd be way behind so um the investigating crimes is mainly
done by the detective Bureau the detective Bureau is busy they have a lot of work they also do all the background checks for the new hires as well as firearms background checks as some of you may be aware New Jersey uh changed their concealed carry laws I think last
year we processed just over 40 of them it's a little bit labor intensive you want to make sure if you're going to approve a concealed carry permit it's going to somebody that is worthy of having it nothing uh that would preclude them from having it so we also uh I had mentioned the
class three SOS and the schools it last year we conducted 750 School checks uh Chief szer and I discussed it and even though we have the SOS in the schools we still think it's important to maintain the police presence so we still
have officers walk through the schools on a daily basis when every school's in session um we do them at random times throughout the day just so there's no pattern to it but the students like it the staff likes it so we're going to keep doing that um also the class three
officers um we haven't heard anything negative about the program since its Inception what was great was uh feedback I received from the administrators of the school said that it's not just a security guard in school it's somebody who actually joined the school Community
they go to the events uh the kids know their names they play basketball with them on recess things like that now of course they're there for C security and safety but they're doing more than just that they're not just standing at the door uh checking
IDs so another thing that we do is we obviously respond to ambulance calls and supplement the ambulance department last year we responded to 723 ambulance calls as P contribute to uh with the fire
department so last year we had 147 fire alarms that we responded to in addition to 115 Fireballs so fire fire call being actual fire fire alarm is uh tagged differently with our
system for the uh Patrol officers they responded to over 300 motor vehicle crashes last year in burough Oakland they performed a total of 648 enforcement details whether that's
radar detail or simply a traffic enforcement detail where they'll pick an intersection or a stop sign or follow a school bus and they look for violations those are uh static details that's but also when they're just driving around on patrol if they
see a violation they can pull the vehicle over hey chief can you can you just talk about a little bit how either I'll receive an email or a phone call from a resident or you your department about speeding in certain areas of town and and how you allocate resources and how you deal with that after you get the
complaint the residents understand so usually we have um the typical hotpots like yoav um down the hill I'm sorry down the hill down the hill right uh the school zones that we most of our traffic details we also log where they are so
most of them are at school zones high volume areas when we receive complaints from the public about speeding one of the things that we'll do is uh we will have targeted enforcement in those areas and we log them with the
cads so we can show what date and time we were there to determine if there is a problem another option we have is we have a stealth speed tracker we can deploy which is those little lines going across the street sometimes and it'll log the amount of
cars time that the vehicle went over and the speed that the vehicle was going and we can see the time of day say morning rush or afternoon Rush how many cars were going what the average speed was what the highest speed was lowest and we can determine is there an actual
speeding problem in that location or is it the resident seeing one car go by at a high rate of speed and thinking there's a speeding problem there um those speeding issues or complaints usually will come come in either through
bur hole or directly to the traffic Bureau they'll call up and they'll ask to speak to an officer if a speeding complaint it'll get forwarded to the traffic Bureau and all of those speed studies are logged and we can go back and compare them over time to try to determine the best use of
our resources as far as where these officers are doing their traffic enforcement details um can I just enter sorry I I know we have the the speed signs um and I know they record data do
we use those actively to to see how fast like I know I have one near my house on seminal and um I like do you all that information's logged um that's separate from the stealth speed tracker that we have we can pull those reports pretty
much whenever we want them we we usually do monthly and we'll review dates and times and see if we need to add a patrol car there to do some target enforcement or if the speeds are or uh the average speed is below the speed the posted speed and how often does it record cman tellini
[Laughter] speeding I I don't want to ask anything I don't want to ask anything that's confidential uh certainly I mean what are your specialized train what programs do have specialized training in
um because I know like with the first aid Squad doing I'll say active shooter I don't even know if that's the correct uh program you know you have zones Hot Zone cold you know whatever so what types of specialized training I mean CU
I know the officers involved in that has to go to additional schooling to be specifically trained so I don't want to give away something I'm not well with us it's it's assignment specific um all the patrol so for the active shooter um I can certainly talk about that I was an
distractive I was an active in SHO active shooter instructor for a few years for the department so we are trained and prepared every member ofs active shooter training a few years ago um we were fortunate enough to have the money for simunitions training not sure
if you're familiar with that with what that is it's essentially a replica of our actual firearm they're blue so you don't don't mess them up um they act the same way it's the same manipulation same sites everything however it in the shell casing is a little blob of paint so it's
essentially paintball um we go up to the police academy we train the fire grounds they have the big uh concrete building there that the fire department's training that's where we go and do our active sheer training that's every member of the department has that as far as
specialized training uh it could be based on your assignment so the officers in the detective Bureau they're sent to more specialized classes concerning investigations um a big one now is the electronic frauds with cryptocurrency
the scams uh like the internet scams that's something that the detective Bureau would receive that a patrol officer may not a patrol officer can request the class if we can accommodate their request they might be able to go um another example would be like a traffic officer the big one is the uh
Ruckers traffic Officer school and the accident reconstruction that's a couple weeks we usually have to plan that roughly 6 to nine months out just to could be able to get a spot um so that's is that kind of what your thinking about as far as a specialized training goes I
mean and you know just I'm I'm sure most people are aware it doesn't just the training just does not end in the academy right I mean it's training probably throughout your entire career so you're making me get a little bit ahead of myself but uh yeah so we have mandated training
that we have to do yearly use of force domestic violence vehicular Pursuit that's everybody receives that we also have to receive at least eight hours of active shooter training this year is the first year mandated that we have to do defensive tactics training to try to
lessen the chances of having to shoot somebody um officers all throughout New Jersey you're going to be trained in hand-to-hand takedowns sort of like a Jiu-Jitsu type of uh technique so you don't have to resort to the firearm if you don't have to or have it you know be able to deescalate the situation prior
to using a deadly force another example of the training is uh I Was Won years ago Sergeant Griffin's won now now is the drug recognition experts they're specialized in DWI based on drugs now DWI numbers are actually
trending down we think that's because of the Advent of uber and Lyft um it's much easier to use your app get a ride home than it is to drive and risk losing your license and the insurance rates and everything and being arrested um however with the Advent of
legalization of marijuana products officers need to be trained in how to identify drivers impaired by drugs versus alcohol um it's a little bit different certainly to get the app point to establ not only establish problem cause but to be able to see that
case all the way through the court process so there needs specialized training for that now with us being a younger Department uh not so much this year but certainly next year I'm going to be asking for a lot more money in the training budget because I was speaking
with um acting Captain O'Neal and we're coming up with a comprehensive training program for the younger officers that's more than just a state mandated training examples of that would be uh case law updates search and seizure updates not
just the legal aspect of it but actually how to properly search a car things like that that's going to benefit the officers and benefit the burrow by having better trained officers but that's also in your certification program they receive that training in the academy but once you're out of the academy no but I mean the Police
Department certification isn't that part of it that accreditation the accreditation so the accreditation mandates that we hit all of the mandated training from the AG's office um but it so as long as we do our minimum yearly training we satisfy those
requirements I don't think those requirements are enough especially seeing how many younger officers we have just above and beyond yeah um and I know in a little bit when we uh review the different requests the
training budget we asked for more money this year essentially for that reason we have younger officers who need to send the training classes the training classes vary in price some of them um are free through the academy some of them can be up to $500 depending on how
many days of a class it is and what the topic is uh we also with the training we need certified armors to work on each type of weapon that we have whether it's a handgun or rifle a carbine or a shotgun those classes are about $500 to
$700 and they have to take them every two to three years depending on what platform it is so that's a recurring fee um so that's an item that I'll give you the heads up is going to be uh increasing over the next couple years
but I think it's certainly well worth it so I kind of went off track a little bit um do you have any questions so far what does the armor uh do you said they're they're allowed to uh break down
the weapon and make repairs if needed um it's more of like a field strip um so anybody can an officer can Field Strip his weapon and clean it and armor could fully disassemble it repair broken parts put it back together than um no
problem so one of the things that we also offer uh as you know we assist with Safety Town we have an officer assigned there throughout the whole duration other officers that are working are permitted to go down and help out uh we do the junior Police Academy this
year uh I'm sorry uh back to safy town last year sleo fasio who's a sleo at Heights Assisted and he was down there it's a great opportunity for the incoming kindergarteners to learn about the SOS in the schools meet them put a name to the face
so that when they go to school in September they know who he is he's not just some security guard standing there this year I'm going to offer to the other SOS also if they want to come down meet the incoming kids for the same purpose because not every kid's going to go to Heights but we know most of the
kids will be going to one of the three elementary schools uh in addition to the Safety Town and Junior Police Academy we offer tours to the police department to the community that's big with the Boys and Girls Scouts typically uh CTC Academy in school they will come down we give them
tours of the building something that the public may not be aware of is we offer child safety seat installations we have two officers certified for child safety seat installations so especially uh new mothers are having their first child a lot of times they'll come down we'll
install the safety seat for them explain how to uh use it um and also in case they have any questions make sure that it's uh installed properly we do also offer presentations to various Community groups that will reach
out to us uh we go up to the Japanese school every year senior citizens go to senior citizens not that I would know you keep stealing my heat I didn't get the pancakes with police say an event coming up yeah we have pancakes with the police I forget the date but uh pancakes
with the police is going to be happening that's an opportunity for the police officers uh we're going to give presentation about the most common scams frauds um that the senior community is concerned with also take questions if
they want to express concerns they have we're right there it's not going to be just one or two officers given a presentation every officer that's working is going to be invited to come down and meet and greet the senior citizens in town April 3rd than April 3rd thank somebody told me uh we also
have officers that are conducting the lead program that's for the fifth grade students in all the elementary schools uh that's usually a hit with the kids that used to be dare dare doesn't exist in New Jersey anymore now it's lead but it's essentially this very similar
program um we also you say the pro for people that don't have children what is the lead uh it's like back in our day D you know drug education it's now it's become lead um where it talks about just safety
issues for children you know stranger danger the dangers of drugs things like that okay that the fifth graders get an education on prior to going to middle school where they're bombarded with all that stuff uh in addition to our pancakes with the police we do coffee with a cop
um typically that was done at TD Bank uh we had a couple of requests for to do it later on in a day cuz not everyone could make it in the mornings so we're going to have um coffee with a cop later on in the evenings later on in the year we
also do book with a cop which is where a patrol officer who's not even assigned to lead but an officer that just wants to be involved in the schools they go to an elementary school and they read a book to the school kids usually it's uh like first graders second graders and then they'll do questions and answers
and the kids will ask some questions to the cops you how many people did you arrest today things like that um one thing that we do and we're going to discuss it during the pancakes with police is uh I want
to not relaunch but I want to bring more awareness to operation reassurance which was put in place a couple years ago what it is is that it's essentially a form that you can get from us you fill it out with any concerns you
have either for yourself or for a family member in town meaning I could fill one out say my relative has cable pausy and there's a key hidden in a certain spot or here's the garage code and we put that into our
CAD system so if officers respond there we'll have that information available to us um it could also be a medical history of somebody they're whether they're on oxygen they have a history of heart problems if they have a Life Alert it gives the officers that are responding
more information so that when they get there they're not showing up completely blind trying to figure out what's going going on yeah Ariel I think spoke about it last night yes right yeah I spoken to her about it um at one of the staff meetings
I believe M so I don't want to bore you too much like I said with throwing numbers at you and different types of things that we do before we get into the numbers of the budget do you guys have any questions or concerns comments I just I
just want to make a statement uh and maybe you can just elaborate on I mean the Police Department police officers are Oakland's first line first respond we're usually their first yeah right so you're there for every fire call you're there for every EMS call every car accident any call of service you are the
first responder taking immediate action right so that and last year we had 20,22 death reports which is any any time an officer does something it generates a desk report whether it's a motor vehicle stop or call for service providing backup to an officer anything
that we do gets logged mhm um and we had 20,22 of those last year in 2024 I have to say the police department first on the scene for first aid call all your officers are really terrific I mean they show such concern
for the for the patient and uh really help a good group of officers really helps those old guys that can't lift some of the things one of those I don't know who they are but but no I I can't thank you guys enough to really it makes our life easier having
such a great group of younger officers but it ALS it's also a challenge relating to them um providing the training that they need and also meeting their job satisfaction needs is important move on a salar wages
or sure uh salary and wage is actually a pretty good story this year as we talked about last night the total salary and wage for police is only up by about 1.4% a good deal of that is due to what you know Captain Keenan talked about
earlier that we hired before we let officers retire so we had extra staff on in last year's budget so last year's budget was a bit of a hit in salary and wages and this year it's down because the retirees are out and obviously the people that have come in behind them
have a much lower lower salary rate um across the rest of the line items here they're fairly fairly flat there's one or two that are up um so I don't know if you have any specific questions for for the captain on any particular line item but but overall it's a fairly fairly
flat increase in terms of overall salary and wages overtime across a couple different categories seems to be the biggest biggest piece there so when uh a contractor or utility uh um office
uh once uh police officers there for Traffic Control they have to pay for the police officer correct they they do if you look the reimbursable overtime line uh there's about $90,000 out there that they still owe us uh Jessica you know works pretty hard and she's you know in
my office you know a couple times already this month asking what we can do to strongly encourage them and we'll eventually get with our attorneys to write letters um and go through that process but overall if you look historically you can see that we collect we collect the money that's due for us
well if somebody owes you money and they come in and they want to start another new project can't we just say no until you till you pay what you owe us well that's so a lot of that reimbursable overtime either comes from burrow bur
Burrow's own projects okay uh or utilties uh and the way this is supposed to work is people requesting our services are supposed to basically receive an estimate of what it's going to cost and post escrow to an account exactly the
utilities do not will not do that uh that's been a perennial issue Statewide um it's always sort of after the fact that they're actually paying this they protected by law that they don't have to do this you don't know they're
utilities anywhere you go same and you need them so you can't stop them you can't stop them from working because as a general rule the utilities do pay they do pay there may be a lag in terms of when you when you get it but in general it's not a you utility that you're
looking to get that money from uh so nothing else on salary and wage uh we can talk about the operating budget um the the operating budget is relatively small compared to you know the salary and wage budget but you know
there are some individual line items in here I think that VIN is going to talk to us about uh the biggest increase and almost total increase year-over-year budget wise is sitting in contracted Services um so I'm going to let then talk about what's
driving so uh we had a refresh of our Network last year uh the council was good enough to approve a large sum for Capital that um refresh because uh the way Microsoft does their licensing has
changed the way we have to do business so now everything is a yearly cost there is no more buy at once and have it forever uh as it was in the past so there is a tremendous amount of money in
Microsoft licensing for Windows 11 for email for the Outlook program that we use every day all of that stuff now is a constant draw yearly per person it's not no longer you can put it on a computer and call it good and have everybody use
it we went to a virtualized environment it's now licensed per person and and that's why that the line item went up we also had to buy a data center Edition for our servers which is good burrow wide which I've used in the burrow uh as well as in the police station but that
is a large investment that uh takes money off of our recurring revenue or our recurring cost for our uh new environment that we have some of the other line items that went up substantially were the Verizon air
cards because of our uh Alper program that we have going in every one of those boxes that we have cameras connected to need to have connections up to the cloud so they can offload the data back to Bergen County and that is a substantial cost and an Alper for those who don't
know uh automatic License Plate Reader do we pay for that or Bergen County we do does Bergen County reimburse us for that absolutely not should they no it's it's our data it just has to be shared with the county
okay if anybody has any pointed questions I can absolutely talk about it could we or could we not talk about the the cameras that we have the new cameras the alpers I know you call them they're fantastic cool um yeah how are they used
I can't go into too much detail that's what I'm saying I don't know um one thing that actually you just reminded me of is that as you all know there was a string of package thefts throughout North Jersey and uh southern New York especially over this last
summer um the feds made 13 arrests it was a ring that was operating and it's nice to say that our Alber data helped them make that arrest there was about 50 agencies involved but it was a pretty
high-tech string of 13 individuals that were doing these package steps part of the way everything gets tied together is through these plate readers as far as what vehicle is where and when but it also allows us um the
long-term plan which we're not too far away from is to have all of 202 covered with the entrances and exit exits to the burough covered so if anyone comes into this town we're going to know about it it's a stolen vehicle or if it's a missing Endangered Person or like a
silver alert something like that it it'll hit the Plate Reader and gives the instant alert to the officers on the road as well as a dispatcher and that'll be complete this year yes it should be right mhm everything is ordered um I'm just waiting there are two locations
that I have to get uh approval through um Public Service Rockland electric uh once they do their pole walk and say that we can have it they'll go in there but the other are going on the uh traffic lights in town on the county
roadway cool thank you Mr D just quick question for you I mean if Microsoft is nickeling and diming us to death is it worth looking at 5 years 10 years down the road moving to maybe Google or something else like that instead and get away from Microsoft if they're going to
well the operating system is the operating system and and they're pretty much the only game in town that's going to work with the software that we need to work with so software specific yeah is very software specific it's also you know we have to maintain seure security
at all all cost we are in the uh we just passed our 14th uh evaluation period uh from the state police and then next year in 2026 we will be more than likely visited by the FBI and go through that
entire process as well and there's uh you know security of the data is of the utmost importance it cost a lot of money to secure there's a lot of things that go into securing all of the data and you know it's not not a cheap
process that's disappointing and are the is this data stored like in the cloud no no our data is stored in my data center oh okay the Alper data Alper data is completely separate we don't own that data that
gets offloaded up to buron County so what we share it with everybody else and we have access so if someone drives across George Washington Bridge we can also see that too so it's one giant Network so is that infinite data storage or is it every 30 when it recycle the
aler data for which data does does that data get recycled the aler data yeah um it can be stored I think for five years that sounds then it gets purged yeah that's a little creepy every one of the vehicles that um we have four vehicles that have
uh alpr units on them and we have um some in town when we're completely done we'll have more in town and then all of that data gets you know sent up to Bergen County and it's free for everybody to to look at and so the the ones in town like they they read every
car that goes by or is it like they random you know is it uh no every car it passes it yeah yep we can't just search that data it has to have a reason to we have to go to a database plug in a case number and why we need that data so it's not like we're out there you know doing
searches nonstop it's a tracking device you know we get audited and it says exactly why we did that and we have the answer to that yeah so it's sort of like a warrant system exactly if we had a um say a Breakin overnight at a night shift or anything like that uh we can actually
look and see what cars were driving through what part of town and try to come you know narrow down to a suspect but then you had said about the silver alerts and stuff like that that automatically happens right if as long as the agency that put it in puts it incorrectly
yeah and it also is uh able to not just by license plates you can actually plug in um somebody reports a white Honda Civic just did this but they don't have a license plate you can put a time frame in and plug in a white Honda Civic and it you know isn't always perfect but a
very nice job of narrowing down a bunch of white cars and you can kind of look at the photo of it and see that it's you know a match or not what do we do now to prevent hacking of our system we have um numerous things in place we have our
data is encrypted at rest we have a nextg firewall that was just put in last year to replace the older nextg firewall that does the entire burrow uh we have a very robust email spam filter that stops
I'd say 99% of all of the questionable emails coming into the burrow and there are several thousand of them um so we are very well protected we every employee has to take many atory training on cyber security you know the biggest
thre that's by policy and by GIF requirements as well uh minimum of hours worth of training I think you're doing it in two two half hour yeah sessions or so um and do you want to talk about the NJ kick grant that we're yeah we just um
were lucky enough to receive a grant from the NJ kick for uh crowd strikes uh managed detection response service which was something that I had talked to Rich about but was well out of our price range for the uh services that they provide and we were good enough to fill
out the application and uh we were able to get that so that'll be going in I'd say sometime the uh end of April and what does that do that is um it manages and detects any traffic that let's say shouldn't be happening and immediately
takes care of it so if you were to click on something that you shouldn't have clicked on even after your extensive training you click on that as soon as it detects it it removes it from the network oh great do do you have uh do you have any offside storage in case of a backup I do we have local storage here
and we have cloud storage okay thank you right SLO 3 any other questions on no good yeah and actually if I can just circle back on that um about you know where the data is stored we do have full offsite
backups as well uh and disaster you know recovery and you know business continuity options there should should something disastrous occur okay SLO 3 uh the SLO budget is is great budget I like it just as much as I like
grants because every time I spend I get back from the schools so it's a it's a pretty good you know deal for us the schools are fantastic in terms of you know paying the monthly invoices um I know we've already got the contracts for for next year
uh I we're already starting to work on those renewals that that process so it really has been from a implementation from a captain's perspective it's been good from a financial perspective it's been really really good too but from a practical perspective it's the same
taxpayer yes it's not affecting my appropriation right remember last night the budget with the whole different part of it's coming out of that that 65% that's the part
we uh Capital want to start with the most expensive item or the cheapest just take take to the top take it from the top all right so the uh replacement of two Patrol vehicles that would be for uh two fully outfitted Patrol Vehicles each Patrol
vehicle is roughly $80,000 once fully equipped the price of the vehicle is just over 51,000 and then it costs about $28,000 between equipment and labor to outfit that vehicle and have it gr ready uh question how long does a typical
vehicle last so the residents can understand so usually the usually a brand new vehicle will stay as a primary Patrol vehicle typically for four to 5 years uh depending on usage uh it also depends on Manpower and then as it ages it'll be SL it back to a secondary
vehicle which is a backup vehicle in case one of the primaries goes down or has to be serviced for whatever reason we have the backup Vehicles available once they run through their lifespan as being a backup vehicle then they drop down to what we call um an
outside detail car when you see Verizon in town psng whomever they'll take the officer that working that job will take one of the older vehicles to go perform traffic functions for that job so even though it's an older vehic vehicle at that point it's making the burrow money
what brand are we using I mean I'm sorry what's the a type of a vehicle now T Haven for Ford Explorers it's two Ford Explorers have they been good with uh maintenance
and every vehicle you buy uh whether it was the tahos or the exporters will have their own sets of issues I thought Taho were supposed to be so good and then they turned out not they have a lot of issues the older ones were awesome uh when they did the
refresh we had a lot of issues with them and the Fords are just much better vehicles at this point and I'm a Chevy guy but I got to admit it there you go sorry the camar camar the the lights and
the sirens and all that uh do we can we recycle any of that or or does not for typically not for the new Patrol vehicles um as Vehicles go through the fleet sometimes if the vehicle is being completely taken out of service for
whatever reason um it manager dies will'll strip it of the electronics lights things like that and we'll set it aside in case we need them for parts for other cars but we typically won't take the older items and put them on a brand new car so by the time this vehicle
serve its purpose it's shot yeah pretty much we run them into the ground run to the ground you know it used to be that Vehicles would sort of um flow over to the civilian Fleet at some point years ago um but then of course you had co uh and supply chain issues and you couldn't
get vehicles it was two years to get vehicles we had to keep older vehicles in the fleet I think in one case we actually took uh a vehicle that had been moved over to the civilian Fleet back into the department uh and now of course we have vehicles for the sleo uh as well
which I guess would be like fourth third or fourth line at that point want to Mark unit out front some do not um so that's up to them what's next um I guess the next one would be the uh mobile data
terminals which can talk about that a little bit they're essentially um laptops that go in the cars okay ruggedized laptops that go in the cars that the officers perform their duties on they're locked in there they're not coming out they need to be able to
withstand the extreme and heat as the cars go through it so so these are Replacements yes okay yeah we're going to take the two oldest um I believe that are 8 years old now um out of service and replace them with these new ones okay next then uh the body worn
cameras so that's a large budget item oh wait a minute you passed over what we're pulling the Drone back we're going to punt that for a year or so going to learn more about it make it worthwhile we have a we have expert here we're going to top
into um so we're taking that out of the budget yes would you PR we leave it into budget and then have you take it out of the budget he disappointed it was coming out so we can leave it in and you can take it out well I'll tell you what you wait two years I won't be here
anymore body warn cameras so the body worn cameras um they're mandated by the mandated by the state we have to have them there's no h SS or butts about it three years ago we purchased watch guard cameras um Unfortunately they don't
function well last year in 2024 we had 112 documented failures on them which is way too high um so you're replacing all of them so we have to replace them all um what's good about axon is it's a much
better Pro product I'm willing to bet that most of the BWC footage that you see on the news it's an axon camera uh they're used throughout the country this uh is for 20 bwc's with the charging stations the software everything we
would need for them uh it also includes seven dash camera setups the body cameras sync to the dash cameras in the cars so you have the video being recorded from the officer's chest as well as the dash camera and it all gets link
together it's a six-year plan what's good about axon is you get brand new cameras when you start halfway through the program they replace all the cameras with brand new cameras and then at the end of the program one part in gift is they take all those cameras back and
give you brand new cameras again um so really you're getting brand new cameras essentially every other year for the next six years uh with Axon the um issues that we had Vin can speak with
numerous Hardware failures while the officers are either just on patrol or actively on a scene all of a sudden it just turns into a brick essentially a paper weight what was the expected life expectancy of the on that you're replacing three years three years yeah so it's three years when did you start
having problems um six months ifth into was there any type of class action suit or anything against this company trying to recover some of the taxpayer no not that we're aware of not that we're aware of and I'm sure it's just not us that was suffering from this problem well if you ask watch guard yes
they're telling us that we had problems that no one else in the country ever had which I find hard to believe um there's no way the open Police Department is the only Department that had these issues um they're just not a reliable product um
and it's at the point now where we would just be throwing more money into these watch Guard C knowing they don't work it's not a good product Mr C do we have any any recourse on this depends on what the warranty period would be what exclusions would be we'd
have to go back and and and check that we'd have to look at the terms of the state Grant uh that provided funding for the initial round as well oh so we we didn't pay for the state paid for it uh substantially I think there was some uh money we put into it uh but I think it was substantially paid for initially by
the state they provided that initial funding when they impos the body camera requirement okay uh so we would have I can't give you a clear answer tonight we would have to some resar have the cost of these cameras gone down I'm sorry have the has the cost of the cameras
gone down no they've stayed about the same um just so we are into the third year so this stuff would have to be replaced anyway anyway um I'm I brought this to uh the administration's attention it's hosting all of the data
in the cloud we're going to leave the data that we have in the building in the building on the server uh it's a Linux server so it should run for a substantial amount of time without a whole lot of effort um but we have a sub you know it's a substantial amount of data and that's why the cost is what it
is is for the cloud storage the access to the cloud the redaction software and all of those things on the back end that uh we have to do okay yeah and that's some functionality that what that's um better than what we have now too right in terms of the the video processing
aspects of it correct yes take you hours to redact a few minutes of a video with the software that and the product itself has gotten better I'm sorry the product itself has gotten better now this new is better yeah better way to look at film better
and better um visual Clarity we went uh we met with axon we saw all their products and everything it it blows what we have now out of the water okay and Tim could you touch briefly on um the grant funding that you're pursuing that may defer some of
that cost eventually well I don't want to get anybody's hopes up but um we're applying for a grant which we could receive up to $56,000 for body cameras and equipment and storage and everything um Chiefs s are started the process about a year ago
uh when he retired I took it over we're on Pace it looks like we have a good shot at receiving the money but I can't say we will because we haven't uh it hasn't been approved yet okay but each month we have to I have to provide them with the amounts how many videos we have how many terabytes of
storage um and some other questions about the usage of them we do that for an extended period of time about 18 months or so and then they make the decision it's a uh small Regional small
Regional Tribal Police Department Grant open Police Department qualifies as a small Police Department so we have access to that we're applying for it and we're going to see what happens with it are there any other grants that you apply for throughout the year um for this no for anything uh the two other
ones are usually the body armor grants okay I don't think the burrow has paid for body armor in a long time it's we do a Federal Grant and a state Grant uh we actually were discussing it today we have just under $15,000 in the body armor Grant to uh
replace some body armor with every 5 years you have to get a new V right and then of course uh like we talked about with project reassurance uh and the uh grant that we just submitted uh you know to do um uh like Hazard um
disaster preparedness training for seniors and to gather that information uh you know that Ariel submitted that that certainly sort of a Cooperative effort with the police department as well anybody else have any questions Council I do one quick
question sure we have a lot of dogs that end up get news in town um you guys have a scanner for the chip if they have a chip so if the officers are able toow the dog they can bring it inside headquarters we have a scanner at the desk if it's chei that'll give us
the information and is it true cuz I've heard story that um we ticket those homeowners those dog owners depending repeat a fender or if it's one time thing where a dog happens to escape out of the house or whatever uh it's
just like anything else officer has discretion yeah if it's a repeat offender then they can receive a summons all right that's all anybody else thank you for your time thank you guys I want to thank you for coming um I
guess this really concludes our meeting for today I think it certainly gave the uh yeah if we can talk about um kind of where we go from here what's the the okay but Tak leave yes you you guys can you guys can stay
if you'd like right um thank you thank you thank youate good night good night this this here is you know an opportunity also for anything that you've seen that you would like to add change delete from the budget once we
introduce then you're you're restricted by the state's 1051 law in terms of what we can change before adoption before we have to amend so if there is something in the budget where you wanted to say hey we want to change or do or something different you know we can yeah I wanted
to bring something up for discussion on that so last night in the senior center presentation right I thought there was an obvious need for another day bus right so how much I did the quick math like $5,000 more a year is there any way
we can consider great for bus driver time is there any way we can find any is there any way that money would be available we squeeze it from somewhere well I think if we we just took out 55,000 from the Drone maybe we could reallocate some of that well so if we if we took the money out from from
from the Drone which right so that that's coming out um it wouldn't necessarily reduce the capital budget what it would do is reduce the amount of the capital ordinance that we would introduce right um the that the rest of that money because we are dipping into
additional res existing reserves it would reduce the amount of reserves that we would be using Okay um but to your point $5,000 we had um put in the budget what Ariel had requested okay uh we didn't cut that line at all uh because
we also saw the value in it um if we want to provide that extra funding um $5,000 I'm sure we could figure out a way to interest interest is is my is my calculation correct well January February interest was higher than what we out so so we would have an
opportunity there to increase miscellaneous Revenue uh again without affecting uh the the tax to do that you also heard uh tonight um you know Anthony saying that you know we want to support the efforts to improve
the Aesthetics in the community downtown half thousand well this is this is s so so this is operating so you know we have a small historically we've had this small amount for sign replacement right typically something is missing if something is damaged this is I think
part of a broader effort uh that really is um come to the for after we were putting these budget plans plans together uh to proactively go out there and replace faded signage and um that's going to require some level of budget
investment to do that because you know the allocated budget funds are pretty much already spoken for here two months into the year um I don't have a firm number for you for you I mean if it's 2,000 already I could see easily another you know5 $6,000 uh for that as well but again I
think if you're saying that uh the first couple months of the year where interest earnings were a little little bit stronger than we had thought they might be at this point we could utilize that as well when we Outlook the interest we were anticipating another 25 basis point cut in the interest rate which hasn't
happened and they're not they're not talking about it anymore right you know so you know our interest is is up probably about $8,000 January February more than the Run rate to meet our look I'd like to make a suggestion
um if if the council is agreeable uh with the taking the Drone money out and moving that into the line item for the downtown make it 150,000 we can draw down on that for all the signage and start working on that Downtown Quarter as we start moving forward can we move
the capital budget into that that's my that's my question so the signage signs probably as a individual sign would not be capital A A signage as part of a road program is is different but an
individual signed replacement is an operating expense but we're okay if we want to do I think if we want to do 5,000 more on signs and 5,000 I think we're talking apples AR here I think for signs the council's on on board I think Eric Eric was bringing forward is
because in the police capital budget there was $55,000 for the drunk he wants to move that sidewalks or excuse me downtown reation yeah sure and and again we that I won't touch the budget with that because not really relevant to the budget that's more relevant to when we sit down I
guess in 2 weeks and have a capital plan right so we'll make sure that's in the capital ordinance that we present has no has no impact on taxpayers correct y so would you like us to we like to
allocate those funds signs and and downtown downtown increase the miscellaneous revenue for interest as the offset yes and what about the senior center bus driver yes okay so we're going to do plus 5K for signs Plus
5K uh for transportation yes I want to speak for the councel right you before what what happened to that well it it it was it worn out worn out and it didn't have the lift for the
wheelchair either but Carol this is more of services because they have now they're using it and and it's so and I thought it very clear we had they would use more it people would more people would go I think that's money well spent yeah I hate trying to
raise money but I think that makes sense anybody else Mr C should we have a camper she go um okay so so process going forward if everybody is comfortable with the
budget as we've just laid it out and the the changes that we've just talked about uh we will prepare it for introduction next week the draft budget that the draft agenda that you received uh has all of the various items uh that are necessary to introduce the
budget that's the cap rate ordinance uh reading it by title they have a new resolution this year uh regarding the budget time frame uh that they're requiring um and a couple of other things are we are we behind no what the
state has always done is on their own modify the statutory budget calendar and said okay it says this we're extending it to this uh it was just basically a proor a thing every year they would issue a local Finance notice and that would be it for whatever reason this year they said
um here's the revised budget calendar um but now this year you have to pass a resolution if you're going to take advantage of it Tech we should be introducing by Statute by the 10th of February corre but but it's always it's always extended because every
town right you under your state a figures yet uh towns will typically introduce in March like like like we do yeah uh so that you'll see that resolution and a couple of other things uh so we would then introduce uh the budget at next week's
meeting and the public hearing and final adoption would be scheduled uh for 4 weeks after that so the first meeting in April April and can we make sure we have that pie chart that we put up on the screen so the residents can see it sure
very important sure the the Public Presentation document will be on the website uh and as soon as we introduce the budget uh that will be you know that document state budget document that all goes on the website as well um certainly for the uh for the meeting we can have
that we can have that as well yeah I wonder if we should put it also on the electronic sign what the pie chart we put traffic and then we will have then the fire department police will be working when people crash
into any other further business see yes one other thing so as this ties into Capital um we're actually a little bit earlier with the budget than we historically have been uh typically we introduce the second meeting in March
adopted the second meeting in April then do Capital um what we'd like to do of course since we're introducing at the first meeting in March we would like to discuss and introduce the capital ordinance uh as we've laid it out and talked about it at the second meeting in March that would put it on track for
adoption the same night that we adopt the budget okay all right and then there's in a stopple period and then we can begin spending that'll provide all the money for the road program funding which should sync up pretty well uh with the uh the bid schedule and award schedule that we've laid hasn't there
been times when Capital couldn't get spent until like August yes sir yeah yeah there has been so now they'll be able to spend in June May we want to get the road program
going too yeah and typically we would essentially pre fund the road program all right so whatever we would authorize in capital or a bond ordinance in one year we would wind up spending in the next year uh we actually didn't wind up authorizing any uh Road program money
last year now we're not going to skip a year of the program just when the funding is Advanced and authorized has changed somewhat all right so it is a little bit more important that we get that done in the spring and not wait uh so it doesn't jeopardize the time frame that we have in mind for the
program okay anything else anybody else motion to adjourn have a second second all favor you all right this concludes this meeting our next meeting will be held March 11th 700 p.m. here at council chambers regular uh regularly scheduled council meeting and with that being said
meeting ad return thank you everybody for