[Music] e yeah bring it point that out will certainly cover that so I will okay all right meeting call to order this is the March 5th 2025 special budget meeting here at the council chambers um would
the clerk please 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 rise to colletive leaders yes thank you I Ali to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice for all please remain
standing thank you the clerk please call the rooll mayor Cala present council president McAn councilman Pignatelli here councilwoman Rose here councilman
saliani councilman slinsky here councilman talamini uh councilman talamini and uh councilman mccan have indicated they can't make tonight's meeting do have a motion to excuse motion to excuse second all favor I and let the record show that
uh councilman Sally Annie will be joining us late he'll be probably about a quarter after so we can certainly start the meeting with him um do we have a motion open to public some moved second all favor hi not seeing any public do have a motion
to close some moved second all in favor hi hi okay so here we are for the 2025 budget presentation uh we've got our Broad administrator and our CFO present uh the budget committee has been working on this budget for the with our Professionals for the last couple months and at this time I'd like to uh turn
this over to uh Mr Coons and just everybody knows after Mr Coons and and our cfo's presentation is done we are going to have Peter havl from the library doing a presentation on his portion of the budget and also Ariel from the senior center the idea here is to be very transparent as we're going through this budgetary process so you
will hear over the next couple days you'll hear from the police department you'll hear from the DPW you'll hear from the fire department you'll hear from the senior center so all B organization will be represented so we have full transparency as we're going through this process uh Mr Coons I yield the floor to you thank you mayor uh I
think I'm going to start uh just by talking a little bit about the budget process so here we are uh in early March uh and we'll talk about this probably towards the end of tomorrow night's meeting in terms of what the uh introduction and adoption time frame looks like um but the budget process
actually starts in September uh when I send out packages to all the burrow agencies that includes volunteer boards and commissions and departments uh they put together their budget packages submit them uh to David and I we then meet with everybody go through their
budget proposals make changes ask them to justify their requests uh consider their Capital results uh or their Capital request as well as we put together the capital plan which will hit on a little bit tonight uh and that's usually then by uh around the holidays
we're putting together a first cut of the budget that we then share with the finance committee and we engage in discussions with the finance committee regarding their goals and priorities for the upcoming year uh make adjustments as as needed uh refine everything uh all
through this process we're looking at uh our Surplus uh our underlying financials uh trying to sort of read the key leaves on what may be happening uh in Trenton in the Bader economy uh to craft a final budget plan that we can then present to
the entire governing body which is the part of the process that we're at right now with this meeting so uh I would like and I know David too uh would like to just express our gratitude to all the volunteers and the department heads uh for really every
year kind of coming in with budget requests that are reasonable cost conscious um you know we have a I think a very solid process here uh and they know that you know we want to see originally from them is whatever they feel is legitimately needed to execute
their missions um that's not to say that they always get everything that they ask for that there are't adjustments made along the way um but you know they always come in with that in mind and they take that instruction seriously so um my thanks to them for continuing to do that this year uh so mayor as you had
mentioned the plan tonight is David and I will go through uh the current fund budget uh Appropriations revenues overall Financial picture tax impact to the public uh then we'll hear from uh Peter hell uh about the library budget
and Ariel preiato about the senior center budget tomorrow night uh we have an action-packed lineup uh we have DPW uh fire and police we'll all be presenting to you okay so the slide deck that you have is about 56 57 Pages uh
that's not all for tonight that's presentations for everybody so that's what we're going to cover in in both nights okay uh Water and Sewer will both be part of the DPW Presentation tomorrow uh so you'll get those utility uh budgets you know tomorrow night um with
with the rest of DPW okay thank you uh okay first slide as as we start there let's let's talk a little bit right off the bat about um what part of the tax levy we're talking about as we throw around the multitude
of numbers that we're going to be talking about this evening so as you can see from the chart uh it breaks the levy down between the schools both local school Regional School the county uh and then the total Municipal portion which is 25% okay that
includes our open space tax it includes a library tax levy uh which is about 2% of the overall and while you're going to hear from Peter about how he spends that money uh you really don't have any control over how much the levy is that
is set by state formula based on an average of the last three years assessed value uh and the state basically gives us a figure gives every town a figure every year uh that is the minimum amount of required funding okay so what we're really talking about when we talk about
our budget plan uh for this evening and the amount of uh the property tax levy that you have some measure of control over it's the remaining uh 23% that you see there in Blue uh schools overall make up
65% uh with the local schools making up 45 Regional Schools 20% and the county Levy being the remaining 10% okay so local and Regional School is 65% of our budget combined corre combined 65% of
the tax levy again what we're looking on this slide is not the budget per se it is a levy and uh the county the regional and his local school district are estimated here we have an idea what their budgets are going to be and we assume they're going to go up like everybody else's but this represents the
tax bill that you get you know quarterly at your house we represent 25% of that tax bill so I think that's an important message for people to understand that the tax bill is what we're talking about here we have control over 25% our full budget but their tax bill comes to the
house we're driving a quar m Mr can I just ask a question just for the residents here at this point obviously we're only talking about our 23% here have we gotten any indication from the the Regional Schools or the local schools or the county as far as any information of what they expect their
Levy to be or increase um I have just got anecdotal that they're facing the same challenge as we are I've not heard any specific numbers but our insurance is up by 133% uh they're mostly probably part of the same gifs and health plans so I can't imagine that their insurance
increase is going to be any less I mean again as you're talking those types of services at a school labor and the labor related costs are a huge percentage of of their budget uh this chart reflects what how much of a percentage increase
did you estimate in uh I estimated them at three and a quarter okay okay just just you know kind of anticipating what it what it might be where we ended up you know we ended up in that same area so I figured probably similar thank
you okay next slide all right so let's start talking about Appropriations very high level overview on on this slide um so all of our everything contained in our budget plan will uh maintain all of our existing levels of
services uh provides a significant increase in capital Investments as well as uh we're including some money to embark on some Redevelopment planning activities as well um we're going to go through there's some detailed explanations in here on several sheets um so I'll you
know talk about that when we get to those slides U but I do want to point out that if you exclude the impact of Grants and shared services that all have offsetting revenues um budget for 2025 is up about $1.5 million or 6.7% over
last year uh that again that includes a significant increase in capital uh that is largely offset with use of surplus um Solid Waste uh of 73,000 capital is 835,000 pension of 100,000
uh Insurance of $425,000 and this represents about 1.4 million of that $ 1.5 million dollar increase okay so uh those are your key budget drivers this year and some have offsetting revenues uh you know that we've been able to identify others do
not and when you look at that Solid Waste pension and insurance they're relatively fixed for us yes we do the contract with solid waste every year and we look to try to make improvements and look for opportunities to reduce that but we signed a contract 3 years ago
that is the cost a pension we get from the state it is not something that we have any ability to affect other than longterm if you reduce headcount in two years you would probably see a a impact to your pension and again the insurance you know we get the bill from from jef
so those three items which represent you know probably a little bit more than the actual increase in the tax levy are a little bit outside our control control so it makes makes the budget this year a little bit challenging in terms of how we manage the revenues and the cost can you just talk a little bit about state
aid and what what we are with that sure uh we're going to touch on this later in the presentation but if if You' like us to address it now we can uh so state aid is flat except uh two years ago the state stood up what was called a
municipal relief uh aid program uh that was two tranches of money that's for us that amounted to about $65,000 one year they doubled that the subsequent year so about $135,000 in additional state aid funding uh at the time that was you know very
welcome it was the first state aid increases uh municipalities had seen since the Great Recession since probably 2010 2011 um so so we have a slide later on that we'll show you where state aid keeps sort of declining as an overall
percentage of Revenue uh that money was not included in last year's uh state budget so it is not available for this year's Municipal budgets all right that created $136,000 hole in our budget that needed to be filled so they said yes but we're
not going to give you a money to do it uh they said they said after two years program's over yeah that's it they just zeroed it out in their budget um the impact on the average household for the
loss of that revenue is about $25 a year thank you and I'm sure we'll drill down further y exactly okay uh yeah I think we go on to the next um so the the state gives us statutory cap laws that restrict our
ability to increase the amount of tax revenue or Appropriations uh the levy cap um refers to the revenue and the taxes uh we're permitted to go up 2% over the prior Year's Levy there are exceptions uh debt
capital pension Insurance shared service um they what we call outside cap um we're also allowed the bank cap for three years on the levy side so if we don't meet the maximum amount that we're allowed to spend and we need a little bit extra the following year you can
Bank it we just take uh would the clerk just make note that Council Sani just joined us yes 13 thank you I'm sorry no no worries um so this year terms of the levy cap uh we're about $750,000 under the allowable increase
uh we don't currently have a cap Bank uh but if we keep this budget where it is we will then generated cap bank for the next three years in case we need it on the appropriation side we're allowed to go up 3 and a half% with the cola ordinance um about 75% of the budgets
subject to the cap again similar things um addition to Capital and debt and some health there's grants and lowp and Library funding are all outside cap as well uh we can Bank cap for two years on the appropriation side we do have some
cap Bank left from last year and again we're doing very well in terms of the Appropriations cap we're about 1.3 million under what we could spend um this is a little bit unique from what I'm hearing from my peers um a lot of my peers and other towns are not only
pushing up against big increases in terms of just a tax levy they're struggling to get under cap you know so we're in very good position in terms of where our our finances are and as rich rich said before when we're going through this budget process we're not just thinking about this year we are
thinking about next year and the following year and make sure that we're in a good sound position to be able to do the budgets we need to do to deliver the services right and if you remember we did have uh an appropriation cap challenge last year uh you know there
were some changes that we needed to make in order to to work within that so so we are compliant okay so it's when you think about the municipal budget uh the next couple slides will hopefully help you think
about it in a couple of different ways this one here is a distribution of expenditures chart uh breaking the budget down by you know sort of major component areas so with salary and wages about third of the budget 34% our
pension obligations are almost 10% and health benefits currently make up about 12.7% so uh if you add all those together those are really what we talk talk about when we refer to Personnel cost it's over 50% and that's about 56
57% of the budget goes towards Personnel all right uh your departmental OE in solid waste and we broke out solid waste because it's such a large component by itself those are all the things you can think of as Direct Services the goods uh supplies contracts uh that we use to
directly deliver services to the public uh they add up to about 22% okay so roughly a fifth of the overall budget goes for those sort of consumables service contracts and all that stuff that's you know program instructors at the senior center and all
of those things uh that help directly provide services to the public all right uh capital and debt combined is about 16% of our funding uh so that's all of our activities involved in maintaining our infrastructure
eventually uh and other OE that 5.4% uh that's things that are support costs um are it expenditures phones Property and Casualty Insurance uh utilities utilities cost to keep the
lights on uh that comes in again at about 5.4% okay next SL uh this sort of divides up the pie a little bit different a little different way this allocates salary costs amongst uh all the major functions uh so this is
more of a budget spend by by functional area uh and you can see we spend about 35 almost 36% uh of our budget on Public Safety activities that includes uh you know law enforcement fire OEM first stade Squad
stien and the like about 20% goes to public works for everything from maintaining parks to maintaining roads plowing roads uh you know you name it all the plethora of things that there involved in infrastructure and capital like the other charts a little over 16% or so uh
involved in maintaining all of our physical plant uh and you know storm sewers roads Etc uh core governmental functions you can kind of look at that as all the activities that more or less take place on the upper level of burrow Hall that's about
9.4 uh and if you look at sort of the social cultural recreational aspects uh and function of what we do uh we include Rec Senior Center Library uh you know that you're looking at uh little little more than 7%
uh that does not include things that are off budget it's important to note so the rec budget is rather large they offer a you know very very comprehensive program of recreation programs and summer camp to the public uh last year if you recall
we moved that off budget okay so that's supported by fees now and and stands on its own except some um some salary costs that are administrative in nature that we're not allowed to take out out of budget okay it also doesn't include um all of the public events activities that
the public events committee does or exess for all does uh those are also uh for the most part off budget too okay uh and then you have you know court all our court operations are slightly under 1% of our spending uh Health activities that's mostly our
contract with uh with Bergen County in the Maine for inspections septic uh inspections food safety inspections nuisance complaint followup all of the things that they do uh that's also just slightly under uh 1%
of our budget and land use activities uh that's planning zoning and everything in Code Enforcement included in that uh so fire prevention zoning property maintenance uh that's only 2 and a half% of uh of our spending
now into the Weeds now into the weeds bear with me the next three slides are that's quite the eye chart gonna going to take a little bit of time all right so these are all of these salary and wage budgets taken together
uh excluding the library and accumulated absences which we'll talk about when we get to the bottom of this slide uh they're projected increase overall by 2.2% uh and that number though includes a projected cost of living adjustment of
3.5% as you know our contracts are still open we're negotiating we have negotiations with all three unions next week um so this is not based on a fixed contractual cost at this point it is a budget number uh because we needed to
estimate something there to move forward with the budget process okay um so I'm going to sort of take each one of these functional areas in turn and highlight some things as I go along uh all of the general government budgets that's Administration
General Services um mayor and counsel clerk uh are up overall 3.4% uh you're going to see a large change there in my budget really that's just reallocating uh the cost for my assistant between my budget and the
clerk's budget uh as started last year um there's no you know additional raise or compensation it's really just an adjustment uh finance budget is up 6% a $3,000 increase uh and part of that is
related to we have a couple of new employees there and we're actually able to effectuate a little bit of uh salary reductions as a result of the new employees coming on board land use budgets are up 15% about
a $60,000 increase that's almost entirely made up of code enforcement and in particular two factors that are going into that uh one we have an employee uh on maternity leave so that is uh to fund
uh a temporary employee during that time for office coverage uh and the rest of that is for additional inspection activity related to the lenar project okay uh there is a state law that mandates in ections be done within 72
hours uh otherwise the developer can actually pull out and hire privately uh and so you know we Endeavor to provide a high level of service and a timely level timely service is timely inspections uh when they're needed so this is for any
additional inspectors that we need or stiens for our existing people working uh you know longer hours uh and I want to point out that this is actually covered there's an off set there on the UCC Revenue uh from based on last year's
actuals and the permit fees that were lenar was paying as they were coming in uh at the start of the process so do we expect Lenard to be getting cosos this year yes yes uh one building is underway they filed permits for others uh
including the two affordable housing buildings so I think as you see the um the year go on you're going to see a heightened level of activity there uh on actually constructing homes in the apartment buildings and once they once they get their Co is when we start taxing that building we don't have to
wait for the whole development we will get some added omitted this year so it'll be additional tax revenue that won't be in the anticipated tax revenue uh that'll roll into next year's so we'll get some increase in ratables to be able to plan for and again we have probably the same thing next year will
they finish next year or will it be 27 before the they're planning on finishing uh summer fall of next year so we'll get and I should say based on the original inspection schedule that they anticipated inspection schedule that they gave us last fall so for two years
or three years we'll get for for for two years we'll get some added and and both the following two years we'll get the actual built into the budget a lot next year and it'll be a final bump in 27 but the biggest bump is going to be in 26 I think so
yeah good okay we'll take extra well we're going to talk about that a little bit more we get the capital as well so oh don't worry it's coming but it's no it's it's a positive it's a positive okay uh Public Safety so
that's uh police OEM flood control fire department uh their sere wage budgets are up uh 1.4% uh and that does account for fully staffed uh police department with steps Cola and retirements uh just a reminder
we have two officers right now and you'll hear Tim talking talk about this more tomorrow night we have two officers uh that are finishing up field training and are doing very well from what I'm told uh they should be on the road in April on their own and we have two officers in the academy that are due to
graduate in July as well you took a big hit on this last year in terms of the salary and wages for police when you preh hire for all of the retirees you know because we had both retirees and new people on the books for a good portion of last year so that's really helping with keeping that increase down
a little bit even though if you looked at just what the salary guide would do the salary guide would be 7% if you're just looking if you're looking at with with Steps step I'm sure we'll have people retire this year too
uh there are one or two that are eligible uh we haven't received word that any of them will actually be retiring though so where we know we can plan where we don't know we have to assume they'll be here for the full year and anything we don't spend there obviously rolls into Surplus for a
future spend okay uh DPW budget is actually down 1% um but that is pretty much due to labor allocations between the various DPW budgets and the water and sewer utilities right so you're going to see an increase in the order andur utility
salary and wage costs uh that was when we went through with DPW and said okay really who's assigned where doing what um and you see that here within the current fund as well where a lot of uh the budgets except streets and roads were down a lot of that was just
reallocating uh between those budgets and you know basically what functional area they were primarily assigned to okay um and it does include the funding for the individual that uh you know was made permanent full-time as well uh although that actually hit Water and
Sewer I think for the most part okay uh and then your health department and Rec Senior Services uh and why not their budgets are up 11.6% uh that again includes their cost
of living adjustments uh and a possible promotion and as Ariel we'll talk about uh some additional funding for our bus driver due to increased demand and again she'll talk about that later when she's presents in a little while this evening
well now that we have new bus which is readily accessible for handicap that increase people using it yes yep it's drive it's it's really driving demand okay it's also good spend yes yes it's good spend absolutely so all of that all
all to there you're looking at a 2.2% increase uh accumulated absences however uh is down by $15,000 uh some of you may recall over the last several years um we had
increased that budget line in anticipation of the police officers retiring so we would have sufficient funding in that account uh to pay for those time payouts we've been backing off of that because we hit the peak really last year uh and we were able to
you know rather dramatically reduce it this year based on projections going forward of how much we're going to need to cover future retirements probably at 120ish for the next couple of years there is another little bubble that we anticipate in a few years um but after
that probably drop back down to 50 60,000 because you get most of the long 10e people what was the year that SI time stopped paying out 2010 2010 uh anybody hired after May
21st 2011 2011 so you know all the people who have started after that may be ACC acing all kinds of sick time but there's no payout at the end of it so you're starting to see the positive impact of those statutory changes and the contractual changes you made here um
so we have we have a trust fund for the retirements correct and I remember being on the council as long as I've been on in 2016 and 17 we were paying out over $100,000 from our budget because we didn't have a trust fund back then for
it further further back than that yeah well I mean that's remember what I can remember uh we set up the accumulated absence trust I want to say 2009 2010 or so it has been been around that
long I meant 2005 not 200 2006 not 2006 and you're right it was an outgrowth of some retirements that were happening around that time in like 6 78 when I started here uh and we said you know we need a long-term mechanism here to manage these cost I
think we were getting a hit with2 or $300,000 on just retirement accumulated sick time you have a trust that's your current fund budget that's a hard hit on your current fund budget right so time time wise P yeah you know I'm thinking
2016 I was 2006 I was on the council and the library salary wages is up as well Peter will probably talk about what he's doing there and what his plans are um that's part of his third Mill so it is it is well spent there too uh this slide is about uh all of our
departmental level budgets on the uh other expense or operating expense side uh and those budgets make up uh just about $5.2 million of 16.6 million in
total other expense spending that's about 31% uh goes again to these direct expenditures all right um under the general government portion again that's budgets like uh Administration
Communications Commission General Services uh mayor and Council clerk collections coun what's that look at that mayor councilman yes uh that that kind of is the big big driver for a couple of
reasons uh one uh we had to increase you kind of feel weird it's your budget I'm telling you what we're doing with your budget uh but there is a professional service line item uh that is sort of a catchall for professional service expenses that are not categorized elsewhere like in engineering and
planning uh and with you know what we were trying to do with Communications and whatnot there was a need to increase that somewhat uh and the other thing is you know this council is very engaged uh with training and learning opportunities uh going to the league of municipalities uh and and for years that
wasn't the case and there was almost no uh you know training travel cost expenditures or anything like that uh and that was becoming readily apparent year over year where you're seeing you know a negative number uh over the last couple years so uh we felt it to increase that to really reflect uh the
amount of funding we think that we're going to be necessary to support those activities okay uh Finance Dave the big spender here uh there's really a very small increase there uh and most of that
is in shared services uh for our agreement with Hillsdale and that's offset on the revenue side with the revenue that uh Hillsdale pays us uh land use is up a very small amount uh
that one we budget uh for construction code looks awful on a percentage basis it's 40% but it's a very small budget it's up $3,500 uh and that is because we uh fire prevention asked for additional funding to support fire prevention activities
fire prevention week activities and the like uh so that's what's encompassed there uh Public Safety Public Safety budget is up 99.1% about $47,000 uh overall uh the primary driver here there's you know some changes in
the police OE and and some offsets um but one of the things that we've seen over the years and continue to see even though the main it budget we were able to find some uh better pricing pricing on licensing and saving on some internet cost we were able to reduce that uh on
the police side uh uh it's increasingly te a technology driven organization and uh the new licensing costs uh and ability to you know utilize that technology to its fullest is really
what's behind that increase it's about a $50,000 uh increase to their technology cost uh and you'll hear from uh officer Keenan you know Captain Keenan and uh Vinnie dies tomorrow night and they'll get they'll d right into the Weeds on
all of that [Music] start uh it'll be available on YouTube yes it'll be up and running about 11 o' tonight thank you okay um Public Works I'm going to take
engineering and planning first we put that under Public Works it's as much land use as anything else too um we increased that by $40,000 uh and that is specifically for uh
potential Redevelopment studies uh as we've been talking with the planner about the you know the potential for looking at certain areas uh keep looking at improving our downtown and our commercial corridors um I don't have firm costs on that yet um but we felt it
prudent again in you know sort of furtherance of one of the main goals here that we have uh to include some additional funding for that all right um so that's $40,000 of the increase the other uh couple things I want to note there under the shade tree commission uh
$144,000 plus increase that is primarily for our Forester that we use uh and increased workload in hour in hours especially has he has to start now going uh back out reinspect properties to ensure compliance with permits that were issued last year in terms of mitigation
efforts and tree planting there's a time associated with that there's a cost associated with that um I have had a conversation with the TR shade tree commission um about the amount of um you know application Revenue that you know
should really be coming in to offset that part of uh what he does um I know that there was a shade tree commission the other night I don't know if they brought that up no they did not okay I'll follow back up with shade Tre commission about that yeah okay
you do I didn't do anything budget cuts didn't do anything we cut the budg that we're back we' we' been having this technology challenge even could just be an little interet
glitch it's the windan uh and the the other thing to note there is a $73,000 increase in our Solid Waste budget uh there was actually I think the contractual increase is actually a little bit more than that we were able
to reduce uh the disposal budget a little bit to to bring that down this is the last year of a three-year contract with Suburban um and so we'll be in a position where we either need to go back out to bid uh I can tell you that I'm in
discussions with a neighboring municipality about a potential shared service um you will be hearing more from me on that in the coming weeks Mr coin can you just elaborate a little bit about the study that was done between Oakland frankco lakes and white just
remind residents how we got that Grant and sure uh so a couple years ago I want to say this goes back now to 23 we applied for a leap Grant uh I do not remember the acronym what it stands for local efficiency Aid local efficiency aid program there we go uh and that is
money that the state provides on a competitive basis to municipalities to study study shared Service uh ideas okay so we partnered with Franklin Lakes and woff Franklin Lakes was the lead Agency
on that uh to study the potential of um combining uh for solid waste collection either on a continued Outsource basis or looking at standing up our own operation and bringing the entire thing in house
um ultimately that study didn't show that it uh was really beneficial to all three commun unities to do uh and there were significant challenges either bringing it in house with sighting in operation all three town cited issues with available land uh and and
Facilities uh as an impediment uh and there were separate challenges there with syncing up contracts and routes and and things like that um and at the end of the day as sometimes these studies do you sort of had a disparate uh level of benefit depending on what town you were
looking at uh so ultimately we decided that it didn't really make sense for us to do anything amongst all three towns but the exercise itself uh I think was beneficial because it did show the potential for the burrow to save some
money uh if we were able to uh perhaps partner with a different Community uh you know and look at look at that so could we partner so we're looking at uh a shared service you know with a town that does it in house uh neighboring
municipality could we go out of County you can go County so we could do Riverdale pumpt and lakes yes hasal yes if I recall correctly the study showed that we provide better Services than our neighboring FL towns to our residents uh in certain respects yes um for example
we provide bulky waste with every pickup right um the other towns do not um it depends on how you define better service too I think woff still does a hybrid uh collection schedule where it's once a week in the winter months and twice a
week in the summertime um we're all pretty much the same when it comes to recycling uh we have a higher level of yard waste collection right so that was one of the other things that we studied how do you you know how do you harmonize those service levels because you really can't have different service levels um
or not do that easily I should say um so yes it it really is a high level of service that we that you know that we provide here uh and Anthony we'll talk more about that tomorrow I can tell you doing bulky waste every week is not at all the industry Norm uh you know
talking with the Consultants that we uh that we engage with that this is their specialty they do these sorts of studies uh up and down the East Coast uh and I said that's not above the majority at all yeah yeah so thank you Mr K I think
it's important for the public to hear that you know we are looking at the shared services Tak advantage of the grants that are out there so we can you know make better decisions thank you right sure okay uh under sort of the social services Banner Recreation uh last year
as we transitioned most of the rec funding over to uh the trust is completely fee based we provided them with some startup money for lack of a better word uh simply because you know they have on they listen they run programs all year long uh and needed
some money at the at the get-go to uh you know to be able to meet contractual obligations with with you know Supply vendors and and uh you know umpires and referees and and the like uh so we no longer need to do that so we've pulled that money out of the out of the budget
that's $55,000 savings uh and then the court operations are you know slight reduction there $2,100 uh and the library a slight reduction as well so all all of the
direct OE budgets overall are up 3% year-over-year so um for court we don't have an inhouse court anymore it's all done by Zoom uh most of the sessions are Zoom there it is in person for certain
matters but it's but it's Mo but it's not like but it's not like the old days where you would see this room completely packed on a court day no so there's no savings uh there is a savings on um police uh for court security um and you know if
you were to look back with a 3 four five year history you're going to see that line sort of steadily decreasing um because we haven't really needed it um you know one point we had you know you walk through the doors is there you still have the metal detector uh you know that we bought for cor security and
the wands and the like um but that's one cost that's greatly been reduced by doing virtual Court thank you okay uh miscellaneous expenses which are all of your non-departmental OE
costs and account for about 65% of the total OE spending uh they're up about 133% year-over-year and let me dig into that with you and explain why uh so for information technology again we were able to economize a little
bit there uh and we have a reduction of $6,000 uh legal we had added $10,000 to that budget due to a couple of ongoing matters um some of that is you know of course contingency depending on how those matters progress and may be
resolved um there is already a little bit of contingency built into that number this is just a little bit of a hedge because normally uh you know we don't go into a year with matters ongoing that we you know have an expectation that we're going to have some extraordinary cost
for uh the probably the the single biggest thing that I want to talk about uh in terms of additional spending this evening uh are our insurance budgets so the good news is Property and Casualty uh which last year was up by over 10%
and I think we've been through the reasons why uh that took place due to you know workers comp uh the regulatory environment for that and you know claims from natural disasters etc etc um but really now it's turned to health
benefits uh our joint Insurance Fund our health insurance fund I should say uh we've done a very good job over during the pandemic and beforehand stabilizing costs are year-over-year
um health benefit premium increases uh I think between 2016 and through 2024 averaged like two two and a half percent a year very modest um and the dam sort of broke
uh in 2024 for a whole number of reasons um on the prescription side there's been this rise of the weight loss medications uh that's driving a lot of spending Wendy there's somebody at the door could you Wendy can you just keep that open you can
um you have additional cancer medications that are very expensive you've had a lot of claims in the fund uh that seem to uh become six figures but they're not hitting the uh what we call the spec limit where reinsurance would kick in and offer some rebates uh
on medical spending you've had uh in ongoing trend of additional outside uh Network claims so that utilization has increased the cost for out of network uh utilization uh has increased as well uh
so there's a variety of factors there isn't just one thing that we can point to here um but sort of a perfect storm all at once um that's leading to an overall 16% I'm sorry 18% in our health care budget uh for the coming year uh
now that's compounded and it is in that 18% uh with additional retirees as well right so our total census po count the total number of people that are getting health benefits has increased uh with those retirees because the people coming in behind them are also eligible for uh
for health benefits so really there's been a lot of things here happening at once that's driving this uh um I'm anticipating that 2026 will probably be no better at this point from what we're seeing uh through the first uh half or
the second half of 2024 and in fact uh the health insurance fund may be in a position where they need to Levy um special assessments on top of this uh in order to meet their claims obligations okay that's something
David and I have talked about uh there was I I spoke with the finance committee earlier today there was supposed to be a meeting Friday uh of the finance committee that's been rescheduled to next Wednesday uh we'll should have a fuller picture at the at the fund level
about what may be entailed here uh and I'll report back to you when when we get that the good news is we have a health benefits trust fund uh where we've been putting any dividends that we get back from the from the uh fund over the years as well as
Sweeping in any uh budget balances and uh that's very healthy and we would be able to absorb whatever that special assessment may be directly by using those funds so we do not expect a budget impact uh or a impact on the taxpayer as
a result of that okay um and again when I have actual numbers I'll I'll share them with you um one thing I want to point out additionally on health insurance so you know you're talking about $400,000 of an increase um the
Blended the the Blended rate increase is about 15% that's about 133% on medical 25% or so on prescription 25% on Medicare Advantage that's a regulatory change that really isn't due to claims uh as
you may have heard uh these eliminated What's called the doughnut hole uh for Medicare uh which is great if you're on medic care and you're on and you're on those plans it's a it's a real tangible Financial benefit um but those costs don't go away all they did was shift
to to the providers uh so the burrow is picking up that cost essentially um and the retiree health care cost because of the great influx of retirees that we had last year uh isn't helping this year's budget either um out of that increase
about 300,000 of it is attributable to retire health care cost increases about half of that is uh premium driven and about half of that is additional Census count I know there's no way of calculating it but let's just say the retirees were
getting $100,000 a year and now the new people replacing are only getting paid $50,000 a year so there is some type of a savings you get an offset on what we call breakage right uh on the on the salary yeah okay so uh it doesn't net
out solely on the healthare budget it just sort of disperses throughout the entire budget uh and you do see some of that uh and you'll see under the group health waiver program there's an increase there uh and that is because we now have
about 13 employees on the waiver program uh there are a few people that have family coverage that are on that a lot of them are the younger employees that frankly are still on their parents' coverage uh and so they're waving it uh so there's a little bit of a cost there for the waiver payments um but combine
those waivers net out to a savings of about $200,000 compared to if we didn't have the waiver program in place okay every little bit helps it's it's impactful it really is okay uh utilities uh there's some
changes there uh as a note points out if you take into account budget transfers from last year uh utility budgets are actually flat um we had programmed in $175,000 for vehicle fuels we were actually able to um transfer some of
that money out last year so the budget as amended was less if you actually compare it to how it was originally adopted it's the same $175,000 and uh telephone you're going to see that's less uh we just installed the new system with ring central uh I
think there's some final things to work out with that but that new system is up and running and uh that'll reduce our cost going forward for phone service uh pension budgets are up uh 5%
overall uh with the driver this year being pfrs at almost $100,000 of an increase and as David had pointed out um you know that's something that can be controlled when you're doing contract negotiations in terms of overall salaries and in terms of
headcount but the bill itself can't be we get a bill from pensions at the State uh and that's what we're obligated to pay on a year-to-year basis okay um and the other variable there on the pension side at the state level is how well are their Investments
doing uh you know in their Actuarial calculations because there's a ratio of uh payroll you know two payroll of how much we pay so for the employee it's fixed right if you're in P RS you're
paying 7 half% of your pay if you're in pfrs that's police you're paying 10% of your pay the amount that the burrow pays as a percentage of payroll is variable year to year thing that bothers me is and I know with P
RS the municipality must pay their share but the state doesn't pay their share well they only pay a portion of their share that was a big that's what's hitting the pension system badly yes and the pfr pfrs system broke away as a as a
result of that um I I know the state has endeavored to make full payments but for the probably the better part of 15 or 20 years they did not uh they gave towns a pension holiday uh in the late 90s early 2000s that I think were probably still
still still paying in hindsight that was a very shortsighted move on the part of the state it sounded good for them to say that it sounded good at the time uh when the stock market was going up would go up forever uh so on PRS right now
we're paying about 155% of of payroll uh on pfrs it's about 38% okay wow and it's on prior prior year year so there there is a lag so in two years your breakage will actually
help us on pfrs because those higher salaries will fall off and the newer salaries will be taken into account of that number y right okay uh Capital Improvement Fund in terms of the overall numbers couple of things going on here you're going to see
an $835,000 increase uh in the amount proposed for the capital Improvement fund uh 500,000 of that uh or so correct me if I'm wrong David uh is supported by additional Surplus utilization we'll get into more
thing what's that the whole thing the 500 500,000 of that 835 is a direct result of a what's called a roll back payment from the lar development right so the lar development was Farmland
assessed uh when they got their permits they started it's no longer Farmland assessed the way the Farmland Assessment law works is there's what are called roll back taxes so you go back three years you assess the property as if it was not Farmland
assessed and the developer owed us that calculated amount of money that was about half a million so what we were doing is directly using that to benefit the public and putting that directly back in to Capital uh you know again trying to match a onetime
revenue with a onetime expense so I'm a little confused so it's not going up by $135,000 on the appropriation side it is oh okay okay the point is that it's the levy the tax levy is not being impacted by that but we'll show that momentarily
different different line knock different different slide you want to make sure all right uh overall um overall debt payments uh if you net that out are actually down by about $25,000 all right getting to the end here uh I know this has been a lot to
sort of sort of throw out there all at once um the final portion is where we have our our what we call our special emergency allocations the $40,000 that you see there was for the initial revaluation costs when we did them in
2021 we have one more year after this year on that uh and then you're going to see support for utility uh that ACO payment was finished last year so we don't need that money in the budget anymore so that's an $85,000 savings and
we reduced the reserve for tax appeals uh you know as we're doing the annual Assessment program um you know you know that overall level of appeal activity uh you know should be decreasing uh and the reserve current
tax of appeal Reserve amount is is fairly healthy so we took a reduction there from 880,000 to 55,000 uh and overall that results in all of these sort of miscellaneous OE budgets being up uh
99.7% I'm sorry 12.9% okay next slide so talking about our Capital plan overall we're proposing uh total fund or a total program cost of about
$3.3 million um the important thing to note here I'll point out a few things we'll get into Capital more intensely tomorrow night a lot of the pro a lot of the projects here are associated with the Departments that are going to present then um but I just wanted to point out a
few things under admin equipment and improvements you see Construction office vehicle Replacements two of those uh that is also offset by funding on the revenue side non-t tax revenue on the revenue side uh because we had an
increase in uniform construction code funding um we've matched that here uh to replace to add to the fleet for additional inspector's Vehicles the current vehicles are
2011 2012 Ford two Ford focuses uh what we would be doing here is what what we're looking at is actually buying a couple of um uh what's the name of the V Maverick maver Maverick thank you I'm Escape
Ford Ford Maverick hybrids actually um other things to note if you look over at Street and Road improvements total funding for this year uh for the annual Ro uh Road repair program uh including yappo Avenue which will be done as a
separately bid project amounts to about $1.8 million that is backed in part by an NJ do Grant about $200,000 and about $330,000 uh of existing Capital funding
from prior years Road programs that we would use towards that as well so again we're anticipating a rather robust Road repair program for this year .8 million you said uh in the aggregate yeah all right uh and lastly you'll hear from Tim
tomorrow night uh a couple of uh again technology related items uh there one we need to replace our body one cameras which I know it seems like we just bought them uh we bought them originally through a state grant program um but
they'll get into the details of why we need to replace them all right and I guess we'll get further explanation on this $5,000 on the Drone yes yes that's actually very exciting very exciting to spend not topend it I don't I hope we get some
more information on that you're going to you're going to get a whole presentation on that a real good explanation and but the first cost it's it's a good okay uh the the key thing here to note is this Capital plan requires no issuance of debt this is a fully funded pay as you
go Capital program all right uh David did you want to get into any more details on that uh no I think most of the details will hit tomorrow night when we go through the Departments okay all right I've spoken enough right now so David I'm going to turn it over to you
to talk about how we're paying for all of this uh you know go through all the revenues Surplus Surplus regeneration AB absolutely thank you so on the on the revenue side I'm going to start with Surplus because we were just talking about the Surplus um as you saw Capital
were increasing that's spend by about 800,000 we're also increasing Surplus utilization by about 750 so that increase in capital is really being paid for by an increase in Surplus utilization why do we have so much Surplus we talked about the lar project
um giving us that roll back uh we also had significant interest earnings last year um the downside to the significant interest earnings from last year uh we've got less cash on hand so our miscellaneous Revenue we're going to be anticipating less interest because there
is less cash in the bank and the fed's also lowered the rate twice um so the interest rate we're getting has come down uh so we're anticipating a little bit of a a hit on the the interest side in terms of year-over-year earnings um it's kind of you'll see that
28,000 Less in miscellaneous Revenue so a lot of that's interest earnings the other piece inside of that is 130,000 we already talked about in terms of state aid being reduced if you take that 30,000 out that miscellaneous Revenue Line's probably up around 3% so all those things that are a
miscellaneous Revenue whether it's court fees permit fees um all those things are you know up slightly uh you've made some changes to fees um so that's driving some of that and uh the rest is just kind of where the business or the market
or the everything is in terms of what we can anticipate so because we got that money from lenar next year it's not going not going to have that we're not going to have that yes so we'll have tax we'll have tax revenue from the properties you'll you'll probably still see a some measure of a increase uh or
or heightened level of Revenue uh in uccc fees as they go through and submit for additional buildings and then you'll start seeing it come through on the property tax revenue side okay 2027 will be the year that we'll you know fully be able to see and realize
all of that Revenue where it is how it's flowing um kind of to 2027 so does does that get eaten up I mean rich and I have plans for how to spend it yeah that's next like the first thing is to stabilize the
tax increase you know we really think moving forward after 2027 with some of the other things that are happening we will be able to get that tax rate back down where you know we've been historically in that you know 2% range which is you know kind of floating below
CPI you know which is you know good to be able to say that he can do that um but we really really feel very good two years out okay then I get to retire right we've talked about that it's not going to happen me
too um delinquent taxes we've never anticipated a whole lot um so any delinquent tax revenue we get floats right into Surplus um we did pick up quite a bit last year uh we actually had some Municipal leans finally get paid off um
so that was about a $45,000 you know plus in terms of Revenue and again that went off to Surplus because we didn't anticipate any of it um and then you see the municipal Levy uh that is the tax levy uh that's the balance of the revenues that we have
to collect to support the budget that Rich talked about um that's up 3.8% that's total that includes the library um and again just as always our revenues have to offset our Appropriations so if the Appropriations budget is 26 million
our revenues have to Total that as well um so that's where we are in terms of revenues in terms of distribution you can see that back 10 plus years ago about 76% of our revenues came from taxes um that's down to about
72% uh biggest biggest change of that is in the utilization of surplus we're probably at the peak right now that'll come back down as we experience less of these you know big extra you know splurges of revenues that we got we had
a big one in 2023 with the interest rates at one point they had been down to a quarter of a percent and they went up to 4% the next year so again all that excess interest Revenue rent off to to Surplus so our fund B our fund balance will that be the
2.8 um that's utilization of surplus uh that number will go back down next year okay uh so this is a kind of where the revenues have been flowing you can see historically where we've been um you see
over 22 23 some of the the changes in terms of Levy versus impact to the residential tax bill uh we had a good shift in terms of our assessment it went from residential to commercial so while the levy was up by 4% the residential
tax bill only went up by two uh this year we actually got a little bit of verse uh this year the assessment uh swung back to residential from commercial so while our Levy was only at 3.7 the impact to the tax bill is going
to be about 4.3 um you know so it's one of those things that'll float up and down if you look at CPI uh CPI came in you know probably around I think four 4.3
4.28 for the New York New Jersey so we're sitting right there on on CPI which is a good good metric and you can see what's driving it you you can see the Peaks the last couple years it's been Solid Waste Insurance pension that are that are driving those those bubble
ups that we have uh Surplus started the year very very healthy um you have a very very detailed Surplus policy um so we look at what our balance is and the policy says that we should use a certain amount and
that's that's good for the taxpayers we don't want to be keeping any more of their taxes in a bank than we need to to be fiscally and reasonably responsible in terms of our reserves so we are using a good amount of surplus again up 750,000 more than last year uh but you
can see that's probably not a bad deal since our change year-over-year uh bottom right was about $714,000 higher than what we started the year so Surplus we're in a very very good place right
now uh you can see my chart is different than yours uh rich and I were looking at this and we said why why is that strange triangle in the top right corner um it's because it's because they were overlapping uh you can see our Surplus
balance is High um but the increase and the change year-over-year is what's coming back down at the end of 2025 uh we don't anticipate replenishing like we have the last few years when we look at our appropriated reserves how much money did we LA from last year's
budget we know that's down significantly than prior years uh we don't see a whole lot of extra things we know we're not getting a a roll back anywhere this year so when we look at replenishment we see replenishment as being down down significantly from where it was in
2024 um still probably better than where we were back in early 20s um that won't be as as healthy as we started with the Year this year and what's the impact um as we roll through all of the uh tax levy uh we
look at the library we've estimated the schools uh we've got our new net valuation taxable gives us a rate um the municipal portion of the levy this year ours is $130 higher to the average resident uh the library
is going to add $1 to that as well and roughly right guessing where the schools might be we might they might be around $360 in terms of their increase again that is a really just a rough estimate based upon them being up 3% or so from
last year as rich said earlier about $22 of that is due to the fact that the state took some of that Aid away um another 25 or so is the shift from commercial back to residential so that's really what's
driving the revenue picture for us okay does anybody before we move on with the departmental presentation does anybody have any questions well back to your back to your insurance points when only know what 2026 is going to look like for insurance
you said based on trending from 2020 2024 forward it looks like you're still between 16 18% insurance rates in 2026 and and it may be more I can tell you that the claims uh from the second half of
2024 uh was worse than from the July 1st 2023 to June uh to July 20 24 period uh whether or not that continues or whether that was just a very intensive claims period is something that will be you
know we'll have a better handle on as the year progresses uh when the actuary looks at the data for rate development for the 2026 budget he's looking at that sort of fiscal year period uh so we do have another four months to go um but
from what I'm seeing right now uh it's it's going to be significant Thank you Rich anybody else not seeing anybody anything else do we want to take a five minute break we transition to the next person I think it'd be great okay take a five minute
recess e e e e e e e e all right uh so we're back in session at this time uh we're going to be turning
the floor over to our library director Mr H Mr you want to set the stage up here for us I I think you did it uh Library director Peter H is with us this evening and uh he's going to walk everybody through uh the library's
operations where their money goes uh and you know how they're how they're spending what it covers and I think it's also important for you to also kind of stress programmatically what you bring to the community that's very important some of the programs that are for the students for the seniors and you know concerts and everything else like that
it really truly is a community center of Oakland with the services that you provide you're correct it is yes it is so we'll Dive Right In with that take it away pet with my first slide so the 2025 budget request um as you guys know our budget is part of a formula right we get
what we get um third of a mill that being said this is how it's been distributed uh you can look through permanent full-time part-time Etc you'll see that I highlighted the increase in spending on permanent parttime for 2025 which is a big increase over the
previous year and I'll get back to that um General funds I'm going to talk to you about in detail uh everything below that is uh sort of contractual for lack of a better word right so we've got uh health insurance electric telephone natural gas pension Social Security and
that sort of thing lumped into those categories so um I'll go back up and we can talk a little bit about why we're making a larger investment in permanent part-time employees um I've now been at the library this Mars for 10 years uh it's been a a very interesting
transition that the library has gone through from 10 years ago to now uh the library Board of Trustees always have a set of priorities for each year a couple of years um and over time we hadn't uh stressed Staffing as much as we stress
some other issues that needed immediate attention uh last year we were kind of running a bit of a skeleton crew we didn't often have more than two and occasionally one person in the building uh things were getting a little bit a little bit dicey in that regard and also we sort of had some what I would consider to be maybe a little
underserved populations uh we lost our Adult Services librarian and had difficulty finding a new one and we've never really had a dedicated young adult librarian which I think is an important demographic I mean we have the middle school right next door we have the high school not far from the library and we wanted to be able to better service them
so the increase here is for those two positions uh that being said we've already had a little bit of difficulty finding um retaining uh Young Adult Services librarian I think that certainly for the library and I don't know what the other um department has are going to tell you it is currently a
bit difficult to find uh qualified employees to come on especially in a part-time capacity um so uh but this investment is specifically for Adult Services and young adult Services it also is extra bodies in the library these uh roles are not limited so if we
need help in other departments they work across departments um they're willing to you know if they have something to do with the children's Department they're going to work across those departments so these positions are also flexible and they're there to help the public and be public facing which we think is very
important for what we do of if anybody has any specific questions about that just interrupt me as I go through the rest of this uh so we go down to General funds and you can see the difference there and if you change the slide please thank you uh you can see how we distribute the general funds so the
general funds are the mone's that we take control of the library Board of Trustees and handle directly um you can see that I've broken it up into a chart here and that we have materials technology buckles membership programming building costs and operating expenses the majority of this money
about 71% goes directly back to the public in form of materials that we buy for them buckles membership programming that we that we host for the public uh so we can Circle back to those I think it's important to point out the building costs this is maintenance on
that Library that's hbac systems that's the sprinklers that's the roof that's anything that does and can go wrong that we pay for to have fixed it also includes our contract for the hbac system which is expensive and uh proprietary and something that we're
sort of locked into since the ren original renovation in 2004 and we bu costly to replace and if you replace it you're really replacing it with another one of those so we do have some significant costs just to keep the building running and to keep it clean and to keep it neat and to keep it
comfortable so that's what that uh represents uh when we look at technology we do have uh an an independent internet connection that we use there's software and Hardware we have to buy we do have our website that we have to maintain and then we try to invest in emerging Technologies when and where we can so if buckles rolls out something new like the
mecan platform we want to be a able to take advantage of that because it's something that the public sees and can utilize I think in the future we're looking at uh where something like AI would fit into this you know how that interfaces with the library and the public and and we'd like to be able to
pounce on that when it comes through um so that's uh you know that's technology operating building operating expenses that's the cost of the audit that we have to have every year just like the B does uh legal fees our copy release postage things like that you can see that's not a very big slice but it isn't
important one so going back to the ones that directly benefit the public or at least in the most visible way materials so about half the money we get we buy things for the public to use so what does that mean well it means we still buy books people still check out and read books we buy those for adults we
buy them for children we buy them for young adults we buy them in large print we buy graphic novels we purchase a wide variety of materials for the public to check out in terms of print resources we still circulate movies we still circulate audio books which in some other
communities they don't even buy anymore in Oakland people still listen to audiobooks on CD it is a dying medium in certain places it is not a dying medium in Oakland people still take advantage of that um movies similarly movies have been on the especially since covid and
everybody getting a streaming service if you didn't already had one DVDs have become a less popular format for people to view movies but in Oakland they still go out so um everything that video games things like that music things that you might not think that we have we have those things in our library of things
which people at home if you don't know we have a library of things we do it has useful things that you can check out for free including a knee walker which I think somebody was asking about recently uh we do have one of those for a loan and a bunch of other really useful objects we have a museum pass program that we uh pay for so if you want to go
to one of the many museums that we offer passes to you can come in and get them for free the exception to that is a museum of natural history which you can go to for $7 of voucher which is a deal and it gets you at the front of the line and it gets you one of the special exhibits for free and the special exhibits are always worth it so um I
think we're waiting for a new batch to come in on those but you should take advantage of those if you have the opportunity to or if you're interested Peter can you just talk about the things like you have got a metal detector down there you've got seeds down there we do have a seed Farm which which was from the I don't want is the Green Team or
the sustainable Oakland yeah they they and they've replenished it recently so we do have a seed Farm nobody ever brings back the seeds which is the idea but doesn't matter we keep replenishing it we've got seeds that you can get for you know if you want to plant a garden yes we do have a metal detector we have an outside uh projector screen we have a
highquality projector we have a slide scanner we have um a diagnostic tool to see what's wrong with your car it works on most uh popular um automobiles if you need to self diagnose that sort of thing we have a endoscope camera so if you
want to see what's going on and your root for something like that a hard place to get to you can use that uh there's a whole bunch of stuff it's all on our website click on library of things and you can scroll through the items there's a lot we try to add every year so if you're interested uh check the link on our website or you can also call us or you can just come in and take
a look most of the things are behind the desk anything else that you want no I just wanted to make sure the public understands you know if you need one of these tools they're available to you simply to sign out from the library right and they're free and they're free yeah and like the for example the knee walker like if you're having surgery and you require a knee walker I think your other option is is to rent it we have
one for free and we're you know it's it's a weak loan if you have a serious injury and you need the knee walker for a few weeks come to the library talk to us we're reasonable you know you can keep it longer than the one week we try to work with our patrons on everything we try to be understanding and you know get people what they want this is a
service industry if you think that we should have something and we don't have it please come and recommend that we have it and we will consider that that's our job it's to give you things that you want so that's kind of getting ahead of myself but that goes for everything Library things books movies whatever if
you think that we should have it make the recommendation we're here to of the public those things so it's for a week everything is one week correct but again if you're going away you need the GoPro for a twoe vacation we're going to make it a twoe loan for you uh the sewing machines are actually fairly popular we
have two sewing machines I don't know if anybody is doesn't know that but you can take the sewing machines and again if you need sewing machine is something you probably need for more than a week especially if you're learning you know we've let people have them for multiple weeks as long as no one else is waiting so things like that that you might need
a little bit longer uh you can can you can take them for longer um right so getting back to materials uh in other words this is so this is all the physical items that we have in our library that you can loan it it also includes the digital items that we have
in our library our virtual library that you can loan so for those of you who may not be aware you can get a whole host of digital products from the Oakland Public liary for free including ebooks downloadable audio books music movies
instructional videos uh a couple we have a I can actually read you the list of everything that we have there's a few platforms for um ebooks the big one is Libby so that's app driven if you don't have that you can just download it if you don't know how to download it come and see us and we'll tell you how to
download it the other one is called hoopla similarly that's got a lot of ebooks downloadable Audi Books and Music you get 10 checkouts a month every month for free you download them to your device and you stream them through your Bluetooth from wherever you are it's like a free audible account except you're not paying well it's free so
you're not paying anything but my point being 10 a month is very generous and the reason we're still at 10 a month is because not enough people in the community know about it or take advantage of it if you're paying for an audible subscription you should really check out hoopla it's free and the fact that you can download the items means
that you can travel with it you can stream it through your car wherever you are so that's kind of a a nice perk with that um we also have press reader which is an online digital magazine newspaper products you get that on your tablet and you can just scroll through them and then when you're done with them you
delete them we have fral music which is a music streaming service that is also free and you also get three downloads a week you can download those thing uh the three songs a week and then you can build yourself your own music library and then you can stream them wherever you are even if you don't have an internet connection as long as a library
keeps the freal subscription we have mango languages if you want to learn how to speak a foreign language you just go on Mango and you can do that online that we have we have uh canopy which is a film service it's got stuff for adults it's got stuff for kids it does not typically have big blockbuster movies
necessarily but it has um the Criterion Collection a lot of documentaries popular movies that are a little bit older um the rights to get movies is a little bit more difficult I think for these companies so they're not getting you know the newest biggest Blockbuster but it's still a good resource you can stream it on your tablet or device you
can just stream it on your smart TV if you want to watch a film especially a foreign film or a documentary you should check out canopy it's free and it's the same thing you get 10 a month if you want 10 a month so um that's a good one uh we also have brain fuse brain fuse is
an online tutoring service it also helps with Job searches and there's also something called vet plus which does some services for veterans who are looking for resources so we bought the full Suite so you get all three of those so you can find out more information on what brain views is on our website the three Tabs are all IND individually
linked there and you can click on them and you can just play around with them as long as you have a library card don't have a library card you can register for for one online it'll last one month just come in at some point during that period to get your permanent card show proof of address and you'll get your card it's
all free it's all very easy and if you just want to play around with something you can get the temporary card play around with the stuff see if you like it and then come down for your for your other C so uh that's that's um what we have in terms of materials that's the
big green part of the part of the pie that's what we have for people to check out buckles membership I 13% you know buckles membership is not cheap it's around $50,000 including delivery a year it's worth its weight in gold it gives you access to 77 other member libraries and everything contained therein it's
the delivery service that when it was under the control of the state your stuff would take 10 days 14 days to get here now it takes sometimes next day which is competitive with Amazon who I considered to be our main competitor in terms of people getting books and getting them quickly if you're on our route you're probably going to get your
stff the next day maybe two days the only downside the delivery services that they don't run on the weekend but I still think it's a f the state one didn't either so I think that's a fantastic uh Advantage so if you're don't not aware that we have that we do we can get you anything in buckles fairly quickly physically I mean
physical item we also get costs or savings so some of the for example Libby which is the largest market share for ebook provider I think they're like 93% market share or something you know when we're working on a price with them it is much more advantageous for buckles to come in together together at 78 member
libraries and negotiate pricing for our ebooks now we do have to purchase ebooks but we get an advantage on the platform fee and that sort of thing by being a member of buckles coming together and uh talking directly to these to these companies there are a couple of other price saving uh initiatives that we have
that you won't see our ILS that's how we run our business that's how we know what you want and that's how we get it for you that's all managed through buckles our public computers is all managed through buckles if I have a problem with any of these things I call buckles their response time is relatively good they are not keeping us waiting they come
when we need them they fix things if we have a problem they're communicative um you know they're it's very much uh feeling of community and it's all run by the membership as well so 78 Library 78 directors everything is made by a vote those decisions and that sort of thing so I think buckles membership is
actually a really big plus you know you can drive to another Library if you want to and you can still go in there and check out whatever and it's no longer called Bergen County cooperative Library System it's now bridging something something I haven't learned the new name of it but just a reminder there are libraries in Essex County as well that
are part of this and you can use them too so uh it's a lot of libraries that you can visit um does anybody have any cost on any of these slices or how we divy up the funds or any other oh programming let me talk about programming so programming is 10% of
this but it's also uh aided by the new friends of the O Public Library who those of you at home have seen the mailer the fundraising mailer they help subsidize this and they help us put on all the programs that we put on all year long for adults children and young adults so if you're unfamiliar with the programs
that we have at the library we have I'll can talk about children's programs first you know we have weekly story times we have weekly music programs some of those are outsourced especially the music programs to people who come in and put on a bit of a show for the kids it's good for socialization it's good for early literacy that type of thing is a
big part of what we do for children's programming if you're not familiar with our story time go to the kids page on our website you can see what we have you don't have to sign up for the kids times kids story times you do have to sign up for the music programs because they fill up very fast they're extremely popular and it's limited um and then of course
we do sort of popup events every now and then we'll have a special event for the kids on the offseason something for Halloween sometimes a theater production on the stage or sometimes a special craft or something or we'll bring an animal in and somebody will do a lecture on that summer reading for those of you in town who are unfamiliar with that
that's our big literacy push during the summer I think a lot of parents are aware of how significantly reading skills drop off between the end of the year and the start of the next school year if you want to keep your kids sharp enroll them in the summer reading program they get prizes all summer long and in a typical summer reading program
now last year I should say um we were doing I think something like five or six programs a day across all age across all age groups I mean it's our busiest time of year other people it's a bit slower for us it's the busiest so I'm talking about all age groups but I mean we just have program after program after program
we have at least two big programs every week for the kids most of them are on the stage in the library if you haven't experienced something on the stage it's a really nice event um you should come down to the library if you haven't been there in a long time and take a look at the stage that we use for these programs we also do a lot of programs for adults
we do fewer in December January February it's March we're starting to do them we do a lot of Sunday concerts for the public we have bands come in and play and do uh musical acts singing acts we also have uh I I hesitate to call it true theater but we've had one man shows
and one woman shows that talk about history we've had some introspective lectures we've had mediums we've had a lot of people up on that stage uh who get a pretty good crowd uh if you're unfamiliar with this sign up for our newsletter that's also a link that's on our website and then every month you will see what it is that's coming out
the adult summer reading program is really great we had two big concerts last year on our stage we had Dueling Pianos who are amazing and the tickets for us were only $10 each and I'll tell you we're a free public library we don't charge for anything we did charge for those tickets because we only have 100
seats and we don't like it when people register and then don't show up especially for a very expensive program so that's an exception we make we charge people $10 so that they'll actually show up to that program because it's so expensive they're amazing they probably sound better at the Oakland Public Library theater than they do and some of
the other venues that they play like the Y where you have to pay I love the white c y I'm not taking a dig but it's $35 to see them there and I think they sound better at the openland public library it's an amazing show they do everything themselves the lights the sound it's incredible if you haven't checked it out they're playing again this summer I
think it's July 18th or Friday Night tickets are go on sale a month prior uh we had 80s Revolution which were also amazing I mean they sold out I think NJ Pack or Bergen pack and then they came to us and somehow didn't sell out I think it's because people didn't know that we had that program but they you
know seven musicians high energy they do again all their lights all their sound it's a really great program those are just two of the bigger programs that we have we have lots of smaller programs and concerts throughout the whole year probably more than I could get through now I think it's important to note that we have a free yoga program here and we
have it all year long we have uh taiichi sometimes uh on and off we've had uh chiong although we haven't had it back this year we probably will later in the year so we have some physical stuff for people who want to get moving um and we have a lot of art classes if you're interested in Fine
Arts watercolors um even some dabbling and other mediums we have a origami stuff like that um on a fairly regular basis so if you're if you're unfamiliar with this I encourage everybody to sign up for the newsletter because that's how you'll find out what it is that we're offering every month and in there will
be the links for you to sign up for those programs um so that's sort of a quick overview of the programs but anybody has any specific questions about any of these slices um allers okay so if we move on to I think
my third slide here uh in 2024 right so so what are we doing how well did we do it and what are our goals for 2025 so um over half the population of Oakland is registered with a card I will say we purge cards after a few years so if people haven't been there for a while their card's going to get purged come on
down we'll just reissue you a new card um I think a lot of people who haven't been there let's say five six seven years have no concept of what we currently offer you don't even have to come into the public library to get your tax investment back if you're a user of e-readers or even download a Audi book
as I was saying before use a bunch of those over the course of the year and the library tax is going to pay for itself um if you don't know how to do that come down and see me and I will show you how to do that it's part of my job I love doing it um we circulated more than 100,000 items we had an
increase from 23 to 24 we've been on a steady increase since 2020 which obviously was a bottom out because of covid so from 21 to 24 we've been circulating more materials every year than the year prior is that books you mean all materials I can get to the
details in a minute if you just let me say one more thing which is that buckles as a whole I'm proud of this fact is on the same Trend um your question is it physical books physical books are actually doing fairly well in terms of
their um statistics fiction was up non-fiction was down a little bit where you see drop off in physical items is Media specifically movies you see it a little bit in audio books but we're still performing fairly well in audiobooks where you see your increases
in digital content and I think a lot of people didn't know that we had digital content that was free ebooks you know both Libby and hoopla we also have made an investment in those collections in order to make more items available to
the public so without getting too into this because this tends to get a little bit complicated buckles shares the E resource bucket uh for liby so everybody contributes and then from that bucket every buckles library card holder takes the materials out they borrow those
materials okay libraries are allowed to become what's called Advantage customers Advantage customers purchase additional copies on the side that go to their patrons first so if for example there is an ebook that has 10 holds in Oakland I'm going to buy additional copies of that to relieve those holds or else they
have to wait for those items to become available from the central collection so we curate an advantage collection and over the last year we've actually now Libby has added another feature which some people are a fan of and some people are not I use it it's a cost peruse
model which means that there is no weight so if there's 10 holds for Oakland people and I buy the cost per use weight goes away those 10 people get their copies we get build per use rather than build for one copy one use or metered content and so there are a lot
of ways to purchase e materials it does get a little confusing um what we try to do is optimize Oakland Patron user experience that being said for those of you at home saying gee this is really taking a long time I'm very aware of the average hold times on some of these
items and we do work to get them down it's the volume of users across the county who are creating the backlog um Publishers charge a lot of money to libraries for digital content so a one copy one use digital item which means
that one person in of buron County can use it at a time is $100 now wow yeah and that and that but now you keep that for forever but a lot of content is 24 checkouts or two years for $85 that means that once that is expended either
the 24 checkouts or the two years it disappears so you have you know your your Roi can be calculated across all of these but you're talking about different variables mainly time and money and how that plays out so you know why do monitor this I think that I think
digital content is something like 24% of our Circ now so what we try to do is in that material slice we try to allocate an appropriate amount of money to that collection so that the people that use it are at least getting uh more content you know rather than I mean there are some libraries that are not Advantage
customers I don't know why we are I think it's a great program we will continue to be as long as we can so uh yes you see Pat shifts in use and you will see further shifts in use over the next certainly the next decade probably
drastic ones but we are not seeing a drop off in print and I'm not just talking open public library buckles as a whole because I can look at annual sir the the fiction print book is still a very popular item and kids are still checking out books or yeah and their
parents and their caretakers so um any other I'm sorry that wasn't a it was a question but okay so we hosted almost 300 library programs we play host to community programs if you're a nonprofit Community organ organization and you want a place to meet you can meet at the library it's free you can
use one of our rooms contact me we have Scouts all the time we already used it for a while we've had we have a a model railroad Enthusiast group they're a nonprofit they used it if you need a space for your meeting contact me it's free you can use it if you're an individual and you need a room for something contact me you can use it it's
free um we have individuals playing majon in there or getting together for uh read book clubs and reading groups all the time people want to use a quiet study room to study or do whatever they doing they're allowed to do that the rooms on the lower level are for the public if you're not familiar with what I'm talking about because you haven't
been down there since it was where we had all the books you should go down there it beautiful and all those rooms are for the public Board of Health meets there Board of Health meets there um right right right so there's you know we're we're here for the bureau um and we're here for residents and we're here for nonprofits so if you need a space to
meet and you can use the TV and the technology that's in there and all the rooms whatever you need to use you can use will help you facilitate that it's all for the public but they have to be out by 8:00 I think you do have to be out by 8:00 which I think is our biggest limitation um we that out B trustees as
as entertained many times keeping the library open until 9: they used to be open you might remember some of the old times that's my obligatory dig P you remember that but the library was at one time open until 9:00 and the 8 to9 period when you're not getting any
patrons especially in the winter they had changed it back to 8 for the decade that I've been there it's been 8:00 but um yes you do have to be out by 8 o'cl OB last time I asked that question I know right um so um you know we had over 50,000 people come through there it's an
increase over 2023 uh last year was our best year for programs and our best year for attendance so program programs and attendance no longer really go hand inand with the circulation of materials those things used to be married a little bit more now they're not there are a lot of people who are looking specifically
for something to do with their kids but they do not couple that necessarily with literacy so that's just a shift in how people behave it is is you know not something that um is either good or bad it's just a change and how people operate you know they really want the experience for their child they
certainly want the socialization especially if your kid isn't in daycare yet um or they want the experience in the summer when maybe when you're home with your children and you're looking for free things to do but it doesn't always mean that they're then going to turn around and and get a bunch of stuff out of the library those things have sort of separated where they used to be
married a lot more but um we we love having having people come in there and use the building use the space come to our programs or come to the programs that they host themselves um I mentioned we have Museum passes the library of f Digital Services you know check out our website they're all tabbed on there I
put some of these on here what's mango languages mangle languages it's a foreign language service if you want to learn how to speak another language it's free you sign up it'll just give you instruction and it's it's leveled right so you start out as a beginner and if you want to stick with it you just stick with video I mean digital or yes it's digital yeah you're talking to them and
they're you know in the was talking about to you so you can practice your pronunciation and that sort of thing it's a sweet and it's relatively inexpensive um you know and I I just want to stop here and I do want to say that if a digital service is underperforming we do not keep it just
to have it we look at the statistics we look at what's being used we look at what's not being used if something is not being used and it is expensive we don't carry it for the sake of carrying it an example of that is Comics plus it got very sort of non-im use so when it
was up we didn't renew it um we did that with LinkedIn learning too and I got a call from a patron this past week who said what happened to LinkedIn learning and I'm explaining that and this individual liked it and used it so what we do is we say all right here's at least one person who's missing this digital service you know when we go forward and maybe we bring it back maybe
we renegotiate for another price maybe we only do a one-year contract so these things are always changing and moving we always offer stability initially meaning if we bring on a service we're going to bring it on for 3 years because a lot of of people don't know what we have and they're learning late what we have so um
we would like people to have an opportunity to see them and then the winner stick canap is a winner Hoopa is a winner um freal music so far is pretty good obviously Libby is a is a huge winner um that sort of thing uh same thing with the Museum passes nobody wants that museum pass we don't renew it you know we're not we don't hold things
just to say hey look we have this we only hold things that we see are being used that's part of uh making smart purchases with a taxpayer money um I think that it's a safe clean comfortable facility um what what um Museum passes
are it for Jersey or New York mostly we have The Morris Museum in New Jersey and we have storm king art center which is in New York state and then we have the Intrepid we have um mola and we have the Museum of the moving image and we have Museum of Natural History and we've had others in the past that again we've
cycled through but I mean the Intrepid is awesome um you know m is great new zeum Natural History the passes are totally worth it they're coming in I promise um music was that uh moving image Museum of the moving image that's in New York as well we have Museum of the dog for a while it was cool but it wasn't great it just wasn't really worth
it not that many people using it so we pulled that one um but if you have kids and you're off for the week or over the summer you want to go to the museum for free or for a discount come to the library um or call us and we'll explain how it works um I just want to say um you know it's I I love our building I
love everything about it even the things that are tricky uh there are are some challenges with that building it's a slate roof um some of the heating elements in there you guys know this they're old um we do have problems every
now and then and we're now in a position the library is now in a position where we can sort of self fund these Capital Pro projects so if something big and expensive blows up we don't have to come hat in hand to the Bur and say we need you to bond for this you know we have a little bit of room where we can say we
can take this on we don't have to B the burrow with it and uh you know we can handle this ourselves and we're really trying to get to that position because the burrow had been so generous and so kind and obviously they paid for a renovation on the building we're trying to to always be in a position where we
can not come to you and say I need money um you know obviously there's something explodes or something like that it would be different but right now we're in a really good position with that um if anybody has any other any other questions about any thing uh
anything I'm I'm here for it thank here anybody I just before I go uh I just want to give a thanks to every Department in Oakland I worked in four other towns before this this one's the best we have some type of partnership with everybody uh these guys are great he can't retire
ever we did not pay him to say that no they did not pay me and and I really but I I seriously mean that that you know everybody is helpful and the DPW is beyond helpful you want to talk about a DPW that's responsive to needs and goes above and beyond open DPW they I mean
they painted our a lower level in other municipalities that would be unheard of you know the the lower level had gotten tremendous amount of abuse mainly from the kids after school they put their feet on the walls they gouge holes in the walls the guys came through they patched all the holes they painted it all it looks as good as it did probably
better after the renovation yeah I switched to to and you know these things you know when we have a leak in the ceiling and they fix it or we have an electrical issue and they're on top of it this saves the taxpayer money and it also saves us from looking bad uh so they do a lot every other department is
just really wonderful to work with so I just want to express our gratitude at how great it is to be partnered with everybody and thank you and you can give me that 20 bucks anybody have anything else before I thank you thank you thank you very much
Peter all right should we just go right to need a break or we good okay so okay I'm here it's t to fall I'm ready for it I'll do my best okay all righty hi everyone how are you
all good all right I am happy to be here with you all tonight um I I'm excited to talk about the senior center it is a wonderful place if you have not been there to join us for a program or special event I really encourage you to join us uh not only because it's a lot of fun but also
because the seniors love getting the opportunity to talk with Council and mayor um before you get started could you just kind of set the stage in the fact that Oakland is very unique and that we have a senior center yeah and there's only half a dozen around the
county oh absolutely Oakland is uh like you said very special in this back for a town of this size you will not see a senior center like this I say usually this is you know larger Suburban you know a Wayne uh you know in E front where where you're from those sorts of
communities you would expect to see that in our type Community it's it's much town I worked in it was in the basement of the church yep so often you'll see Senior Services it's like a club that meets out of uh the first aid squad or the firehouse or you'll see it as part
of the W Center but to have an independent freestanding Senior Center is unheard of um and we are of this area of Western B County we are one of two um Us in Mawa and Mawa is a much larger Town than Oakland so it really is
amazing what is offered here Oakland takes care of their seniors um and you've invested early on we're seeing you're going to see in the next 10 years such a major jump in senior population and Oakland has invested so early on that you're way ahead of the game um
because these services are going to be requested by the residents and you all I I think that we're there we are already offering a lot of them um and our new bus too and our new bus I will get there absolutely uh we have a fantastic bus
that is very well utilized and very much appreciated um the senior center is open residents 55 and up our youngest resident currently registered is 57 years old our oldest resident is 96 so we are and that 96y old resident is
there every week participating in multiple things exercise maang all of our special events uh so we have a very active and Lively Center regardless beage and we are um reaching two different Generations in the same building and because of that we need to
offer a wide variety because the different populations want different things need different things uh and I think we're doing a great job of that we offer 11 exercise classes a week uh nine of which are instructor Le they are of all varying degree of difficulty you'll
see something like Cherry yoga you will see uh country Fusion line dancing you will see Matt Pilates you will see arthritis boun invol prevention and all our instructors uh have multiple certifications most of which have specialty certifications focused on uh
active adult Fitness uh and they are all great classes again I do uh recommend you come out and try one they're a lot of fun could you just talk a little bit just drill down a little bit why this is so important for the Aging population as far as socialization yeah absolutely
absolutely and I was going to get there but happy to talk about it earlier um so we saw during Co um this is we saw during Co the isolation of our of not only seniors
everyone but specifically seniors um a massive it caused a issue where um our seniors I'm sorry it was
uh so the isolation was causing the um I'm sorry you looking for the word I'm looking for the word and it's just not coming to me uh had major effects on their cognitive function same I could not think very cognitive we saw major
effects on their cognitive function major delays um and it came on quickly uh and rapidly same word they came on quickly and it was the isolation the lack of socialization not coming out not around other people that was absolutely
causing this we saw this across the board um and the importance of this facility to give people a place to come it that's the most important part of this facility is giving the residents a place to come whether it's just to get
out and see another person is beyond measure for some people that's all they're coming here for they're never going to come to an exercise class they're never going to come to a fitness class they're going to come for a cup of coffee and they're going to see another human being otherwise they could be in their house for a month and not interact
with another person and you'll see it if you if you've ever spoken with somebody who it lives alone you you can see the challenge how that affects them physically emotionally it's very
challenging and it's um it's that's the main purpose and importance of the senior center in my opinion um of course the exercise the fun the fitness the transportation it's all all necessary
but the the socialization aspect of the facility is beyond measure the most important part of it um we try to offer multiple ways for people to get out there and come those exercise classes we offer special events
we offer two to four special events every month and those can range from Big parties to lectures to educational sessions we have like I said coffee we have coffee out every day um and people will come in and just grab a cup of coffee and they'll
come sit down in the office with us and they will just talk and they will tell us what's going on in their lives and that is the their socialization for the week um we have daily games you'll come and see majang and canasa you'll see clubs we've got men's poker we have a knit and
crochet club with 25 amazing ladies who sit there and they knit and they crochet and it's it's run entirely by a volunteer all of the supplies are all donated and then they'll knit and groche and then donate everything they make back to the community they'll bring blankets to nursing homes they'll bring
hats and scarves to um homeless shelters it's amazing what they do uh we have a book club where everything comes from the library and they'll come and they'll meet monthly they'll read their book and meet monthly and discuss we so we really try to offer a little bit of everything
for everyone to give engage everyone and give them a reason to come Out Come participate come socialize come be with everyone be part of the community it's really a Central Community meeting place for our older adults um in it also
serves as a place an educational center expanding their learning um as you know for many older adults things like technology can be a struggle and we're there to help educate them we're help there to help um build those gaps for
them um and make sure that they are just as involved with the community as anybody else you know um they watch you're they're not going online and reading what the updates are on many are but there are a lot who are
not going online on Facebook to get the updates of what's going on in town they're coming and they are talking with us they're getting the physical paper printouts of what's going on around town and those are the things they're getting at the Senior Center um they're getting
Medical Services we have the Bergen County nurses come in bonly and provide um blood pressure screening Wellness checks we have a podiatrist that comes on site every 60 days to do a foot care we have transportation which I will go
into a little more detail um in a further slide but we offer transportation in town twice a week um and we will take you anywhere you need to go in town um food shopping the senior center the bank the library to
get your hair done a doctor's appointment um technology assistance so I will sit and work with anyone uh By Appointment we'll sit down for 30 minutes 40 minutes and we will sit there anything you can bring to me I will teach you how to use uh you want to
learn how to use your new cell phone you want to learn how to use that tablet so you can zoom with your family members across country I will teach you how to do it I will teach you from basics of how to turn your tablet on to how to download an app how to make it work we'll do it all um like I said we have
guest speakers and educational opportunities next week for example we have a doctor's office coming in to talk about peripheral vascular disease um we have a Bergen County genealogy Society coming in to teach you about genealogy and how to track your own family tree um
tomorrow for example we are having a big fun early St Patrick's Day party corn beef and cab so we're really try to do a little bit of everything we go on trips um we like the casino we like to go see shows we go all over we've got a lot of
plans for some more local trips within the state we want to go to museums restaurants uh local parks uh historical sites in the state and we want to utilize our new amazing bus uh to do that so there are a lot of programs in
the works and out there we have a calendar that we put out it is online it is emailed if you are on our mailing list if you're not on our mailing list come join us uh it's really easy I need to see a license so I can confirm agent address and that's it you fill out one
piece of paper and you get a card and you're officially a senior when you said mentioned about the bus I just like to mention that now with this new bus we have a lift so there's a we didn't have that before I very I think help
I know it was a it was a large investment and it is worth it and I will absolutely touch on it um and then some of the other services we provide so you won't see these kind of things obviously on our budget but some of the other
things that we provide food access um we work with several agencies uh in the area meals and wheels local food pantries um to make sure that our residents our seniors are getting the food that they need and we have
residents who are on fixed incomes who are of only Social Security so finances are a challenge for them and they rely on these services to meet their nutritional needs we also have older adults who may be recovering from injury who are just no longer able to cook for
themselves for one reason or another and programs L Meals on Wheels provide them with the nutritionally balance meals that are already prepared so we work as a conduit to help get them access to that um with our partners um and sometimes it's as simple
as one of us going over to food pantry picking up a bag of groceries and dropping them off at somebody's house uh it it's one of those subtle challenges that not everybody realizes happen in Oakland but there are a lot of people who are in that
position um so Health Mental Health Services uh we work with Partners like uh Alzheimer's Foundation AAL Foundation a lot of the times we are that first line who sees what's happening with our
residents we see them every day and we'll see those cognitive declines happen subtly you know one month everything is normal and then the next month we'll notice that we're having same conversation over and over about
the same thing with somebody so we're we're often that first person to go and call that family member uh the child of our res Our member and let them know hey this is something we've noticed going on and we just want to make you aware and then from there we will help put them in
contact with the sort of resources to go from there we're not social workers we're not medical professionals but we can relay what we're seeing and help them um get the resources they need to help their family
members um and then we do a lot of assistance with navigating government program programs nothing in the government comes easy uh we help with filling out applications everything is moving digital now which for many is a
difficult is difficult because we do still have a lot of senior residents who do not have access to the internet or if they do they can't navigate it um we also have those with hearing impairments if they need to make phone calls for sorted services to meet with uh
different agencies we will sit there and help them make those phone calls and act that go between um we help them fill out senior tax free pad we help them make um real ID appointments we help them access chore appointments chore is a Bergen
County service where they'll come in at no charge you only pay for the equipment um and they'll do things like install handlebars and do small home projects install lights and fire detectors and things like that things that don't really need to go up on a ladder um um
so we'll help them with those kinds of things um we help with financial assistance so ship state health insurance program it is um a program put out by the state to help navigate Medicare we do the
coordinating of that we especially during open enrollment we offer sessions with our ship counselor uh and we set that all up and help we help countless people throughout the year uh navigate Medicare as they're coming off they're retiring and me
reaching that age to transition uh it's confusing and it's complicated changes every year so we're thankful do you do that personally so I'm not providing it ship is and we do the coordination of yes I meant coordination yes we do the coordination with our ship counselor um
tax preps so Midland Park Senior Center offers no cost T basic tax returns and we help um disate that information get that out coordinate with them to make sure that people have access to tax prep
resources uh we assist family and caregivers with resources and information on housing and caregiving and elder law uh understanding the difference between home healthare assisted living nursing care figuring out what might be the best fit uh we
have a library of resources brochures from lots of different agencies lots of different facilities in the immediate area and we help them figure out you know this might be the right path path that you need to go we've met so many people and we've worked with so many
people we uh and we really just try to be a resource to our residents and their families uh we help with I'd say we provide peran support in the sense that when people pass when loved ones
pass away uh we try our best to connect them with different groups there are bement groups all over the area and we do often help connect them with that um with um I'm sorry
uh I can't think of the word I'm sorry I'm sorry counselors thank you counselor I'm sorry it's been a long day uh counselors and again it goes back to just having them come in sometimes when you're in a house alone and you're used
to having somebody else there it's good to just have somebody available to sit and talk with uh we do regular Wellness checks we make phone calls to people who are at home due to illness injury or we just haven't seen them a while and we check in during covid we made over 500
calls checked in with every single member we had anyone who's on our roster to check to see how they were doing um see if they were in the area if they needed anything we did um our food shopping program and helped a lot of
residents access groceries uh for one reason or another they could not leave their homes and it was a fantastic volunteer program the community really came out and supported our residents our seniors um we were able to make those connections and uh I really think that
that helped make Co more manageable for a lot of individuals um we have in the past assisted persons experiencing homeless um helping them find shelters helping
them connect with social workers at the county and state level um we have a fantastic snow removal program here in town snow shoveling for seniors the cost of hiring a company to be on call for through snowstorms
throughout the year can be um something that many seniors just can't afford yeah they can't afford and we've connected with Boy Scouts and many other Volunteers in the community and they will go out and uh shovel driveways and
walkways for our senior residents at absolutely no costs we coordinate with uh the seniors they call into US let us know they need assistance we reach out to uh our slew of volunteers and we get somebody out there as soon as we can and it's been a fantastic program uh and
it's only possible because the residents of Oakland are there to volunteer it's a community it really is um people come up and say how can I help what can I do how can I volunteer with the seniors on a regular basis and we do what we can to bring as many people in
because it's a fantastic thing um we have a we maintain and provide a database of local contractors and Tradesmen um in the area uh when a senior needs to go out and needs an electrician there is no phonebook
anymore to look that up um and there's always a risk of scam so we really try to maintain based off recommendations of others and people who've reached out to us uh we have those names to give to them to provide to them when they need it understanding that we don't recommend
we don't recommend it anybody we're just providing names yeah names that's it um we really uh disaster preparedness uh just this past September we had OEM in uh to provide a dter disaster
preparedness seminar for our seniors uh we also I'll touch upon this a little later but we actually just put out a grant proposal for a emergency emergency preparedness project where we'd love to be able to send out a
mailer to every household within Oakland uh and it's a two-part project the one part would be that there'd be like a tear away at the bottom of the mailer where individuals could then fill out their information um um and say in the
event of an emergency these are the kinds of things that I may need assistance with it would go off of the police department's already active operation reassurance program um where they maintain a database uh internally that people provide the information to them that in the event that they would
make a call to their house they would know what they were walking into uh and it kind of goes off and expands off that where if we were to have a a a power outage an extended power outage like we did during some of the major storms and
we had an individual that we knew was on oxygen and relied on power to be able to do use their oxygen machine and their battery they of course we'll have a battery backup but that's not going to last forever we'll know that that person is going to need additional help or if
we needed God forbid um we needed everyone to get out of their homes because of a natural Des disaster like a fire or something like that we would know that this person may be trapped in their home they don't have Transportation they may not have the ability to leave on their own and we'll
know that and we'll be able to assist and Ariel isn't the senior center also a shelter location as well got a full generator you want to talk about that as well absolutely the senior center is um it is a heating and warming Cent it is a warming and cooling center it is a
location in the event of an emergency an evacuation we are like you said we do have a full generator so in the event that there is a power adage we we will be continue to be up and running um we have a full kitchen yep I was about to say we have a full kitchen so if we
needed to prepare meals or H store any kind of food or medicine or anything that we would have that ability to thank you sure thank you um and then we really try to offer as much as we can on scam
awareness scams are a major issue facing the senior community all communities but especially senior community they tend to be the most targeted population and we have presentations brought in by the our Oakland Police Department Banks we have local banks come in to do Financial scam
awareness we have the county come in to do uh an assortment of other scam awareness there's just so unfortunately so many scams out there and we really try to make sure everyone is up to date on the different options and then other we also like to talk about ways that you can keep yourself safe with banking with
shopping there's as best as we can any questions on okay um so we work with a lot of fantastic Community Partners as I mentioned the Boy Scouts help us with our snow shoveling program uh Bergen
pack offers uh offers us Show tickets through their Arts Access program uh Arts access allows for access to the Arts allows for well-rounded life experiences and this program allows access to our residents uh to tickets to
their sh shows regardless of ability to pay uh so essentially see they'll send us a list of shows for that month that they have available tickets our seniors will be able to request tickets and it's kind of on a first come first Herve basis we will put in the requests and
they'll let us know what tickets we get and then we disseminate those tickets and our seniors have had the opportunity to see some amazing shows orchestra level seating at no cost it's been a really fun project for them uh we worked with Oakland chamber uh do a lot of event sponsorships it's one of the ways
that we try to we are able to keep our programs as low cost as possible uh and as low cost to the um Oakland Community as a whole in our budget is we do sponsor at about 50% of our events have at least some level of
sponsorship um whether that's food related entertainment related other supplies they'll come in and help us run these events uh but it's really great for us to to work with our local Community Partners our local agencies
our local businesses to provide to our residents uh we work with mothers club they offer Thanksgiving and holid dinners and donations every year we this past year the picture that you can see on the screen is our bus driver helping with the delivery of all these meals uh
they had a lot um we help with organizing the names of the seniors that we're aware of who could really use this extra little pck me up during the holidays and we help get those out to them does the does the state or federal who offer at state or federal program
used to be a program where they gave away butter and they gave away cheese not familiar that long time ago I guess they stop doing that you have been in Council a long time before that's it I'm not so they do have a farmers market
program where they can get vouchers to bring to Farmers Market a specifi farmers market um to go get fresh fruits and vegetables and Pat this one for for
you so the senior bus runs twice a week Tuesdays and Thursdays about three to four hours per day it's by appointment so the seniors will call us let them know and it's not just seniors it's also those who um uh who may need some assistance it is
a handicap accessible vehicle uh we do have a lift uh and wheelchair it can bring a wheelchair up and walk in two wheelchairs um and it'll go anywhere within Oakland's borders mostly if it's right on the border we will go a little past but
generally it's within Oakland's borders we have seen a 100% increase in rides for the same time period between July to December of 2023 and July to December of 2024 um because we got the bus in July I wanted to be able to give you the best
um relation num uh additional so this is when you look at the budget this is the area that you'll see the largest percent increase for 2025 requests um because of these
additional rides the variable SC uh because of all the Riders the additional rides the variable schedules that require additional time dedicated to the coordination uh and the because we now have left our previous bus um uh we did
not have a functioning lift and then the van we used did not have a lift uh we now have individuals in wheelchairs using it which is wonderful we're so happy that we are now able handicap accessible but it not a but but it does
uh take six minutes longer to load a wheelchair passenger versus a walking passenger onto the vehicle do you see this service increasing in the future as we go along as we're budgeting yes next year the following year I I do I think
so here's where it gets challenging um I have people who will tell me on a regular basis I would give up my car today if I had more Transportation options if I was able to get where I needed to go more often um Bergen
C but of course unless I can show unless we're regularly seeing it it's hard to ask for additional so it's kind of like a which came first the chicken or the eggs but I do anticipate growth I'm already seeing it between last year and this year we're seeing this growth one
of the things I'd love to do is be able to expand off of the program to offer um medical appointments so we're at one of the challenges that we face in Oakland is our location to the greater Bergen County
programming we are so far west and because of that we're surrounded by pay County on that half of our size um Bergen County's Transportation program will not cross counties so Bergen County does offer transportation
door-to-door bus transportation they'll also call Ubers and as needed uh for residents but they will not cross counties so somebody might be right over the Border they need to go two minutes into Pompton Lakes but they won't take them there but they will take them to
paramis or hacken sack right uh and I understand the need to have a break somewhere they can't go everywhere but that is where I think that the Bro can fill the Gap in the future um to be able to set a set distance as far how far we'
be willing to go and be able to offer those rides to really help it would be a huge help to Residents okay thank you for that um so that is the area that I would see it expand I'd love to see it run um
an additional day as well um what do you think going to be a capacity where you really have to put another day in there or is it soon or is 6 months 2 months within the next year within the next year within the next year okay it was something that we were looking at pre-co
actually and then things kind of went down because people didn't want to be in the same space as anybody else um but we've come out of that and we are seeing we're continuing to see increase our Thursdays we are close to fall at this point okay and and Ariel throughout her
tenure here has I think you've taken a lot of sort of looks at the program and how we can expand it and one of the focus areas has been um you know looking for another town to partner with uh on on expanding the program that way so far there really hasn't been uh any any
towns that were all that interested in it but uh yeah this is something that I think you're seeing this expansion now because of the vehicle somewhat uh and you're going to see further expansion I I if if we were able to stand up a program that offered medical
appointments to surrounding areas I I think it would get used I can tell you as a dealing with two senior parents that are in the same this is invaluable to the seniors yeah to be able to make get to those appointments and everything else like that so absolutely I agree and
I see it and what the biggest piece of feedback that I'll get across the board from our residents our current members is we need more transportation i' come to the senior center daily if you offered a ride here okay um so growth and participation
we've seen steady growth uh year after year uh our total membership is 807 members that's 16% of Oakland's eligible population 55 plus um but I want to keep in mind that 55 plus 55 to 70 it's a
very wide range but 55 to 70 you're not seeing that many you still see a lot of people working um and you're seeing more people work longer uh due to inflation um and individuals living longer depending on numerous factors people are know that
they'd run out of money if they retired as early as they originally planned um so that's part of the reason why we're not seeing them come as quickly as I originally thought or originally we were seeing during Co people were retiring earlier than they originally had planned
um and we saw people coming out because they had nothing else to do but a lot of people are going back to work um our average week do you do you have uh then a sense of let's say 70 plus what that percentage is in terms of
Oakland's population as a you know that are members of the center I can I have the number but I don't know it off the top of my head I can get that for you um our average weekly attendance is we see 26 people 260 check-ins that definitely
Cong grasp absolutely every person um sometimes people will just come in and ask a question and then leave but that is generally what we see and it changes throughout the year so our programming is much lighter between December and February due to weather due to snowbirds
people who go down south during the winter months um and people just don't want to leave their homes when it's yucky outside um but we're going to start seeing it up to usually around the end of March early April we start seeing the big Resurgence in our membership
coming through they stay through summer early fall and then they usually head back down south uh come November uh and then our daily average attendance with our exercise classes so we offer two exercise classes every single day it's about 45
people um so financials so the main reason that you're seeing any increase in the budget is due to inflation um just cost of everything has gone up uh our vendors uh our exercise
instructors their costs have increased uh year after year because gas increases supplies increase um Refreshments budget Refreshments are a big portion of our budget it's a big portion of our programming between the coffee supplies the supplies for our special events uh
food has gone up tremendously we're all seeing it we're all seeing cost of eggs Skyrock skyrocketing um but I think we've done a pretty good job at keeping our budget increases limited year after year and I think a large part of that is due to sponsorships we try to keep the cost to
our residents as low as possible if we can do it the events and the programs for free we will absolutely will but we sometimes will charge 510 dollar to help offset the costs uh but ideally if we can keep it as low as possible that is
best thing um and then grants a lot of we brought in we were able to do a lot of big updates over the last few years due to Grants we replac a lot of furniture in the facility all new chairs um all new we have a brand new entryway Furniture we got a lot of
storage we have a new uh sound um new sound system within the facility audio visual system uh our database that we installed in 2021 uh with the hardware that was through a we just put in a brand new beautiful digital signage in
the front entryway that allows us um to be able to display our flyers in large scale and also cut back on printing costs um for a flyers uh all came through grant funding over the last few years and I had mentioned we just put in another Grant
request this past week uh so we're always looking for a way to fund our programs um and not hit the taxpayers you did the grant applications I do all the grant applications with some assistance from administration of course yeah it's sort
of a it's it's a coordinated effort uh but Ariel is is Ariel is very good at putting together Grant applications and uh especially during covid when Community Development block rint funding was made available uh I think we were
probably one of the few towns that were able to take advantage of what there were three or four supplement Grant rounds and we were able to take advantage of it every time outdoor furniture outoor on the patio uh the new stuff the sign board uh all of that uh
the registration system that that we did she's been very creative uh in looking at ways to use that funding uh and you know we've applied to the ARP uh program uh you know a couple of times that is a hyper competitive
Nationwide program um but we'll be we'll be trying that again as well um and we have new age friendly Grant will be applying for again the second round of funding is coming out very shortly so we'll be applying again with a similar project uh because it's a worthwhile
project to try to fund um let's see so as I mentioned so with uh the biggest increase that you'll see in requests for the 2025 budget just
percentage wise will be for the cost of my uh driver my bus driver um because the additional hours taken to run the bus coordinate the bus he puts together all the reporting for me um and they're
very detailed reports I can give you how long each individual person was on the bus each time mileage everything uh so just overall the time that it takes to run the program has increased with this new bus because the bus is so popular you're talking about
$3,000 yeah I just it's important for the public to understand we're not talking about tens of thousands of dollars we're talking $3,000 to provide more service know if if you go back to because I think what you saw was a little bit of an increase already last year right uh if you go back to let's
say 2023 and compare to what we're asking for this this year it's about doubling that cost or doubling the the amount of service offerings we've dou Services double the rods and we we have better better facilities and programs for the
Ely right but still when you're talking about total dollars that's $5,500 no no I understand but but I think I think the the reason I'm ask I'm presenting it this way is is the service that our seniors are getting it's important to understand the value proposition of what they're getting and by you outlining all
the services and events and everything you're providing this is you know unless you're a senior I don't think the rest of the population really understands you truly providing Senior Services not just a senior center right yes and the cost increase is relative to the services
being used yes yes and my my my point in saying that's $5,500 is is just to your point that it's a tremendous value for the money correct I agree we made your case for you thank
you um so uh future goals uh I'd love to increase senior bus offerings uh we want to provide increased support to our caregivers uh because they are part of Senior Services the people the children
who are taking care of their aging parents and then some so we want to offer educational opportunities we want to bring people in to talk about uh not the most exciting topics but end of life planning and what you can expect when a
loved one passes through uh dementia care and what you may see uh when your family is faced with these situations uh a lot of people have no idea what to expect until it hits and then they're just overwhelmed by
everything so we'd love to be able to offer educational opportunities and then support networks people getting to talk with other individuals who are in the same uh stage of life as they are so let ask you a question so so obviously you've got a lot of independent seniors living in Oakland yes whether they're
single or you know there's uh so my question to you is since they live in Oakland they're part of your program now if they got a child that lives out of state can they reach out to you for the services and the planning absolutely we help all the time a lot of what we do is working with family members who are not
in the area um and help them navigate what's going on with their family member so when I was saying that we're that first line of defense in a sense we're reaching out to them and then from there we're help we're sending them a lot of times we'll pull BR Shores and cont information we'll mail it to them so
you're bridging that Gap and we're bridging that Gap exactly we're trying to act as a resource to everyone in related to Senior Services Senor living okay if there's a I believe it's a Medicaid Program where the caregivers get paid they do yes there is um where
you know a lot of times people have to either leave their jobs or limit um their work because they are caring for their loved ones and the it is more affordable to pay a family member to care for them than to pay for an entire uh assisted living facility or nursing
home but is Medicaid not Medicare yeah um we'd love to develop some new programs uh intergenerational program is one of the big areas we'd like to focus on this year it's something that's been I've had families of CH children have
the parents have been reaching out to me they want the opportunity for children to connect with seniors that I was going to say what does intergenerational programming mean and seniors so what for example one of the things I'd love to see I do um technology courses with our seniors I'll sit down and I'll work with
him but I'd love to have the middle schoolers come down from the hill and be able to provide you know once a month you can sign up and sit down with a middle schooler uh who they all know technology they've been doing it since birth and they can sit down with seniors
there is it's so important for um older adults to spend time with children for children to be able to spend time with older adults uh we see improved communication enhanced self-esteem um improved memory for our
seniors for kids you there's they've recognized academ improved academic achievement through senior mentoring programs um they're exposed to the knowledge and the demeanor of older adults um particular if they don't have grandparents uh who are regularly
engaged in their lives because they may live on or may not live in the area or they may not have grandparents so um we'd love to be able to offer programs of that nature um we've talked about doing something fun like a mini trunker treat kind of thing where the seniors
get to set up tables fun themed tables we have local Community Partners donate candy and the kids can come in and go Trigg or-treating seniors love that kind of thing they love seeing little kids um anytime somebody comes in with uh their parent for recreation and they're
bringing their babies and their little kids the the seniors all kind of swarm they love it so I think it'd be great to be able to try to bridge that Gap and bring everyone together because like we've like we've gone over it's a community center um it may be focused
towards our older residents but it it offers a space for many to get involved um and then one of the other things is our seniors have been asking for opportunities to volunteer they want to be able to get on the community and give back so we are researching uh volunteer
opportunities for our seniors um and then we do the one project that I have on that is in the back of my mind that needs to be done on the facility we've been doing a lot of small things here and there the building's not that old it's 30 years
old we have some updates that need to be made um we're redoing the men's bathroom this year they're getting all new flooring new Partition uh fresh paint it'll really make the space look nice uh red doing the window treatments this year we
um like I said did all that um Furniture in the front entryway but the siding needs to be replaced so it's one of the projects that I have for myself to try to identify and apply for funding sources uh to try to redo our sighting it was something that I know was a
project planned several years ago but then we had something that took priority uh the fire suppression system right that right so uh the most recent projects a couple of those the the window treatment the the men's bathroom um is you know on budget funding right
but a lot of the other improvements that we've done um you know when we replaced the roof repaved the U parking lot uh redid the Carpeting and Flooring and painted redid the ladies room all of that was um either in whole or in part
funded through Community Development block grants uh as was the emergency generator they really ows the facility to function as a as an emergency shelter um so that's something where I think we're going to get probably sooner rather than later in the next year or
two either we're going to identify a funding source or if we're not able to identify a suitable Grant Source we will just have to put it in the capital program uh to sell fund um because by that point it'll be 35 plus years old it is getting worn in cracked and some
holes here and there Critters getting in and beehives being built into the side so and DPW has been amazing anytime we see something they come they patch what they can um but it is getting to a point but I got to tell you for the residents that have never seen the building they should maybe come down and take a look
at it the inside is gorgeous great I mean with the work that you did with the new flooring the AV system the new furniture uh you know the game room in the back I mean it truly is a beautiful facility and you know we as a community should really be proud of of that and
the work that you do and we even used the senior basement for storage for some of our stuff well I have goals where I would love to find a way to renovate the basement and make it usable space that
is a you know 20y year off dream but I can I'll be I just got to find a way to come up with a few million dolls that it I believe so yeah that's it does anybody have any question have any other questions anything else I can
TCH do you see um do you see expected how much expected growth do you see this year with the senior So based off the last two years I think that what we've seen where we're seeing roughly you know 80 88 to 90 new members I think that's going to become the standard we have
2021 is when we first started tracking these numbers uh but we we were coming right out of covid so that was uh I don't think that was accurate number even 2022 I don't think that was accurate but after this year we'll have a idea of what we'll have three years of
data to be able to accurately see what we see each year anybody else that's it Mr C any uh just a reminder uh same bat Time same bat Channel tomorrow night uh 6 o' uh we'll
be here to hear from gpw uh fire department and the police and I just want to say it's really important that we have this Roundtable discussion like this with our department heads cuz you know you know taxes are dirty word but I think it's important for people to understand the value proposition that they're getting for the taxes that they
pay and the services that are provided here in Oakland are very unique compared to other towns and the level of service that we provide thank you Ariel for coming in thank Peter we want to thank him for his time coming in and Rich and Dave thank you for staying with good and
Wendy thank you Wendy you're welcome not see any any further business we have a motion to adjourn so moved second all thank you everybody thank you so much for coming we'll see you tomorrow at 6:00 next still raining good
job good job