okay roll call Mr herandez present Mr McGrath here Mr Mella here Mr neglia here Mr Ki here also in attendance are mayor James Barbaro business administrator Jamie cryan Township attorney Michael ly municipal clerk CED Madden council president we have a quorum may I begin yes please thank you
upcoming meetings March 18th 2025 at 7: p.m. is the regular meeting April 1st 2025 at 7:00 p.m is the agenda meeting uh ordinances second reading and public hearing I'd ask you guys to uh please just do a quick review if you have any questions uh please do so now and then
if not we'll move on so Colette I do have two questions absolutely when we talked about lacana AV last time one of the requirements or two of the requirements I asked for one was to have the drive Bays away from the lake area so away from homes and then two looking
at that from I believe the highlands and Judy I look at you because you're way smarter than me at the Highlands a th000 foot buffer to homes for warehouses correct I would have to check on I think I think it's a th000 foot so making sure that the the tree line that's existing there
remains intact and that we're only talking about a Redevelopment for the building the lot that's already Disturbed not similar to what's happened in other areas where they've destroyed kind of all that area that would be my ask in this is is that we keep those two pieces so uh so you would when we come
to vote uh you would state that uh on the record that that would be a precondition or condition precedent uh to uh to to them building this so this way you know if it goes and gets transferred to the boards they at least know that that's the condition thank
you yeah I do have uh one modification I'd like to make to ordinance 2025 colon 2 um I think it's a you know it's a good Ordinance one way that you know we can improve it in the spirit of of transparency where some other
municipalities have gone wrong with the Cannabis process is I would actually like to edit um and provision that anyone with a cannabis um business interest in a in a in a business that uh wants to be established that that uh be
disclosed and make it a uh a condition of use into the ordinance um that's something when they come to uh vote on you you can have discussion but that's that's something that would be under the administration's purview okay can we can
I make a motion to have that introduced as a small at it now absolutely okay well um I think it's a pretty standard boiler plate if I look at other municipalities I think it's very important that any applicants disclose
the interest in their business who has um ownership in their business and that is the uh proposal to just provision that anyone with ownership interest in a cannabis business be disclosed so that's the motion so real quick I just want to
just understand it so are you saying anyone on the council or anyone asking for a location anyone asking for a uh a location so in the previous ordinance isn't that part of how they apply or are we allowing I know I know that the go
ahead uh go ahead president I'm sorry um that is part of the process with the state correct um and that's also part of our process because of uh it being with the state okay so anybody you can't have just you know um
John do yeah John Doe put up the money and all of a sudden you have the C cartel being the people behind so we would know it anyway yeah every would knowbody who's uh involved okay nope then then I'm good on that okay any other
questions okay seeing none we're going to go ahead and go to the public session I'd like to entertain a motion to open up the public session motion second motion made by Mr neglia seconded by Mr muella roll call Mr Hernandez
yes Mr McGrath yes Mr Mella yes Mr neglia Mr Ki yes okay the motion passes the floor is open to the public you have 5 minutes to speak on any matter please state your name before you speak case was
say hi everybody knows my face by now I'm just here to find out if you have any updates from y do you have any sense of when you might hear from them no um are you following up with
them C go ahead are you done with all your questions I'm just getting a no so I don't I mean for each no it's like no I know but the process ask you ask all your questions and then so it's it's a follow up on what's happening with weog
it's still a blank she you know wall in front of me just up toally with every note then the thing is what's the next step then okay so council president just as a reminder this is a company that is located in Denville and a project that is located in Denville no and is 100%
completely controlled by Denville um I did reach out to the business administrator again from uh uh Denville regarding this issue he was on vacation um uh for a week and um should have uh some more information him as soon as I
connect okay but again this is a property in D right no I I know we really have we're kind of at their Mercy because it's in their Town y right can you maybe uh if would it be all right for her to call you maybe in a week or
so to see if there's any update sure would that be okay ma'am okay thank you good evening I'm Tony Fano I live in Pia New Jersey um past week I've been saw online many videos of Mr Mella utilizing
position as his councilman and handing his council card out to police to offer to get some moving out of some moving violations this is a clear violation of abuse and Power by a public official the law is against that the law that can be found at njsa
40a colon 19- 22-5 it's clear no government official or officer shall use or attempt to use the official position unwarranted PR privileges or advantages of him or for himself of others I see it this way Mr
Mel must be as a clear violated the law and is not only du I ask for his recogition and I ask for ethic charges to ethics charges to be filed in my opinion say it's a hypocritic business you need this if you'd like to submit it you're more than welcome to
good evening my name is sioban Fuller McConnell I live in pipany Justin musel's campaign slogan should be laws for thee but not for me Justin has egregiously misused his public position for personal Advantage particularly to
exert undue influence for himself and his wife he sat in this chamber and said the police need to crack down on speeding but then he brazenly flashed his business card to the officer when his wife was pulled over for speeding
seemingly attempting to intimidate and evade lawful duties this Behavior raises serious concerns about his ethical integrity and suitability for office Justin's attempt attempts to evade consequences for traffic traffic
infraction are not only shocking but also illegal the local government ethics law prohibits Municipal leaders from exploiting their positions for personal gain that's njsa 4A 9-
22.5 his conduct also violates njsa 2C 30-2 regarding official misconduct undermining public trust and raising serious questions about accountability in public office such actions are incompatible
with the high standards expected of elect officials I urge the council president and the township Administration to contact the Attorney General's office to initiate a thorough investigation into council member musel's conduct for
Behavior Unbecoming a public official furthermore due to these serious violations I call for his immediate resignation as our Township cannot tolerate corruption from its leaders Justin musella is an embarrassment to
this town and should immediately resign I respectfully disagree my name is Amit Mitra uh I live on six Fox Chase Drive and I respectfully disagree with what the other two citizens have said uh I
have personally experienced uh how much he cares about the people he represents he is the only person who came and helped us when this God aul Factory by weog was being built right in our backyard uh he contributed
from his own campaign to plant a scream uh we had approached both Mayors the previous one and the current one we had sent pictures of our houses shaking as this thing was being built we had asked for help totally ignored he's the only
one who did it so I believe he does his job well uh and you know I I don't know about all these laws I'm not a lawyer about the regulations but I can tell you uh I've I've been uh I'm an ordinary
citizens I've been caught for speeding a couple of times and uh sometimes the officer has given has given me a warning and let me go because it it was mild enough I don't think that should be a
Criterion for asking uh Mr musella to resign he he has helped us and he I believe he helps the people Hees and that is the core of the job that's required thank you
Anthony Longo Lake pry couple of things talking about a ticket that H uh not a ticket but speeding a couple of years ago something would have been done by then secondly that the roads in this town is atrocious on bever road you drive down
there you see people driving around and they're trying to avoid those bumps they somebody's going to get hurt on that road one day and when is it going to get done and third and final says this bickering between Mella and barbier on
the focus before the primary won't you two have a live debate so everybody can see what's going on between you two to settle the matters for the town thank you good evening everybody I'm Alan
solazo Paran resident uh this video they were talking about I remember with Justin and the traffic stop was about a year about a year ago right mysteriously right when the pilot program stuff came out uh I
looked at it I haven't looked at it since but when I recall Justin didn't do anything the officer actually looked in and said hi Justin how you doing so he obviously knew who he was so so I I don't see
where this is going it's it's I I don't know I've lived here 30 years now and I respect every one of you you do a good job Justin does a good job and we all
have our differences of opinion but I do think we should be doing this as a debate out in the open and I'll tell you I have a Farm in Vermont and a little it's I guess like Hooterville and um if
this went on over there it it did be a lot worse going on people talk with each other they they're level with each other and this is what we need we're setting a bad example for our kids my my children
37 and 30 but they're still my kids and they see what goes on now the problem I have with all that's going on with the politics now up in Vermont I had my contractor work and the kids would just a family so it was election day I was up
there kid comes down and I said you going to go vote today and he goes no I bother and I go why bother you going to go go get a sandwich it's 5 seconds in front by this town hall they'll take you a minute it doesn't matter what I do and this is the apathy you guys got to work
on this all of you it's sickening it really is I love this town I don't want to leave this town but it it's just not right and to bring up this traffic stop thing now it's a year and it's it's it's
a year and a half ago come on guys all right thank you man you can't can I I you all know me Kim Anderson in Mount tabber um I'm here once again um
because I have not received any response from either the water department or the mayor's office to set up a meeting to discuss placing my house in phase two of this water replacement
project um any course we had a meeting in November at the Tabernacle in Mount Taber where I was told we'll take this offline request meeting since that time I've received a couple of form letters um a letter from the township
attorney and then just last week I received um a letter basically stating blanket denial we're not putting you in phase two you know you better you know get in line or you know they'll they'll bring an
enforcement action against me um I responded and all of you you got a copy of that you re C seed if you did not I have copies here in case you'd like to refer to it now um my point in this response to the
water department was that were it not for the water Department's incorrect conclusion that we had a leak in our existing waterline we would not have been put in phase two it's a neighborhood
project and they generally keep houses that are in the same vicinity in a phase they put us in phase one because they thought it was an emergency situation turns out there's no leak in our
line we've been through a lot the past few years with our road collapsing for the second time not having any access to our house uh we had to delay putting on a new roof because the road collapsed it
leaked caused damage that we had to pay for in our house out of pocket I don't think I'm asking very much to be placed in phase two the two houses at the other end of our street they're in phase two I just I don't understand this and the
lack of responsiveness is it's it's it's shocking quite frankly um so all I'm asking is let us be placed in the phase that the rest of our neighbors
are in you know we all know about how terrible the contractor was everyone knows that hopefully the phase 2 contractor will be better um that's really all I have to say about
that but I just want to point out this Pearl clutching and um excuse my French piss match between you know the mayor and Justin I got to say it's kind of Unbecoming and Justin has been one of
the only council members who has reached out to me and tried to do something about this water situation the other council member who has been very helpful has been Judy Hernandez um all I want is to be put in phase two
that's it you know thank you so ba cry I know I followed up off her email address on this and I looked at a Google map image of where their house is and it's according to the map they're right next to each
other what is the challenge because we removed the first set of people that did the work correct and then you're in you want to be in phase two that would be acceptable the how is at the end of the road or in phase two did we ever determine because I I I just looking for an answer why that would not make
logical sense it's one road and like I said on Google Map I didn't drive to your house but on Google Map it looks pretty darn close this is a phased project can you move the microphone this is a phased project um
that we required by the state to do um it's costing us a lot of time and effort and and energy to do this the Anderson have this isn't you know um the first meeting or the first ask from the Andersons we we've done a bunch of
different things already we've had issues from back and forth sorry uh but there there's been a a lot of different uh um um concessions uh to date with this um I know that the water department
uh has done a great job your time's up of trying to manage this project that's been thrusted on the town not something that we're doing is a vanity thing and we're doing it in a way that tries to limit not only the disruption for uh the
residents but also the cost for the residents so with that we put these projects out the bid based on a certain number and a certain uh uh uh type and plans and all of that stuff moving thing people from from phase to phase makes it a lot more difficult um makes the
bidding process it almost compromises the bidding process in some ways because we're pulling in in taking out it almost gives cart blanch to others in the phases to move among phases it's a really difficult thing to do while it looks like and sounds like on a one-off
basis that it's it's really easy it's not I mean we we've had multiple meetings with the Andersons and and they're they're good people and they uh have been Afflicted with some issues uh that have been thrust upon them that
they didn't deserve um but at the end of the day I I think from my point of view I trust our water department I think Shawn and his team are doing an incredible job um not only just managing the day-to-day operations of the water
uh department but managing these incredible mandates that are coming uh from the state from the federal government and doing it in a way that is as least disruptive as possible Right but I I go ahead what
concessions did we make for them that the wall the retaining wall collapsed they couldn't get out of their home I mean if there was a fire or an emergency and that didn't get fixed right away thank God nobody was on that lower level and the other yard or else they would
have been killed the they had things going on that also prevented that work from being done am I wrong with that with the phase and at that time we knew that the contractor wasn't the best we got rid of the contractor in
November according to the Andersons they were told that there would be a discussion I understand that we have these mandates coming from the federal government every municipality does so why are we just not trying to
work this out with them it seems kind of like a small thing it's one house and it's on heading no disrespect to you Sean and and I also did request I sent a letter asking about this and nobody got back to me at all last
week not yet I didn't send it to you but to just real um before Mr Anderson speaks to sit here and say we didn't meet with you is absolutely incorrect we did meet with you in my office with regards to that and everything that our
town Town ba said we've expressed um we we're going to try to find a solution I know you guys up here think it's easy just to switch and bait exactly but you pretty much said it was easy uh you did say that and you're not an engineer exactly and you're not
and we discuss these things with our superintendent with the professionals with regards to the bidding process with regards to how it works we don't we don't just say oh we're not going to do nothing there's a process that comes with it uh so I and like like the PA
said I have a lot of faith in on our on our water department and I take I take your your opinion and I very highly and I respect it um we want to work it out with the Andersons we're going to do everything that we can but nobody's talking to them and
they got a letter saying that they were fined I just explained to you they have been taught to I think the I think the larger ISS issue is is the culture of unresponsiveness and setting expectations with residents public
meetings um that you're going to meet with them and they follow up and they follow up and they reach out and they don't get a response and they come to a council meeting and they're told that we'll reach out to them and then nothing happens and then council members follow
up and we get uh ignored I think that's the larger problem of that's not the problem the problem is we resp finish you just don't like our respon I didn't interrupt you mayor so let me you didn't you're right I apologize so saw problem in your
head um you know look the resident was told at a public meeting that there would be uh a meeting offline and just have the meeting and know the answer is no the answer is no but let's not have these poor people just continually chase
their their own tail council president if uh I may if we had another meeting it would be the I think the either the third or the fourth than I'd be attending um and I know that uh the water department has had multiple uh uh
conversations and I I think that this should be settled with the water department you know for the township Administration or the council or anybody to start big timing and changing things the way that things
were done I think the experts these four people here are experts on this stuff and there were concessions there the whole thing was rerouted at a great cost that we picked up
it our choice is never to do things differently than what um the qualified Engineers tell us to do that's that's my choice and I and I they're they're here they can they're going to do a great
presentation that's going to be incredibly interesting and everybody's going to love it on posos treatment feasibility and the master plan the water master plan um maybe they can address it at that time okay thank you James Anderson M tab
resident I've been here 21 years and uh the last four have been very very hard um sir please speak into the mic yeah this has been going on for quite some time and it's caused us a lot of
stress and aggravation um on July 1st 2024 the mayor my family um uh Jamie cryan and the water department Sean
Andre and his assistant Kevin all sat down and we had a discussion about this how to reroute this how how to address our personal problem um with um the
digging up excuse me digging up of the water line which currently runs through um my neighbor's property to my house it's great line never once leaked they told me it leaked then they told me years later they were wrong and they
apologized to me um but couple of years went by of a lot of anxiety and a lot of threatening uh emails and letters back and forth I've appeared before you like 10 times in the
last four years over this issue okay so is do I feel confident it's going to come to some kind of a positive resolution on our behalf not at all um but we're keep trying we're going to keep fighting this the
reason why we are put in that first phase with a terrible contract Regal contrac thing and I know you don't pick your contractors you get the low bit was because of faulty information provided by them they said the line leaked it
didn't leak it never leaked and then they proved it didn't leak so why we're not in another phase is beyond me we should be in the phase with our neighbors on our street I live in East heading I got two neighbors
down the street okay put me in that phase all right enough with the threatening letters and then you end up we decided it was decided back in July 1st 2024 in uh right here uh in the
mayor's office uh the waterline will go through the woods from St Peters uh to uh adjacent to our property an arborist will evaluate health of oak tree next to our house uh so that the effects of the
excavation of that new waterline would not damage that tree uh and we we notified prior to construction no cost to us of any part of this line um seems like they forgot a lot of what
we had talked about and what we had decided upon and um and now we're we've kind of gone backwards and it's it's again more aggravation more U letters back and forth we wanted to have a
meeting last week we're here we said let's have a meeting okay another meeting and iron this out no meeting okay I got a letter another threatening letter um and uh you
know got a nice letter from the uh from the township lawyer another threatening letter fall into line Anders Len you know do what we say you're not listening to us okay we're taxpaying people here we've been
here for 21 years um we're just trying to get what's right for us okay and uh all we want to do is sit down and iron it out it's all I got well I I I would just say my letter was more informational purposes it was
not threatening in any way and I have the letter in front of me and it concludes with as you can imagine the replacement of the Le and galvanite service lines is a massive undertaking mandated by the state I assure you that the township only desires compliance with the state mandated code section and has no desire to penalize its residents
to avoid the necessity of any enforcement action please advise the department when you will be replacing your service line so all we did was point out what the requirements were the ordinance and the state law and that was it certainly not meant to be threatening in any way it's just like this is what
you're required to do and please comply my name is Jack Ray I'm a member of the parity Board of Education I'm speaking in my capacity as a private citizen and My Views do not necessarily reflect those of the Board of Education I'm happy to provide this this disclaimer as
the mayor always relishes this ethical requirement he always relishes diminishing this ethical requirement I read curious Facebook post by Mr valenzano who I sincerely think is an excellent writer hey come
on go ahead I look forward to finding agreement on local issues at some point He suggests councilman Mel should resign as he may as he may throw sand in the gears of the mayor too bad Mr valenzano didn't inform all the US senators who
ran for president in 202 20 that they should resign Barry Sanders KLA Harris Elizabeth Warren Cory Booker Kirsten Gillan were among those that were running and that's who came to mind without a Google Search and they all were running for president uh and they
didn't resign from the Senate on the traffic stop there should be far more emphasis on the issues than I hope to see debates between the mayoral candidates to discuss issues of concern to the town
the town still has not forgotten the the proposal for a redundant and retaliatory audit of the Board of Education an irony since board members are not paid and no money is handled by the Board of Education in September 2024 uh a press release went out
declaring a series of meetings between the mayor and the Board of Education to discuss how money receive from Pilots will benefit the school district 6 months later there's no progress but even without the impact of Pilots inflation will cause fiscal strains that
will only be made worse by the number of students that will come into the district in future years and there will be no Revenue to service them unfortunately the election has gone into the gutter councilman Mella is criticized as a carpet bagger while the
mayor has secured endorsements of politicians fewer from parsipany and to me those endorsements are less important than those of the citizens of parcion similar to National politicians getting any endorsement of celebrities such as
Beyonce George Clooney and the much sought after Taylor Swift endorsement contested primaries are good for the town let's get out of the gutter and do a service for the town with vigorous debates to discuss important issues thank you Mr re before you go I have a
question for you sir so you've come up and said that there's going to be 200 kids I believe it was from 1515 I think you wrote 600 pilot kids from other developments and you've also said on some of the Facebook streams with Council that there might be thousands does the school I just need
you on the mic Mr just just indulge me for back and forth what is the number of pilot children that are expected from the developments that were previously under mayor Sorano and under the previous Council what are the numbers of students and what my understanding is
1515 is a Sorano pilot that's approximately true how many kids hey please please be quiet come on you know better it's a s pilot and that's approximately 200 children based on the number of units there you know we do a
demographic study a demographic study was done and it and it's about 200 children counc president would you be able to send me that study yeah it's posted okay thanks go ahead CH please so so
there are other Pilots that have been passed since then and they were rigorously debated over the last year and a half right 10 them yes and now there's based on those the number of units that are going to be built over the next 5 to S years there's
approximately another 600 children rejected to come into this to the district campus 2 and three 600 kids roughly yes okay I don't remember all the but all the names but approximately 600 kids and and again without the pilots the district is financially
strained and not just parp but other districts across the state they're strained because of the 2% tax cap and they're strained because we have inflation we have you know there's just it was okay to have the tax cap when you
have 1 or 2% inflation which we did for about 15 years in the last three or four years we've had increasing inflation okay and that is going to cause a lot of trouble for the not just our school district but all over the state all of
the country really town too sure yes towns basically businesses as well so it is a problem so 800 kids roughly and then I think you said 20K kid roughly but inflation there's going to be a growth to that obviously well there's
there's going to be 800 kids coming in and then there's no teachers to service those kids sure and there's no facilities because they're pretty well the the school district is pretty well stacked as it is there's not a lot of this room which then raises the issue of
do you raise the class sizes okay sure I recall that yeah you guys had passed the go to 25 Elementary all that happened and again I keep saying we what the board of education did was just the actually the
superintendent waved the limit on the class sizes that doesn't mean that class sizes were increase he basically needed the flexibility to do so because there was some strain on understood and then with the addition of Littleton what was the expectation because I know there was a long-term facility management plan
that's published to the state of New Jersey um are you familiar with that what was published to the state of New Jersey with the Board of Ed uh in terms of what we expect to have room for in schools maybe but it doesn't ring a bell right okay I I'd be curious and again I
know we're way over your five minutes so apologies to everybody who gets yell that I'd like to understand again I offer to sit down with you because I have a challenge with some of the things that you said but I'd love to have a conversation so thank you for going on record before and I think the numbers
are fairly sound all right and again based on demographic studies and what we're anticipa what what the board of education is antip all right very good thank you and I think one of the other outstanding items that Mr Rya brought up is what is the status of the board of
education budget it's come up routinely we've been told that there's been progress um cry what is the latest with the board of V audit uh I don't have any uh update on it well what is the person doing the audit doing well um I don't
have any update i't followed up on it I'm not um I have other priorities going on right now okay by the next council meeting can we expect to get an update on the audit you know I'm really focused on the budget stuff and the Cannabis and the affordable housing but if it's uh possible I'll try to get to it in
September this was such a prior to congratulate the school board for getting an increase in state aid this year in 26 2% increase in September this was such a priority to do that we rushed this and now for whatever reason it's
completely off the radar so I don't want to have to start putting in opras but I would like a full update on where we're at so so to be clear though you voted it down I voted for it I know you want the data I'd like to know where we are too here's what we'll do um Matt I'll make
sure you get it let's let's in fact we have a committee we have a committee with regards to the Board of Education Matt you're part of that committee um Frank um and I'll speak to um the the vice president of the Board of Ed we'll meet we'll discuss it and um we'll go
forward with that way there thank will be released to us so we can get it well when when we're going to meet our committee is going to meet and we're going to discuss it and okay uh Nick comak Lake haata one
question I'd like to know on the consent agenda I want a definition of what is meant by Surplus property is this Municipal property is this a vacant land adjustment and a correction
1515 Route 10 was a John English Cino pilot deal not mayor Sorano inherited the that from Mr ino's deal one of his FasTrack uh
deals um that's that's incorrect well I I'll I guess I was dreaming when I was here in the town hall and and it all happened uh this politics should be about issues of the time now I
understand that uh this film with our Congressman being pulled over by a police councilman what did I say you call me Congressman oh well maybe in the future who knows but if you you remain the Trumper I hope
not uh I can't understand why unless this was he was pending a criminal charge or a heavy fine why anyone would even
bother to put in an Oprah record quest for you being pulled over doesn't mention time circumstances traffic what speed you were actually doing the police officer did the right thing he extended
courtesy and and it moved on but who would even authorize a Oprah request like this to be processed for and a year ago so it's clearly 30 uh uh
politics and U um it's just like I said we should talk about things sub that mean things to people that our times are facing not qu quing about uh somebody speeding that's a common phenomena
that's life by Auto that's the way we designed our society and you're never going to stop people from speeding but you know it's even an ambiguous term speeding you weren't Reckless striving were you
but I'd like to know who and why this Oprah request was even approved for what purpose for what purpose you said corruption what corruption did he pass the officer a a $100 bill or $50 bill
you know he got caught doing something that people do at times and we don't know any anything else like I said road conditions anything else I just think it's uh politics if that's what politics is no
wonder why this uh country is in the shape it's in and I got another qu Board of educ what's the Board of Education going to do when the Maga people destroy the Department of Education and they say it's all up to the
states and if you don't cooperate with Mr Trump you don't get no money so you better factor that too in these pilot deals that you gave to billionaires cuz the thing I had against the pilot deals were your helping a regressive tax
system that's injust and inequitable Prime real estate and precipi perfect location for a warehouse no need for a pilot and even the developer admitted he had billions of dollars so the whole thing to me it just smells as something
in the background a political camp paying contributions to the politician who favored the pilots and I'll leave it at that I think to answer your original question about on the consent agenda
item three correct me if I'm wrong it's just a municip bid for vehicle surplus vehicles yeah here's a list if you want it's for vehicles not not prop old Vehicles yeah
my name is Bob Vania and uh I live in Paran the um Justin muella uh speeding ticket incident is just another attempt to force him out of the Republican mayoral Primary in June the first attempt occurred when Mars County GOP
chair Laura Ali asked muella to drop out of the primary in the name of party unity and focusing on winning the general election this happened shortly after she unexpectedly switched Allegiance from muella to
barbaria when that failed the GOP chair lined up every Republican mayor and official in Mars County to Endor to endorse the mayor and now as a last resort team Barbaro has turned to digging up dirt and using which which
what has now become known as lawfare to threaten some kind of Ethics investigation against muella supposedly muel you used his political influence to avoid getting a speeding ticket at the time of the
incident muel was quoted as saying I was pushing her meaning his wife to go a little fast unless you can read minds the interpretation of that threat of that statement as a threat or a bribe is an
un unsubstantiated reach it may be as I believe that he was just trying to accept blame for putting his wife into a predicament into the predicament that she was in there's a clear difference in ideas between the
mayor and the councilman and the voters deserve to have the opportunity to decide to decide whose ideas are better thank you my Twilight's on my name is Hank K and
U what a what a sad meeting this is I have to say uh I I I know most of you people on on the board I know the mayor well and I know most of you people and I like you all and it's it's just kind of
an interesting thing um I i' I'd like to tell you that uh I have picked a position for for this coming election and it's not because of any of your personalities or any of you it's because
I hate what the board and the and this Administration is done with with the with plas and with Pilots I think that you guys have done the very wrong thing in terms of what so many of your of your citizens have have
requested of you have demanded and in fact we've been turned away and now we've come to a place where where we now are writing News newspaper articles and letters to the editor and what have you and I am guilty
of that myself okay I've read I've read some of the things frankly quite by accident because I don't often go on and read the local news out of these blogs and and and I have seen um some of the
some of the letters are from people who who some I know and respect and like and some who I don't know but they are either employees of the Town some of them are employees of the town as well as some of them have relatives working
for the town and I can understand those people supporting the administration that they are very familiar with that they work for that they in fact have real important relationships with okay on the other
hand I feel that I have had to respond because because I don't agree with the postures that all of those people have taken and in fact I'd like to tell you that uh just this past week I wrote a letter to uh to respond to one of one of
the letters that uh to to uh that was I tried to enter it into tap I had to try twice to get it published in fact I called the publisher and I sent an email telling them how disappointed I was that
I had to work so hard to get a a response into their newsletter and what what I'm really trying to say to you is this okay I am not for a particular party in these elections I'm
for telling you that I don't like the the the postures that you have taken on certain important issues to me okay and what I see happening is that that we have developed a a very unfair playing field and I see that the deck I believe
that the deck is stacked okay and I don't like stacked decks in fact I've spent my whole life fighting against bullies and those who would try to intimidate others and I'm telling you now that I think it's a mistake to continue to go on this particular
direction how many of the people in this room how many of you have not been stopped for speeding I certainly have more than more than several times not in a long time though thank God okay the point my point being that that judicious
cop let me off because I told him that I I live right nearby and I was I was fighting with my wife or I was or I was thinking of something else or whatever it was but this is this is this whole attempt is garbage and it's wrong and
it's beneath you every single one of you okay and I'm urging you to stand up and say let's deal with what's important in this town let's not try and go after those who we don't like or who are
perhaps dangerous to our thinking or our interests this is really nuts and the other thing that I wanted to say is and I'm I don't want to make a big deal of it but one of the people wrote something talking about this
this stupid speeding situation and comparing it to to a candidate that you have picked to run in this next election and and and and one thing is a speeding
stop and the other was clearly judged to be election interference now why how in the heck can we feel that something like that is is similar or or debatable now I
don't care who anybody picks to run with them I couldn't care less I'll make my own decision but I'm saying to you that we are allowing us to pick up the lint from the from the floor and make it into
a into a whole blanket and then leaving ourselves open to scrutiny that that's that it can't stand the scrutiny I'm sorry guys all of you I tell you that you're doing the wrong thing for yourselves and for the people
of parcion and I urge you I urge you to think through what the way that that we're going because it's not a good way and it's not earning the respect of the people thank you for your time anyone else good evening everybody it seems like
there's a large number of people here compared to normal uh Council meetings it's very good uh I just happened to find out the issue about this speeding actually uh I'm here for a different reason but I
just want to mention that the speeding issue should should be put aside let's talk about the real subjects that parip residents are are dealing with and asking for resolutions for those points
actually let's improve the infrastructure the roads okay on bever road on Route 46 on Route 10 in Glenmont comment where I'm the resident of since
2016 um I had been attending this Council meetings on a regular basis trying to bring about the Sol ution to improve the roads in my community we have
761 voters in our community and we only see the politicians when they are looking for votes but every election session the voters are asking only thing
improve our roads give us small park for our children that's all we ask how long do we have to stay like this if the current politician is not
about to bring changes in the community let's find out if somebody else can bring the change in the community okay I've supported mayor barberio um I've supported
Sano Barbaro came back in his May here now he's going for a reelection but my problems have not been solved all I had been told we're looking at it we have the lawsuit going on wait wait how long
can we wait 2016 now 2025 the small problem has not been fixed in my community that's a we just need change let's stop fighting amongst
all of you and work with you work with each other and bring some change for the residents that's all we ask that's all just don't show up at our doorstep looking for a vote once you have the vote you get elected and then disappear
for 4 years okay let's bring some change all I want is the safer roads for our kids in our community all we want is a small part for seniors to spend some time
and let's just not work for the big um uh um developers okay let's just not work for them work for the for the people who are voting for you and bringing you here at the panel let's work for them not not for these Builders
actually thank you very much council president can I please respond C I'm going to respond with regards to gentlemen first of all with the park you've been we've been very upfront with you in detail and you always bring up the election the election the election so I'm not going to tell you what you
want to hear I'm going to tell you what you need to hear with regards to the park the developer has to do a environmental study the owner of the property won't do it we're not going to take a piece of property over unless there's a phase one environmental study
I mean we want to we want to work with you we want to get that part done but we've told this to you I can't tell you how many times and you know that we have and right now we sued the developer okay and we're just we we can't really talk about it with regards
we had the meeting with everyone in my office with regards to it and that is one of the reasons why we can't move forward with that until this goes to trial whatever I don't know if it's going to go to trial or there'll be a settlement um so you you say the same thing and I appreciate what you say and
you know that but we're not going to take a piece of property off and over that could be environmental an environmental hazard well just not going to do that it's not it wouldn't be right for the residents of poron it wouldn't be right for you if it's environmentally
not sound so that is why there's no part there thank you council president we can back and forth anyone else okay seeing no one I'd like to entertain a motion to close the public session motion second motion made by M
Hernandez seconded by Mr neglia roll call Mr Hernandez yes Mr McGrath yes Mr Mella yes Mr neglia yes Mr Ki yes floor is closed before we advance on there were some things that were said in the open
public and I I just have a question of Mr LA because there were some people that got up and stated some criminal statutes in there are we obligated to look into these since I'm not exactly sure what each of those please Mr beros
please okay here we go what here we go what okay I know I heard you there were some criminal statutes that were brought up and I'm not exactly sure what those statutes exactly state but is that something that we are obligated into
looking into I mean we have residents saying Mr Mel does a great job this and that you can still break a law and do something nice for someone so one is talking about a totally different thing but is that something that we are obligated into looking into since
residents came up here and stated criminal statutes well well you had two things that were brought up one was um the local government ethics law which is quite simply and I don't know the situation here I haven't seen the video I don't know this but if if this was
true and again I don't know whether it is or not you can't hand hand credentials and get special treatment from a police officer when they pull you over it's different if a regular person gets pulled over for speeding and then the officer says well you don't have a bad driving record I let you go that's one situation but if you're an elected
official and that you try to use your office to obtain some advantage that a another Resident wouldn't be allowed to get then yeah that's a violation it's clearly it would clearly be a violation if that happened of the local government ethics law and quite frankly that would be similar I guess as an example would
be the Port Authority commissioner whose daughter or daughter's boyfriend was pulled over and she flashed her badge and that falls under the state ethics commission um but I think she ended up paying $1,500 fine is found guilty of violating that but um the state ethics
commission doesn't have control over local government officials that would be the uh DCA and uh the division local government services so yeah you cannot offer your credentials to a police officer in order to get out of a ticket but I also think to the add- on to the
council president's Point um if somebody just comes before this board and says oh this individual violated criminal statutes that's just going to mean we abandon good judgment and say okay well you know they said this so let's go
ahead and do it because I think that's a very dangerous precedent where we just start having people come up cite a criminal statute and then launching investigations no no no and I'm not saying that I'm not saying that anybody's presumed to be guilty but when somebody makes allegations like that I
think you would want to get your name cleared and if there is a video or whatever send it on to whomever I'm not going to decide whether you or anybody else is guilty here I'm just saying if somebody made the allegation and there was evidence to that the council felt that that should be at least vetted one way or the other yeah you would send it
up that's all Mr Mr L is this something we need to discuss in close session um being it has to do with uh possible uh illegal activity um or just something we we can uh based on a attorney Council privilege you can discuss it in open or
you can disc discuss it in close let's discuss it in open I have nothing to hide you w on film I guess you wouldn't but yeah you you're very familiar with the film you sent it out last year let's not start talking about who's sending anything out Justin because I can give
you a laundry list of what's going out okay goad and all well let's start with this we got a we got Justin's uh some supporters handing out flyers out of Board of Ed building you want to get a picture of that Mr baros thank you we have uh you know that's the that's baros state
that's something different U so we have all kinds of cool stuff here we have the what was this other thing that went out Mr Justin uh the Triad of something um Triad of treachery sent out anonymously
by Tim beros uh originally but he forgot to remove his picture from it so that's there too but um you know this is all stuff that you that's coming from you and your side and we all know that so let's not kid each other let's not kid each other about who is and who isn't doing things Mr heler I can't agree with
you more than trying to do everything above above where it should be and not bring up things that happen 14 years ago like happened to Mr like Mr Patel was accused of Mr 14 years ago I'm sorry Mr Shaw sorry that's your running mate that's correct um but I was looking at
someone else back there but but the bottom line is Justin if you're going to start bringing these things up and you want your people to come up and say oh let's not talk about two years ago let's not talk about 14 years ago let's talk about the issues that are in town I strong L recommend you and Mr Barbaro
have a debate and discuss the issues not mudsling when when Mr valori ran for mayor it was a g Two Gentlemen running against each other there was no mudslinging there was no nonsense being sent to people's homes there there was none of that stuff that happened and and
I got to tell you Justin I'm really disappointed in you I'm disappointed about some of your tactics about some of the things you're saying in my opinion I think you're lying about a lot of things and I've seen that video and in my opinion you clearly violated the law by handing your your your business card of being a
councilman to a police officer you can't do that that's not that's not how it's meant to be you're not above the law you are a counsilman you are held to a higher standard you are not above the law that was wrong in my opinion so I'm pretty upset about that because I can't
tell you is there any councilman up here that's gotten a ticket in the last few years in precip Mr McGrath tell me what happened uh yeah we got a ticket last year for uh registration and we paid it okay did you show your your councilman C to the officer no we just paid the ticket thank
you Mr McGrath yeah you know being Above the Law is not what we're here about we are here to support the law support the people of this town and do what's right for the town and the people in it I'm sorry Mr Mella you can be angry at me when you want but I'm speaking my mind and what my opinion is uh so we can do
one of two things we can go discuss this this and what in my opinion is an Ethics violation in Clos session or I'm going to make a motion now and actually you know what I am going to make a motion now I make a motion to direct the township attorney to depare a resolution of censor against Mr Mella for an abuse
of power to file ethics violation of official misconduct for the act of using his Council position excuse me speaking please to TI please be quiet to the authorities have a good night this is
political theater at its best absolutely not Mr one person at a time the hey hey Nick Nick Nick come on come on Nick the officers Nick please Nick come onck please Nick finish your statement and then
Justin if he wants to speak can speak okay do I have a second so let me ask you a question we discuss this you cannot discuss this on the floor unless there's a second to the motion all right I'm going to Second it for the sake of continuing this conversation because I'd like to hear from councilman Melle in
terms of what his position okay so a motion was made by by Mr neglia there was a second by Mr McGrath we can open the floor to discussion so this is just discussion on the issue that they're talking it's discussion But Then followed by V let me yeah let me what did you pres I haven't watched the video so I don't I think that's important you
know I mean tell me what happened sure so the the video that is in question is almost a year and a half old it's been circulated previously by the mayor during the uh pilot process as a way to intimidate me then and it failed then
and it and it obviously know what happened in scenario can I I didn't interrupt you okay go ahead um and it's obviously being recirculated now to do the same thing because there's an election coming up but let's talk about the video in the video uh you know my
wife is driving me to a train station we were pulled over by a police officer um my wife presented her identifications uh she did include the council card um the police officer if you watched the video actually knew who
we were uh so it was you know not necessary and I trusted the officer's judgment I see we have our You Know Chief here um and I trust the Judgment of our parpan police department and the Judgment call they made I didn't never
asked for any special treatment um and you know I I told in in the video we were going a little bit above the speed limit it was late to catch a train and that's it so so you presented your card though but you don't feel my wife was driving do you feel you did anything
wrong I feel that um we shouldn't you know the the card had no place you know I don't I don't feel like that should have been presented and and I own that but uh we didn't ask for any you know special treatment and the officer knew who we were if you watched the video and
I encourage you to do that because it's a highly edited video of course because it's used for political purposes can I respond to him continually saying uh for political purposes uh first and foremost you're the one that said our Traffic Division
isn't do anything here in pany you're the one that said two days before you um spoke at a resident's house with regards to metal Buff Road and that you're going to fix the safety issues over there and yet you're the one speeding on that road not not us we
didn't speed or anything like that U maybe you should look and um be really upfront un let know if you received any other tickets going forward for any infractions uh maybe you had four prior to this one uh maybe you should you know
let the residents know about those as well but that's beside the point you're the one that brought that Public Safety you're the one that continues to say you're going to make the street safer in parcion okay we're doing a good job I got to thank the chief we beefed up our
um our Police Department we 20 new police officers are um our our our summonsing are up speeding's down and all that you don't want to keep saying we're not we're not maintaining the public safety here in pany but you have a card that can get you out of a ticket
and that's okay okay every time you want to take a shot at me with regards to saying you're not keeping the road safe mayor well maybe I wasn't maybe I wish I could have caught you myself the the bottom line is this public safety I take very seriously okay
especially when I have a councilman saying to me that our Police Department's failing it's not doing anything I got a problem with that and then as you saw in the video he gets pulled over for Speed not him and um says you know I encourage my
wife to go faster now what if your kids were on that road at the time you you don't know you don't know okay you don't know somebody can get hurt somebody can get killed but I encourage my wife to
speed and you know you think that's a good thing I don't and I don't think it's even funny and I don't think that that nothing was done wrong no one ever called him out for speeding other than that when he came and said our Police Department isn't doing anything I'm
going to beef up I'm going to be the one that's going to make these roads safer and just because someone does a good deed and they get it they get a ticket they get a pass it doesn't work that way it just doesn't work that way okay I'm the mayor of the township
that I take Public Safety seriously when I have any doesn't have to be just Justin any council member ever goes after the police department after what I came back to 81 Deployable police officers we had no Traffic Division whatsoever our crime rate was up well
due to several things and all of a sudden we straighten it out and we fixed it but since I fixed it we got to put a jab into it and saying we're not doing anything well we're doing a lot here in town we're doing a real lot and I want to thank the chief I want to thank the police department because you're getting
some bad publicity out there from individuals that you don't deserve whatsoever and everybody wants to come up here and say well you know I got quau speeding one time I remember this and that well guess what you weren't you weren't a councilman you weren't an elected
official that's the big difference yes you might be able to get away with a ticket I don't flash my if I get pulled over I'm not going to I don't deserve any preference nobody up here deserves preference whatsoever the most important thing to me is Public Safety and if the
councilman breaks the law he should pay for it or she whoever she is I'm sorry I was on Littleton Road when that kid got killed and you could smile all you want Bob it's not funny I was on that road
and I was distraught and I was frustrated when I left there and it really made my heart sink watching those parents the parents at night had they didn't know what to do what to say I had nothing I could I didn't even know what to say to him but it's okay for the
councilman to speed on a road that he was complaining about it's not okay but I think this is good for us to have debate so we can clear up factual errors and just I just cleared it up well let me I did not interrupt you
please and egregious mischaracterizations of my positions number one um and I'm sure you're referring to a comprehensive 12-page policy document I recently released that was done in conjunction with um active
retired uh County and Statewide uh law enforcement officials who looked at um a host of criteria and it's a template for improvements and nowhere in that document that I say the chief is failing or that the police department is failing
email you sent in 23 I'm by let me again can I please continue we can't conflate opportunities for improvement as these direct attacks on you they're not the same and that's not what I'm doing I'm talking about the
ways that we can improve the all of the different departments in our municipality and how we can make them better and I'm going to continue offering that advice I'm going to continue pushing out ideas that I believe in that are are going to make us better and you can say all you want that
these are attacks on you but they're not and with okay I'll let you finish and I'm going to go by what you said so good okay let's let's do it um so good let finish I want him to finish the last thing I'll say is that I
think all of us need to be held to the same standard if one of us is caught speeding all of I think 30 12 miles 30 37 miles over in a 25 mph Zone if I had gotten a ticket I would have paid the
ticket uh for my wife and the story would be over but um whatever you guys want to do if you want to make your motion make your motion I have nothing to hide and I want this conversation to stay in public okay I let me I think
what no no you sir you can't I think what what looks bad is that you were at a council meeting and you were stating about this particular neighborhood that speeding was rampant in this neighborhood that there was no traffic enforcement there by our police
department and only a few days prior you were actually pulled over speeding or your wife pulled over speeding in that neighborhood and then the following council meeting you came and you complained about the police department's lack of enforcement in that particular
area again after you had been pulled over so I think that just is what some PE residents are saying well you know how do you get up here and complain about that and then you're you're in a car that's feeding um the other thing is too is I mean let's face the facts the
rumors of you running for mayor or or you're a councilman have been out there for quite a long time so I think where it comes into play is whether this officer or not knew that technically you know we vote on their contract we vote on this if if you
were to become mayor does this this officer gives you a ticket does he think in the back of mind oh I give him a ticket how is that going to uh affect me in the future for promotions Etc so that's where I that's why I think they have these laws in effect and why
they're so stringent on us you getting all this Mr baros yes I am okay good because that officer could feel intimidated by if he were to issue a councilman or a May or a ticket so that's why they have these laws in place
for that so I think that's just something that you know people need to keep in mind and if you're a resident in that town and you complained and here you are saying our Police Department's not doing anything speeding I I I agree with you speeding is out of control in
this particular neighborhood but then you're doing it to me that just doesn't look good and if you think for one second the police officer felt that way don't you think that would have been in a police report no no absolutely not okay absolutely my my my point is it's
it's all speculation and this is just pure political theater I want to talk about the issues that matter to the residents of parcion but clearly you may want to do something else so let's have at it so so Justin is this a one-time
thing or are there other videos of you handing cards to other people I'm not aware of you know I don't I would not recall any other instances of this happening so you have gotten pulled over
anywhere else and taken out a card your councilman card or advised the police officer anywhere that you're a councilman prity if if I've been pulled over um I do not recall any other instances of that happening
so that's it did you have get pull over other the prior this we're done we're done here okay well you know what if you can't recall that means it happens so is there any other discussion on this
matter okay seeing none uh we had a motion by Mr neglia and a second by Mr McGrath so we're going to go into a roll call Mr Hernandez Mr Mr negle can you please repeat your motion make a motion to direct the township attorney to prepare
a resolution of censor against councilman Mella for an abuse of power theile ethics violations and official misconduct for the act of using as Council position to avoid a speeding ticket and to forward the video to the appropriate authorities that way they
can make a decision so this would just get us a legal decision I'm I'm going to vote no because it's been what just go ahead Mr I'm voting no this political argument and back and forth is just taken away
from a lot of the issues we have and I just don't see any benefit for it to limitations sh please of course I am Mr McGrath yes Mr Mella no Mr neglia
yes he not vote this he hasain but you're okay with this that you have you are our Township attorney you are our highest legal officer and you're okay with this motion being made without you having just said you haven't seen this video are you okay I am not
judge jury and executioner I was asked a specific question about whether if somebody did handed their card to a police officer in a traffic stop is that lawful it is not okay so I'm not judging whether you're guilty or not guilty I was asked a specific question about if
what was alleged happened was that something that would violate the local government ethics law yes it would whether it's official misconduct that'll be for somebody else to decide other than me I was just asked a question about if those facts were correct what was it a violation in my opinion it's a
violation Mr mcrath yes Mr neglia yes and Mr Ki I'm I'm going to vote Yes just so that we can put it to bed like Mr heler said and get to the issues we can put it to bed these people will either tell us yes or no and
that'll be the end of it so yes okay motion passes so moving moving moving moving along to the consent agenda I ask you back to the business people care about yeah consent agenda everybody can just please review the consent agenda if you
have any questions seeing no questions moving on to approval of minutes moving on to presentations and reports mayor thank you uh CAD I'm going to go all the price on my
report here but on Thursday February 27th I had the honor to welcome to mount tabber browny tro 98638 to learn about local government and it was um I got to tell you it was actually really fun time the kids ask a lot of really good questions and um I
tell you um that's one thing I enjoy doing um like I said I'm going to bounce all over the place for some things I just didn't put down um I did tonight um I don't know if you know who Robert sparo is but Robert sparo is a
pacian high school School 2024 graduate and intern in my office who par participated in Temple University's annual pitch competition which saw a variety of innovative ideas with fman Robert Sparrow's Cafe SPO winning the People's Choice Award um the cafe aims
to combat elderly loneliness by fostering intergenerational connection and I have to tell you I'm not surprised that Robert one Robert is a was a very very very good um very good intern here for me in the town he really got did a
great job with the residents and this was a 17-year-old kid who um really I see a bright future for um on behalf of the township inro Hills um I I have to honor and remember the
extraordinary Life and Legacy of Dr Joseph Weissberg who passed away uh last week uh he was a devoted public servant educator and Community leader F Webber's life was a testament to service scholarship and dedication as a
dean of arts and sciences and professor emeritus of geoscience and I'm bringing him up for a reason he was also a councilman he was a school board member he was also the mayor of parpan Troy Hills and a very very very dear friend of mine his academic achievements
including doctorate from Columbia University and multiple degrees in Science Education reflected his deep commitment to learning and teaching beyond the class like I said do was a pillar of the pan Community since moving to the Township in 1975 with his wife
Gloria he dedicated himself to numerous Civic and governmental roles he served as Township council president from 1988 to 1994 and as mayor from 1994 always leading with integrity and a vision for a better Community his contribution extended to the County
College of Morris who served as a trustee for 25 years until the Morris County open space and farmland Miss committee which he helped found Dr wbur's passion for public service and engagement was evident in his roles as past member and vice
president at bimon Board of Education past president of Lake Kwa Jewish Center past president of the Kanis Club of Paran and I laugh with the Kanas Club because that's when I first met Dr Joe
in the year 2000 when I was asked to go meet uh my baseball coach Jack M from P Hills was probably one of the greatest baseball coaches in all P history in the state possibly um and the first time I
met him I sat next him I didn't know him all that well and I introduced myself and you know what he says oh God another Italian and I couldn't stop laughing and I literally fell in love with the man from that point on because he was such a
good hearted man um I'm truly going to miss him he was a big part of my life and my children's life as well um but he was a great great public servant here in pipany so rest in peace Dr Joseph barsburg your service
kindness and wisdom will never be forgotten and today I I've been wanting to congratulate him for the longest time Nick bronzino I have to tell you I see a bright future for you I have seen you work that P like I've never
seen any other director work it your heart is in it and I'm here to work with you now I know you've gotten some push back with regards to a former P director and I'll say his name I don't really
care Sam yice with regards to um the P him making comments with regards to you being there when he couldn't even do the work half the work that you do and I hope he hears this um now that he's over in Woodland Park as the administrator um but anytime you have an
issue or a problem when anybody tells you you know what's your business plan please feel free to come to me because the business plan is working with the town pany Troy Hills that's what the business plan is that's the plan Alto together we're supposed to work together
when it comes to that our children our kids and our Sports youth groups so you have my 150% support and I want to thank you for all the things you're doing over there now also as yeah she doesn't get enough Kudos but
they try to beat them up so you deserve it um and I'm going to confront that gentleman so don't worry so as we know St Patrick's Day is coming and um I have to make my comment today because the next meeting is the 18th so I wish
everybody a happy St Patrick's Day celebrated on March 17th this day honored St Patrick the pain state of Ireland who was credited with bringing Christianity to the country in the fifth century originally a religious feast day it has evolved into celebration of Irish
culture marked by parades music and the wearing of green and I wish all Irish all Irish Americans all Americans a very very joyful laughter and a great great St Patrick's Day and
Irish luck cheers so your token Irish I so that being said Thank You council president Township Council yeah I won so economic development is going to be um celebrating alongside mayor James
roberio hakee Hot Chicken and Biscuits on 9 North beverick Road Thursday March 13th at 5:00 public is invited officially open to the public at 6:00 so um definitely if you have an opportunity to attend you should also the economic development committee is excited to
announce the grant opportunity to support local businesses with critical funding will continue through 2025 eligible businesses may qualify for Grants ranging from 5,000 to 50,000 to reimburse costs associated with interior and exterior enhancements and purchase and installation of new furniture
fixtures and equipment in collaboration with the Economic Development Authority the committee has successfully connected over 20 ppy businesses with these Grand opportunities and collectively these businesses can secure over $1.3 million in funding
approval economic development committee is also promoting a cyber security webinar in conjunction with the New Jersey Small Business Development Center and Google to help small businesses combat cyber threats the free session is Friday March 21st will cover threat
recognition security strategies and as valuable training resource please contact kill with any questions if you'd like to attend and then the next meeting of economic development is on Wednesday March 12th 6:30 90 East Hy Road Third Floor conference room public is invited
please RSVP with chairman Frank kahill at 973-559-6787 pal uh in all my years of being a volunteer in this town which is probably more than most of you are even that age but um I I just can't can't tell you how
wonderful job I see him doing now and continues I was at a two of the shows this past weekend and I was just amazed at the amount of people that were there I couldn't even move in them but uh he's done a really good thing about getting the word out about uh come reaching out
to other organizations about partnering with the town and the different groups in town and Nick uh as your liais on anything I can do to you help um please anytime you call me what you do but you can continue to do that but uh I look forward to working with you uh regarding the library I had a library meeting and
they had a couple of questions Mr cryan I'm going to send you an email tomorrow and if you can answer some of those questions on their behalf one of them was about the insurance and stuff the Cyber something but I have it written down I I'll send you an email tomorrow and you you can uh reach back out to him I'd really appreciate it we'll do right
thanks that's all I got uh council president I'd like to respond to some comments made during the public session before I go into business sure uh few individuals had called on me to resign and I want to be crystal clear
to those people I will not back down this attempt to centure me is nothing more than a political maneuver designed to silence me and undermine the will of the people that I was elected to represent this is not about a genuine
care for ethics accountability or Integrity this is about punishing someone who dares to challenge the status quo in my four years I have served this Township With Honor transparency and a commitment to the values that our community cares about
most throughout my times as a councilman I have fought for what's right not what's easy or politically convenient in all always willing to put the town's welfare ahead of the political W welfare of those in charge those who now seek to
censure me are the same individuals who have grown comfortable in their positions of power afraid of the progress and change that my voice has always represented and will always stand for I will continue to serve the people who have entrusted me with their vote I
will continue to stand up for the issues that matter the issues that make a difference in our everyday lives if some think that this resolution can intimidate me or force me into submission they are gravely mistaken I will not be silenced and I will not be
bullied we will not let Politics as Usual dictate the future of our community I will fight every step of the way to ensure that your voice is heard in the name of fairness progress and Justice this centure will not break me
it will only fuel my determination to work harder stand stronger and represent you with even greater resolve I am here to stay so now back back to the business um when will our budget be introduced business
administrator cryan uh in April in April okay and how is everything going with the DPW director hiring it's going well okay and in the meantime I understand that he had the
only license Whose license are we using to operate under uh he did not have the only license okay who who is that individual that has the license uh you're talking about the cpwm um uh we have our Township engineer who has a
cpwm um and um you're allowed to go uh a few months without it if if necessary okay um and I would like to make a resolution of my own to address something that we continue to hear which is the unresponsiveness that is coming from town hall and my resolution is very
simple I'll read it into the Le record then make a motion uh my resolution is within 24 hours of receiving communication from a resident or a fellow Township employee the relevant Township Personnel shall acknowledge receipt of the communication 72 hours
after acknowledging receipt the relevant Township person Personnel shall provide a more Det detailed response so I'd like to make a motion motion made by Mr Mella can I get a second I'm going to second that because I don't get responded to very often I
know I'm the minority here but that's how I feel and I know there's a lot of emotions going on today in this room but we've been here an hour and a half and there are so many issues that are going on and everybody I know here wants to do their best but maybe we could if we had
something like that maybe that could help us absolutely I know everybody here M Hernandez seconded the motion so we have a motion in the second uh so now we're going to go into a vote M herandez hold on so one one change to it make it business
days okay all right something comes in on a Friday it comes in you can't respond in 24 hours where would you like a specific change 24 hours business days so so if we work Monday through Friday yeah you get it right not on a weekend so one business business day just
business day okay I'm good so one business day I'll I'll type it to you and send it one business day so we have a motion and a second going into vote Mr Hernandez oh yes um Mr McGrath yes Mr Mel yes Mr
negia yes and Mr kifi yes okay the motion passes Council PNE uh no report this evening council president business administrator crime thank you council president thank you councilman mayor uh just a couple of things you know we have a presentation that's going to happen from
the water department and uh uh professionals uh but first I want to talk about uh couple of things one of them being on the agenda uh the chief pantina contract that is up um I would love to say for Renewal but it's the first contract since he was appointed uh
back in 22 one of the um reasons why Chief pantina in my opinion is a great Chief is the time frame that this from when he started to this contract being
executed we uh discussed this immediately um upon my hiring and one of the things that mayor Chief and myself had talked about was making sure that the rank and file and the superior
officers contracts were renewed and completely uh negotiated before any discussion started on his um and he was insistent on that he wanted to make sure that his uh folks in his charge um were
taken care of first and I think that's indicative of the style of leadership that you get from Chief pantina he's been he was hired here in 1989 um as an experienced uh officer out of Elizabeth uh PD moved up to Sergeant
in 2003 then promoted to Lieutenant in 2007 in 2011 he was promoted to Captain served as uh Deputy Chief from 2013 until he was appointed acting Chief in 2021 then in 2022 he earned uh the
appointment to Chief of Police um he leads by example he's been um an incredible resource uh for this town in in difficult times when I started he had just been uh
appointed a few months before and um but he had been in an acting role and he knew what he was doing and his hands were tied by uh a lack of Manpower and a lack of commitment and that changed with
mayor Barbaro and uh uh Chief bentina filling the roles in the department to make sure that there was stability um and now is the perfect time to make sure that this contract is done because we're at a point where there's upper
leadership in the PD that um all of them are uh uh beyond the age uh and and years of being able to retire um losing that experience especially in such an important role is uh really you know can
be detrimental so it's great to have um this contract up uh to make sure that there's continuity um in that department now the contract is really you know economical
when you look at other um uh Chiefs in Morris County and around the state it is not the highest by far in Morris County um even though we're the biggest town with the most you know
potential issues and the uh uh uh you know a lot of the issues that happened um you know if you look at some of the stats that have come up and I'm sure hopefully you know Chief has an opportunity to speak to this in 21 the
number of summonses that were issued the number of stops that were issued was uh 3600 the number of summonses were um 1,444 22 he started 23 this year the
last full year of 24 you had 18,600 motor vehicle stops 10,949 summonses in 25 to date we're at 4,777 summonses so
there's surpassed the whole year of 21 before he was here before he started and the number of summons is to date uh 1843 I think well that's not you know a clear indication of his leadership and
how um dedicated he is to the department I think it's a good uh uh barometer to start from um you know that's one of the bigger things also in this contract is it talks
about the UH responsibilities where prior contracts had nothing except for money and uh uh benefits uh discussion in there it many of the prior Chiefs in por siany
had uh 4-day work weeks had 36.4 um hour weeks that were very rigid this contract codifies what mayor myself and and and the chief feel strongly about and it's the chief of police shall
spend sufficient time at his job to ensure the smooth and responsible operation of the police department over which he has supervisory control as well as during emergencies or as needed to fulfill his role as the chief law enforcement officer for the township the chief shall work at least 40 hours per
week the work week will generally be consistent consist of Monday through Friday 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. obviously that can't be adjusted but may sound like a a simple thing but it's something that the three of us wanted to make sure was in there uh because the chief has
been putting more than 40 hours a week in the chief has been uh uh putting the time in it shows that's why uh uh the public saf um aspect of the operations here have been really moving in the right direction and and and and uh everyone on
the team has been doing a great job um and it's appreciated Chief it really is and to all the rank and file who take the abuse uh on a day-to-day basis of you know uh uh people saying oh they don't do this they don't do that they don't do this you know for every one of
those there's another person complaining about oh I can't believe the cops are pulling me over and they're all all over the place and you could see the number of stops summonses warnings that have been issued so it's working it really is I think uh um it's it's really it's
it's great um and thank you and I hope that the council considers uh passing this agenda or passing this um resolution uh uh because the continuity and the expertise that Chief provides is not being is not accessible anywhere
else um next item that I wanted to talk about is the um winter termination program ends on March 15 we're really March 17th this year so the njbpu and DCA uh are encouraging residents to
bring their utility bills up to date before the winter termination program ends on on March 15 which is actually March 17th so generally there's an annual program that's in place by the BPU um that says that uh uh customers cannot be be shut off their utilities
can be shut off between March November 15th and March 15th during cold weather um we don't have to uh uh follow those rules and regulations but the township voluntarily does um so with this happening we wanted to make sure that we
give a reminder to everyone that March 17th shut offs can happen again we hope that they don't um we had a meeting with uh uh the Water Department and the collector's Department mayor and I uh this week to talk about uh uh this and to make sure that we're reminded the
residents that there's we want to try to avoid these issues as much as possible quarterly bills go out if a a resident is 30 days late or over then there's a notice out and that notice generally can you
know long story short it takes a long time to shut someone off it's not something that happens right away it's usually at least a 60-day pro process after someone is late we are doing everything possible on our end to avoid it and we hope that you do
everything on your end uh to avoid it too if there's any issues that you have with your finances there's numbers that can be called uh uh for assistance there's payment plans that can be uh uh provided uh for residents and the BPU
and DCA have programs that also can help there's actually the DCA is putting on a a utility assistance Day event for Warren Morrison Sussex and Hunton counties um on March 12th from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. unfortunately it's in
Philipsburg uh I don't know why they put the mors county one up there but that's where it is at the St philli and St James Church you can get more information on the DCA website um lastly the we have the water team here to talk
about um the posos treatment feasibility and master plan master plan study that was done our guys have put a lot of time and effort into this and it's not something that is um a happy subject because
there's a lot of money involved to fix these issues and these issues are not readily um apparent always so um I really appreciate everything that they're that they they've done here I've seen the presentation I've talked to them about this multiple times um mayor
has as well uh so basically Shan Andre who's our water superintendent um Kevin Busan who's our assistant water superintendent Greg shyan who's our environmental engineering Aid and Dave Shandra who's our uh senior project manager from Suburban Consulting Engineers have worked on this report
have gone out and done all of the work um and I just want to uh pass it over to them you picked a real meeting to do this presentation well this is this is the necess NE stuff you know they're out there searching we're dealing with POS
regulations that are going to cost 25 to $50 million to fix and they're out there searching and finding and helping us with our lawyers to uh try to get some of these big corporations to uh fund some of this stuff and it's going to be a real hit to us so this is the real
important stuff thank you good evening uh thank you for your time this evening uh we do appreciate it let the corporation go ahead please Hank
Nick please not Hank Nick please your to administr before we start the presentation uh is there any questions the council has regarding the Township's LED in galvanized service line replacement program I could perhaps answer for you
tonight this is in regards uh to the Andersons that brought up concerns on their end yeah so I I would love to know like just looking at the map guarantee it's a one off I understand there's a lot of complications I understand all that my
question will continue to be if we remove the last people because they weren't adequate is that a stretch to say hey we extend the road again I I haven't been up there 100 feet I guess that's my question so there was a couple
factors and Mrs Anderson brought up the first one which triggered and drove us to include their property in phase one which was I believe was prior to covid 2019 maybe um there was indication of a leak on their service line at that time
um that was the driving factor that is not the only Factor um the other factor that came into play was the length of service line that we had proposed and designed the replacement line the copper line to bring to their property was a
pretty long one um I want to say was an area of 200 linear feet so for the benefit of the township and our rate payers we said you know what that's a pretty long service line let's get that in Phase One to take to get the benefit of lower
costs at that time when this when phase one was bided obviously inflation comes into play as well you push this into another phase that costs for the township side of the service line goes up year by year the other thing is and I
have talked to the mayor and uh Mr cry about is and my recommendation to you as council is that we don't set a precedent to allow residents to request to be moved to a future phase one of my
responsibilities as water superintendent is to make sure number one is that we're delivering Safe Drinking Water to our residents number two is to make sure that we are in 100% compliance with the safe Drink of Water Act part of that act
is the regulation and law requiring us to replace these lead and galvaniz service lines if we were to take these requests and keep kicking that count down the that can down the road to push service lines to another phase to another phase
guess what we will never be in compliance with the safe Drink of Water Act I take pride my team takes pride in making sure we are never in violation and as of today we are not and I don't want to end up in that situation does
that answer your question councilman yeah I guess it does I again I I so so if the Andersons don't have their house done are we then out of compliance we are out of compliance if
it doesn't get done by the 20129 date correct Dave right yes we are at of compliance we don't get it done by then by 2029 in when's face two start phase two is currently under design we um are out uh we just went out to bid um and
we'll be awarding uh the the low big contractor to perform test pitting in Mount Taber and an effort for us to get some information on the existing water mains and services throughout Mount Taber to include that information for a more robust uh phase two and future
phases so I would imagine phase two would would go out to bid um towards the end of the summer okay I had a question you said there are they in phase one they were they are in Phase One correct and we have until 2029
in phase one no so we have we have till 2029 to be in compliance and have all lead and galvanized service lines replaced within the township okay I'm sorry I Mis that thank you you're welcome the phase two part is just the Taber phase two Taber phase two yes so I
mean would it really set a precedent for other people to ask different phases to kind of extenuating circumstances in this case I think so I don't see the extenuating circumstance in all due respect council president goad can I just want to ask a quick question I I I
hope this doesn't bring up worse worse scenario but um are the Andersons able to do this on their own yes they'd be given that opportunity and they could but they can go like they they chose do it on their own
so we did provide the Andersons a 90-day notice once they decided to opt out of the township program and we are willing but they are able to op down if if correct and we and we we can be lenient we and with Mike LA's letter as he say
at the end is please let us know when you're going to replace your line we can be lenient with that but we can't wait forever okay thank you so that's another option they get to do their choose their own person I just don't understand how they
come up theyve come up and said they've had meetings and discussions and you guys were talking about it and you guys have a different no disrespect but you know a different um reality I mean there's two different
realities going on here from what I I'm hearing and I just try I'm trying to understand and what's going it doesn't make sense to me right um does it make sense to you trying to understand the
Andersons are in in it or out they were part of phase one okay and are they still part of it phase one technically has not been closed out can they still be done in phase one no okay only because the contractor has fulfilled his
contract requirements and I believe he has one punch item left and at that point we would release release retainage and close out that contract but if phase one is still open it would be difficult for us to go back to the contractor have him
remobilize um and do their portion of the service line I don't think that would be fair to the contractor either there would be an additional cost impose on the township to have him remobilized there's a cost to have him remobilized um we're not going to put that cost on the resident would be on
the Township and that I don't think that would be fair to put that cost um towards the other rate payers in town correct course you know remobilizing would be a lot yes to get the machinery and labor labors out there yes and we've
had difficulty with that contract absolutely so but but the challenge is Phase phase one's essentially done yes they haven't opted out they've op they've opt it out no we have not they have not they say so so again I have
none of the information other than two people saying opt it in opted out if they haven't opted out then we would have to put them in phase two because otherwise we'd have to redo this mobilization which would cost too much I mean how did we track that's not how I
look at it so if if a resident that's affected by this program opts out they opt out and having the Township's contractor perform their their portion of the service line um at the Township's cost but there's a payback to the town there's a huge benefit to that if they
if they opt in to our program if they opt out um per hour ordinance we have in place uh the that Resident has 90 days to replace their portion of the service line um and we we put that in the ordinance so we can remain in compliance
yeah otherwise they could just keep kicking that can down the road and surpass 2029 which would put us in violation do you have that in writing that they opted out I I want to say I'm most like I I my team and I have correspondents an email with them opting
out all right C can you please dig that up just so we can make sure we understand everything yeah I I can get that over to Colette I mean why so why didn't you go to their house because they said they didn't want you there we were at you mean us the contractor no
the contractor was that after we've got rid of him so because he wasn't doing his work no he wasn't he was he was not he's not the best contractor we we know that we've talked about that and um the
back and forth and I don't want to speak for the Andersons on this but there was reasons they had because of the contractor his attitude and how he operated that ultimately drove the decision for the Anderson to opt out of the township program which is their
prerogative but at that point that's when we submit them or give them the 90day notice to then replace your service line yourself with your contractor and we specifically put 90 days on our ordinance again to make sure
that we as a Township and a utility are kept in compliance with the same Drink of Water Act I I guess I agree with Matt that we should go back and see where this disagreement and who disconnection
and the opt in and opt out out yeah yeah if you could do that for us would be great of course any other questions regarding that program good okay so we'll get to the fun stuff um I don't have to introduce
myself um but I do want to thank Kevin and Greg from uh my team being here uh my co-presenter is David Chanda with Suburban Consulting Engineers um who's going to do the most of this presentation but uh here's a
quick outline for you guys um I'm going to take a little bit of time just to go over our water system um a little bit more depth so you guys have a better understanding of our system um and then Dave's going to take over go over what posos is what it stands for what it
means what's happened regulatory wise at the federal level and the state level um their treatment recommendations um and basically go over um the study that Suburban was tasked
with performing on behalf of the township so um just a brief background remember last year around this time my budget presentation I kind of planted that seed P was coming it's going to be
costly uh we invested uh some uh funding and retain Suburban Consulting Engineers that performed this study basically they looked at our entire water system as a whole looked at each of our groundwater Wells evaluated each of them made
recommendations on how we should move as a utility in a Township to treat for posos because it is present in our groundwater Wells um and to be in compliance with the with the uh upcoming uh well to be in compliance with the now
uh federally DA's new MCL which we know that the state uh d as our Primacy agency is going to adopt as well okay um so right there some quick information about our water system we're not going to keep on this slide but Dave if you can move to the next one so we all know
how large the township is large Township means large water system um our water allocation permit allows us to pump uh water out of the ground out of 19 public Supply Wells so if you look at this map right here those red boxes all indicate
uh the general location of these Wells that we operate each well um generally speaking operates as its own treatment plant where we pump the raw water out of the ground treat it most of the most of the time we are just disinfecting with gaseous chlorine and we're pumping it right to the system uh we have uh 105
million gallons of storage so nice blue storage tank you see throughout the town that's holding our water for fire protection and storage um we operate 7even booster stations as you know as you move from the eastern part of town by New Road West it's flat and then it gets hilly and
more hilly so how do we get the water up there we got to pump the water from our wells again which are on red and Pump It Up in gradient to reach our residents that are in powder mill um in that section of town uh
precip geographically and hydraulically is divided into six separate pressure zones all our wells um basically live in our biggest pressure Zone which is the Veil Zone which is that big outlined in blue section so basically uh to the east
of Route 287 that's our Veil Zone half our wells live there and service that portion of town and then the rest of our wells live in that middle portion of town kind of surrounding Lake precip area that's our Brook lawn pressure Zone
um so fun fact that everyone uh pretty much west of 287 even going into the Powder Mill Area Route 10 their water is coming from these Wells that live around Lake precion so we pump it out of the ground we treat it we send it to booster
stations the booster station pump it up to the next gradient take that water pump it up again to the next gradient that's how we kind of operate our system Sean real quick yes so I'm not a water expert but is this all coming from the same aquifer yes so is there any
concerns about the limits of the water underneath there as we start to grow out this town as some of the regulations are coming in so the state has those concerns which is why they require um and David if I'm wrong I'm not an expert on this but that's why the state D has
what's called water allocation permits so we are allocated as a Township utility to pull x amount of water uh in millions of gallons per day per month per year we cannot exceed any of those limitations so uh when developers come in town and they want to build a big
development obviously uh my team and I review those plans but if it trick what's called a watermain extension permit or a simplified water main extension permit um I have to do a calculation with their design Engineers to ensure we have enough what's called firm capacity to serve that development
times three there's a peing factor of three for that so yes that is a concern of the state it's a concern uh with the township and this utility as well which is why we've been so aggressive for the past uh 7 years with r developing Wells
uh existing Wells and replacing Wells and Dave is going to get I think you'll touch on that a little bit in in his presentation for our study because uh we obviously we collaborated a lot on this study um I asked him to uh consider the fact that hey we got existing Wells out
there that yes need posos treatment but I also have wells out there that need replacement because they're old Wells and Redevelopment does help a well so if you you know let's say you have a well that's rated at a capacity of 500 gallons a minute right you can operate
that long at 500 gallons a minute for let's say 5 years slowly that capacity is going to drop down over time and then I uh have to consult with my hydrogeologists and then we say yep that's a good candidate to redevelop let's try to get that capacity back up
so something you know well pump at 500 might get down to half at 250 right yeah we got to redevelop that we'll redevelop it um it's hard to get that back up to the 500 but you can get close to it and you can do that for decades if you got a
decent well and a decent acfer um but at some point you're going to have to replace that um and we've been replacing we've replaced uh two Wells um we'll get into it in the presentation who uh and those treatment plans for those individual Wells include posos treatment
also so we've already been doing this um we have to do more of it but we do need to replace more Wells which is all taken in consideration of course with our capital budget do do we understand the recharge on this aquifer like do we understand or is that like it's underground I don't know bud sorry
that's what hydrog geologists are for okay so we we do have a hydrog geologist consultant that um we are in constant contact with throughout the year um I like to redevelop at least two Wells a year but we meet frequently and we go
over what we're pumping currently and what you know that what those well should be doing and permitted for and then he'll make recommendations to us on what we should redevelop for the next year next 5 years Etc one more question we'll get to P is there any thoughts around as we're developing the town you
know you put in a warehouse say hey Warehouse you should have a water tower water tank on top of your building or something something to again because we're going to be spread out is there any conversations like that to put any requirements in there's no requirements for that typically because we do have uh
a warehouse that uh if I'm not mistaken needs a a small water tank for fire protection purposes only but I will say and I can put it on record that at some point and this is you know when I have to consult with like a David Chand or an
engineer our Powder Mill section of town um is serviced uh by one tank which only holds and I say only in my opinion it's a small tank only holds half a million gallons of water I think at some point in the foreseeable future should the
Powder Mill Area um be more developed I'm going to have to throw my hands up and say we need to put another storage tank up there for fire protection is there any thought of using rain catchment for those warehouses I mean they have big flat roofs for their uh their tanks I wouldn't be opposed to it
I don't know what's out there I wouldn't be opposed to that as long as that rain system is not uh cross connecting with our water system no no understand I'm just thinking from a collection in and if it's for fire suppression who cares of it's stinky water I agree I agree so I just have a quick question I know you
talked about the Max and this so what what all this affordable housing mandates that we're getting shoved down our throats you know obviously for instance an office building is not going to use anywhere near the amount of water that a 500 apartment building is going to use where people would flushing
toilets sinks showers Etc so would all of these coming in is there a danger of us like running out of water or not having enough water where we could say hey we don't have enough water for our town and you're putting these man you know 5 years ago yes there
was um because we were under if you recall uh and Mike you jump in on this we were under a scarce resource order technically we still are right AR it was yeah you're right it has been lifted yes we it has been lifted um I do have to
report um to the special Master twice a year so we are under under that um but yeah that's cuz I mean obviously you're going to be able to have you're going to have to do these calculations I would assume correct I don't have all the water in the world and and the state's not going to give me all the water in the world we can only we can only pump
out what the sayate giv us some point if that were to happen would we be able to turn around and say hey we don't have the water for this so well well council president we had an incident last year where for a year over a year uh a daycare was waiting to come in space was
perfect for it and all that stuff but they were told that we didn't have the right I remember for new business because they had to go to that first four of the affordable housing uh uh uh potentials not even actuals uh
potentials were uh prioritized right so I I mean I know you want to get to your presentation and going to ask about the affordable housing because infrastructure is such an important part water infrastructure and it can change any year of do okay these are pumping
for Pony correct any other municipalities around us that you deal with at all and pH or yes something I forgot to mention so uh that's a good question we do have what's called interconnections with neighboring towns
um our biggest interconnection would be the Jersey City mua next door that's the reservoir to the North in blue um we do have a contract with the jcmua to purchase water
so right so average daily demand is about 55 million gallons a day that's the demand that the town uses um off off peak season and peak season June July and August where lawn irrigation is
going crazy people are washing their cars and people are drinking more water and taking more showers than that we can see up to uh 7 and a half to 8 million gallons a day believe it or not it does happen every summer so uh we do have to kick on that Jersey City
interconnection um which gives us that contract provides us 150 million gallons a year to help supplement our own resources to meet demands especially in the summer months now um with these new
wells that we've replaced and have posos plants on and as we build these things we're going to increase our own production but the state also requires that we maintain interconnections in case of an emergency something catastrophic of course yeah yeah that
makes sense all right um I think that's it I'm going to hand it over to Dave thanks Sean yep um this is all interconnected though is May and Council okay with me presenting out this way is that okay um then Sean aply mentioned
firm capacity then your allocation limits and where this program is going to go is critical to firm capacity because firm Capac is your ability to deliver water and that daily snapshot that daily Peak whereas uh a St question about the long-term health of the aquer
that's allocations perview that's where the MGM and the million gallons per year come into play so taking a very critical look at this long-term regulation is key to maintain that firm capacity so I'll probably say that a few times here when we get into our ultimate
recommendations we have a bit to get through so um I could talk about posos for hours um it's pretty much what we're doing now at my firm solely but we'll try to keep it somewhat to the facts straightforward and we'll get rolling so
posos is per and poly alal substances they're long carbon fluo compounds um they're very resistant they have been widely used throughout the industry for decades um and a lot of practices that we use today and part of the reason that is the case is because they're very
resilient to destruction um they come in the form of what we call long and short chain posos compounds okay uh short chain are compounds that have carbon flu bonds of four to six and the longchain PES are
seven and eight and nine in some cases so I think what's important about this slide and what's really crucial for us is in New Jersey we're one of the more conservative and stringent States as a Primacy agency since 2019 we've un we've
been under ulation for the big three right now pfoa pfna and pfos and we have mcls of those three contaminants that is not the case for the other you know many of the other states in our nation so the water department and myself we've been
keenly aware of what our pfoa and pfos pfna levels are but again what's really crucial is those mcls were 13 13 and 14 respectively those are longchain posos compounds so what's starting to happen as technolog is getting better and were
able to more reliably analyze for these is they started to come out with rules for short chain as well all of this culminated into a final Federal review on this program where last year in April
of 2024 they prated a new MCL of four parts per trillion so that's the number right now that the EPA has set inst stone for pfoa and pfos now there's a hazard index and a little bit higher of levels for pfna but
in our case from our sampling we're really and you'll see go the next slide Sean through New Jersey we're really just dealing with pfoa so again pfoa stands for perlow octanoic acid it's eight chains of
carbon flu bonds that's the only one that we found in our New Jersey sampling program that came back um with notable detections we also have um what's called the UCM unregulated contaminant monitor rule program where we look for shorter
chain compounds those came back non detect as well so the brunt of this analysis is really going to be on PFA and again New Jersey being so conserved really helped kind of set a baseline for where we're going to go in Paran um you can go next slide so this is a great visual graph
instead of looking at tiny tables on a projector this is a long running breakdown of your quarterly results since 2020 so what you can see is you can see two MCL levels New Jersey's up at the 14
and then the epa's new limits P visually speaking we kind of that's that's the red flag like we're going to have a notable amount of Wells that will be out of compliance of this new MCL so you can go to the next
slide U go one more slide really quick Sean two more slides three more slides there we are okay and this is what mayor and uh and Council I really want to key into we came up with a series of parameters to try to
objectify this analysis because that's really crucial in making key monetary decisions and how you prioritize addressing something that I think has been alluded to is going to be quite a capital investment so and we we'll go back to what options exists but the key
facets we looked at now knowing we had these limits to deal with our Well's capacity was Prime that got weighted the highest we actually tried to objectify these parameters into a full grading scale so capacity was number one and the actual P concentration was number two
and this is a very consistent thought as you start to structure a program you know if you're non-detected a source we're going to keep letting that Source do its thing it's in compliance then the next start to more or less manipulate where the rankings uh
reside so we look at then feasibility constraints of the site the cost what's the cost going to be to implement this if it's a very challenging site we're have more features that needs to be installed maybe more environmentally sensitive criteria to address that then
comes into play population impacts Sean did a great job showing how the water department is really structured so that one really pretty much got normalized across the board since most of our wells are Regional and then lastly the existing wellif expectancy that gets into what he was mentioning with your
rehabilitation program if we had a well that was on the docket for replacement hit it now and we were very fortunate enough to have caught 1 AR and 21r as the EPA promulgated the rule so we were able to kind of address a couple concerns with those plants while hitting
posos so if you don't mind going back a series Sean so those are the criteria we use to rank our ultimate recommendations which we'll get to but what what exists for you to really deal with this where are we heading as a water utility so
there are there's a series of Industry recognized treatment approaches for these compounds the two we're going to really focus on in parcion is uh granular activated carbon so G contact vessels as well as ion exchange
treatment and what's going to be really cool is at the end we do have pictures of our two active construction projects it's almost going to be kind of a self-imposed PO one's a carbon contactor that we just started commissioning today and the other's ion exchange resin so so visually we can start to see what these
can look like um each of these are proven they have some detriments and negatives and what we will do is we look at them specifically to each site you know for example carbon is a longtime fully
industry vetted treatment approach that can also hit other contaminants as well it does come with it some somewhat of a smaller quicker life cycle runtime they're taller contactors compared to onon exchange pressure vessels but ion exchange can also again you know have
initial higher costs UPF front they can have Downstream water quality parameter issues um but again they actually are a little bit more stocky and compressed in terms of their footprint so we we want both of those to be viable treatment approaches for the water utility um and
we will look at them Case by Case by the sites the other just to throw it out there you know on the record there are other more enhanced treatability approaches in in terms of membrane filtra we have made the decision to not explore that technology as it does come with a
high level of waste stream and knowing what we kind of just set this whole discussion on with water availability that was kind of antithetical to where we were heading in terms of this utility so there is reverse osmosis a nanofiltration which will you know fully purify the water it's just not something
we're going to look to invest capital in right now so with the treatment technologies that we have available this is kind of the batching of how we are recommending the utility Pro seed with these plants you can see again a lot of numbers you know very tough to read so I'll just
give you a general breakdown anything highlighted in yellow those were areas we decided we could do what's called centralized treatment so he's got good clusters of well areas that are geographically and regionally close within the similar grade lines and pressure zones those are great
opportunities to potentially combine treatment this way he doesn't have 20 well treatment facilities now around the township that's completely new for the utility to this date we've really just been running these plants with gas corination and a few other you know air strippers Etc if we didn't seriously
look at the ability to combine plants he'd now have 20 more enhanced and more involved treatment techniques out there so we would be remiss to not seriously consider centralized treatment and fortunately there is a good amount of opportunity to do that that also comes with
great um conding of capital costs up front and long-term operations because there's going to be substantial long-term operation costs to these plants so if you're able to get more gallons a minute into one footprint it has it has benefits it has challenges
too but it gives the utility a little bit more redundancy and reliability in those instances so again there are four areas we deemed appropriate for centralized treatment and a couple walls are too isolated to really be able to reasonably
get a transmission line to a centralized location so the big red circles here just to kind of polight off of the well facility map that Sean was sh these would be where the treatment plants reside so this is everything this would be where we're able to centralize this
would be if there's offshoot single Wells like I think I see well 17 up there so it' be a much less scattershot approach go with the Criterion and what we went over we were able to reasonably rank our
wells and including the thought and design and the centralized treatment with the focus being on well 9 10 and 18 turning into a centralized treatment facility first moving into 1419 his well 8 field and so on and so forth all the
way down to well 3r and6 which were um pretty low levels of pfoa so that's the rankings we're going to be evaluating and this is the representation of we have initial startup cost and then replacement cost and really nice jop of
the last column is your media light expectancy so these costs so we'll look at let's F on focusing the priority of 9 10 and 18 we have currently estimated $9.8 million to uh that includes soft cost and construction to get a facility
up running and through commissioning um we have excellent real time time bids from 2022 and obviously current P plant Suburban administering to drive that number and its accuracy um but very key slide too is to
understand the media replacement costs this will happen based upon that media life expectancy duration as that comes to term we have to replace the media hey so can I pause you real quick so I'm reading this correctly so 10 20 30 40 50
60 3 plus million okay and then an ongoing cost of every is that every year let's call it every year and a half every year and a half that's another one two 3 4
1.5 so call it 2 million ongoing cost every year and a half am I reading that right that's correct next slide so obviously yes that's a pretty know jarring number in addition to the fact that they are beholding to
many other regulatory requirements and Capital Improvements that are not on here so part of Sean's Capital Improvement report he submits annually which is now being looked at not only by the DP but the DCA and BPU um needs to consider treatment but you know we
talked about the lead service L replacement program any water main infrastructure so Sean and I know you don't have a mic your hand but so when we talked last time when we did an assess like our our kind of budget review you gave the number of about $400
per linear foot times I thought it was like 220 270 mil in town so it's was like you know was it 5280 a mile so $464 million to replace all the pipes in town roughly with all the pipes breaking uh and I think you said they should have
been replaced 50 years ago they already at end of life something in that kind of terminology when you come up with the budget are you going to present all this in terms of like what our plan is yeah so um another thing Suburban was tasked with uh is our
asset management plan okay um which takes all that into consideration this P study is actually we can call it a subset or version It's volume two volume two of our asset management plan so that's all considered we have a plan in place here us at the water department in
conjunction with David chanda's office and some other Consulting on what we should be doing in terms of capital Investments every year yeah and that's what drives our my Capital request every year so I'll put it out there now my Capital request this year is $20 million yeah we have a lot of
water made breaks there's like one every week at unfortunately um yeah last year was a record year yeah um 68 68 68 water breaks oh I know yeah last year but in line with um the state
not any more than the state average would be correct everywhere is oh yeah it's put News 12 every morning where are they now for the record I not saying it's Sean's fault that the water is breaking in the pipes it was 50 years ago should have been replaced I'm no way
blaming anyone yeah everywhere where allil pipes should have been replaced 50 years ago yeah the the water M we have in the ground has surpassed its life expectancy um which is why we're seeing
breaks so often um every year um so we invest the township invests money to replace that water M and we uh we consult and use our asset management plan with Suburban Consulting Engineers
to kind of figure out where to start and what road to follow um that's a whole another subject we can get into another time um but we kind of had to Pivot a little bit uh if you remember maybe it was 5 years it was prior to co so 6
years ago we started what's called our water quality account accountability act 150-year water main replacement program that we were required to have that plan in place so phase let's call phase one
of that program was in Lake hawaa our oldest section in in town where we see a uh a myriad bad amount of water main breaks um we replaced the existing water main going down Lakes Shore Drive from
uh North beverick Road down to suav um but then we got hit with the Le and galvanized uh regulation so we had to kind of pivot away from replacing water mains in Lake hawaa and invest Capital Money uh to meet the reg the the new
regulation of the Le and galvanized compliance period by 2029 we didn't stopped replacing water man because then we started seeing a huge amount of brakes on Route 46 as well yeah so um we are actually met with an engineer um
just the other day uh to start looking into and designing our route 46 uh water main replacement phase 3 project so that certain things take priority I don't know if you remember but we had a few breaks on Route 46 couple this past
winter a bunch the last couple years you know we had one that shut down part of the highway yeah um so we had to kind of say you know what we can deal with the lake highwa brakes and repair those in house but we really got to we can't be shutting down this highway every week
yeah which is why we we did a phase one and phase two main replacement on Route 46 so 600 million is what you need so right there overtime yes great all right let's um go through the last few there's some really good representations just to then we can
close up um Community impacts we don't we can oh one thing I want to touch on here is there are grant opportunities out there for pasas the state knows the hardship they're putting utilities across the state of New Jersey and federally obviously down but New Jersey is also recognizing it and there are
Grant monies tied to P specifically right now I can tell you I mean it's $2 million of principal forgiveness if it's available I don't know where those money allotments are going to come with the new Administration um but I don't believe they're going anywhere I think they'll only get higher um I know
there's a lot of discussion how will this um regulation that's promulgated become enforced what's the timeline with the new Administration that's another common question I get asked and if anything I could see it getting extended just like the lead and copper rule we
just faced they kind of pushed that about 3 years to let State privacy agencies catch up and they only just issued it and made it final in the Federal Register last October so that took 3 years for them to promate that rule I could see the 2030 timeline extended to 2034 something
like that the four parts per trillion that's the MCL they're not going to go backwards on that they actually establish an mclg at maximum cont level goal of zero for posos so once you put your flag on the ground of that nothing is missed they don't usually go
higher okay so I get that asked that quite often um so we can go but again there are grant opportunities there's also litigate ongoing class actions against some of the biggest uh culprits to this with 3m and Dupont which we are you're
part of good so part of our study it's it's quite a large study we started concepting up some of these so we would be looking at the slier of parsel you have here to work on our centralized treatment plan Green Acres I've had
great correspond with them are full participants and aware of the hardship for posos and there's posos exemptions now for many of the Green Acres hurdles you typically would have to go for for diversions and disposals of land so they would be an active participant in this
so right now we'd be looking at that's actually the existing well 18 facility that we'd be changing to the centralized treatment location you can go to the next slides I think are more important uh my team was able to just do just a proposed rendering to see what these
plants look like obviously that we also have um initial um kind of site plan maps for this site in particular with all of the zoning setbacks and everything that building if you go back really quickly is we always render out in something
architectural asphalt roof Gable style to try to meet the local areas the only reason you're able to achieve that here is because we selected strategically iron exchange and if you recall I I mentioned exchange is not nearly as tall as carbon contactors so when we took
into account this area again this is all just Concept in the master plan we're actually there's an RFP out for engineers to start to design this that was the goal was to try to mitigate any visual exposure um while also really extending the life of the media so now we can go show what the
yeah this is what the plan view look like yeah know it's okay just security are they really secure oh yes yeah okay I think we just you just went tonight to see some these sites are um well outfitted for
intrusion um this is the engineering design plan view of what the facility could look like top down Suburban Consulting and many firms we know um we're really no longer designing these to just hit what's there today because the second most common question I get at
mayor and Council presentations as well as any board meetings they say what's you ucmr 6 going to bring so we work to leave an adjustable location for a future pressure vessel as a polishing step so this type of a design would give
you 1,800 gallons a minute reliably for 20 years so the treatment that's going in today is absolutely going to hit P fos long term and if the ucmr 6 has something it gives us a chance to Pivot and not waste that capital expenditure of the plant so that's that's kind of the theory of this design
layout and we'll close with this so we only have a few more slides this is well 1A as you can see again that's what existed today or yesterday I should say that was your disinfection that was oh no disinfection was somewhere else but it was a small little well facility 420
gallons a minute you go to the next slide that's the plant right now as we speak we're going through startup the next 3 weeks that is an ion exchange contractor so again I was actually very surprised the D they were great um
participants in this project because this project was on the streets in con contract with our um you know W contractor for a totally different treatment approach and they worked with us to let me redesign something for specifically pfoa so that was that's not very common that they work with you on
that but again they also know the challenges and we would have been ashamed to have been into it for $4 million in a bid and we've gone in for a different style of treatment so that today is set there for pfoi and that's what the onon exchange looks like this
is one of our bigger producers that's the existing well 21 facility again all that resides in that wellhouse as of yesterday was gas corination for disinfection we were just out there today this is the new plant next to it those are carbon
contactors they are in there for a different reason we're treating for 14 dioxine at this plant um but carbon again as it has it stands is effective at removing pfoa so we're going to be full scale piloting this plant and
taking look at how how those two carbon contactors treat for the pfoa we have there um again you can see that building is much taller than the exchangers that we looked at prior um and that that bid was $5 million with soft cost total
project 5.5 so that's kind of it good visual representation those are going to be what nearly 2,000 gallons a minute of reliable water in compliance with this new rule right off the bat and help kind of promulgate where we're going to head with the rest of these improvements we
also excluded 20R 20R is underd designed by another consultant to consider this so that's underway as well so good news thank you it was you are the important part I we're very much ahead of the game we're ahead
of the game that we're this far and we have plants about to be commissioned for it the only other facilities that may be further ahead are the investor owns um in my experience ones and the uh uh Bad actors out there who were being made do this stuff then they get put
under administrative order y so you don't want to head there what was the time frame again sorry Nick what was the what was the time frame again when this has to be done by so it was it was promulgated last year with a 5-year duration of 2029 just like the lead and copper unfortunately but I I foresee
that extending personally the rule is effective April 24th of 2024 Nick once he's done you can talk to him okay once he's done presentation question
coun we're already here 20 hours go ahead Nick triable to storm water Runway great question tough to say again we're dealing with Wells not surface water if we had surface water treatment
a large amount and it's tough very tough to track where it comes from well some of the known polluters they were able to trace but even the plumes and the aquifers are so widespread at this point there's no really reliable way to find a point
source to it all it's so widely used but again they did finally Target a few of the culprits and I met 3M and Dupont but in terms of where this comes from quite a lot of places I've worked with surface plants where we were nervous about nearby airports that ran firefighting
drills there so the firefighting foam is absolutely known to have these in large concentrations although I think they've started to change that but my point being it's too late once it was introduced and it runs off it's in the system pretty much forever the the degradation on it it's quite slow now in
your opinion is New Jersey being really strict because a lot of our drinking water comes from the ground yes okay California too right you know y okay no questions thank you so much for the presentation you're welcome
thank you for having me most important resource yes it is okay uh moving along to the non-consent agenda R 22562 authorizing the purchase of various fertilizers herbicides and other
landscaping supplies for the null Golf Course motion to approve the resolution motion am I approving can I get a second guys we need to move here okay I know it's it's tough what's the second here Frank okay Frank second fantastic oh
sorry Mr NE um roll call M Mr Hernandez yes Mr McGrath yes Mr Mella yes Mr neglia Mr K R2 a motion passes r225 063 award a contract to William stth company for the total bid price of $544,000
for the well number 8 um 8-2 replacement project motion to approve motion second motion made by Mr neglia seconded by Mr McGrath roll call M Hernandez yes Mr McGrath yes Mr Mel yes Mr Nea Mr kifi yes motion passes r225 064 authorizing
Award of a contract to dor toio Landscaping LLC for a total base bid price of 34,9 93.75 for the test pit program Phase 1 Project Mo to approve motion second motion made by Mr neglia seconded
by Mr Hernandez roll call Mr Hernandez Mr McGrath Mr Mella Mr neglia Mr kifi yes r225 065 authorizing an employment agreement between the township and the chief of police motion to approve motion second motion made by Mr neglia seconded by Mr Hernandez roll call Mr Hernandez
yes Mr McGrath yes Mr Mella yes Mr neglia yes Mr K yes moving along to approval of payrolling bills the CFO Angelica satini recommends authorization for payment one authorizes payment of the March 14th 2025 regular miscellaneous payroll estimated at $1,650,000 and two payment of bills from
the vure list of March March 4th 2025 which is $2,674 426 2,674 4261 Cent motion to approve motion second motion made by Mr neglia seconded by Mr Hernandez roll call Mr Hernandez
yes Mr um mcrath Mr Mella Mr neglia Mr Ki motion passes motion to adjourn the meeting motion second Mo made by Mr Neega seconded by Mr Hernandez roll call Mr Hernandez yes Mr McGrath yes Mr Mella Mr Nea Mr yes motion passes have a great
night everyone hey money