good evening Mr starring this is Joe Fagan public information officer we are starting a few minutes late thank you for joining us this evening at this time I'd like to turn the uh floor over to Council President Yokoviac thank you Mr fagan and welcome everyone
to our meeting i apologize for the delay i think it will probably become clear for the reason for the delay later on in the council meeting i'm not going to talk about it now but I appreciate your patience and uh I think we're ready to move forward madame Clerk this is to
inform the general public that this meeting is being held in compliance with section 5 of the Open Public Meetings Act chapter 231 Public Law 1975 the notice for this meeting was emailed to the Star Ledger and to the West Orange Chronicle on January 7th 2025 and published in the West Orange
Chronicle on January 16th 2025 councilwoman Castelino present councilwoman Gberichel present councilwoman Ruden here councilwoman Scarpa present council President Koviaak present mayor McCartney i will move the meeting along as soon as
I pull up my conference agenda where is my conference agenda does anyone have it thank you thank you uh I am uh pleased to announce that we're having a presentation from Mayor
McCartney i believe that's from Mayor McCartney uh celebrating the Women of West Orange uh town hall as part of uh uh Women's History Month so Mayor McCartney please thank you Council President council
colleagues march being Women's History Month we are celebrating All right so we have a proclamation it's so nice to see um our West Orange town employees here today um Women's History
Month provides an opportunity to appreciate the achievements of women at both the national and local levels the women of West Orange have made invaluable contributions to our past and continue to serve as role models and leaders in various fields they serve as our teachers first responders business
owners community organizers healthcare professionals and our public servants so welcome this is a fitting occasion to recognize women working at the township to acknowledge their dedication and commitment they consistently demonstrate hard work and resilience in their daily
roles contributing to the efficient operation of our township and the well-being of all of our residents so now therefore I Susan McCartney mayor's township of West Orange do hereby pro proclaim the month of March as women's
history month in the township of West Orange and I urge all citizens to reflect on the enduring legacy of women who have shaped our community our country and the world so thank you and I would like our public servants to please
come up and join us very nice very nice y behind you joyce Hey everybody look this way okay everybody look this way thank
you okay just so you know I photobombed you congratulations all right was that last year that's last year's yeah sure he almost He does the same
shirt that's so funny you does everybody want to do council as reports now I do okay well I got Yeah I went down restaurant next week yeah no it's for the public
as you can see we're setting up for public comment but before we get to that I'm just want to ask my colleagues if they have uh any council leaison uh reports i'm gonna start with councilwoman McCartney i'm
deja vu you're Mayor McCartney was a council woman for 20 years half of that was we were on the same council so I apologize okay councilwoman Castelino thank you council president um so we're very
excited uh restaurant week starts next week March 30th and it goes to April 6 i want to thank all the uh hardworking uh commissioners at the downtown alliance and the public relations commission for uh rounding up all the restaurants with
their specials there still are coming online this week so if you get a chance uh start looking at ww.west orangeweek.com and come out and you support one of your local uh restaurants i can't tell you enough how we all know
how the cost of uh price of food has gone up through the years and how a lot of these businesses are struggling and I know it's hard for most to go out um but please try to uh patronize them if you can uh local small businesses is what
keeps our community going uh especially look at uh Target is is coming and construction is well underway but Frank's Pizza is uh well in the back and and Jersey Mike's is still there so um you know just try to be mindful and
remember them um as they struggle through construction so we appreciate everyone's support and uh Chipotle as well in that shopping center but we're excited uh Dogtopia opened up uh last week and uh mayor did a ribbon cutting
and we're just really excited that some of these uh shopping plazas are going to be opening uh but remember also to always come down to downtown West Orange and catch our energy as our restaurants uh in the downtown area uh uh struggle
to uh to um you know keep keep the downtown vibrant and uh as we wait for redevelopment so we hope you could come out and support because a lot of great uh cuisine so again restaurants
orangeweek.com and I just want to thank all the women who came tonight before us a few minutes ago i can't tell you how hard uh everyone at town hall works to keep things uh going here along with uh the rest of our uh staff but um really
do appreciate it and because it is women's month I also want to give a shout out to the West Orange Women's Club they have been doing phenomenal work uh all year uh great organization that came back to life a few years ago
uh that raised uh for many years raised scholarship money for the West Orange Scholarship Foundation and they laid dormant for a few years and uh Jen Tunncliffe and quite a few others uh Janice Burman a few of them just really got the ball going and I appreciate all
them for for keeping that women's club uh well and running so thank you all for all the work that you do during uh women's month thank you Council President thank you Council councilwoman do you have any Sure um last night we
had our older adults advisory board meeting and we had a wonderful speaker who spoke about the importance of simply moving to maintain good health and brain development for seniors as an SLP a
speech language pathologist um I understand the anatomy and physiology of movement and particularly for seniors but I found it so helpful to have another professional explain this to our seniors most of us don't realize the
effect that the mind and the body it all works together and if we don't move we start losing the brain um it's why I am so happy to see so many seniors taking advantage of my walk and talk that I had started last fall um and I'm going to be
beginning that again next week we are also continuing to develop a number of programs for the seniors to socialize with the older adults advisory board and I'm going to be conducting some focus groups to determine the needs of seniors of all ages because seniors who are
young seniors just retiring or in their 60s often have very different needs than seniors who are in their 70 80s and some even vibrant in their 90s so um if you would like to join a focus group uh please call me at
973-665-4780 we want to hear from all of our seniors thank you Councilwoman counciloman Ruden hi um I attended the open space and recreation um meeting and um there was discussion about an event that will take
place a tour of our open space and also a hike that will take place one in the fall one in the spring and it'll be noticed and I hope everybody can can come and see what's left of our open space there was also um a discussion
again about acquiring the Mount Pleasant Forest which is our last shred of Hilltop um land on um the corner going down Mount Pleasant Avenue very very important to save this land as is it it
is overlooking the Crestridge Apartments and we really want to help secure this land so that there is not another uh landslide in our community and that the the community is protected so once again there was discussion about acquiring this land and purchasing it through open
space money um and and that's the report thank you so much thank you Councilwoman and I'm going to skip mine to day two uh to try to move the meeting along uh this is now the time to uh start the
public meeting seven we cancel seven oh what time is it now five minutes five minutes okay uh we'll just have to hold on a second uh by law we cannot start the meeting which starts with uh very
soon with public comment until the notice time which was 7 o'clock what I would like to uh fill the time with is I I just want to uh bring up something that's I'm getting increasing inquiries from uh from residents about and it's
the budget and I I just want to explain to everyone who is interested in that that the council has been asking for months and repeatedly expressing that getting this budget and getting started work on it is a priority for us and the year is now one quarter over and we are
still waiting every resident should know that the council which by law must review amend and approve the annual municipal budget can't even get started until the mayor presents her draft but every day of delay reduces the opportunity the council has to save
money by its actions uh to mitigate the financial impact on residents and taxpayers uh this delay does not hurt the council members it hurts residents who have less of a benefit from anything we can do to help once we get the budget and the more time we have to work on the
budget the more likely we can find more savings the council's hands are totally tied and I would uh respectfully ask uh with the business administrator and the mayor here uh if you have a date on when you are going to get uh the council the
draft budget sure so we had a meeting uh the other day um we promised a budget draft to the council at the end of this month so that would mean within the week right Mr diac correct okay thank you
Councilwoman so council president if you want to save time why don't we uh pick our calendars and see what dates are available to start the first workshop so if uh Mr denniac says that we're so through the chair identify everyone um
the meeting hasn't started correct so you're not going to take any action on the calendar items you're just having a discussion discussion yeah it's a little on but yeah I've done this before um so which
is always hard to get our calendar together for the administration so my recommendation is that we should get some dates together for them so they could uh pick their hearings because they you know they get us the budget and then um you know then you know the
council doesn't get back to the administration with our dates so I we could save some time we give them our dates is when we could get together yes that's fine i think uh under new business does that sound like a likely place to to do that okay sounds good is
it 7:00 yet Madam Clerk 659 okay you want everybody countdown together because I think No it's not it's 659 it is 659 whose side are you on we can jump we can do Yeah Mr fagen
could all be start earlier well no i Oh yeah yeah oh we have the normal way you open yeah yeah has this ever happened before i didn't this early when I was on the counts over 10 year period yeah it happens every
once in a while i would hope the clock always goes slower when you're looking at it that's true watch never boils oh here we go madam clerk thank you this is to inform the general public that this meeting is being held in compliance
with section 5 of the Open Public Meetings Act chapter 231 Public Law 1975 the notice for this meeting was emailed to the Star Ledger and to the West Orange Chronicle on January 7th 2025 and published in the West Orange Chronicle
on January 16th 2025 councilwoman Castalino present councilwoman Gberichel Councilwoman Ruden Councilwoman Scarpa present council President Kokoviaak present mayor McCartney will everyone please rise for the pledge
of allegiance i pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all
the council is now in their public meeting mr fagan please take it away thank you Council President um Councilwoman Castelino I just want to say that I was at Frank's Pizzeria earlier today and uh it is worth pointing out that in order
to get to Frank's Pizzeria that you do have to go in the second entrance off of Prospect Avenue by Pavis and go around back there is a good deal of construction going on there because of Target so it's just worth noting to uh people in the Zoom audience uh that
Frank's Pizzeria is there and uh they they're awaiting your your business uh as was mentioned uh February is um I'm sorry March is uh a woman's history month and we are concluding that and we've concluded that with a nice ceremony honoring all the um woman uh
employees here at Town Hall and throughout the township um we have a spring concert coming up for the West Orange Community Band April 2nd at Liberty Middle School one Kelly Drive this is a free event and they always do a fabulous job uh please come out and
support them um there's a annual fundraiser for the Lions Club of West Orange April 10th 5:30 to 7:30 west Orange High School Tarnoff Cafeteria is one of their major fundraisers and they are a great community uh partner uh a as
we uh go into spring here now I just want to remind everyone our residents that uh last July um the uh fines for parking in a fire lane were increased and so it's important to to be aware of fire lane parking and to not park in the
fire lane it's a safety precaution uh so please be aware of that um uh when when when you're parking your car within the township of West Orange uh council uh connection open office hours is scheduled for Thursday March 27th from 6:00 to 7:00 that's here in council
chambers no appointment is necessary and of course uh Mayor McCartney's open office hours next are Thursday April 3rd 6 to 8 right here 66 Main Street and once again no appointment is necessary uh I had posted this on the website
about the Real ID deadline approaching May 7th and uh you really need to go to uh Real ID New Jersey.gov to answer any questions but I do want to point out that you still won't be able to drive with your current driver's license your driver's license
will not expire you just need to have the real ID if you care to fly domestically but if you have a valid passport like I do uh I'm just going to wait till the deadline passes and then focus on getting the uh the real ID wings um I want to give a shout out to
uh our West Orange Pal competitive cheerleading uh tryyouts uh now is the time to register for grades five through eight and uh you can go to the website westdarnepow.org for more information i
also want to point out that April 15th is the deadline for the um Junth Film Festival submissions uh as I mentioned they want to build on the momentum uh last year so uh you can contact Tammy Williams for more information regarding
that and uh shredding day once again is fast approaching sunday April 16th 11 to 3 p.m now is the time to gather all your documents that need to be shredded um I also want to point out that on Sunday April 6 I will be at the
West Orange Public Library as part of a program presenting the uh Hats Off to Our History uncovering the hat industry of the Orange there will be an entire program there uh and it will be well worth your trouble to come and find out learn about uh the hating industry of
the oranges uh a resident sent this to me this is certainly worth mentioning the West Orange neighborhood gave beloved UPS driver a memorable sendoff on his retirement lou Devo has been for 21 years and uh they really
appreciate his service and they had a little party a little mix party for him and um I do want to point out in case Chief Feio is watching that uh the fire hydrant scene here I mentioned parking in the fire lanes before uh and I'm sure that the UPS truck was only there for a
matter of minutes so uh not not to be concerned thank you um and if we close tonight council president I want to speak on something on a personal note uh on um not too personal I not too personal no sir uh on June 28th 2022 I
began a journey waking up at 6:00 every morning and going for a walk um and I reached 800 900 and just yesterday I reached a thousand days thank you i appreciate that um I'm not special because I walk i'm just uh it's
just a a habit of doing it for a thousand days and and hopefully it will inspire someone with the spring now to get out and and do the same and uh with that Council President that concludes my report and thank you are you thinking more clearly uh did you say something i
was up early this morning thank you Mr plesi uh thank you anthony Paglesi representing County Executive Joe Definenzo uh last time I was here I talked about the cherry blossom events uh just to go over it again it starts on
April 5th uh with the bike races april 6th is the 10K run april 12th is our uh children's fun run and family day and uh April 13th is the balloonfest all that information is on the Essex County website
essenj.org and then also on April 27th which is a Sunday that's our Earth Day celebration at the Environmental Center and that's from 11 until 3 again that's also Any questions thank you thank you thank you Mr mlei okay we're finally to
public comment so I appreciate again your patience just so you know if if you haven't been here before and don't know the uh the process please slowly state your name and address for our minutes and then you have five minutes to speak
if you're here to speak on an ordinance on second reading not an ordinance on first reading if you're here on an ordinance on second reading you can wait until that ordinance comes up during our meeting and speak then if you want you're certainly welcome to uh speak now
on any ordinance on second reading please take it away good evening can you hear me okay yes um my name is Ma Broo 14 Whitman Street longtime listener first time speaker
i'm a Western Dresen for 20 years and a member of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation at Monontlair good evening council members mayor and community neighbors thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight i stand before you in strong support of the ordinance
2906-25 requiring all single occupancy restrooms in local businesses to be genderneutral this is not just a matter of policy it is a matter of dignity practicality and inclusion for every member of West Orange let's be clear
single occupancy gendered restrooms are a relic of the past they solve no problems yet they create a barrier for many for LGBTQ plus residents particularly transgender and non-binary individuals gendered signs on single
stall force unnecessary choices that lead to discomfort scrutiny or even harassment imagine needing to use the restroom but fearing judgment simply because the sign outside doesn't align with who you are the ordinance
eliminates that fear with a simple compassionate fix a sign that says restroom this change also supports parents and caregivers a father with a young daughter shouldn't have to hesitate when she needs assistance nor
should a mother with a son feel unwelcome in a space labeled men genderneutral restrooms allow families to move through their day with dignity not division for our disabled neighbors
accessibility is already a challenge many already require single occupancy stalls and adding genderneutral designation streamlines access no one should have to navigate multiple doors or labels when urgency strikes
opponents may argue about cost but the reality is simple this change is affordable replacing a placard or repainting a sign cost less than a takeout dinner no construction no permits just
common sense over 20 states and hundreds of cities have already made it shift without financial strain if small businesses in Hoboken and Monontlair can do it West Orange can lead here too yet my support tonight is tinged with
disappointment my understanding is that an that is nearly been a year or more since this proposal was introduced a year of delay for a change that costs less but means everything equity shouldn't be propo postponed every month
without action is another month a transgender uh resident avoids shopping locally a parent feels sidelined or a disabled neighbor faces added stress to those still hesitant ask yourself what do we
gain by keeping single stall gendered nothing we lose inclusivity convenience and our reputation as a community that prioritizes people over outdated norms so many argue that many businesses
already offer genderneutral single stall voluntarily rendering this ordinance unnecessary but voluntary compliance is not equality it's luck without a mandate access depends on where you shop eat or
work creating a patchwork of dignity a visitor to West Orange shouldn't have to play guessing games about which establishments respects their humanity moreover businesses change hands signage fades and policy shift this ordinance
endures permanence and usability eliminating ambiguity ambiguity for everyone's parents disabled residents LGBT plus individuals and even tourists if most businesses already comply codifying it costs
nothing but secures everything a guarantee that no one in our town is left to wonder "Am I welcome here?" This ordinance is the only option that makes sense it respects our values protects our neighbors and aligns with the practical realities of
2025 let's pass this ordinance without further delay thank you let's make West Orange a place where hate has no home and everyone belongs ladies and gentlemen ladies and gentlemen ladies and
gentlemen ladies and gentlemen I need quiet in the chambers guys guys hey hey hey i want quiet in the chambers if you
want to talk or argue or fist cuffs go outside all right we value civility here even when we disagree with each other that's why we're here to work these out if you cannot if you cannot comply with that
please leave as you can see we have a police officer here and I'm going to enforce this and part of that is none of this clapping all right we're not a basketball game all right no seriously we are here to do serious business for
the township and it's not a place for clapping so please if you want to clap please go outside thank you sorry about that i apologize please go ahead no worries happy to wait my name is Steven Johnston
i live at 49 Sheridan Avenue you've all heard me speak about this bill i gave it to the mayor on June in June 2024 and from June 2024 to today she has done nothing with
this bill not only has she done nothing with the bill she has lied lied in writing you have lied in writing to me about introducing this in pending matters with the last council with this council it is not not in writing i asked
for the proof in writing you did not give it to me i went back and watched the October town council where you said that you had put it in pending matters which is not on the agenda and it didn't come up under
pending matters council member Gber Michael introduced it at my request to take pictures to paint the outside steps rainbow and then to fail to institute
policies non-discrimination in employment which you said you would publish and has not been published your wellness campaign which has no minutes since March 2023 which does not include black people which does not include LGBTQ
people you have done nothing in terms of substantive policy in terms of substantive resources for vulnerable communities as they are attacked in this country what are some of the things I've heard
online in the last week alone from members of this community who some of you don't think need protection woke hard stupidity why do we even need a pride back in the day we used to agree and get
along when when being gay was illegal when marriage equality was illegal when having your name on your birth certificate was illegal in this state within the last 50 years i've talked to all of you you've all received my email about this
bill council member Castelino at the last meeting you voted no to having this bill this ordinance not a resolution this ordinance heard on first reading you stated that this is something that you weren't going to tell
small businesses what to do castle Rock is a small business on Main Street and I tried to have an LGBTQ event there and I noticed that they have two single-use restrooms that are male and female i asked for one night would you be willing to make them gender neutral no no would
it would be a small act on that owner and it was the owner who said no a small act for one night for an LGBTQ event to have a genderneutral sign on that door no why because this is the way it is and this is the way they want it no other
reason i talked about this ordinance he said no so you also say you didn't see any offensive signs well in Montlair they have this ordinance all of them are genderneutral do they not need the ordinance anymore no new businesses are
open and required to be inclusive i find it interesting that today we celebrate Women's History Month but we don't want to pass a bill that helps women it doesn't make sense there are so many things that this town
can do and is not doing we won't even talk about the police force we'll let the Essex County Prosecutor's Office deal with that which none of you responded to by the way so it's called
pinkwashing mayor it's called gaslighting and lying okay our community put their lives on the line in the 80s while we were dying and the government did nothing today we are seeing those actions and
those results held back by the federal government and we're going to sit here in this town and say you don't deserve it i'm not going to force anyone to welcome you the despicable things I've heard online that people put in
writing we deserve your your support we deserve your resources and we deserve substantive policy i'm an attorney i did my research this isn't an illegal bill other jurisdictions have had this
for years years our neighbors have had this for years i'm not going to sit here and waste more of my time i'm going home to my husband okay because I'm not going to wait until I get harassed in a bathroom or attacked i'm asking you to
act now thank you uh Gerard Anthony 18 Wildwood Avenue um I came here tonight to speak about the proposed uh residential behavior health facility at 33 Mount Pleasant Avenue uh it's named Zineia Health the application
right now is in front of the um the zoning board and I know this is that's um a different uh body than this one but I thought it was important to come and and put this on the public comment i'm not sure how how uh close the West Orange public has been following the
hearings that we've had um but I just wanted to make sure that you know that it was heard and uh and put in front of you guys uh Councilwoman G michael's been very helpful in terms of um you know communicating and how things go but I just wanted to come and uh make a few comments today so I think the most
important thing that I want people to know at the outset is that um my opposition and a number of the other residents that live close to the uh facility the opposition is really about the particular um applicant itself not the not the community that we're talking
about right because that type of facility people that need those services are very important but I think is also important that it is facilitated by someone who's like ethical rules follows process not someone who's just come in and make a quick buck so I wanted to
bring some of the issues that uh that we have so the first one is that um this proposed the proposed stay of these patients would be from 30 to 60 days so it's pretty high turnover rate you also have 80 patients and if you remember the
previous uh facility uh Canterbury that was there the long-term residential facility was about half of that so now they're doubling the capacity they're only proposing to have one security guard no additional uh no fencing no gates around it uh no walls um and no
medical personnel on staff in case they have any type of emergency so if there's an emergency they got to call the ambulance they got to call the fire department um and then also what I think is probably the most troubling is that the background checks are voluntary so
it's all it's all self-reported they don't tap into any uh national registry for example the sex offender uh registry it's all self-reported uh information and just to kind of highlight the uh the turnover rate um the applicant's
testimony expects about 80 residents at any given time with an average day of 30 to 45 days if the average stay is 37 12 days this means that there will be approximately 9.7 turns of each bed in
any given year 80 * 9.7 gives you 776 even at 85% occupancy so that's 68 residents this still this still equates to approximately 660 residents coming and going from the facility in any one
year so you see that that's quite uh a large turnover rate um in any given year and also you know the background checks are pretty are pretty lacking so you know that's one issue and then separately there's been a number of um
of of issues that have come up based on how Zenia operates so they also have a facility in Carney and it was discovered that there was a lawsuit filed by one of the um one of the therapists at that facility when she found out that one of
the managing uh operators was having an inappropriate relationship with one of the patients uh ended up being settled later but that came out during the uh during the hearings and uh the testimony that we've had like I said so we've had a meeting in there's been a hearing in
November there's been one in January uh there's one in February and the next one is April 17 so all these things have been coming out and then another thing that I think should really trouble the town is that one of the operators Harrison Katzen was sued by the SEC for
fraud uh in 2017 uh and he was accused of defrauding over 60 people of $2.5 million and had to pay uh disgorgement and a fine and that also came out in uh the last meeting as well so you know I
think the town really needs to take a long look at who they're doing business with and like I said uh this has nothing to do with the actual people that will be receiving the treatment and everything to do about um Zinny itself thank you thank you
good evening my name is Brandon Aguilera i am a senior at West Orange High School for the past three years I have been running my own lawn care company in this town so I'm here to speak about the proposed gas leaf blower ban like many teens today I care very much about the
environment last year I spent a large amount of my profits from the previous year investing in uh in a large battery powered lawn mower and hedge trimmer along with extra batteries and chargers to be able to complete all of my properties however I did not buy a
battery powered leaf blower for several reasons first the batteries do not last long enough to complete the average size property in this town i would need to purchase so many batteries to do more than one property in a day and that is cross prohibited a single battery costs
more than $200 the alternative would be to invest in a portable generator that can charge some batteries while I'm using others not only would this be not only would this be extremely expensive but it would also be much louder and not as good for the
environment second battery powered blowers take much longer to to do a job than gas powered blowers because they are not as powerful so even though they may be a little bit quieter the noise would last considerably longer and third if landscapers are required to run all
battery powered equipment then their rates would go up and homeowners would pay the price many of my clients are senior citizens who are not physically able to maintain their properties on their own but they also cannot afford to pay thousands of dollars thousands of dollars a year for
lawn care services while some wealthier residents in our town might not mind spending the extra money for increased landscaper rates there are many people in this town that would be hurt by this member of the West Orange Town Council I ask you to reconsider your support for the gas leaf blower ban until the prices
come down and the technology improves for battery powered blowers please consider the impact that this may have on residents taxpayers and small business owners in our town who would be hurt by this ban at least please give the residents of West Orange the opportunity to vote on this important
topic in November thank you thank you could I just interrupt you for a second please ex please forgive me uh there is some concern that with everybody standing up in line that we may be uh impeding people's ability to move in and
out of the the uh uh the seats i just want to ask two two asks uh if you could stand to sit down until the line gets shorter uh I would appreciate it also if you insist on standing in line and that
is your right i that's what I have allowed in the past if everyone could just move over a little bit away from the door that's being used for ingress I'm sorry egress and and ingress no over this way yes thank you that way that's
perfect that's Thank you and again if you want to sit down and take a load off until the line gets shorter uh I would appreciate that as well thank you go ahead i apologize my name is Alex Mtos and I reside at 2600 in Road and I'm a senior at West
Orange High School i have lived in this town my entire life um as we look to move right now we are continuing to look to move within the town of West Orange because it has been such a great town to grow up in i have always felt pretty
safe living in this town following the cancellation of last year's Pride flag raising due to refusal to appro to to issue permits I lost some faith in that the presence of the mayor and
council members at the town's National Coming Out Day event made me hopeful that this was a fluke however these last 10 months have shown me that I may have been wrong the ordinance requiring single occupancy restrooms to be accessible to all regardless of gender
would put our town on par with many of the other towns in Essex County it is important to note that this bill is not just about trans people this is about equity for all residents regardless of gender ability and more as people have
stated before me this change makes it easier for parents disabled people and women to use the restrooms without waiting in addition to transgender residents the cost this puts on b businesses is minimal and it benefits
every single person that lives and shops in this town in addition to the year-long delay of this ordinance the harassment received by those advocating for this bill by some of the people standing in front of me is disheartening with this town's
vibrant queer community the refusal to prioritize this proposal and other events is a bold statement you are not important with this town's motto hate has no home here it is time to uphold
that queer people are dying and this government is doing nothing and it is on this council to keep West Orange a safe place for all residents thank you good evening my name is Christopher Torsello and my Apple Watch says I'm
very nervous it keeps buzzing on me i am a resident of West Orange and I'm here tonight to advocate for the passage of the ordinance regarding single-use bathrooms in addition to being gay married and an adoptive parent to a black child with trans family I'm a
licensed clinical social worker in the state of New York i've been practicing clinical psychotherapy and social work for 17 years i forgot to give my address which is 25 Quarry Terrace i specialize in working with the LGBTQ
plus population and for four years led a team of clinicians at Beth Mount Sinai in New York City where we helped create policy to better address the needs of trans patients i want to share my connection to West Orange because I was born here i was born at St barnabas and I grew up on Coobe Terrace and when I
was 11 my family moved to Miami for my father's job and in 2021 when me and my husband and my daughter were looking for a place to live some family friends suggested I come home so we come and like many queer couples do we scope it
out we visit on different days we go to playgrounds we go to Shopright we go to CVS we go to Whole Foods why to see if we'd be harassed to see if we'd get stared at to see if it would be comfortable right just like everybody
does when they move and the verdict was it was okay it was not the place I grew up in where I was bullied where I was made fun of where I was happy to leave at 11 because of the machismo in town at the time right and so we see a big
rainbow painted outside of city hall we think well surely it will be okay since moving here my family has had the director of a preschool compare working with children of queer families to the disaster victims of the mudslide you spoke of earlier not a swear not a
single piece of LGBT content was introduced to my child during the entire year in a nursery school in town at a second nursery school in town the director asked me if I thought people were convincing children to be trans our town and school district
documentation is completely inadequate for queer families white out labels are placed over mother on school documents that come home to me my child goes to Kelly great school terrible town policy at the last council meeting a
council woman expressed and I'm paraphrasing that they have assessed the need for genderneutral bathrooms by looking around when they're out with their family and it's been suggested that trans residents haven't made their discomfort known to the council and as a
therapist to many trans people and a queer person I can promise you this council is the last place we're coming to to tell you it was uncomfortable to pee in public i don't know if anyone up there has a family member friend or colleague who is out to you as trans i
do and I can't think of a single restaurant or public place we frequent in West Orange where my child's birth parents would feel comfortable pissing excuse me this town this mayor and this council should not be proud of our
record on LGBTQ issues the cultural competency that this council possesses in serving queer constituents is inadequate by all measurable means the town has taken no action to protect anyone in our community tonight you have the opportunity to change that i would
like more than nothing to walk out of here knowing that you will all prove me wrong that tomorrow I can hop on social media and see you all boasting that you passed this and the crazy gay guy got all upset i would be super happy about
that if the council cannot provide for our needs we will vote you out in the next election thank you hello uh Ed Reichman 12 more terrorists i'm here to speak on overriding the mayor's veto of the leaf blower ban uh
this veto is merely the latest in a string of bad decisions that this mayor and this administration have made not once but twice uh last year the mayor and some of the current town council members said we should wait a year to give landscapers time to adjust well
it's been a year and we've we've passed this bill or this uh ban no more excuses we should get this done now um it's not just the landscapers some of who may or may not live in this town who are affected it's
the residents who are affected um many studies have shown that the leaf blowers that are used the sound from them uh travels at unddeminish strength for over 200 yards in my dense
neighborhood that means that two to 250 houses and households are affected that means when I work at home or if I'm outside in my yard and trying to enjoy my backyard I don't have peace and quiet i have a leaf blower from some house
that is within that two to 250 yards blowing and that's ruining the entire neighborhoods uh you know it's impacting our lives um the battery technology I've heard various people say it's not ready yet it
is ready it is being recycled they are effective neighboring towns have all done this it hasn't caused a problem there are good inexpensive alternatives out there to leaf blowers including leaf sweepers which can be either manual or
pulled by the mowers mulching mowers and leaving the leaves in place so no more excuses please override the veto i will work tirelessly to oust any town council members that don't override this veto
thank you greetings i am 83y old Moren Robinson jesus my dog and I live at 200 Mount Pleasant Avenue Cresy
Apartment West Orange New Jersey let me start my time now if I'm starting this is an update ms robinson you can see the clock here that's your time to to speak see the button being hit after
I identified myself but it's okay i'm good thank you most of the issues in the apartment I have have been fixed i have doors on the closet in the second bedroom i have open and shut knobs on
the closet doors in my bedroom the bedroom the bathroom has been steamed clean and the gout around the floor in the shower has been repaired my grandson installed double overhead shower spas it
took almost four years instead of the promised week to get the job done and the inspector has not returned to inspect the issues complained about however there are still no se safety mechanisms to accommodate my handicap
issues such as a safety bar in the shower and a commode to accommodate my height since my knee replacement however when you know what and who you are dealing with and who is con connected to
whom you move forward to the next level and seeking relief and justice i filed a case in your court system in reference to my complaint and tonight I've returned to provide you with a written
copy of the judge's response your judge didn't do anything either she referred me to landlord tenant court however when I contacted landlord tenant court to file a complaint I was informed that landlord tenant court only
handled cases that deal with rental issues such as evictions etc and I've always paid my rent on time and I've never been late the issue in regards to accommodations for the handicap such as
safety bars in the bathroom discrimination and despair treatment in reference to the delegation of water usage without meters to measure water usage by tenants in each apartment or handled in federal court under federal
laws in reference to discrimination what I have observed is a compilation of used commodes that have been moved from apartments and thrown in the dump area which means that bathroom fixtures such
as toilets and sinks can be replaced in spite of Cel investors refusal to accommodate this black senior citizens handicap with comfort and safety of handicap mechanisms such as a safety
are in the shower to provide comfort safety security satisfaction and happiness in regards to meeting her needs i have contacted a federal attorney thank you
hello I'm Shannon Breen at 325 Gregory Avenue in 2022 a group of parents from the Gregory neighborhood circulated a petition for traffic safety around our public schools including Gregory Elementary and Roosevelt Middle since then I and others have met multiple
times with town officials including the mayor engineer police and some of the council members here today as well as officials from the county all of whom agreed these safety changes that we requested were warranted and necessary
some of you have heard me talk about how we walk our two girls each day to the elementary school along Gregory Avenue we walk on a busy block with no sidewalk oncoming cars trucks buses even semi-truckss pass by mere inches from us
sometimes going 45 50 or more in a 25 mileph school zone they sometimes go so fast that it makes our hair blow we all know that Gregory is sort of like a narrow highway and we often see hurried drivers texting distracted with no
regard that children are present they're rushing to get to work or somewhere seemingly important if they swerve just a tiny bit we're done my family would be wiped out if there's snow or rain it's more treacherous it's just a dreadful
walk gregory and all throughout our town is only growing busier in order to achieve our goals with West Orange's Vision Zero Action Plan which pledges to make our streets safer for pedestrians by prioritizing street improvement projects we need to up our game with
traffic safety there are a lot of families around with young kids so we need to adapt and quickly within our petition for traffic safety that we made a few years back we included the petition that a Gregory third grader named Nquille Badlani had
made in 2007 asking then Mayor John McKon for a safe route to school including a sidewalk on Gregory between Lawrence and Walker now as many of you know NIL's life ended tragically when he was only 11 years old in a car crash
just four years after he created that petition nquille's parents Sangita and Senil tireless advocates for traffic safety kindly offered Nquille's petition for our efforts now it's been almost 18
years since Nquille made that plea for more safety on his route to school 18 years while we admit to growing impatient about the length of time it takes for implementation of these needed changes we are grateful for the township
initiatives like the vision zero action plan the municipal grants funding for the pedestrian safety enforcement and some of the changes that have already been implemented by the township and county such as crosswalks radar signs that I think have made a difference branson resolutions for sidewalks from
Lawrence to Walker have been approved with the caveat that it can take several years to implement if it happens at all as there are no guarantees ordinance will be voted on tonight for some of these needed traffic safety measures i encourage all of you
to vote in favor of these ordinances tonight so we wait and we hope my girls and their classmates will possibly be done with elementary school by the time it all comes to fruition and perhaps even through middle school and beyond i certainly hope not while we we wait for
some of the bigger initiatives to clear hurdles what can we get done pragmatically that's more affordable and feasible so in the meantime we've asked for additional school zone signage including pavement markings traffic cones additional speed radar signs at
Helen Gregory and Lawrence Gregory and various other locations lower the school zone speed limit to 15 miles per hour like they did in Jersey City and assign police consistently to enforce these speeds we've requested a crosswalk at
Gregory and Orange Heights and are waiting for the results of that traffic study which we've learned today that has been completed we've also advocated for multiple needs in the Lowel Mountain Way area and others are here to speak about the huge safety issues on South Valley
Road and the need for crosswalks and other measures in that area again we're appreciative of these changes that have already been made and those that are on the table we still have a lot of work to do to make sure that all routes to school are safe so thank you for your
time and for supporting traffic safety measures and for voting yes on all of the traffic safety ordinances tonight thank you good evening my name is Jennifer Jones i live at 239 South Valley Road and now
that I'm here I also would like to voice my support for the designation of all single occupancy bathrooms as gender neutral in town that is the good thing about coming to these meetings and getting informed um I am primarily here
to uh speak in favor of the board bond ordinance 2911-25 uh my husband and I have lived in our house here since 2003 so we are no strangers to the traffic on South Valley Road uh we call ourselves the second to
last house in West Orange so if you uh visualize South Valley Road the triangle median that separates us from South Orange uh we are one full house in and our stairs go right down onto South
Valley Road with no sidewalk um our driveway runs behind our house it's a shared driveway and it dumps out onto Lington Road so that's a little confusing no one can find us but um we have twin girls who are now 11 so we
were lucky to have lots of help from grandparents when they were babies uh none of those grandparents would opt to cross South Valley Road pushing a double stroller they instead decided to heave it up Letington Road which is very steep
so people in their 60s and 70s pushing a double stroller do not want to even brooch that traffic on South Valley Road um you know moving forward to the present time when we found out our bus uh stop location we found that we would
be at Lawrence and South Valley which would mean crossing from our driveway from Lington across there somehow leaprogging to the Triangle Median across South Valley Road down to the sidewalk side and back across to Lawrence to the tiny corner where I've
seen middle schoolers gathered together and if one of them like moved the wrong way they would fall right into traffic so instead we got our bus stop moved since the transportation the bus transportation department did not know that South Valley was at all a hazard so
we did have our bus stop moved up the hill once again heaving up the hill uh to Letington and Overlook so yes we definitely would love to see some change in this way some safe crossings across South Valley Road we have friends on
Ridge View that we can barely even walk to um who are at the bottom of the hill like we are um and we're surrounded by no fewer than four uh houses with preschoolers and toddlers who are coming up and they'll be walking to Gregory
just like our kids did or didn't because we drove them if it was not not a safe condition so thank you again for listening to us this evening um and thank you for voting yes on this ordinance good evening my name is Erin Robbins i
live at 6 Ridge View Avenue uh I am here in support of the bond ordinance 2911-25 and like my neighbor before me uh in learning about the uh amendment
for single occupancy bathrooms I am very encouraged by the previous speakers and their advocacy and their bravery to speak out in the way they did even amidst many naysayers which um have continued to have comments throughout um
and they have not been they have not been controlled only the clapping for the first speaker was actually controlled so I' I'd like to note that um and that feels biased to me the other thing I'd like to say is I've lived here
um I lived here and grew up here went through all the schools here throughout my life i left and came back uh about 12 years ago to raise kids and I live at the bottom of Ridge View one house away
from South Valley Road um it is treacherous i almost die often when I cross that street i will not let my children go alone i want them to have independence i want them to be street smart i cannot i
have watched this road be this way for almost my entire life what gives people what gives what is it going to take for someone to pay attention what is it going to take for this town to listen to its
people why aren't you listening we have had a multitude of emails phone calls meetings the neighbor before me is beautiful at her administrative detail i'm not so good at that but I can tell you that this
doesn't feel right and you need to do better i cannot cross the road at the bottom of the street without walking into actual traffic there is no crosswalk there is no curb there are cars parked on the left
side the west side of South Valley so I have to get in the middle of the road to see if a car is coming and so do children so do seniors who live in the area people who are not able to ambulate there is a church here on the east side
of the street there is Valley Vintage on the northern east side of the street and then there is a narrowing of the street right before Ridge View and Meeker so it's Meer Ridge View Valley Vintage Church cars lined up here it is
treacherous and I walk every day because I have a dog and every day my heart hurts because I do not have pride in where I live when I look around and that makes me sad because I want to I want to
believe that somebody actually cares so I hope you guys will actually take heed and not wait until somebody dies because someone will die and there will be blood on your hands thank you very much
hi my name is Katherine Jagger Thomas i live at 10 Ridge View Avenue in uh the Gregory neighborhood um I have two children in the West Orange School District i have been living here for about nine
years um I'm here to express my support two items on the agenda first like my neighbors before me the bond ordinance 291125 to improve South Valley Road between Walker and Letington
we are as you can hear from my neighbors before me in desperate need of safety measures my elderly mother just moved in with us she has had a car accident at that street before she moved in she will not cross the street on her own we also
live on a big hill so that means that my 77year-old mother would like Jen's before us would prefer to walk up the very steep hill of Ridge View for her daily walk rather than down into um the the flatter safer areas and she has
health issues which means that if those are the two choices she's not getting outside my children um are uh I are in middle school and high school and I do not feel comfortable allowing them to cross that
road without an adult which limits their ability to have independence to go to the local um stores to see their friends and um to to to really be able to enjoy this community that we moved to thinking that it was a familyfriendly place
so um I echo my neighbors in the need for crosswalks and more care in that area i'm also here to express support for ordinance 290625 requiring all single-use restrooms and local businesses to be
designated genderneutral um my fellow community members have expressed far more eloquently than I will why this is incredibly vital to our community this is a simple designation
it eliminates a really painful barrier for some for dignity comfort and inclusion it is absolutely inexcusable for this body to not make this simple designation for our
community members it changes the the experience for our LGBTQ plus community members our disabled our elderly and our multigenerational families again there's
just simply no excuse for not passing this ordinance thank you for hearing us all and for your hard work there we go hi Mosha Ruden from 38 Woodland Avenue lived in the town for 27 plus
years um and I'd come originally to thank the uh council for finally passing the uh resolution banning gas leaf blowers i heard though that it was then vetoed for
a second time and I expressed my disappointment and dismay um frankly I'm just really surprised that this has become such a broad issue so filled with anger and accusation and
acrimony i mean I guess part of the job of town council is to listen to angry people and I apologize for that and um uh but I just have to say that it sounds like we're talking about the NRA out here sometimes you know people want to keep their uh keep those gas blowers
strapped on in full power and maybe for some of the same reasons i don't know uh but whatever reason I just have to say that uh you know it seems like there's a lot of there's folks on the council or in the town and mayor's office who want
to defend the rights of these folks to uh to walk around with these uh obsolete two cycle monstrosities on their backs what about the rights of like people like me i'm right now I have like a buzz in my ear for my tenitis i want to be
able to enjoy my property i want to enjoy where I live friends I want to be able to invite you over to my place i'm sitting my on my patio my backyard place that I've invested my whole life in from 7:30 in the morning till 7:30 at night
during summer and fall the place sounds like like the Indie 500 i never been there but it is what it sounds like all right the place sounds like a factory floor if it's not the guy across the street it's a guy next door or it's the guy over there it is literally filled
with purple smoke filled with noise filled with particulates why do the people who run these machines have more rights than I do or that people who live in the town do why are you defending them and not
standing up for us i don't understand it and all the arguments you want to make that's the tact I don't care I just want to be able to enjoy my house my yard bring my dog out bring my kids out bring my grandchildren out without this it's
Is that so difficult to understand and is that so outside of your ability to do something about really I just I I'm flabbergasted that this is still an issue that's being punted back and forth
and now I here that the schools are getting involved okay because why because the schools want to fill their fields with this pollution with this gunk with this noise with these particulates with this with this destroying our quality of life yeah I
mean let's do that that sounds really good for our kids i just don't understand i don't know what the the actual things are going on here i'm already sacrificing half of my family life to the town government now I'm coming out myself to do it what will it
take to get you know I've heard a lot of really powerful statements eloquent statements on behalf of safety you know it made me read in college this book called Plato's Republic you know don't don't bother right you know but no I don't know maybe you want to read it but
it says that the job of government above all else it calls them the guardians you're the guardians of our life you're the guardians of the quality of our life you're the guardians of the property that we have spent every cent we have on getting and maintaining you are supposed
to be our guardians so guard us guard us okay like let us enjoy our property let us enjoy a little peace and quiet are you telling me these these monstrosity blowers aren't breaking noise ordinances they of
course they are whatever you know why a bunch of guys get up here and yell at you and you fold i'm sorry i have great respect for you i have great respect for you do for the sacrifices you make but please let's
have some sanity in this let's maintain the the what we love West Orange for thank you right here hey guys guys guys you need to knock it off okay if you can't be quiet and if you
can't be respectful either leave or I'll get the officer to escort you out this is serious business okay civility this is how we try to get together and settle our issues our differences and that does not
help please go ahead sorry thank you good evening my name is Brett Vaper Scott i'm a resident of West Orange at Nestro Road um and I'm here to speak uh on everything um regarding the uh leaf the gas powered leaf blowers i am here to speak regarding the
gas powered leaf blowers can everyone hear me now great uh it seems every time this measure comes up there's a moving of the go gold goalpost um and that moving is done by Mayor McCartney the cost of doing business
we've gone from gas guzzling cars to fuel efficient cars to electric cars that is the natural progression of the cost of doing business not just in automobiles look at the camera we'll talk about that in a moment
um taking pictures of your neighbors seriously does anyone here not have a cell phone it is insulting that Mayor McCartney and Councilwoman Castalino would actually sit there and try to scare the public into believing "Oh
you're going to take pictures of your neighbors." That's ridiculous you cannot drive or walk down the street in West Orange without being picked up by every doorbell camera on the street and now Mayor McCartney wants to
move the goalpost again it's too expensive for children ironically it's children who suffer the most from the emissions of gas powered blowers i have two children in West Orange public schools right now and I want the ban and
I want the school board to adopt electric gas power blowers if they'd use blowers at all they don't have to let's move the gas the goal post again let's have a referendum let's have an election did the mayor ask for a
referendum when she offered us her tax increase no she did not why didn't you ask for a referendum then Mayor McCartney what happens when you have referendums for everything the word astroturf refers to
organizations masquerading as organic homegrown community civic groups when in reality they are anything but what they are are front groups for and funded by corporations with agendas calling for a referendum it is
an insidious form of manipulation firstly they have the money to spend to try and sway voters with unchecked misinformation secondly it's a very slippery slope and don't get me wrong I am for regulated ballot access a
regulated ballot access strategim that occurs every seven years for laws and once a decade for constitutional amendments but once you start having referendums on every issue we become like California and other western states once you start having referendums bodies
like this are no longer elected to do the public's job you are parting out your job to corporations and people with a lot of money who have agendas to do it for you and that is not what we elect
you for so I ask again did Mayor McCartney ask for a referendum for her property tax increase no she did not i've done a lot of research i worked for the Sierra Club as a lobbyist for several years in California and during
the reauthorization of the Clean Air Act and one of the things I learned which surprised the heck out of me was that black children in California have 25% less lung capacity because of emissions from gas powered vehicles and
from gas powered electric blowers and the like 25% less lung capacity you want to look out for the children look out for all of the children not some of the children my children are important too and as Rabbi
Ruden said I want to enjoy my patio too and my house that I'm paying Mayor McCartney's and Michelle Castelino's tax increases for it because no one else up here voting for them so please do not buckle under pressure do not buckle do not be
bamboozled this is not going to cost the schools hundreds of thousands of dollars it's not even going to cost them tens of thousands that is a ridiculous lie and if you buckle now what does that say about your leadership you're going to sit here
having voted for this twice in 2025 and several times in 2024 and repudiate your own vote i know you have more courage than that i know you have more strength than that i'm counting on you thank you good evening uh council members and uh
just want to echo what's been said before and congratulate all the women excuse me for interrupting you could we just get your name and address speak slowly okay frank Bars for Ridge View Avenue here in West Orange um so I'm certainly not going to
uh lecture you uh I don't think that's necessary uh but I am here to talk about the um the bid and the improvement of South Valley from uh Walker Road to uh Lington um and I'm approaching it from a
slightly different perspective i live on the corner of uh Ridge View and South Valley and I've been there for 26 years and I've witnessed some horrible horrendous accidents uh Mr raone here is a former neighbor
and uh it's very good to see you again and he knows what that traffic is like um one of the incidents that occurred resulted in a uh in a death and it was right beyond my property uh where just
before Lington where there's a break in the road and there's a driveway that goes up to another set of houses and a uh panel truck I believe it was came along leaving uh leaving the orange area
going towards South Orange and ran up the wall and flipped over and the person died in that accident um there are a number of older people not only children and certainly there's a there's a need for the younger people who are living in
uh young families coming into the community um to have safety but the safety extends not just uh for young people but for elderly people as well and it's it's
very difficult to walk in that area there's a sidewalk on the east side of the road there's no sidewalk on the west side of the road and um that's that's a real issue the properties come almost to the street line and I think part of that
improvement would be to put sidewalks on both sides of the road the sidewalks are narrow as it is some of them are uneven it's difficult to uh to walk in that area um a crosswalk right at the end of Ridge View going over to across South
Valley would be uh really important and I'm just echoing what my neighbors have already said um so um there's not much else to say about it it's a very dangerous area unfortunately the speeding is ridiculous um in the 26
years that I've been there I've seen the traffic increase tremendously and when people are heading toward South Orange once they get past uh Valley Vintage they take off and the speeding is is really uh dangerous as I said so um
thank you for your time and I hope some action will be taken on this i'm I'm in favor of the uh of the bid thank you hello everybody my name is Angela i'm a resident in town from West Orange talk about the blower band can
you repeat your name please say it again can you repeat your name angelo Reella okay and the address condent Terrace 43 thank you all right i've been a resident for the last 25
years i just think it's foolish for the blower band i think people don't realize what you're getting into number one the blowers are electric blowers are way too much money they
don't do the work they're fire hazard material on your back i mean so is a gas blower but you don't get the quality you don't get the money the people the residents in
town are gonna spend double the money on labor that people can't afford and I go you have the timings for the blowers november what about October you know you want to compromise
but there's no compromising november to December that's not enough time just think that stick with the gas electric isn't ready to be
electric all I got to say please please hold your applause you want applaud please go outside please come up good evening my name is Dan Widner i'm the owner of Cougar Landscaping i've been doing business in West Orange for
26 years uh I promise to uh try not to be sarcastic it might come out uh due to how this is affecting me so I apologize for that ahead of time it's certainly
not my intent uh I also promise to try to avoid uh straw men arguments argument madulum and uh to say that this might be some kind of racial issue um I did go
down to uh Fred Small Engine today where I've been doing business for 26 years and I priced out an electric backpack one backpack $999 that doesn't include the batteries you
need two of them in each backpack $900 you need a charger they make one that you can charge two batteries or four batteries if I was forced to get these things which I'm not going to uh I would get
the one for four batteries which it only charges one battery at a time over an hour so I don't know where we charge these things perhaps in our garage i don't think it's any mystery
that uh these types of batteries have been catching on fires in apartments and like that you hear about it all the time so the landscapers are going to go back to the residence or their shop and charge these things overnight that does that is just
nonsensical are we going to have an out building for these batteries is that what the township's going to do going to have a separate room a separate construction just to charge batteries for the town oh at any rate so that's $2,200 for one
backpack which can operate at maximum capacity for cuz I asked a salesperson that I've been doing business with for 26 years 16 minutes do you hear that 16 minutes uh and then if you want more
batteries 450 each so sorry um I also saw a uh estimate for providing backpacks to one of the local golf courses right because that's part of your brilliant ordinance as well right
to equip them to be able to work all day long right because I'm an employer i label me crazy but I want my employees to work all day uh $250,000 $250,000 now while I understand that you're a speech pathologist I'm going to
go out on a limb and say that you're doing the best you can here but you don't know anything about landscaping nothing nothing and you're all invited whoever has a boat you're all invited to come to work tomorrow for Cougar
Landscaping strap a backpack on and take it on and take it off and take it on and take it off and take it on and take it off for 26 years so maybe you want to think about people's lives rather than your green
agenda it's absurd you're absurd oh focus groups were mentioned tonight i don't know by who i'm so sorry to point at you i don't know your your name i'm I'm not a resident uh what were the
focus groups like for this decision how many landscapers do you have in your focus groups how many were here filled up here giving their opinion i bet the answer is zero because you'd be getting all the same answers and you're all sitting there like this and
the only thing that counts is your agenda which is getting rid of of any kind of gas operated thing what are you going to start regulating what kind of cars people can drive in town i mean if you really want to go for it it's idiotic
oh Plato's Republic someone brought that up since I only have 15 seconds left i read that too okay and the people who were making the decisions were the philosopher kings is that you all of you philosopher kings are you you know
what's best for us it's absurd your time is up please don't collap please go ahead good evening darnell Gibbs Steel Perro Vibes use the address
of 470 West Prospect I mean Prospect Avenue um so my only concern is is that my license with you guys is due to expire right we got a year then every year we have to renew it uh my wife made
an attempt to try to jump ahead of the problem and say "Hey guess what we're coming up on this year what do we have to do to renew the license with you guys?" Her initial email was sent out February 27th somehow it was missed
mistakes happen i get it follow-up emails were sent no response to those until we got a hold of Chief Abbott so I appreciate that Chief Abbott was able to respond to us tell us that he was going to look into it so what I'm asking for is tonight is to have some type of
special vote with sole purpose of extending our license so this way we could remain compliant with the state as many of you know as you sat on a task force the cannabis task force during this whole process that process with the state isn't as easy as you may think it
is if my license goes expired I have to redo the entire process over reason why I'm asking for a mirror extension is because in fact nothing about my company has changed my ownership is still me and my wife our location is still the same
there's nothing changed about my application my home address is still the same my employer was still the same i'm still in the military i'm still a veteran so I'm asking is it somehow some way to do a special election or vote tonight just to
simply extend our current license with you guys for a period of 90 maybe 120 days this way it allows you all time to figure out what you want that renewal process to look like once again nothing's changed about the structure of
my company so it shouldn't be a matter of me have to resupply a whole bunch of paperwork like I did the first time when you guys approved me because nothing's changed thank you uh good evening council james Jackson address is one Ashley Road West Orange
New Jersey um I am uh I am the CEO of Yorkana LLC i'm not here um under that guys to talk about cannabis tonight i'm actually here as a community member of West Orange um with my concern um with what my good
friend and and neighbor Gerard spoke about earlier which is the Zenia healthcare application um that is currently in front of the zoning board um I've I've been part of every zoning board meeting asking questions um and
not to compare myself the process I went to to Zenia Healthcare but I mean it's a cakewalk compared to what I went through with the planning and zoning board to get my business approved um and you know again I am a huge
proponent of of um therapy of mental health of drug rehabilitation of all of those principles um but under the guise that it is run by somebody who is responsible and ethical and a good actor not somebody who cares strictly about
dollars and cents and making money in our community not servicing our community and leaving it in a worse spot than it was before i feel like that's the definition of someone we should not want to do business with in this town um specifically you know I'm not I'm I'm not going to belabor the points that
Gerard made was very concise and very to the point and gave you guys a lot of facts um to be able to take back and and and think about um but specifically you know we have to look at the people that we want to do business with and just how this gentleman and how Zenia Healthcare
goes about speaking about their patients speaking about beds which is them counting the dollars that they're making not counting the lives that they're trying to change um there one we're talking about venture capital gentlemen who
chose to leave VC and move over to a new business and I guarantee you it is not because it makes less money it's because it makes a lot more money at the deficit of our community at the deficit of a lot of these people that will be patients um
not only ha has Gerard talked about you know um lawsuits I mean there was another lawsuit where these guys didn't pay $64,000 of a food bill so not only are their principles of the company having inappropriate relationships with
patients they're not even paying their invoices um what what leads us to believe that they're even going to pay their taxes um in addition I mean if you look at the location of that of where that facility is proposed we're talking about right across the street from town
hall we're talking about the back there's no separation between that and the back of Llewellen Park where somebody could easily not jump over but step over that fence and enter the Llewellen Park neighborhood um one thing that I would say is there's
a number of children young children maybe not the case before but who who live in Lwellen Park and who whose safety I fear for um if one of these courtappointed um patients right who are not making a choice to be at this facility they're courtappointed their background is not
being checked they could be sex offenders for all we know and they're within an earshot and a jump over offense or a step over offense from our children um doesn't make me comfortable uh as a resident of Well Park doesn't make me comfortable as a resident of West Orange um and frankly we have to
start thinking about safety of our community but also safety for those patients um if we think for one second that people in the Wellen Park are not armed I'm here to tell you they are legally so it's unsafe all around for the
patients that may breach the park for the children that play and run up and down the street and for right now are in a safe space in our park um but also I would like to believe that and and in everything that I do believe um and in
me getting my approval and the people that you chose to partner with on the cannabis side and the businesses that you allow in town is that we don't do business with bad actors right we don't do business with those that um do not have the best interest of our town and our public at hand and I can tell you
for a fact this is not one of those um this is being coined as a mental health facility but we have to call it what it is it is a overrun from the beds that they can't keep at their Carney facility that's why it's in such close proximity they said "Hey let's go find a town that
might let us in that we could give some taxes to that that'll forget about the fact that you know I got sued by the SEC and forget about the fact that we don't pay our bills and we are in inappropriate relationships with patients not staff patients that are supposed to be getting help." Um all
those things being said not the council's decision i know you all speak to and have appointees on the zoning board um I want this to be on public record and just so that everybody in the town knows that this is not a safe proposal your time is up thank you very
much thank you Mr jackson hello my name is David Manassian i live in West Orange on Elliot Place i would like to discuss the leaf blower van i tried to follow this subject um so
one I'm going to recommend I apologize if it's already been discussed but I know one of the main issues is the noise of the leaf blowers i know also there's an emission or environmental issue but um a potential solution for the noise
issue is say we divide the town in half and one side of the town can use leaf blowers on Monday Tuesday and Wednesday and the other side of the town can use leaf blowers on Thursday Friday and Saturday so what you're essentially
doing is you're creating work days for the landscapers and quiet days for people who work at home now I know it's not a perfect solution there's got to be days where people working at home have to have a conference call or doing a work on an important document that's got
to be on one of those work days for the landscapers and I know there's got to be days where it may rain three days in a row and the landscapers can't work on those days but it's at least one potential solution to address the noise
complaint and that's all I had to say about the subject thank you thank you for the suggestion good evening um my name is Greg Rahman i'm a town resident um for 25 years my first town council meeting i didn't
realize I get so passionate but talk about the Excuse me what is your last name rahman can you spell that rh a M as in Mary a N as in Nancy and your address 91 Oakidge Road thank you
y um I'm here to talk about the gas uh leaf blower ban um like to thank uh Mayor McCartney for applying some common sense to it um there's a number of factors to be considered um on this band's mother folks you've you've heard
from um already but the there's an economic impact um performance impact practicality of actually enforcing the ordin ordinance and the overall need for broader awareness um you know
landscapers are going to incur extra costs um as you've heard from a professional landscaper um homeowners are going to incur extra costs go swap out gas leaf blowers for um electric
leaf blowers um the performance of consumer battery operated uh leaf blowers are severely underpowered you've heard from other people i've speced them out the run time on them lasts about 15 20 minutes you've got to buy multiple
batteries you've got to charge them professional landscapers they're going to have to do what get a diesel generator to charge them on a trailer they're going to have to you know they're going to pollute they're going to put uh um fuel um uh environmental
concerns as well um you know I'm just a I'm just a regular homeowner likes to take care of the yard i've got 14 trees adjacent to my property just in the ones that touch so the arguments on oh just leave them let them decompose you can
rake them it's not practical right if I leave those leaves on my lawn for 3 months by the time spring comes around my lawn's going to be dead because you can't just let the leaves just sit there all winter long and expect to have nice
green grass come grow in spring so um the gas blowers they they're much better they run for you know 45 minutes compared to a limited 20 minute cycle that you get from Home Depot and Lowe's
they're like $300 from Lowe's the gas powered ones I went um um looked at those at Lowe's and um Home Depot they're like $300 the consumer grade electric ones you
know a good backpack one is $1,400 us-made steel reliable um that's going to last leaf blower about $1,400 from manufacturer steel which is USmade um so
you know the issue with policing this thing I don't know how you're going to police this a neighbor I'm going to use my gas blower a neighbor's going to take a picture of me how do you How do I defend that i'm going to get a fine done what happens after that do I
come to the town and have a right to defend myself see the picture who takes the picture who who determines whether that picture is legible what's the distance it's got to be taken from can you see my face can you see my full face what if I'm wearing sunglasses i got a
hat does the town got resources to go look at software and go figure all that out or is someone just going to take a picture from 50 feet away submit it to town and then the residents get a fine doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me um but I'm just bringing up the points
uh let's see you know the I think this is being environmental is one of the items this is being brought under but environmental you have to look at the broader picture of the environment right you got the batteries to begin with where are the batteries coming from they're all coming from
China they got to be mined got to get lithium they got to be shipped over here that takes gas to go do that getting oil out of the ground to run a gas we've been doing it for 70 years it's more efficient it's easier to go do it the
lithium batteries they don't last you got to buy multiples of them all the leaf blowers that you go buy at Home Depot and Lowe's they're all made out of China all the parts come out of China it's all inexpensive parts they're not durable they're not going to
last you a long time i've had my leaf blower for five years what about the leaf blowers that residents have already purchased what are you going to do with them they got to go all buy new ones now so I don't know the whole thing doesn't
seem a whole lot practical to me um but I just want to thank you for your time and your consideration and look at maybe look voting a little bit differently than the last two times you voted thank you
good evening Mr president members of the council clerk gentlemen member courtney Mr plesi and Mr fagan how you doing i'm here tonight to Mr mr pulo Joseph Panolo I thank you
in ethics files within 200 foot notice area of the West Essex Highlands proposed project i'm the president of Recare the objector at the planning board to the proposed plan and I came here with an update and a couple of
questions last meeting was March 19th last week was postponed due to technical difficulties if I understand correctly the next meeting will be April 30th uh we had tree expert and geology hydro geologists ready to go and see what
happens at the next meeting uh at the meeting prior which is the only meeting the objector has had has been presented i think it was meeting number nine uh developer was presenting their plan there are still some things left to be presented
the storm water expert for we care spoke and we have more to talk about on the plan itself but the public's comments were predominantly about the impact of the plan on the outside on the area outside the limit of disturbance the 120
acres downstream downhill the condos the grand the club waters outside the pe permit application so given the concerns by the citizens at the planning board I want to make two quick points about an article
that was published uh last week made by the signatory from fair share housing to your settlement agreement the man's name is Josh Bowers and he said two things that were notable in that article one was the site was
extreme extensively analyzed and that development would be appropriate at the time it was considered i wasn't here at the time it was considered but the historical documents either make that
statement far-fetched or oxymoronic the 2006 plan at the planning board for more than less than 30% of that density was defeated soundly for public safety reasons the 2010 master plan of this
town dedicated that site to be preserved and deemed it environmentally sensitive there was a 2010 green acres grant application to DP by Susan Bour from this town the 2020 settlement agreement that
followed was not effective for three years the settlement agreement that was entered into is 2017 it took three years for this project on that mountain to be agreed to by township developer at the
condo association which arguably doesn't have standing to grant easement over the lot but that's a different topic but then in October of 2020 if that site was extensively analyzed and it was appropriate then why is the only lot in
this town 17932 zoned ex suspending every single ordinance in the town municipal bulk environmental etc i don't know the answer to that question and if there are legitimate environmental concerns he went on to say they should be taken into consideration they will need to be
reviewed at the planning board i don't have a lot of time here right now but I have a larger point the planning board is not elected not an elected body it is not a legislative body it is there to consider the plan presented with a zoning ordinance that we will contest that but suspends every
ordinance in town anyway and was basically spot zone under port order for that purpose well this town has a flood plane management ordinance and a flood plane administrator i don't know who that would be but I'll ask you at the end if there's a minute but just a few
things to review this ordinance shall apply to all proposed development and flood hazards hazard areas established in section of the regulations the purpose of the regulations are to promote public health safety and general welfare to minimize public and private
losses due to flood conditions in specific flood hazard areas and establish regulations for those areas designed to protect human life and health manage alteration of flood planes among other things and minimize the need for future expenditure of public funds
for flood control projects and in response to in recovery from flood events well this actually correlates to FEMA with flood maps there are three maps in this ordinance for the canoe brook the headquarters of the canoe
brook are where the site is actually going to be developed the other three maps must be and I haven't seen them the condos oval road separate lot and expels country club which is partially owned by the town your time is up as expels owns the land that's in West Orange on the
Canoe Brook side so I would like to urge this town to consider a flood plane study by its flood administrator that is outside the scope of any municipal ordinance because it's subject to FEMA and FEMA maps i don't know where to make that request or who to ask or who was that administrator i appreciate the
extra time and but that's a real question it's an ordinance in town and it supersedes um Thank you Mr panill all right thank you kindly hello Gordon my name is Richard Groves i'm a longtime resident 30 plus year
almost 30 years in West Orange and um I'm also a a um business owner i own a company Kindle Financial Group uh we specialize in uh financial services i'm also a member of Mim Make a Difference spokesperson for Mim Make a Difference
and I'm also on the Downtown Alliance group uh I'm coming here before you today because I talked to a lot of people in town and neighboring towns and as I said I've been here 30 plus years and I have not seen any advancement in this town uh over that time period i'm
looking at surrounding company towns Bloomfield South Orange Monlair as well as West Orange i talked to newcomers to this town and everyone talks about places to go um as a member of the downtown alliance and and prior to that I'm also a real estate developer you
know the goals of most municipalities is to build up their infrastructure um we as a town has never done that i don't care what council has been up here some of you have been around a long time and I and I accuse all of you for not taking the time and effort to put things in place that allows us to move forward um
we talked about ordinances zoning things we had a group in town the uh Nishuang group who was initially contracted to do an a broad view of uh what we needed economic development in our town and then we're told they were told to do minimize that and this focus on the
downtown area and then after they created this comprehensive document that many of you have seen uh people were talking about we spent too much money with them they didn't give us a comprehensive thing but no one realized that they were told to do a smaller version of what they were contracted to
do none of you know this you all also didn't know that they weren't paid from August to my sure it was last time January that they and I spoke to many of you absurd that you don't know this absurd you don't know this right the other turret of development in town is I hear you infighting with the mayor on
things and I don't agree with everything the mayor does but I would fire all of you and start over because you don't know what you're talking about half the time development in town studios coming in here you're talking about not putting it down if you know anything about development developers don't come in
town unless there's a reason to be here i'm told that downtown some of you afraid to go downtown what the hell afraid to go downtown to our downtown i go down there all the time right there's been consideration warranted at at at the Nishuang Group after this
comprehensive this study was done it's never been done before ever the master plans that we have in town suck if you've ever read them and I've read all of them there's nothing in it we talk about streetscape streetscape does not bring people to our town and there are people who love coming to West
Orange because it's it's nice and it's homey and everything but those same people go out to Montlair those same people go to South Orange those same people go to other towns not here and I'm a developer i know folks i have I know some of the largest developers in the country that I could bring into town
if it was open for them i talked to other business owners who now were being uh uh police are showing up in their their facilities for whatever reason right that's not a friendly environment so I think it's absurd about
how we talk about moving forward and each of you bears accountability i don't care how long you've been here if you've not done anything except talk about fiscal responsibility I hear you're talking about bringing a a planner in do you know what a planner costs long term you have an issue with the zoning board also with the planning board now being
paid and you want to bring a planner who will only go out and ask someone else to do some of the things he or she is unable to do which means you pay more money as opposed to planning may cost you a quarter million dollars plus in pension and lifelong payments whatnot that's not f being fiscally responsible
and as a financial person I can do the due diligence i've been reading the master plan i'm considering writing the damn thing up myself because none of you have sat down and actually done anything about regarding it and I don't care what's going internally it's the people in this room that elected many of you
right and I'm not sure what we're getting for that higher taxes my child's not in in my opinion $20,000 i'm like what the hell am I paying for i hear times when people reach out to you you don't reach back to them follow up i'm like "What the
hell?" Right so if I were a business person I am a business person you were part of my I would fire all of you or at least put you on on some type of of of of academ some some referendum to see how you can do better and I'm charging you with doing better i'm so tired of
hearing about the altercation you have with the mayor and not moving anything forward and I guarantee you I'm telling you now that may make a difference in our other groups that if you don't do the right thing we are all going to make sure that none of you are here that's a promise my name is Richard Rose
nice catch just please pull the microphone down so you can get near your Thank you sure pamela Beardsley Edisonia Terrace i live down here a couple blocks away actually not too
far um let's see i'm speaking on um the uh leaf blower ordinance um so some of you uh may know from my last um when I was here at the last meeting um I was doing some
investigation for uh batteries to outfit our food truck that we're getting for our business and so that made me realize that I did research at least a year before um as far as economics what it would put
out for me what you know savings um all that type of stuff so I actually um applied for a grant that my family business actually ended up winning we were um finalists within the nation out of 400 contestants
um and winning that grant money enabled me to follow through with um this fantastic plan that I had of mine for um the batteries for our truck so anyways the the food brand is named CIT Foods and their motto is Huntos Me
which is together is better um and so I'm I'm just um here speaking on behalf of my um community down here downtown my Hispanic comm community our shop is in the valley so I see a lot of um
landscaping businesses um we have friends that have businesses within the landscaping community um so I just wanted to put a little thing together hopefully I have some time good evening members of the town council i come
before you not to oppose progress but to advocate for a practical and inclusive approach one that considers the financial realities of small business owners and residents before implementing a ban on gas-powered leaf blowers we all recognize the environment environmental and health benefits of transitioning to
electric leaf blowers reducing noise pollution lowering emissions and improving air quality are worthy goals that benefit our entire community however before enacting a ban that could place a financial strain on residents and small business owners we must first
explore financial assistance programs that make this transition feasible for everyone not just those who can afford it fortunately many other states and municipalities have implemented financial incentives to ease this transition programs like the South Coast
Air Quality Management District in California and the Rhode Island Office of Energy Resources offer rebates covering a portion of the cost of electric equipment making the switch more affordable even New Jersey is actively considering legislation that would provide tiered rebate amounts
based on the cost of the equipment if our town truly wants to encourage cleaner alternatives we should first explore similar financial options rather than immediately imposing a ban that many residents and business owners may not be able to comply with in addition
to financial support I believe the town council must also consider a significant that there is a cons significant lack of awareness within our community about this potential ban many of us um from the BO from the board of education found out about this last week at the board of
education meeting where they were talking about um deficits and and just incredible um debt that they have a large number of West Orange residents are either uninformed or just or just now learning about it
there has been minimal public outreach to my belief and the community I feel deserves better before a ban or phase out takes place I believe the town should hold educational meetings in various parts of our district
distributeformational pamphlets and make flyers available in multiple languages if necessary people deserve the opportunity to fully understand the reasoning behind such a decision as well as the financial and logistical challenges they may face without proper
outreach and education a ban will feel abrupt and unfair to many of our community i urge the town council to state to take a step back and prioritize both financial assistance programs and and community education before enacting
a ban let's explore rebates grants subsidies trade in programs and partnerships with manufacturers to make electric leaf blowers more accessible and let's engage the public properly ensuring that all residents homeowners landscapers and small business owners
are fully informed and have a chance to voice their concerns a transition that considers both financial well-being and public awareness will be far more effective in my opinion than a rushed mandate that could lead to unended consequences such as job losses higher
cost of home higher costs for homeowners or even non-compliance duei due to financial hardship let's move forward together not by imposing an immediate ban but by creating a pathway that allows everyone in our community to transition fairly and affordably thank you so
much okay good evening my name is Dean Weiss i live at 11 Tannery Lane in Rosland um I've been in business in a landscaping business for over 35 years and it's it's fairly easy for me to see
through the extreme comments on both sides about you know what actually it is like to operate and be around a backpack blower so but I have 35 years experience so I'm just wondering what information you guys
have that you're making your decision on so just recently your town contract came up to bid for the landscape maintenance and it went out for a two-month contract in an attempt to see how much it was if they maintain
the gas powered blowers and what it would be to be the electric backpacks and I'm going to tell you if that bid came back today and there whatever increase or same it was is not reflective of what this bill
imposes this bill or whatever you call it is a 2-year bill the second year holding the most repercussions by banning the big blowers in the fall which represents 15% of your budget which if you go by what have happened in
other towns from my business specifically that that 15% has doubled in cost so if you have intentions if you want to base your decision on on purple fumes and noise that's irrelevant of the
budget but I can get back to that but if you're going to base it on finances you should wait 2 months till this contract comes up and you should bid out your next contract for a 2-year period because it is reflective of the
end of the second year of what happens to your budget so what just happened with the budget you just whatever information you got from finances is not providing you with enough information back to so if you're basing on finances and you want to make the appropriate
decision pause this send the contract out for two years which get and give the people the option just like you did this time give me a bid for gas and give me a bid for electric and then you'll be able to see exactly what you're going to be up against if you pass this now back to
the fumes and the noise if that's how you want to base your decision most of the times I hear these people talking about I want to be outside i want to be on my patio go entertain guests the happy median in the other towns I work for is to use the electric in the summer
months and it's okay for us because in the summer months there's minimal need to use the electric backpack so it's not a big sacrifice also by now most businesses have the electric backpack so you bid out the first two months of your contract after spring cleanup which is
heavy on gas powered machines and eliminated the fall maintenance so you really can't tell if there's much of a difference between that but it does offer a happy median when people are out in the spring nowadays and in the fall generally mostly most time in the fall
it's cold enough where people aren't out anymore during the day during the week they're not entertaining on their patio and the windows are shut so whatever gas that you believe may be coming out of these machines in an extreme fashion it should be okay because the windows are closed and it's
necessary the other thing about the contract that you want to set up is a lot of these people on one side will say you could mulch the leaves you could leave the leaves in the beds you guys have come accustomed just like all the other customers of the type of service that
represents West Orange the beds are nice and neat and everything like that if you're going to balance your decision on people telling you could mulch 5 in of leaves and you could leave the leaves in the bed and create a habitat for moths and insects it needs to be in your
contract i'd say this is an acceptable rate of service because right now landscapers are trying to compete with the service they were been providing with inadequate machines so and lastly there is no substitute for a gas powered
blower there's none if if you have a problem with the two-stroke backpack ban it for the whole year we could use the electric one in the fall but you cannot ban the gas powered blower and maintain the schools i've seen the sheet of a 100 stops that you guys maintain the parks
Denm Park Colgate Park all these all these fields it's not possible and they say you're allowed to buffalo blower turbine blower it doesn't provide you with the detail in small spaces to keep it out of the street to keep it out of the water to keep it out of people's backyards so I appreciate your time and
effort thank you very much good evening my name is Michael Jabini i live at 68 Manganger Road here in West Orange uh I am here to speak on the gas blower ordinance uh at first I'd like to applaud the mayor for her courage to uh
put herself out there and veto it and have some common sense because that's what it all really boils down to is actual common sense um I'm not a complete hater of the electric equipment by far not at all um I would like to
speak to all the council members if that's possible you can certainly come back i think she had to take a bio break but uh you can certainly come back and we'll start your time over i'm sorry i will for the It certainly is uh it certainly is not intentional
is there anyone else who'd like to speak good evening Michaela Bennett Old Indian Road um while you wait for councilwoman I uh wanted to uh speak with the council about
the genderneutral bathrooms um I would ask the council members to ask yourselves why the steps of town hall are painted and if you support that and if
you support our LGBTQ community members and then I would ask you what's the harm in making sure that any single service bathroom just says restroom on
it just restroom not men not women restroom i'm straight so for me if it says women fine but it would have been a lot easier for me with a son to have
been able to use any bathroom to assist him when he was younger same is true for when my dad was alive and needed help navigating and negotiating because
of his Alzheimer's would have assisted me to be able to enter any bathroom restroom and not have a male figure or men on the door when it was just one stall one sink
and one toilet and it may be lost on straight individuals what it's like to not be straight and to exist in a very straight world and so I would encourage all of
you those of you who this isn't your learned experience to get to know a different learned experience to get to know what it's like to not be who you are i would encourage white people to know what it's like to be non-white i would
encourage men to read up on what it's like to be women and I would encourage straight people before they make decisions about something that literally I looked up is going to cost 12 to $20 to change out a
sign and just write restroom on the front of the door the expense think about risk benefit um think about the reward that it provides to individuals who don't want
to have to make a decision about which restroom to use i it just seems like a very simple request and ask i even contemplated you know in my mind sitting over here um how much would it cost could we like start a campaign and just
gather the money so that it's a so that it's a non-issue but I would really encourage each of you to actually consider if there's no harm why not make this a reality for people if you're willing to paint our town hall
steps why aren't you willing to you know agree to something that just represents inclusivity and acceptance it's just the right thing to do so I would encourage you to pass thank you hi um excuse me hi my name is Zas
Academy i live at Ford Dolls Avenue and I noticed that a landscaper wearing a steel hat was not made to give his address but I had to give mine i noticed that there are different rules for the landscapers they can hoot and howl and boo at people who want restrooms um that
are unisex but you know uh the rest of us can't applaud or make noises um it kind of shows the kind of impunity that the the mindset and I really really hate to think this of some of the landscaping
people the lobbyists and and uh their special interests they don't think about the residents what's good for us what's bad for us how much it's impacting us you talk about windows closed you know I wish I could turn around and talk to these people but I have to talk to you
so I will okay so I got asthma after I moved to this town i didn't have asthma before I moved to this town i moved here in 1993 i acquired asthma by 1995 what does that say about living in suburbia
i'm I probably falling on deaf ears now but you know mayor with all due respect and I do respect you I find it laughable that on your campaign you posed in a picture in a newspaper with an electric blower in your hand and now you're talking and railing against
them uh it's upside down world I guess okay so I want to remind everybody I'm going to calm down a little bit i don't want to yell at anybody because you guys have all been yelled at enough um first of all yes we don't have uh
male and female bathrooms in our homes it's a no-brainer right you know we could all use the same bathrooms I think uh wouldn't wouldn't that be nice inclusivity caring about the uh
marginalized people i'm a senior i'm disabled due to asthma and no one seems to care about me more than they care about the landscapers i'm sitting minding my own business since co I started I have to work from home and with the windows closed because of the landscapers and the fumes are coming
through the windows i have multiple air purifiers all over my house and I'm still being attacked in my own home where I've paid taxes and I haven't had one child in the school system so I hope the board of ed can hear this that I put
in I calculated over $320,000 towards the board of education since I've lived here i haven't had one child in the school system so you could take 70,000 to outfit your so-called 10 10 units that you need and have batteries all day long and by the way
I've become somewhat of an expert on how much these things cost exactly and what it takes to configure them i've talked to numerous distributors commercial commercial distributors numerous landscapers who've transitioned who know how to put it together who are willing
to help us out what are we talking about we're talking about transitioning one piece of lawn equipment oh by the way I really felt bad for the teenage boy who was here who said he got electric lawn mower and trimmer but not the backpack blower i could only think about the
health hazards he's exposed to by the way these are OSHA violations these tools does anybody know that do they know that backpack gas power blowers are OSHA violations i know I'm starting all around because I have not Please keep
your comments to yourself unless you're public speaking i'm sorry i'm sorry for interrupting i just I hear people talking while you're talking please give me I would not allow them to do that to them and I will try not to allow them to do that to you okay thank you and I
asked for more time since please 20 seconds more the home as a homeowner I switched over okay sorry most homeowners don't have gas backpack blowers because they're too cumbersome and dirty and you don't need them okay i switched over i
got I outfitted my entire house so that my landscaper could use electric mower trimmer hedge cutter blower and he does just fine and it cost me less than $500 for all of those tools i have become an
expert on commercial tools still is a bad product sir the one with the cap booing the unisex bathrooms it's a bad product i don't know why you do you just said if you steal out again I'm going to have the police
officer remove you please be quiet and respectful i can help you find do your research since I've done so much research to find the good products the ones that work the ones that last over an hour i can tell
you that the numbers that you're quoting are are crazy of course you don't want to spend that i can also tell you that none of you are thinking about fiscal responsibility because after you get your money back after 9 months you're
going to break even return on investment and after that for 10 to 14 years you're not going to have to buy any gas any batteries or fix the blowers it's more responsible to transition fiscally environmentally
i think I get an extra 10 seconds um the videos and picture thing okay so now aside from the lithium batteries that we should all take out of our phones and our computers because they're so dangerous we should also get rid of all
our Ring cameras and all our phone cameras and when somebody breaks and enters into our house or porch pirates we can't tell the cops well this is who did it okay thank you for your Thank you i'm sorry for my frustration let's start all over please okay again
Michael Jabini 68 Manganger Road West Orange um as I stated earlier um I've owned a landscape company here in West Orange since 1986 um been maintaining homes in West
Orange and all the neighboring townships throughout that whole period um efficiently effectively and to satisfaction of my clients uh this ban that you are uh proposing to keep in
place um is going to affect not only my livelihood I mean obviously because there is a a monetary uh value to it but it will definitely affect my clients um I do have clients in Maplewood and I do
have clients in Montlair um and it has affected their cost now they can I'm assuming afford the extra cost i'm being fair because my crews keep track of the time that they keep from start to finish
um and not only we spending additional time but we also have additional labor um the clauses that you're hearing as far as the the purple smoke and and uh and the the falfumes and and the and the
dust particles um be aware that when you're mulching leaves on a dry day the dust that is created is far more and harmful than what the backpack or any blower is going to create not a hater as I said previously of the
electric equipment it has its time and its place but I can tell you firsthand from experience which none of the opposition is saying they're all giving you their opinions i'm telling you from fact
because I work with the equipment my crews work with the equipment and we know what it can do we know the capacity that it has and we also know the productivity that is created the cost yes just last week we
had a blower that wasn't working the crew said "We have a blower that's down." Okay take it to be repaired unfortunately it's out of warranty you know what they do to repair these blowers they don't they don't repair
them it was an additional Yes $900 you may call it false i'll show you my receipts for another blower with the batteries okay now we're talking about blower and optimal working time the
optimal working time is 15 20 minutes and that's under optimal conditions okay these batteries are um affected by many variables the weather especially i know of some colleagues that went to go to work in the morning
and it was a very cold autumn day all their batteries were dead so now instead of going out and being productive no they have to wait because that's the first piece of equipment that needs to be used they have to wait and hopefully get them to warm up to recharge
so again coming to you and speaking from experience not from well it's bothering me well it bothers me too and I'm fearful i'm fearful too we all know the fire hazards
that these batteries cause and you may laugh i could hear you laughing but it's fact you see it all over the news is it your cell phone battery no is it the ring battery no it are these larger lithium-ion batteries
okay i have an establishment here in town that I am deathly afraid and if I start to raise my voice will I seem more credible like some of the others that spoke maybe I should but I am deathly afraid to come down to my shop one
morning and see it burned to the ground what will all of you do for me at that point because you told me this is what I have to do so will you help me i don't think so
no that's all I have to say thank you thank you richard Leonard Pleasant Valley Way West Arch first I'd like to thank the mayor for the veto second I'd like to thank Joyce Ruden because you sent my battery business through the roof um but it
don't work i I'm I'm here we keep talking about this i send 20 to 30 of these batteries to Lowe's or Home Depot a month and they're all brand new batteries under warranty so it was
stated last week that or two weeks ago that the batteries last and they don't have to be recycled that That's baloney i personally take 20 to 30 a month to Home Depot or Lowe's second of
all you can't recycle this battery it's phosphorus you can recycle cobalt this battery cannot be recycled it ends up in the landfill so you could say whatever you want you could look all this stuff up it's a fact second to that is last
week they talked about raking leaves that's really not scalable how does a landscaper show up on my property with a bunch of rakes and rake leaves then we talked about children oh the children we're worrying about the children and all over the place we got children how about the children in that are
harvesting the batteries are we not worried about them because they're not here so we're worried about our children because that's important and I have two and they went through the whole school system but we're not talking about the children that are mining all this stuff right so we can't recycle it
we're not worried about those kids if they live to 20 years old that's great because we don't see them so we're really not looking at the whole picture we got Montlair that had the lawsuit so what happens when that happens this law firm hires a heavy duty law firm that
specializes in this and we got double bills running right that lawsuit's still going on that that last mayor I mean that last uh um counselor died it just was reopened again this isn't over you got the golf courses now you want them
to start working at 9 or 10 o'clock they start at four or five in the morning so how how do they fit into this picture because I can tell you a golf course because I've given them all demos cannot use a battery leaf blower to do what they have to do the township cannot use
a batterypowered leaf blower to effectively do what they have to do you've heard from numerous landscapers telling you they can't do what they have to do with the with the ordinance you're passing sure they can do it in June July and August but they can't do it in the spring and they can't do it in the fall
but we're just turning a deaf ear to them we're not these people that are the professionals we're not even listening to we're listening to people coming from other towns saying they're an expert they're an expert on what that guy that just spoke is an expert he's been doing this for 35 years he has a
batterypowered piece of equipment i just sold the guy in Montlair a batterypowered leaf blower and the reason he bought it is because his neighbor turned him in and now he don't speak to his neighbor so is that what we're going to have here somebody else said "Well we're going to take pictures." It don't work we're not there
yet so why don't you table it why don't you make a referendum like they've talked about and let the technology get there it's coming but we're not there and I keep saying the same thing over and over nobody listens because we want to jam this thing through and and we're
not there and I sell it all i I I've I've given demos for you guys to use i have a a a Greenworks commercial leaf blower which is a batterypowered blower two batteries and a charger for $600 a lot of the landscapers are using them it
don't work it just don't have the power you need to be upwards of two $3,000 for a package right and when you start extrapolating that number out for what you need for the time frame you need
it's costly and and I sell it all so we can listen to homeowners that are going to Lowe's and Home Depot but that's not your league we're just not there and I don't know why you It's common sense i don't know why you're not listening to this uh as somebody selling the
equipment and dealing with all these the golf courses and the towns and the landscapers everybody's telling me the same thing how does the golf course that starts early in the morning who has to blow leaves out of a out of a sand trap it just we don't have the power but
nobody's listening to them right i guess when there's a lawsuit you listen when this law firm has to hire another law firm to defend it and we're spending a million dollars in legal fees so wait we can put a backpack blower through what sense does that make i
mean you've given me a lot of business by putting this this through i'm here telling you with all the business I'm doing it doesn't work it works in the summer June July and August most of these guys have this stuff
but to do a total ban just it's not there thank you sally Malanga Ridge Road i disagree gentlemen the electric blowers work fine at my house i have two
acres 200 trees who said that officer please escort the fellow in the balloon shirt out they shout that we should move to Montlair we're not
entitled to our properties or some respect for the high taxes we pay or for being customers of these gentlemen behind us where is your customer service dean Weiss spoke he was the only
one that actually understood what residents are experiencing and is actually making some decent proposals whereas the others are just nonsensical whiny complaining busy bodies
lobbying unwilling to change if we if we still had horse and buggies they they would be the ones driving them resisting cars so let the air darken in West
Orange let the butterflies seek neighboring towns mayor Susan McCartney has vetoed the most significant public legislation health legislation West Orange has seen in over a decade maybe ever it's only a summer
ban on polluting gas powered leaf blowers and a transition to electric in a year from now though she herself uses an electric blower she blocks the path to clean air peaceful neighborhoods and saving money
for our residents the mayor's veto is not only a bad decision it's a diversion ignoring achievable and affordable measures that would protect our famil family's lungs and ears we have informed the public we've
had petitions we've had emails we've had endless ad nauseium public comment and debate about this but some days West Orange feels like an unregulated industrial zone yet
without giving residents the basic protections that OSHA would mandate sure landscapers shouted at us to go to Montlair maybe we should the landscapers are smarter over there
they figured out how to make it work let's also correct the misinformation being spread by the mayor and her cohorts on on Facebook and other places the mayor claims autumn leaf collection costs
$482,000 and that would double or triple if the town switched to electric blowers but the reality is different electric blowers work just as effectively and having only to buy 14 electric blowers has somehow been
exaggerated to $200,000 a wild and false claim meant to confuse residents and give hope to landscapers as for schools why would we continue to allow benzene carbon
monoxide and oil particulate in the air around students these should never be used on school property school property hardly even has any trees as for enforcement the mayor says her staff is too busy that photos won't help but that's exactly what makes
photobased enforcement smart it reduces the burden on police we treat it like any other property maintenance issue let's get sensible if you see something wrong you say something it's been done residents have a right to protect
themselves and we have no law to protect us from this noise and pollution as of today we must respond to the idea of a referendum there is no referendum on clean air people don't get to vote or decide to pollute our
air and to the council the mayor and her company it's your job to protect us from health threats don't allow this mayor to manipulate you and ignore the residents who requested help in addressing this noise and dirty air that's wrong they
figured it out in California in Washington DC Montlair Maplewood and lots of other places we should join those smart towns i'm proud of our council don't be swayed don't yield to misinformation or
fear of change when public smoking was banned people complained now it's accepted as normal this too shall pass and when it does West Orange will be an even more coveted place to live thank you for doing your job
president members of the council good evening i didn't expect to speak about your name and address thank you Council President i didn't expect to speak about single occupancy genderneutral bathrooms but
hearing the comments tonight the township should support that it has been the law in all of New York State for 5 years it's simple simply support it provide the LGBTQ community
with the dignity and the safety that they deserve as for the gas powered leaf blowers I'm old enough to have seen an astonishing number of changes where
government has led for the health safety and welfare of its citizens seat belts remember the complaints about seat belts women would say our dresses will wrinkle men would
say my tie will get wrinkled who even thinks about that now how about unled gasoline motor hazards say the valves of my engines will be ruined who even thinks about that
now banning smoking on airplanes people complained they couldn't last two and a half hours on their flight to Miami airlines said "We're doomed you're going to kill the industry who thinks about that
now how about banning smoking in restaurants again predictions of doom for the restaurant industry well have you tried to get a reservation at uh one of the hot trendy restaurants in Greenwich
Village how about airbags and cars too dangerous people said they'll just activate unnecessarily you'll hear the technology isn't there that's what people were saying people say that about the leaf blowers who even thinks about the airbag
in their car now catalytic converters the auto industry said too expensive can't afford to build cars with catalytic converters who has a car without a catalytic converter kids wearing helmets on bikes
we see a kid without a helmet and we think bad parents how about fluor fluorocarbon refrigerant the air conditioner industry said we can't operate our equipment without it who even thinks about that issue now
that it's been banned by the Montreal protocol government needs to lead on certain issues not follow government needs to lead for the safety the health and the
welfare of the community thank you is there anyone else who would like to speak i would just like to Lawrence Cohen Lincoln Avenue West Orange New Jersey i'd like to start to by saying that
uh many of the in the in the back the landscapers have been rude i can it's been hard for me to hear and I think that's a disrespect of the council and the council members should take that into consideration in their vote and how people are being treated here
um okay i'll start in December 2023 South uh S SoCal Public Radio ran an expose on the issue of Pasadena California glass uh gas
blowers uh um G I'm sorry gas blower ban that transition to electric battery alternatives now they they had a a ordinance just like us here in 2022 it had a transition period we have a transition period of two years they
had a transition period that actually did have um uh some financial assistance to the very small landscapers and that's something you know this everything's not going to be perfect but that's something we should consider we should consider
anyhow the radio station interviewed a 55year-old man uh he ran a mom and pop landscape business it was him his two sons and his wife did the bookkeeping uh he um his name was
Mr ernes Mr florencio Molina 55 years old i'm going to paraphrase try to paraphrase the article i mean the the the radio program and this is what I wrote from
paraphrasing he said uh Francisco said uh I'm sorry um Lorencio said I'm not long in this business these electric blowers are slower and weaker in work output and noticeably heavier on my back
the cost is initially higher for electric battery but over time I see no need for these no maintenance no gasoline electrics to be so expensive i see that the gas
uh blower has a lot of maintenance and the electric has much less i'm not sure but I think that over time over a 5-year period these gas blowers will be the same or maybe even less expensive and and gasoline is going up here in
California but then he says "But damage has been done my breathing is belabored by the workplace induced emphyma lung scarring and heart disease that I've developed i never smoked anything i I eat healthy but I'm still
chronically not able to breathe well and the docs say the damage was cumulative and permanent these gasoline tail pipes it's a tail pipe i wear it on my back it's in my face it's in my lungs and there's nothing I can do now so I leave it to the new generation of lawn care
and landscapers who are the daily blowers the workers on the on the ground they're mostly in their 20s and 30s some are in their teens to get out and carry these heavier electric backpack blowers that they can carry more easily on their back than me and and they the difference in the weight you know maybe they can
handle it but I do hope the batteries become lighter because over time I must admit I at my age I can't really carry this heavier uh these heavier batteries so this is an issue and I hope over time there aren't in innovations um but I I love the so much
quieter electrics i mean it's it's it's a world of difference i feel less stress i don't feel that my ears are popping it's I don't feel like it's a grind job i don't feel this job is something that grinds you up
um it's great it's great to have low noise zero fumes by my head no gasoline vapors going in my mouth up my nose and in my eyes for most of all I want my children and relatives to stick it out in landscaping and I don't want them to
get so sick like me from the job I love and um that that's the paraphrasing i would say just from more research in Pasadena it doesn't you know there there's problems in these these ordinances um the town has had to um has had to
have the police and the department of public work do the enforcement it couldn't be neighbor to neighbor they saw that that was too um that was too much of a snitch or neighbor neighboring relations became toxic so they relied on
the police and the police initially didn't want to do it now they just make a regular call for that in Los Angeles itself many leaf blowers uh continue to be uh gas a lot of people just don't follow the rules and uh so that is another problem but anyhow California is
becoming Your time is up uh an electric electric gas blower zone thank you so much thank you Mr cohen is there anybody else who'd like to speak hello everyone good night my name is Nordi Gibbs uh Treeman Avenue in Orange
co-owner of Pure Natural Vibes i forgot how uncomfortable these chairs were man we have spent a lot of hours you know discussing the ordinance um but we didn't finish there is a
second part to that which uh you know in in turns has to deal with renewing the cannabis licenses um we've been operational for six months they say when you do what you love it's not work
lies definitely work but love also um so while our license is still valid with the state the the resolution that was given to us was April of 2024 um and in the ordinance it states that it's valid for one year upon issuance
however there's not a renewal process that was discussed with the prior council or the task force so there's nothing in place for us to I guess submit or renew the license that we have from the township um so it
is our duty to report everything to the state including any expiration any changes must be submitted um and I would have submitted a renewed resolution but there's not a process to get that renewal so I do ask the council
until that is figured out if you can grant the extension to the current resolution that we have that would be great um renewals are not challenging with the state you're in a portal if anything regarding your business has changed you submit that upon renewing
your cannabis license as my husband stated before nothing has changed within six months except for how tired I am but I would appreciate um there would be some kind of vote to just renew the um extend the resolution we were granted
until the resol um the renewal process is figured out and we'll happy to provide whatever that is needed okay that's it thanks guys thanks thank you Miss Gibbs is there anyone else who'd like to speak at public comment
mr president if I may while we're waiting uh there are people in the Zoom audience with their hand raised could you just kindly make an announcement that there's no public comment from the Yes to those of you who are on the the Zoom and are raising your hand in order to speak we have suspended com public
comment from the Zoom uh temporarily we're working to uh get it back uh but you you will not be able to speak at public comment uh from the Zoom please go ahead speaker K
hi Jessica same thing excuse me are these copies of two copies of Yes can you share them across only two sorry i That's I only printed three and I I'll give you the third can you hear me okay jessica Stolesburg Fairfield Street Mont
Clear this doesn't Are you able to hear me yes that's better um what I've given you is from a manufacturer that's actually been referenced many times tonight in
the room and this is from a rep that I've been in touch with and what he prepared and shared with me is he shows as you can see the return on investment of gas versus electric there are apps here that you guys can actually plug in
your own information just that's for this company other leading companies have the same thing which is really helpful for you you can start to factor in how many blowers do we need how many employees do we need how many hours do they spend how many acres do they cover how much gas do they you know how much
gas are they usually using and you can see this number one line goes up and one line stays the same so for people in the audience you've got an initial investment here just these are general numbers it'll be specific to your
community and to each landscaper's business gas initial investment $9,000 battery $20,000 it's double okay estimated annual cost to operate gas $9,000 battery
$1,000 3 years later total investment of gas $37,000 battery $23,000 so all of the concerns from your board of education and it's not that they're not legitimate they are they
will end up saving money as will your DPW please remember that um I wasn't planning to come tonight particularly after you know being referred to as an outside agitator two weeks ago and I felt that you guys were basically at the
finish line that you did have a super majority i've learned more about the politics of West Orange as has um people watching West Orange right now across the nation um I got a call last night from someone on the West Coast who works very carefully on this very issue she wanted to find out if I knew what was
going on in West Orange she goes "I think they're about to pass it." And I said "I believe they are." She goes "But the mayor vetoed." And I explained "Well but they have a supermajority." Some point today I learned that that super majority may be weakened i truly hope that's not true because it means that
somebody of the supermajority who's had a very clear conviction on a commitment to public health has changed their mind and I really hope that's not in play here as many many people talked about tonight there's also this interest in a referendum on public health and I would
truly like you to find in your own history books has there ever been a time when West Orange felt that science and evidence should be decided by public opinion through a referendum and I'm not sure you're going to find that and in
Montlair our referendums are about uh changing to an elected school board about um a bond referendum so we could improve our facilities um you know you guys t I mean that's come up tonight what does West Orange use referendums for what does it not use them for is
public health the right time to decide that public opinion makes a decision that as I said two weeks ago Mount Sinai made a decision on how dangerous the gas leaf blower is it does that now go out to 60,000 people because Mount Si it you
know like please consider whether or not a referendum on public health makes sense um the mayor seems to have departed which to me I'm I'm surprised on something that's been so important to her for so long her veto there was not
one mention of health not one mention of health her concerns are enforcement and the golf courses mostly enforcement one thing about enforcement to remember that for everyone who worries about enforcement do you change your speed
limits because people are still going to speed do you say "Let's not have speed limits here because we're having trouble with speeding." There may be enforcement issues you will learn to work with them the wrinkles can get smoothed out so another thing is golf courses one of the
reasons that the golf courses want to make sure all the work's done before the golfers there is there is no golfer who wants gas leaf blowers in operation next to him during a golf camp it would be so disruptive to the leisure activity that they pay for so you have to think about
why is it that they're done the woman who has this amazing sounding food truck and has put so much thought and care into her electric thing maybe it's she wants it electric because her customers don't want to stand in the fumes of a gas truck while they wait for her amazing food so these are all things to
be thinking about and um the last thing is you know you have someone in is up okay thank you very much thank you is there anyone else Mr river we are so happy you're here they just gravitate to you they tell you
don't get to go home please go ahead hi my name is Daria Paxton i live at 7 Greenwood Avenue i'm sorry could you just repeat that name my name is Daria Paxton i live at seven Greenwood Avenue thank you um I am um I'm really glad somebody brought up Pasadena
California um it is a you know as as anybody who's been to Southern California knows it's a pretty different climate they don't really have seasons the trees are quite different and there's a group that was formed there by Dan Mabe called AXA which stands for the American Green Zone Alliance and their
entire purpose is to help anyone transition away from the use of gas powered tools so they do a lot of real world testing and they have a lot of empirical data on their website they share this openly they do advisory with
towns schools universities anyone um I'm sorry could I just ask you to try to uh speak closer to the microphone please thank you um I implore you to look at their website reach out to them i believe that their northeast
representative reached out to the town council a couple of weeks ago uh one of the ways that they actually helped implement the total transfer to electric tools in Pasadena was to get the
residents of Pasadena to buy their own tools and be responsible for charging them so they were available when a landscaper showed up to use them which somebody mentioned here and I think that that is one really good way to address
this problem um they and they are a national organization so they will help with that um I wanted to share this letter because it is current uh we actually just found
out about this last week but the uh the lawsuit in Monontlair is ongoing and apparently the town asked uh through their lawyer to reach a resolution i don't know what that means you probably know what that means better than I would uh so just to
set the record clear on that the lawsuit is in federal court still so um that's the main thing I wanted to say other than that if any of you happen to read the
uh know about the homegrown national park um one of the things that is very clear is that in dealing with ecological issues mainly because so much of the land in this country is privately owned the solution has to involve
landscapers um and I really hope that you guys put effort at least as much effort into cooperation and education and getting people to choose to use electric tools as much as they can and encourage their
neighbors to do that too um as as well as the issue of having the the gas fumes in your face which nobody's arguing that these are not a problem but it is a problem and it's
even more a problem with other two-stroke engines so as I've said before you should be if you're serious about this you should be looking at banning all two-stroke engines and I don't mean that physicious phys faciciously but you there's no logical
reason to be banning the four cycle blower which is really important and yes it's important for the for the golf courses which happen to be the largest if I'm not mistaken taxpayer in West Orange so um thank you for your consideration please put this up for a
referendum is there anyone else who'd like to speak um no no we're not going to do that i I appreciate your offer is there anyone else who'd like to speak for please please is there anyone else who'd like to speak at public comment
seeing no nobody speaking I'm going to close public comment at 9:39 and ask if there any of my colleagues would like to respond councilwoman Castelino sure please
lots unpacked tonight thank you to everyone who came this evening everybody was very passionate about the different topics and whether I agree or disagree with some of the commentary I do always
appreciate you coming forward and really speaking from your hearts because I definitely that you know I definitely felt that from all of you each and every one of you and and I appreciate that i'm gonna start off with the the Gibbs
because I want them to get out of here early and uh thank you for your investment in our town and for struggling through our process with uh our cannabis ordinance uh madame clerk
uh went where where'd she go she's not here anyway when I saw your email which I saw it later because just so you know folks we get a lot of emails lately like on all all these different topics and
it's really really hard and and I we go back and comb them and I I could I'll speak for myself but miss missing a lot of them and then finding them and going back i sent an email right right to the mi to the chief because I'm like I
thought we went over the renewal process it's in the ordinance and so she has a a copy of the ordinance on her phone um so it is in a particular section in the aud uh or um in the original cannabis ordinance with in regards to your
renewal it's something like 60 days prior to the date of expiration there's a process there for you to follow so I don't know why has I'll defer to the chief can you talk to that i think the confusion is Oh your mic chief you got
to I I think the confusion is it's not clear that the application that was filled out initially is the same application for the renewal uh Mr rivera and I just looked at the ordinance and that is the case but it's not very clear so we probably want to do something on
our online portal so that the retailers know that that's the same application um if you recall the previous council disbanded the cannabis task force so I think that was that's part of the problem there's really the retailers
have nobody to go to so um I believe the Gibbs when they say that they sent an email on February 27th i've dealt with them they're honest people i have no reason whatsoever to doubt it but we don't have it neither the clerk or I can find it anywhere so it probably got sent
into the abyss maybe a typo in the email address or something i don't know but um if you fill out the application um that's all you really need to do mr rivera will speak more about the legal process for council um what they need to do to give you the extension
okay thank Thank you i guess we could Do you want to talk you want me to address that now different comments on it what a great idea thank you Mr river sure so um looked at the communications as well as the ordinance which is
section 5-34.6D um which requires renewals must be submitted 60 days prior to the expiration of a license except the applicant can request an extension of 30 days but that must be submitted 30 days prior to their expiration this applicant did submit their request for an
extension um which I did see 30 days prior so um they do have good cause to request the extension and the council can grant that i can't speak to the initial request that uh Chief Abbott spoke about but I will say um I would recommend that we
create through through the administration and the council approved a renewal application and place it online so that any other applicants can simply grab that and submit that um in compliance with our ordinance and that shouldn't be too difficult to do and that would clean this issue up but I
would recommend based on what I've heard that you take action to provide them with the extension based on what I've seen thank you Mr just as a followup thank you very much for that it we've heard the suggestion from Mr gibbs that we do something this evening is that what you're suggesting as well yeah I'm
sorry apologize if I'm not clear i would recommend you take a vote to pro grant their extension request so you may have to add that to the agenda by vote and then then vote subsequent on their request for a 30-day extension okay so we could do that on pending matters i
think we should another great idea are we agreed yes okay yeah uh could somebody uh think about what the wording of the Mr rivera yes I will do that for you when you're finished with moving
paper from one part of the council chambers to another if you could just come up with that that would be wonderful thank you uh um council president can we do that now so that the Gibbs don't have to sit here all night we'll do it they I think Miss Gibbs mentioned how uh pleasant and
comfortable it was sitting in the Anyway I I'm sorry i don't mean to make fun of you i know we're causing you quite a bit of grief i would recommend against that i would follow your agenda and put it in where you're going to deal with resolutions that's the appropriate way to deal with it okay otherwise you may have to do it for everyone else that
wants you to do something um yes I agree so are we agreed we'll wait till the Okay Councilwoman Castleina you had the floor thank Thank you Council President okay so one issue uh clarified so so thank
you folks for your patience and I'm glad we're going to be able to resolve it um okay so I'm going to go back a couple years ago when uh I first got on the council
and there were folks um advocating for use of uh single-use plastic bags and I got a lot of heat because I voted no at the time mainly because it wasn't mandated uh by the state where I felt
that's where the legislation should be going through the through the state and eventually uh it it became a state uh mandate and everyone complied so we don't have to worry about hurting our local business owners because everyone in New Jersey has to comply with it i
kind of feel the same way about a lot of what we've been talking about lately um you know we we start the the the leaf blowers i did not support this ordinance from from the beginning i always felt
strongly that um there should be education through the environmental commission uh to and uh to educate our business owners and our residents on on the use um I
feel something of that magnitude should be something that should be passed at uh the higher level within the the state if if the leaf blowers are that dangerous and a health hazard um so I was never for that i also felt that the batteries
um coming from where they're made from with China and some of the remarks were made tonight i always did not support that and um I didn't feel that um you know you're you're trading one health issue for for another
situation um so so yeah I I I've been a longtime advocate of um just not just staying status quo but educating and eventually transitioning with that being said I was
surprised no one this evening realized that we have a ordinance on later this evening uh 2905 um lawn care registry that each resident if you have a lawn care professional you're going to
have to register that company uh with the township and if you do not your first offense is $100 your second offense is $200 and any subsequent offense an amount not to exceed $500 so again we we talked about the
last meeting privacy for for the veterinarians to uh to uh report dogs uh you know that aren't licensed in our community i I think this is a big privacy issue on for this evening so I
won't be supporting that as well you know I I appreciate my colleagues advocate i I I guess I I I appreciate that your concern for the environment and the health and wealth of of everyone but we're very
diverse community and here's here's where it gets tricky you have folks that are very supportive of this and you have other folks that this is really going to hurt financially and I feel like listening to
a lot of the uh comments this evening um and in the past is that well they'll have to deal with it they're going to have to learn to deal with it and and they'll figure it out you know Pam Beardsley was here this evening with her two young children because she's
concerned about her community where she lives down here off of Main Street and I know folks in this area aren't going to be able to comply and to to get the the new equipment i I know the young man this evening just starting out with his own business is not going to be able to
buy the new equipment and it's it really really is frustrating to sit here unless well you know they could they could figure it out they can't a lot of people are living paycheck to paycheck and I just feel this is another tax for them
in this community so I hope one of my colleagues changes their minds this evening and I think it should be if you are thinking about it should be done this evening because again we're taking time off from the from the business of
the council to talk about this topic once again after a couple years and uh I'm going to commend the mayor for for this veto because it's it's problematic it's problematic for the uh school board myself and uh council president will be
talking to our uh council our board of ed colleagues on Friday morning this is a cost issue for them as well and we're we all know they have a very serious budget so timing is not good for them so if you want to uh
transition I say why does it all have to be done this year obviously the equipment isn't where it needs to be um so that's that's I'm going to stay firm on that so I hope one of you one of you really really change your mind because this is putting a huge financial
burden and I'm not going to discount the health and wellness for folks because I do feel bad for folks with allergies i think this is more about noise so if you want to fix the noise ordinance uh uh Dean's comments tonight with you know different days I mean that will be
inconvenient for a lot and here's the other problem with noise and timing and and whatnot we have a lot of a lot of families in town that work multiple jobs and work at night and you know so they could only landscape their properties
their own properties only paying a landscaper when they can and so I've talked to a few of those folks and they're embarrassed to come here to say they can't afford to buy one of these uh electric uh blowers and and that's a
shame because this is what we're doing to people we're squeezing people out um so I really hope someone reconsiders um folks that came out to support for the um renaming the restrooms just restrooms
i didn't realize that was an option i thought the only option on there was genderneutral um and I'm not opposed to that but again we get out of our lane i feel this is a state item that should be I asked about
to the health department what does the state have on the books for this you'd think bathrooms would be you know mandated by the state of that you have to have one or two or how many and it's more about the signage is as long as
whatever you write on there is in braille is really the the main requirement um as far as um yeah and this does sound like a no-brainer and Miss Bennett I will agree with you this evening um and I'm very very supportive
to the community and I don't appreciate Mr johnson's remarks um I take issue because I've in the past have um seen emails and I know the mayor expressed on
one email uh the mean spirit about some tones i know folks get frustrated everybody gets frustrated because it takes a long time to get items done here in the township but again I I'm I'm not one to push the business owners to tell
them what to do with this i feel this should come from the state and so although for me this is a no-brainer I'm just sticking with what we talked about in January with this council with just
not having certain resolutions um and ordinances and I just feel that we need to stay in our lane because perfect example the all the folks from the Gregory area coming out
I appreciate the PTA i appreciate Mr bars and all the neighbors in that area i knocked on many of their doors and spoke with them uh this past summer when uh I was walking their neighborhoods and it yeah valley uh Valley uh South Valley
Road is dangerous it's really really dangerous and um I appreciate our engineer cuz as soon as you know I would get back from a certain neighborhood um she was right in talking with the chief you know right on top of you know
addressing these really really tough traffic issues in those areas and but it takes money and where are we we never did our 2024 capital budget tonight we have items on this budget and it's not even all the streets
and areas that need to be done in town we have some streets that haven't been touched in over 20 years but because they're dead ends tucked away Hillside Terrace uh uh Carell Street uh or Pleasant Valley Way they're not on these
lists tonight so um we still have a lot more repairs so we have to get back to business folks um we need to really focus on what local government I feel should be about and it's maintaining our infrastructure of course health and
wellness and safety i always say safety is number one and if folks need to feel safe with a bathroom issue i really feel for that but again I feel that should be coming from the state level um so I'll I'm I'm not going to support that this
evening think I cover it i don't make prepared marks before I speak i kind of go on dates with everybody uh came here to speak from the heart so I always try to speak from the heart as well um the issue and excuse me council president
this could be for the chief uh obviously we're not the zoning board we're a separate entity uh but the establishment um across the street I uh council any we don't license them so I don't know what
and we do in regards to the uh new rehab that's coming in across the street from here on Mount Pleasant that's an active application before the land use boards i wouldn't comment on it there i don't think there's anything you can do but is it a permitted use that I I could ask that question i don't know what
variances they may or may not be seeking it's I just know there's an application okay all right so there's really nothing else here at this level but I do appreciate uh the two gentlemen who spoke this evening um and to put it on Jared and uh and
uh Dan um I just want to thank them for coming in to speak about James james James that's it james um so I appreciate both of them coming in to put it on on the on the record so folks can go to the zoning
board to uh to uh give their opinion because I also know there's other residential properties right on Mount Pleasant so I was a little confused about that as well i'm not that well verssed in this application but I believe it's before the zoning board or
a change of Okay and that requirements all right so thank you everyone for coming down to speak tonight i know it's been been long thank you Council President thank you Councilwoman Gver Michael
thank you all for coming out tonight for those of you who voiced your concerns with us to those of you on Zoom listening in um it is already 1000 p.m and we have 1 hour until the administration leaves we still have to vote on things so I'm going to defer my comments until we get to them in the
agenda so that way we're not repeating ourselves again thank you Councilwoman Rudy good evening thank you everybody who is out in the audience and also in our Zoom audience um the gender um neutral bathrooms i was in New York
about a week ago and they have signs on the bathrooms that say humans that's what we should do we need to have humans on the signs in our bathrooms we need to respect this community we need to
respect everybody who has come forward uh for their bravery and to ask for this this is a very simple ask and we can do it and I hope my council colleagues will support that i'm glad to hear that the um issue with pure vibes is going to be addressed um one of the issues that we
have in town is that simple licenses are not easy to access on our website and I really hope that that issue can be addressed um we have licenses for raffles and bingos we do not have licenses to renew your your cannabis
business um that needs to be changed um we need to put up licenses so that people can register their dogs instead of going after veterinarians who um have clients in town and asking them to give over their their um private business um
as for Mr panula thank you so much for always coming and giving us an update on uh what is going on in the West Essex Highlands a very fragile piece of land that we have to watch extraordinarily closely because of the impact it has not only in West Orange but in all of our
surrounding communities um safety uh Mrs robinson thank you for coming out i apologize that I personally have not yet reached out to you i do have your phone number i will reach out to you after this meeting and and try to follow up on some of the
very basic safety issues that you would like to see happen in your in your bathroom to accommodate your needs um as for safety the residents that came to speak to us about all of the safety concerns on Valley and Gregory I have an
appointment to meet with one of the residents on on Friday to look at the Valley area and to walk and see exactly what areas need um sidewalks what areas need better crosswalks um this is an
outrage i lost my sister um in a pedestrian accident and I feel very very strongly about this issue and I am here to help you so please reach out to me i will come visit i will learn the streets and I will help you one of my pledges
that I made when I ran was to get brightly colored crosswalks it's a very simple thing to do i don't know why everything is bogged down in study i understand that we're dealing with some county roads and that's an issue but come on let's let's do some simple fixes
for the safety of our residents nobody should fear about having to send their child out to go play at a neighbor's house because they might be hit by a card let's do better um as for Zenia I have been following that application that is currently before our planning
our um zoning board um I too have raised some concerns i think it is very important that we as a community look at the businesses that are coming in and the people who are behind these businesses so that is an issue obviously for the zoning board to um to decide um
but I urge everybody who has concerns to make their opinion known at public comment um before the application is voted on at the at the zoning board um as for the issue that was raised tonight about um gas blowers I'm really really
sorry that we are relitigating this i had hoped that we'd put this to bed it's not a surprise that the mayor would ve veto this she vetoed it before and she has she uh ran in West Orange as the environmental mayor and has been
anything but since she got into office um I'd like to correct some misinformation that was um mentioned tonight a woman from Gaia Gardens spoke and said that there's a lawsuit currently um pending in um the courts uh
regarding Montlair um she lied she knows that the appeal was denied by the federal court last December 23rd she is the lead plaintiff in the matter the me the gentleman please please please the
gentleman who just called out who has thanked me for growing his electric blower business is laughing his way to the bank he comes to every one of our meetings on this issue and declares that he sells the worst equipment and then moves right in when the town decides to
go electric to sell his low functioning machines wouldn't the dealers who he reps like Greenworks Crest and Steel love to know how poorly he thinks of their products maybe he shouldn't rep them we have tough decisions to make as
a council but the transition to electric blowers is not a tough choice spending money that is within our budget to improve our quality of life and to protect public health is not the same as going into further debt with bonded projects bonded means that we have to
borrow money and pay it back at the highest rate we will find a way to upgrade the playground in a way that does not drive up the the interest we have to pay back to the banks the mayor in her 20 years never met a tax increase
that she didn't approve she gave multi-million dollar 30-year giveaways to developers she gave a 50-year interestf free loan to a favorite developer and tonight at the end of our agenda she is asking us to approve another $13 million in borrowing she is
also attempting to authorize dispersing your tax money to a company that has no contract to do basically whatever it wants to give a blank check to this company we need to allocate money
properly in this town so when the mayor and her minions come to town hall and cry that the house is on fire let's be clear she set it on fire and now she's urging paralysis we can do nothing we
can only maintain the beloved status quo the mayor received one estimate from one company which was promoted by her campaign contributors and big surprise that estimate is not factual the township can be equipped with
state-of-the-art technology that doesn't spill 30% of its fuel onto the lawns and play fields where our children spend their times we can do this cheaper and here's the dirty little secret all of
the landscaping companies who are in this audience most likely and out there who have mobilized against us and come to come to our town council to yell at us already own electric equipment and they use it
in their businesses in Maplewood Monontlair Glenidge and other officer please remove that person mr leonardo please remove him i'm sorry I misspoke i'm wearing my
close-up glasses couldn't see apologies apologies and in other towns that actually put their residents first and there's no need to charge more these landscapers who have transitioned to electric are
actually saving money by not having to buy gas or oil one gallon of gas used at f full throttle lasts only a half hour a fourperson landscaping crew working six hours a day spends $25,000 a year on gas
multiply that by our two sevenperson crews and we will be saving around 50k a year on oil and gas moving forward we will never spend that wasted money again nightly charging of batteries is a fraction of the fossil fuel price tag
and the pious protests about disposing of batteries are another red herring properly used these batteries will last 10 to 12 years and can be easily recycled there are two kinds of leaders there are the dream makers and the dream
breakers we are the dream makers we were elected to move this township towards a better quality of life doing our part to slow the destruction of our planet's environment last summer was the hottest on record and this winter snow and
rainfall fall were below normal we can and we need to do something about it we can and we need to live in a community that reflects and enacts values and not just turntail when the mayor and her pronies distort invent and turn us
against each other just to reiterate the gas power blower was singled out by by Mount Sai Hospital as a public health hazard the most polluting toxic and dangerous landscaping tool ever devised
they are literally poisoning us the machines we are bringing in that are electric are just as efficient as gas blowers we know that budget cuts are coming to the board of ed and we are committed to doing everything we can to support our children our board of ed and
our families there are those who say to us "This is not the year it's not the time to make a change." Even though this change actually begins in 2026 some of these people will undoubtedly yell it will never be the time but we
must move forward a matai if not now when this is something that should inspire us and excite us not turn us against each other thank you
councilwoman great okay i think I'm not going to cover the things that have already been covered i'm just going to try to microphone i'm going to try to be as brief as I can given the time um I want to say that uh in relation to the single occupancy bathrooms I think I
mentioned it at the last meeting uh we always strive to do everything we can to make all of our residents feel welcome and safe and comfortable in our neighborhoods and there is no reason i am in full support of the single
occupancy bathroom there is no reason not to do this and I just want to say that I don't believe that we need to wait for the state to do this or for the blowers i believe we need to lead and um
that's about all I'll say on that one uh to Shannon Bream and all the Gregory um neighbors who came I want to thank you so much for the crosswalks you've advocated for on so many parts of Gregory Avenue i live on Gregory Avenue
on that most dangerous curve i've been pulling out of that driveway now for 50 years or more and um it is so dangerous the way those cars just come running around in all those years I've never had
a problem until last month when I backed out of my driveway and somebody came racing around the curb and hit me from behind so I am in full support and I will be reaching out to my Gregory neighbors who unfortunately I haven't
had an opportunity to meet with yet and do everything I can to support their efforts as a child I witnessed so many dangerous accidents right in front of my home so I'm in full support of the Gregory parents and we'll be contacting them as well um to James Jackson uh
thank you for your advocacy i think you're absolutely right about what our neighborhoods should look at and our responsibility i agree with all of your commentary and the quality of life issue that it is unfortunately I can't say any more about it because it's something
that will be uh litigated at the zoning board uh Mr panulo thank you for all your advocacy we really appreciate everything you're doing and your whole group i we can't we don't we really owe you a lot i know how much
time and effort you've put into it um in terms of who the flood plan administrator is can anyone answer that for Mr penulo tom Beondi the construction official tom Biani our construction official okay because I didn't know that either thank you very much
and to the um the issue of the evening the uh gas powered blowers i was the first one I think probably almost a year ago to publicly state on camera that this is such a
serious and divisive issue that I thought it really should go to a referendum because all I felt that all of our uh residents should be heard on this as I did on the garbage which is why I
surveyed the township um when I was confused about where we ought to be with that garbage contract i have always felt that this is a health and safety issue and I believe that
these gas powered blowers are dangerous to our health and I want to see them gone but it is a matter of fundamental fairness that all of our we need to balance the needs of all of our residents and our residents should have
a voice in this and I need to maintain the position I had about a referendum after speaking to so many residents in the last two weeks people came out of the woodwork as they started to find out about this the woman who said that we've
had minimal outreach she's right we've had a lot of misinformation from the landscape lobbyists from our administration we've had a lot of actually excellent information from our green west orange and Joyce Ruden who
have actually brought a lot of this to our attention but I think we need to understand how adversely this is affecting a lot of our residents who have come out to me and the school system i work in the school
system i can't walk down the halls without teachers a lot who live in in West Orange and administrators and other people from the board of ed telling me "How could you do this to us at this time we have an 11 million deficit we
are going to be laying off teachers this is just not the time to do it we need to do it we need to do it soon but I think right now we need to
understand the financial reality for all um I believe that the referendum is around the corner i would encourage all of my colleagues to let's put this on the ballot in November i am confident
that this is the right thing to do and it is going to pass with flying colors no matter how many leaflets come in our mailboxes I have a feeling that the majority of our township does want to see this happen
and we need to give them the opportunity to tell us that i really feel like the referendum is the right way to go i also want to say share my thoughts as how I make decisions particularly as a businesswoman how I make business decisions
um I really had to soulsearch after getting so much feedback from people particularly about the financial reality of it and I said to myself I can't believe that we're making this decision without a thorough business analysis
from our CFO and without a break even thank you for the woman who brought us the break even but that really needs to be done by our own township we need to unbias and we need to know what the true costs of this are going to be and thank
you Councilwoman Ruden for your excellent synopsis of the situation which I do agree with you with i I mean we have to be purchasing the right products at the right prices and we need to be doing this
economically with a finan with a shared services agreement with our schools and I will be happy to put this through as soon as as soon as we can but right now
I can't support the full ban because the financial implications are just too great if we wait we do the November resol the uh referendum we can bring this right back up and we can address it
in a more thorough and smart way but I for right now I really feel that because the the schools are a unique situation they were not in the mix as we've done this because I'm hearing from so many more residents we need to do this right
and we need to give our residents the voice that they deserve i ran on that i ran on giving residents a voice and that means every resident not just the ones who agree with me because I really do feel that this is the right thing and if
we do the right education campaign the environmental commission the human relations commission I'll get the seniors involved we could get our public relations commission and we need to educate the public that this is a health hazard this is going to save us all money down the road and we need to do it
so that's where I am on this at this point and in the spirit of um giving our residents a voice there's one last issue that I want to talk about i want to address this I believe to our engineer
and to um to uh our administration and I don't know if they've looked at this other serious very situation serious situation before but I have a letter I want to read from concerned residents of Johnson Robertson Blackburn Rosney and
Wood Hole Roads uh it's regarding the IHOP in the Popeye's Chicken Drive-Thru on Eagle Rock Avenue they said at present the corner of Eagle Rock Avenue and Prospect Avenue is a traffic nightmare which is going to worsen as
Target opens its doors gridlock existing and entering the above streets to Eagle Rock Avenue is a challenge to say the least traffic going north on Prospect is bumperto-bumper backing up to Route 280
and beyond drivers cut through CVS which only holds it up more residents on Wood Hole turn into CVS to enter Wood Hole and need to cut through the back to Uturn to go home while others are
constantly making illegal left turns onto Woodhole and are parking along the street to eat or take out at Kim Sushi Restaurant the bus stop on Eagle Rock Avenue often has shopping carts from
Whole Foods just rolling wherever drivers are often seen illegally turning onto Harington Terrace which is closed off to avoid traffic from or on Prospect Avenue
drivers exiting Whole Foods turning left onto Eagle Rock Avenue are trying to beat the light and end up stopping traffic by blocking Eagle Rock Avenue we are citizens of what of what once was a
peaceful neighborhood now our quality of life is going to be compromised even more as we are asking for some consideration popeye's Chicken Drive-Thru and IHOP on a small 1acre piece of property on Eagle
Rock Avenue will only create worse conditions please consider these proposals we are totally opposed to any kind of drive-thru thank you for listening and there are many many of these concerned citizens they are afraid
to come here many cannot and as I've said to many residents if you send me a letter and tell me you can't get to the council I will read it for you but I think they have some very serious concerns i know some of them who live up there and they said they can't even get on and off of their streets so I would
like our administration to kind of let me know what if it's been looked at what we can do about it if we've done any studies but this is a very serious situation and I don't think it's gotten the attention that it warrants
you want me to go around this is the first I'm seeing or hearing of this so if you want to give me a copy of it I'll look at it yeah absolutely i'll forward it to you right i mean I'm I have nothing to do with whether there's an IHOP or a Sonic or a Popeye traffic situation is what I want to address
there's a lot of traffic you know it's the that's the busiest intersection in Essex County lot of traffic there have we from an engineering perspective have we looked at that county roads yeah with regards to the Eagle Rock Avenue
first of all is a county road the same thing with Prospect Avenue as far as I know there hasn't been any study done by the township itself in this two roads it's a request that we could make to the county however absolutely however let's
keep in mind that this is a land use board application therefore I am sure that the professional sitting on the boards will be asking the applicant to maybe provide a traffic study which is common
in this type of applications can we ask the county to do an unbiased well I'm going to be honest with you i have no problem writing a letter to the county and making this request which I have done in the past and 99% of the time the response is
if the township pays for it that being said that means that the council will have to appropriate the monies or the funds in order for me to be able to conduct the study i'm just being honest yeah yeah they were also concerned about all the trees that have come down on the
street they just said their neighborhood's been decimated speak their neighborhood's been decimated with they've cut down all their trees they've created a traffic ma um mess all over the neighborhood they're just really very very disturbed that area of
township will be planting trees actually this spring as a matter of fact our forester did send the letters good and as part of the u rope program we are going to be planting the trees in this area so I will relay that i'm sure they'll be relieved to hear that
especially done this week okay very good thank you you're welcome they may be watching you never know i know the area yeah we all realize it's very problematic done done i also want to say thanks to everyone
for coming tonight uh taking time out of your evening all the patience that everyone showed and I want you to know that I heard each of you but in nearly 3 hours of public comment I am not going to respond to everybody uh I I want to
say Miss Robinson thank you for coming and updating the council on your situation it sounds like you've made some progress so keep it up um a lot of talk about the ordinance to transition to electric
blowers uh I have said all along there are lots of pros and cons and I'm well aware that the uh the financial cost of this transition is going to fall heavily on a relative few the landscapers their
customers and residents who have gas blowers while and so I can understand a lot of the frustration we have heard uh a lot of Uh I don't excuse some of the misbehavior and I certainly want to
apologize to Mr leonardis for incorrectly calling him out uh he has been as far as I know a gentleman throughout all of this and a very strong advocate and I apologize for getting that wrong
um so I understand that that frustration and I also understand the benefits of this uh transition are going to broadly fall on everyone and but it's going to be uh hard uh it's not going to be easy to
measure so I think a a lot of what we're disagreeing on is is timing we want to move it now and of course everybody has to pay that cost would like to push it along for lower prices
of the equipment and uh uh better efficiency on the equipment i understand that but I think now is the time for us to start uh this transition to the benefits of of this ordinance and
we'll we'll be dealing with uh the mayor's trying to deal with the mayor's veto a little bit later in the meeting if we can get to it while our administration people are still here uh uh lastly I just want to comment about the proposed single occupancy uh uh
bathroom signs ordinance that's on the agenda for first reading tonight i I have considered this proposed ordinance from the perspective of the problem or challenge that we as a council could have a significant impact
on fixing or mediating i do not see a problem that is negatively impacting a large portion of our community i understand that some residents consider this a problem and believe that approving this ordinance will fix that problem i respect that opinion but I
don't see this issue as one that the council can can take to make a substantive difference to a large number of residents so uh with all respect I'm I'm going to be voting against this
anyway I'd like to uh uh finish this up and get back to the to the agenda madame Clerk thank you thank you okay um consent agenda approval of minutes of previous meeting March 11th 2025 public
meeting consent consent report of township officers none reading of petitions and communications and bids uh there is a bid out currently for Walker Road South Valley Road and Rooney Circle Roadway
improvements project NJ do DOT funded um can I me can I speak on that just for a second um first of all um thank you so much for bringing the bids to to everybody's attention um I did read that
bid and um I know that there are not that many trees left in that area but I is there any way to to address this so that there is tree protection for every tree that
is there and that also that sidewalks that will be done be done in a way that protects every single sidewalk and that the street paving also be done in a way that that um marks every single tree and protects them councilwoman Ruden I
certainly understand and support your concern about this but I don't think a council meeting is the place to work this out uh I think there's plenty of time other than the council meeting to try to get to try to get that done
can you send an email to administration and we can get your answers thank you um bill list are there any questions on the bills yes um one second i will be p pulling
um the bills once again for um our two land use boards attorneys who are uh who do not have contracts and are working in this town they are professionals and they do not have
contracts they also have unequal pay and this is completely discriminatory we have a female on the planning board who is getting one salary and we have a male on the zoning board who is making
another salary and by the way that salary is hourly the distinction between these two salaries is unethical it is possibly illegal and it needs to be corrected
um so I would like to continue to pull all bills that have to do with um Warner and his firm and also um Diana um Pal McGovern um for any bill that goes to
her and it is minuscule in comparison to the gentleman's um earnings so if I could just interrupt here Councilwoman Ruden I I know the members of the council had a very very very busy day in Newark and I don't know whether you had
a chance to closely review uh Mr rivera's memo uh from uh this afternoon but I'm going to let Mr rivera speak to this because I I I realize that it is a a great concern not only for you but the rest of the council but I think Mr river
may have addressed some of those issues in his memo uh this afternoon mr river sure so um I provided a memo this afternoon and I apologize for it being provided late in the day but uh we got
it to you as quickly as we could so with respect to voting no on items on the bill list which is what I think you mean instead of pulling them because you're going to make one vote yourself um my recommendation is that if you do so you
do it based upon a justifiable reason and something that's in my opinion not arbitrary or capriccious meaning just willy-nilly I'm going to vote vote no um and if you do have an issue specifically it should be raised to the
administration for them to review so for example if you think a bill is too high if you think it's not for valid time for any vendor it should be brought up to the administration to respond and look at it before you take action to vote it down because there may be an explanation that will help you to make a more
informed vote from where you sit um there were other issues raised about planning and zoning that I addressed in the memo meaning those two entities do have the ability to hire their professionals under the law and they should the final piece that I think you brought up as a reason not to vote for
this one is that you believe that it's unfair or somehow biased i don't believe that's a valid reason to pull it because these are vendors who who agreed to those hiring terms as business people i don't think that you can hold on to that as a reason that
somehow it's unfair that's just my opinion on that issue the second issue of them being holdovers which I think has also come up um professionals are not to be held over under the law and so if their contracts did expire that
should not they should not be allowed to continue there may be a billing issue i don't know if that's a reason for you to to not vote for them on the bill list that's a separate issue um in terms of you know the administration dealing with
their contract status but it your your your issue about pulling them i think you have the right to do that i just wanted to make sure you had the feedback of of the legal research that we provided i appreciate that thank you um I will agree to whatever you advise
but I do want to make it public that there is an inequity between the payment between uh two people who have the exact same job and I'm not really sure that that that both of them are aware that one is
being paid so much more than the other so I'd I'd like to call that to our attention and I would also I have raised this is the third time I'm raising this issue and I have gotten no answer from the administration on why this exists i
have also asked many times why we are violating local public contract law and not giving out contracts to professionals who are vendors so I see that before us tonight we have a lot of
money going out in contracts and again in uh resolutions to Matrix and to CME matrix has already earned over two milli two million dollars
um over over a period of time um not not within this this particular year i did not get the number from from um Mr tiniac in terms of the total amount to date but I remember the last time I
asked it was around 133,000 which is in excess of our local public contract law which says that if it's over 445 if you have a qualified purchasing agency it has to have it has to either go out to bid or and andor there should be a
contract we do not know they are they are making up the the game as they go along and telling us what price they're pay they're charging us without there being a contract that we have that says this is how much we're paying them and
there is no NTE which means not to exceed clause on any of these contracts so you know if you if you feel Mr rivera that the the correct thing to do is to continue to pay um vendors who
lack contracts then I will I will listen to your advice but my my role as a council person is to bring this to light and to let the township know that the and to let our public know that this is
how we're running business i don't think it's responsible to the taxpayers so can I respond to that please do so I did not say that you should pay professional service contracts or vendors who don't have contracts um if they're not valid
or or you have them in front of you so again if there's not a contract in place for a professional service that that's an issue and I'm not telling you should pay any of their bills because of that issue okay so I want to be clear um if you believe that you should pull a bill or not pay it
because there's not a valid contract that's a reason that I would say is not arbitrary or capriccious that's a legitimate reason as to why you're pulling it if there is an issue with respect to contracts um that exist there is a law on in place that if
you have a QPA you can make certain um hires without uh either passing a resolution or having it come before the council i don't know as I sit here whether any of the vendors that you've brought up have gone through the appropriate process so at this point I'm
not prepared to weigh in on the engineers or any other professionals as to whether or not they've gone through the appropriate procurement process to allow for me to say they have valid legal contracts so if you would like to vote down the bills today you're you're fine to do that but I would ask that we
have time to review this with the administration and come back at the next meeting and present to this council a review with while working with the QPA to say "Okay each one of these vendors has gone through the appropriate legal process and they do have a contract for
the services that you're being build for." Correct and then at that point you'd be informed to take any action you like the vendors that I have singled out do not have contracts at all in
2025 and the land use boards um did not have a contract in 2024 so I can't really say that this is a holdover um it's a non-contract but but they may there's not even there's
they may be validly operating under the threshold of 44,000 or 175 depending on the work they're doing i would need a confirmation from the QPA that that has in fact happened and they he or she is taking the appropriate steps so I can't
say that now as I sit here i can provide all of that information so that and I would I would appreciate if it could be reviewed that's why I'm bringing it up and asked it asked for it to be reviewed at two prior meetings yes and please please CC the council on that because I would love to see I'd like to see that
just before we move on before we move on I just want to ask Chief Abbott or Mr datiniac if you have anything uh to add to this conversation um please thank you council president um so in regards to to matrix the bills that we have on um
tonight's bill list that pardon me that are are are being charged to our general capital um not any of our escrow accounts um we do have resolutions um for these particular projects uh I have
the references the references are in the bill list um so Matrix New World Engineering an invoice 54973 it it goes back to resolution 34224 um what that actual resolution is
I I don't know but those projects were awarded by the council with NTE um possibly the engineer could speak to the specific resolutions um but at least for the the payments for matrix and CME
um on tonight's bill list they do have resolutions that uh that they reference back to we have not violated the local public contracts law at all there's the resolutions they're the functional equivalent of a contract this council
voted for them or the last council did so to say that is patently false and it's misleading and it's wrong well I I go ahead council mean if somebody is earning over $44,000 and we do and the the vendors
that I mentioned three of them do earn over $44,000 without having a contract i believe that that is that is illegal the resolution is the contract i understand you're saying that the resolution is a contract but that is not a contract
agreed upon between the township at with the council voted on it it is a Wait wait wait what one at a time please councilwoman it is a purchase order and I understand what you're saying and that's that serves as some sort of contract but every other vendor in town
has a legitimate contract which spells out the terms of agreement of of their um work for the township and it spells out exactly how much each service is this is being done very peacemeal we don't do not have a roadmap for either
of these two very large vendors and they keep coming back every single meeting with more and more requests to continue this project and continue this project and we don't know as a council where this is going and how much we can continue to authorize them and they've
made one of them made threequarters of a million dollars last year i think that as as um an elected official that we have a responsibility to figure out where this is going and to question why these people don't have a full contract not a
purchase order but a full contract the engineer could probably speak better to this you can never do that with Matrix or any environmental engineering group that every time they put a well in it's depends on what comes out that is the next step and the step after that there is no road map we don't know we don't
know how contaminated any of this land is they're brownfield developments and a lot of it's grant money if you want to speak to it I mean it's not like we're hiding the ball here so the council knows okay first of all every year I would Thank you can
everybody hear me okay so every year they would sell what is called a request for qualifications meaning that for professional services for engineering architectural you name it we receive packages from the different
professional services from there is basically we create what is called a pool when we have that pool of professional services the engineer basically picks who is going to be doing the work
i basically what I have done to basically save money and to have more of an open fair I do request for proposals for which in reality really not needed for most of our road projects I do a request for proposal and everything
else now there is something that the council needs to understand the environmental services or professional services work is something that not only have I inherited but it is also something
that the professional who's doing the work we need them to continue to do that work just like one of the questions that I believe was part of the um emails can we use another vendor the answer is yes we could use another
vendor but understand something you will be paying up front for somebody else to come in and review those reports those tables data you name it because no professional is going to put the license on the line and taking somebody else's
work without checking their work first there's no way so what are we going to be gaining from this going to be paying another professional to come in who's going to take longer because now he has to sit down and review the history of a site in this case whatever the LSRP has
done and then we're not going to be able to meet our deadlines within GDP if I recall correctly on the last council meeting I said and I will repeat this site remediation work is the gift that keeps on guilt okay but not to us
not to us no it It's the gift that keeps on giving because it's every time that you test if whatever is on the water or whatever is on the soil happens to rebound then guess what you're going to have to do more work and satisfy the EP
there are guidelines that each one of this licensed professionals have so if the testing came back higher and it doesn't meet the thresholds that are required by the law then they're going to have to see whether A B or C apply and if this says that they got to go
back out and they have to do more wells and they have to come quarterly to test them that's the way it's going to be either that or we pay fines yes if Thank you for that that answer and before Councilwoman Ruden responds I just want to perhaps clarify uh
Councilwoman Ruden I think talks about or ask questions about two different things one is the existence of a contract with an NTE and the other one is this idea of competition and if we could get more people competing for the business we might be able to reduce the cost so I know you you're talking about
sort of why there's less competition in this area but I'm not sure whether you can speak to whether there is a nec necessity for a contract whether or not to exceed limit on it the purpose of
a resolution is to be your contract the proposals that are submitted by each one of these companies whether it's for remedial work whether it's for road work whether it's for drainage work whatever the work might be it is the proposal is basically their contract when this
resolution is done I sign up on that contract I review the contract if I don't like the contract I pick up the phone and I call the consultant and I say okay I don't like this can we do something about this can this be included why is this being excluded from the contract cont that is
a process between professionals and they revise the contract and if I'm happy with the contract because I I feel that the time check is going to be getting to what they're paying for then I go ahead and I will do a resolution and with not to exceed not to exceed x
number of dollars it is put on the agenda and the council votes on it I mean that is basically your contract and understand that if they're doing remedial field work and it keeps coming back and we have to go back out and do more and do more and do more and we are
on a timeline and we have to comply with D i'm not gonna go out and go find another vendor who doesn't know anything about the site and that start from a scratch and I'm gonna have to pay them more now because he's gonna have to review everything because he's not going
to take liability and responsibility over something over another professional's work that he hasn't done right and I tell you this as a licensed professional myself I am not going to take another engineer's work or their work for it I got to check
their work in order for me to be able to sign off on it and put my license on the line right let me let Councilwoman Ruden speak for herself i just was hoping to clarify i'm not sure I did okay in April of 2024 there was a resolution for uh there was a contract agreeing agreement
for environmental consulting services between the Township of West Orange and Matrix and it lays out the terms i'm wondering what that that um contract lasted until from April 9th 2024 until December 31st 2024 and it has an exhibit
A attached i'm wondering why we are now almost in April why we don't have a similar contract in place for the same vendor when was this again in April 9th 2024
could I just interrupt here because again I'm I'm I'm not sure that this is the proper venue to be waiting into these details it may be uh more effective and efficient if we do this elsewhere i I I know Councilwoman Ruden
keeps bringing these up and I want to make sure she gets the answers because I think one of the issues she has is that she's asking for uh answers and she's not getting them so if I created a table for CME matrix and each one of those
tables I provided you with each one of the resolution numbers and each one of the bills and whether or not the work was completed as well and which ones were with them i also provided you the total amount of each one of the contracts and as of today how much they have expended sometimes there's money left in the contract if they don't have
to do as much testing as it was anticipated the same thing I did for matrix why one contract is different from the other it depends on the type of work some of them will have an exhibit some of them won't other ones will not require as much indepth work and it will
be a one-time deal like on a yearly basis we might have to do vapor intrusion testing on the building where I work to make sure that you know we have peace of mind where we're working and I certainly hope you do but every single one of these
contracts we have had a resolution we have had a proposal and the council has voted on it i understand but we do not have a road map of where this is going and every cannot give you the I fortunately and
I'm going to say this I don't have a crystal ball and neither does the LSRP was doing this work every time they dig and put a new well and they test it and if it comes back with more contaminants there's absolutely nothing that they could control or I could control this
contamination has been in place probably in hundreds of years okay it was used to be Edison's lab and unfortunately depending on where you test or where it is or where the the
way the groundwater flows the data that comes back if it's not good and there's more contamination they're going to have to keep on going obviously we have to get to a point where we the township when I say we the township can actually hand it over to
the developer in order to develop the land and this beyond the books but until then we're going to have to continue do the testing we're going to have to continue to do the quarterly investigation and provide the data to DP i cannot tell you
when this is going to stop i am hoping it stops soon because me myself this is way like too many contracts to keep like track off but every time that there is a problem I do see sit down with the LSRPs and we go over what it needs to be done
and why it needs to be done if a new area of concern happens to bump up there's nothing I can do about it okay okay so so my question again and I I appreciate all of the information that you've provided and I know it's a lot and I certainly don't you know blame you
at all for this ongoing problem of of contamination in an area that and I feel very badly that you're also working in it um but I would like to know as somebody on the council that there is a total not to exceed clause for each of
these vendors because because at least one of them if not both earned almost three quarters of a million dollars last year and I think it is our fiduciary responsibility to know where we are in this process each year they right now it
feels sitting up here like it's an open checkbook and we have to say yes because there are vapors there's this there's that there's a hole there's there's contamination we have to say yes but how do how do we be responsible up here if the checkbook is just unlimited
this is what happens when you own property that is affected by this once again let's not once again let's not Excuse me for interrupting you Miss Carbalo you've already explained this and I I think if we want to follow up
with it we need to find another venue than a council meeting where the administration people are going to be walking out in 10 minutes so uh again Council Moon Run I'm I fully support you getting your information but I don't think the council meeting is the right
place uh I think Miss Carbalo described the process pretty well it it actually is open-ended because we have got to clean up this mess and we don't know what we're going to find and when we find something we got to remediate it so
I I want to move on unless uh Councilwoman you want to actually pull some uh some bills uh from the list i am concerned about um going forward with any of the vendors that I've already mentioned that don't have contracts
that's that's my concern and I have asked for this is the third meeting that I'm asking this exact same question what are the names of the vendors um Matrix CME who else cma um Diana Pal
McGovern and Savo Shul Corsini and Warner i understand that i just wanted to get the names of the the vendors thank you so I think at this point Oh I'm sorry Council i just I think um and I
understand what you're trying to do Councilman Ruden i think that maybe you don't understand but resolutions are contracts and they and it says right there that they're contracts we approved those contracts last year and it says that this is a
contract and it has an exhibit and it explains everything you know all the work that they're going to do um you know the insurance that they have to have all you know all of the bureaucratic stuff that goes into contracts um also
um with environmental cleanup you don't know what you're going to find you can go in there and test something and then find out oh well look we've discovered a well and now we have to test that you know or you might think it might cost $100,000 to do a job and then you open up and you find out it's worse than it
really is and it might cost $750,000 or $500,000 um so but I do see where you're coming from what you're trying to do regarding you know not having contracts but those are contracts those resolutions are contracts and you know regarding planning board and zoning board I haven't seen their contracts in
some time you know the first year we voted for it i don't remember the second year to be honest off the top of my head we see so many contracts and we hire so many professional services um professionals and so you know that I would like an
answer to you know and thank you for do doing your due diligence and that's it i conclude my response good yes and and Councilwoman Ruden I I want to make sure that you get all the information from the administration that you need to do your job so if you're having an issue
with getting responses uh even if you don't necessarily agree with those responses but uh let us know because that that can't stand that you're asking for um clarity on some of these bills and you're not getting it back because
as as if you look at uh Mr rivera's opinion he says we need to get the answers to our questions but again now is not the time i don't believe uh we've we're in a situation where we're in the bill list uh I think Councilwoman Ruden
has pulled some of the bills and I just want to make sure that we uh get a motion to exclude those uh for for the record and for followup sure so why do you pull why not just run a roll on the
bills and you all vote how you want on the bills well what we typically do is vote for the entire bill list if there is what we call pulling it's it's not to say no we're not going to pay it it's to say we need some clarity for these reasons but do you all agree to pull it
or you is that a comment as a curt so why not just Well we're just we're doing a motion my other public entity clients put the bill list up and individual members will vote yes or no so have you seen the bill list yes but I've seen all there's places that are
it's like 80 pages long no I know but they vote yes or no on the bill list but to pull it is I don't understand why if one person requests pulling it unless you all want to pull it is that a I don't understand what that practice is
here so we make a motion we move that whatever bills that one of us does not want to vote on and wants to pull for clarity from the administration then you're all going to vote and agree to pull it then yes that's correct that's why we're I think that's why we have the
motion uh unless I'm No I'm not agreeing to pull it which is fine we can we can you can vote against a courtesy that this council has exhibited in the past like if one person says "I want to pull something," you all vote on whether to pull it or not okay what we're trying to do because I've had other places where I
don't want to vote on this for whatever my personal reason the other majority votes it through and it goes through so I just didn't know if you knew that was an option for you with the bill oh yes yes yes it's just uh I I can't speak for previous council presidents i'm just trying to streamline streamline this
part of the process because we have so much meat to get to so if my understanding is correct Madame Clerk we're going to have a uh a motion that to ex to pull some of the bills and then approve the rest of the bills okay is
that is isn't that what we've been doing we've been Yeah we have okay yeah okay um can I just say one thing certainly so a resolution was passed by the zoning board on January 16th 2025 appointing
the zoning board attorney okay nine nine in favor zero opposed okay and was there a contract associated with that um I think I don't want to again I don't want to speak for Councilwoman Ruden because she knows this stuff much better than I do but uh
isn't that also part of the question both of both of the land land use boards um have re resolutions permitting the each of each each attorney to serve on their board i understand that they still
do not have a contract and we as the legislative body are the ones who approve the spending and the the paying for the contract so I understand that they can choose who they want in a resolution but they're not coming up with the contract the chair
Would a simple fix be to memorialize those resolutions in a contract have the zoning boards vote on those or this body and then you your issue would be resolved yes if they come with a contract with with terms on the contract that would bring it before this is how
it all historically both land use boards came to the council with a contract and a resolution and that's how it was always done until last year council Giver Michael I will ask my
question offline don't worry that okay so I think so madame clerk I I think Mr rivera has a an either a name or or or bills that we are uh going to vote on to pull temporarily to clarify yes so the
the identified vendors are matrix CME I think it's McGovern and Saval did I get that correctly um Sabo F A V O Shul S C H A L Ka
Corsini and Warner mr rivera can we vote on these individually because I would like to know and get more clarification for planning and zoning so I'd vote yes to that but I mean I voted for the contract for Matrix and CME last year so I want to pay him for the work they did okay
you can separate them thank you so it would be a motion to pull CME and matrix and then a separate motion to pull the McGovern and Savo yes thank you i second that motion so move i can't
make a motion but you can move based on what I said and get a second okay if you want we're going to do matrix and CME together okay okay i move to to um pull matrix and CME contracts for further study from
the bills not the contracts the bills the bills i'm sorry is there a second i'll second okay uh roll call vote councilwoman Castelino no councilwoman Gabriel no councilwoman Ruden yes councilwoman
Scarpa no council President Koviaak yes the motion fails um okay and McGovern and Savo is there a motion i make a motion to
pull um the bills for Diana Pal McGovern and Savo Shaw Corsini and Warner i second that motion okay councilwoman Castelino no councilwoman Gabber Michael yes councilwoman Ruden yes councilwoman
Scarpa yes council President Koviaak yes the motion carries okay okay now the bill list all right well do we do we need a motion to approve the rest of list we usually do just consent consent or do this the bill
list normally we just do consent like the bill be consent okay consent consent okay resolutions are any resolutions being pulled this evening not by me to the chair i'd make a Mr
river a recommendation at this point you um vote to amend the agenda to add a motion um I'm sorry motion to add to the agenda resolution granting a 30-day extension request to Nordia Gibbs of Pure Natural
Vibes to submit a renewal application under section 5-346D of your code and then add that into your resolutions great so I I don't know if you're familiar with our ordinance but our ordinance allows the the council president with consent to
move stuff around on the uh on the agenda i just want to make sure you and I are on the same page i just said myself I didn't want to pull any resolutions we got four other council members so I don't know whether you thought we were moving to uh new business i thought you were just moving to resolutions we were moving to
resolutions but we were going to He just wants to add it okay so that's okay so I'm the last to know okay i'm sorry i spoke quickly okay so so uh Mr rivera has suggested that we add a resolution to Yes I would second to the agenda okay
okay well let me just make sure we we've got an actual wording of the motion uh M rivera you have that i do i can read I can say it again and I I will email it to the clerk okay because the clerk is one that's about to fire off the vote
here so we have Yes because it's so long can I just say I make the motion sure yes yes so so moved if you really want to be short so moved work and I'll second but let me wait till the madam clerk is ready to move forward no
problem okay so what is uh Mr rivera suggested that we add a resolution yes read the resolution he's going to email it to you so you will have it and uh we want to uh have a
roll call please okay so well we we need a motion and a motion i made the motion and I second it oh okay wow I missed a lot okay so here's the roll call vote for that councilwoman Castelino yes councilwoman Gberichel yes councilwoman
Ruden yes councilwoman Spark Council President Kakoviaak yes all right the motion carries and the resolution number will be 107-25 letter I you go yes letter I and we should give them the
applications okay um All right all right so are any resolutions here to pull well could I just ask a quick question mr rivera was uh leading the addition of a motion to
add to the resolutions now we have one on the resol on the resolution page we may be able to either vote on that individually or we can do it as part of consent is that is that where it stands now part of the consent okay so I'll I'll give you the meeting back Madam
President okay so yeah okay can we just clarify this is you said for 30 days yes okay yes 30 days 30-day extension okay do you have any questions or want to pull no I'm good you're good
councilwoman can I ask why just 30 days that's what your ordinance it's in the ordinance okay so it's 30 days councilwoman Ruden do you have any questions or you want to pull any of the resolutions the chair the appropriate way to do this
is to make a motion in a second on the consent agenda with the numbers from beginning to the end and then have a discussion i don't know if you've done that yet yeah we're going to have to break in this new guy we got a lot of short once if they pull
anything just bringing you back we're all learning so how would you do do you have a motion and a second on the consent not yet then but we will and then you have discussion once you have a motion in the second yes she usually does get a chance but you
already have discussion not on any of the resolutions we weren't We were just saying are any resolutions being There was a discussion on the amended resolution about 30 days so there was a question about Oh that's right yeah yeah i ask a question
safe we're all out of order we We all do the best we can councilwoman's Yeah I do understand thank you yeah she needs a chance to move the meeting okay so all right so no one's pulling anything correct well no
we we're not there i said I'm not councilwoman and I think Councilwoman now it's Councilwoman Gro Michael and No I'm good okay so now we're ready to vote on the consent agenda um is there a motion to approve the consent agenda motion to approve the
consent agenda second thank you all in favor i any opposed the consent agenda is implemented yay okay so ordinances on second and final reading 2902-25 an ordinance amending chapter 4
section 34.3 of the revised general ordinances of West Orange extra duty employment for police officers rates of compensation administrative fees payment for services is there a motion to introduce on second
and final question were we allowed to vote on uh resolution 106 which has the fees for this ordinance weren't we supposed to pull it and vote for this ordinance first and then on second final rating and then vote for the resolution with the fees probably did we just do it
the wrong way no not a big deal okay okay i'll move it right yes i remember from last year i know we have several lawyers on the deis but could we ask the one person that I know as a lawyer you're you're going to vote all in one meeting so okay okay good
thank you but I just have a follow so but normally we would do it the other way take pull that and then because that's how we normally do it but it was an oversight so it's fine in my opinion okay thank you if the ordinance fails then we're going
to have to go back and resend that okay that's fine um is there a motion to introduce on second and final reading second okay councilwoman Castelino yes yes councilwoman Gabber Michael councilwoman Ruden yes council Garpa
council President Koviaak yes okay now is the time uh for the public hearing that's required by state law uh if you would like to speak on this ordinance and just on this ordinance please come forward be recognized by the chair again
give your name and address uh for our minutes and speak slowly and you have five minutes to speak would anybody like to speak at the public hearing on ordinance 2902-25 seeing none close the public hearing and
move forward are there is there any discussion among my colleagues no okay councilman you're good i'm good okay so Madame Cler is there a motion to approve on second and final reading
final reason thank you second thank you councilwoman Castelino yes councilwoman Gabber councilwoman Ruden yes counciloman Scarpa council President Koviaak yes the motion carries ordinances on first reading
2905-25 an ordinance amending and supplementing chapter 28 and establishing sections of the revised general ordinances of the township of West Orange regard regarding a lawn care registry is there a motion to introduce on first reading i make a motion to
introduce on first reading thank you is there a second second okay councilwoman Castelino uh no councilwoman Gberichel yes councilwoman Ruden yes councilwoman Scarpa yes council President Koviaak yes
okay the motion carries so here's an here's another legal question uh before we move forward uh the mayor has uh vetoed the uh supporting ordinance or the the source ordinance that is the source of this
ordinance did I get that right so in other words we have the transition to electric blowers ordinance that has been approved on second reading the mayor has vetoed it and we have not yet figured out how to respond at this
moment uh we haven't responded so the the question is do we move forward on this ordinance if if it's in the veto stage 2905-25 yes is an ordinance amending an
ordinance that's been vetoed no it supplements part it's Yeah what would you call it supplement supplements it so we have the we have the ordinance uh we have the ordinance to the transition to electric blowers and as part of
that there's going to be a registry of lawn care companies that operate in West Orange that have to register and that's what we're talking about here so the question is if the mayor has
vetoed it but the council hasn't responded yet to that veto in whatever way we're going to figure it out should we even be considering it at this point or or can we should we just approve it and then tabled it maybe my recommendation is you table it
unless you're going to amend it on the fly and renumber it uh Councilwoman Ruden um I I think that this is a standalone um ordinance that that is not contingent upon uh
overriding the veto of the uh lawn um gas powered blowers um I think it's necessary to establish this registry so that when we move forward with the um transition that we have a list of who is
who is operating in town so that we have a means of communicating with them this registry costs nothing we have a similar registry for um vendors who do tree work in West Orange and this is just a comparable registry
council President yes please yes so here again we with the overreach which I just I it just drives me crazy in this ordinance and this is for uh for attorney this evening it states there is
no registration fee for this process each registered business vehicle parenthesis truck will be issued a sticker by the township which which must be affixed to the front driver side panel of the vehicle so now are we not encouraging people to take pictures now
we're going to look for stickers on the landscapers all their vehicles we already do that with with the uh tree companies and I didn't and I didn't agree with that i I voted for I did not vote for that amendment i was a flat no i I mean this is over government
overreach we're a local government i I do not feel the need to report who is who my landscaper is sorry Councilwoman i just think this is beyond ridiculous but that is my opinion i'll be ju just
just a second just to clarify it's not the homeowner that that suggests the registration of the It's ridiculous it's the lawn care company it's the lawn care companies if they want to operate within the count the town it's terrible to do counc I understand absolutely terrible
it's government overreach at its best and we're local government what we have to do tonight we have to do the capital budget and have a nice conversation about that but it's after 11 o'clock administration's going to leave so all these people that have to get their streets paved we can't do because we're
still talking about uh landscapers like their public enemy number one it just this is not a this is not a hit list registry it's my opinion that it is a hit list Councilwoman and I really don't appreciate that okay okay let's
just hold on to everything again mr rivera this the the I think the I'm I'm not disagreeing with Councilwoman Ruden but the whole purpose of this ordinance is to is associated
with the ordinance that the mayor has vetoed that it's in that veto limbo land so uh my question is should we should we table this until we get clarified whether there's going to be an ordinance
that this ordinance supports so unless you're going to make substantive changes to this ordinance other than just the section numbers you should table it if you're
going to simply approve it even if the other ordinance remains vetoed okay then this would just pick up at section 28-12 and stands alone on its own okay i
haven't gone through this ordinance to see if it amplifies or it relies upon the leaf blower ordinance it doesn't seem to it's just a registration and therefore it could be added in section
28-12 if the council so wishes okay do you understand yes i believe so i haven't understood anything you've said tonight in the first round but I think I do now so here's what I think so we've we've got a uh a motion a vote to
introduce we just voted on uh on first reading so it's for our purposes tonight it would be then put on for second reading right and if for some reason the ordinance remains vetoed on second reading we just
amends the session okay which is not a substantive change okay so we're we we're not going to make f take further action on this ordinance it's going to be on the next council meeting agenda for second reading and we should be clear by then whether whether it's going
to exist right whether the section numbers change okay yeah I'm not worried about that okay so so this is Yes uh Councilwoman did we introduce it or we voted on second time no we we voted on it for
first reading so it's it's in the books and it's going to come up on second reading and by the time it comes up on second reading we will know whether Okay i just for the record want to state that I don't agree with the first fine it should be a verbal warning i don't think we should find people right off the bat
um and I thought that's what we were talking about $100 if you look at it the first fine is $100 it should be Yeah don't even look at this $200 and then $500 it should be
I already voted out so again can I just jumping through the chair again you've already voted you voted on this already correct yes so you should move on to the next item there's really no need for any further
discussion that's what we'll do we can amend the next yeah I know so uh the next ordinance 2906 I'm sorry madam 290625 an ordinance amending chapter 25 to add a new section
of the revised general ordinances of the township of West Orange regarding singleuse bathrooms uh is there a motion to introduce on second and final on first reading i second thank you okay um
Councilwoman Gabberl yes councilwoman Ruden absolutely councilwoman Scarpa yes council President Koviaak no okay three one okay
i just have to make a note that Okay the motion carries the motion did carry thank you um 2907-20 now this is just to go back that it's a 25 chapter 25 ordinance so it has to be reviewed by the planning board as
well so um I'm not sure when that will be but they'll let us know what the date is and then then it'll go back on the agenda for approval um 2907-25 an ordinance amending and
supplementing chapter 2 section blank of the revised general ordinances of the town of West Orange to establish a citizens budget advisory board is there a motion to introduce on first reading a second thank you council uh Councilwoman
we're on 290725 for the to establish a citizens budget advisory board that's going to be a no also okay councilwoman Gabberich yes councilwoman Ruden definitely councilwoman Scarpa absolutely council
President Koviaak uh yes could we just just say yay or nay i agree this we we're sounding like the obnoxious a little bit councilman I just want to publicly state I originally supported the first advisory board that we've had
i just don't deem it necessary that they have to meet all year long i think this is going to put a necessary burden on our CFO because the way this ordinance is reading um the st like the
um which the members are all always entitled to information but the way it's reading I see a very tough burden on the CFO so that's I can't support this that's all okay
2908-25 an ordinance Amending chapter 2 section 9.4 of the general or of the township of West Orange special counsel is there a motion to introduce on first reading i introduce on first reading we we have to have discussion after right
correct introduce it is there a second even for amendments to it you need a second to second okay and we they discussed before the vote or after okay before the vote okay
i I just uh I just want to say I I don't think other than just um uh typos or whatever that we should be making substantive changes to ordinances in real time at council meetings and I understand sometimes we need to do this
but I want to stay away from it it's just it's not it's not good practice so I know you just said you wanted to make some amendments uh please go ahead but I' I'd like to try i don't I thought you said you wanted to when we spoke earlier today about this one but I don't see any
changes that need to be made to it this is special counsel sent me an email oh the special counsel was just to create just to fix a typo that was that was all that was done and and you did that fine so yes then we're good okay um Councilwoman Castelino yes councilwoman
Gabber yes councilwoman Ruden yes councilwoman Scartha Council President Kakoviaak yes okay the motion carries 2909-25 an ordinance amending and supplementing chapter 7 traffic subsection
7-32.2 restrictive parking zones of the revised general ordinances of the township of West Orange for handicap spaces is there a motion to introduce on first reading i make a motion to second councilwoman Castelino yes councilwoman
Gberichel yes councilwoman Ruden yes councilwoman Council President Gobiac yes the motion carries 2910-25 capital ordinance appropriating $1 million to pay for various improvements and upgrades to the Oscar
Schindler Performing Arts Center in the Township of West Orange uh is there a motion to introduce on first reading she make a motion to table um is that this one okay yes actually the last two because I think it's late to be talking about capital improvements and and I'll
second that and voting yeah I I agree okay so to table Councilwoman Castelino to table yes councilwoman Gber yes councilwoman Ruden yes councilwoman Scarpa yes council President Koviaak yes
the motion carries i have one quick question now on 29 can I ask 29 or process sorry well my my question was that the the million we're we're getting receiving a
grant correct so my question is does is the refund like why did we have to put out for a bond if we're getting the we're not putting out for a bond for the opac there is no debt authorized for that particular resolution which um madam clerk I'm I'm confused about the
the numbering of the ordinances because on the agenda I think 29 11 is the opac grant I think we we noted it was 2910 yeah it says here on 29 2910 yeah in the agenda it's 2911 the
the website agenda and it links the documents 2911 um but the OSPAC grant is a million-doll grant there's no debt authorized we're simply doing the capital ordinance um so that we are authorized to then
spend that grant this number okay um is this time sensitive yeah both both ordinances are are timesensitive um the ordinance with the multi-purpose where there is debt authorized um I was
advised by the township engineer that the the DOT grants that are part of the funding package for those uh for that for this particular authorization they're timesensitive um I I hate to bring up the township engineer again but
she could speak to the deadlines on some of the DOT uh projects and and sort of why we're doing this now so I have the or the engineer speak it's up to council president i was going to say I'm relieving you of that burden
please Miss Carbalo if you could come up yeah we just need to know the timing of the uh the grants so that we can figure that into uh the work that we want to do on this so for one ordinance the one that is the most sensitive one is the one that is
currently out of bid the bid opening is actually on April 2nd which is the uh improvements to South Valley Road from Walker Road to the uh city of South Orange
Line also Walker Road from Gregory to South Valley Road and also uh Rooney Circle that is the LTPF 2023 grant which I believe is a million dollars and I was hoping that it will be introduced today so that way if we get
approved on the next one and I could award it because I believe the deadline if I'm not mistaken I give it to you in the letters for some reason I don't have it in here um it has to I have to basically submit it to do I believe is uh you know April more or less the end
of April yes do you guys have the the letters that I sent you i I do but my computer's dead does anybody have this um from the Gregory uh neighborhood yeah there's some some notes in there about uh the timeline for the DOT grant or
LSRP not LSRP LTPS right uh while we're waiting for this information I I'm not sure if I speak fully for all of my uh colleagues but we
want going forward to change the process a bit on these sort of bond ordinances uh it's been the practice in the 15 years I've been here that uh we do the bond ordinance with just the barest amount of information of what we are
going to spend the money on and I think it's more appropriate that we get a more detailed narrative on what you want to spend the money on because we don't want to borrow money that the council is later not going to authorize to spend
and we and we want to try to avoid the situation where we borrow the money and then we're paying interest on it sometimes for a considerable amount of time at some very high interest rates so I I we want we want to change the the the practice so that we can get more
information uh because typically what happen is we'd pass the bond ordinance and then we get a project somewhere down the road maybe a year later maybe two years later yeah so uh Councilwoman Castle had a hand up yeah in in years past we had
um a more a presentation from the administration not not on you Mr jiniac but um where we'd have some pictures and you know when we got to the capital improvements so
um disappointed that that's not tonight not that we you know we'd have to be looking at now after three hours of public comment on leaf blowers again and other items but again like we or we could even move these presentations to the very beginning of the meeting so we
get them done and then we could deal with public comment after that yeah I would completely agree with you because on one of them in particular it's a it's a worthwhile pause but there are a lot of parts of it that I don't agree with that I that I would not okay
okay so I don't know if if we need to be clear or whether you want me to put something in writing or or whatever but we'd like to get as much information about the projects not just the projects but why we need to do them and what the
priority is and I know there was some information sent uh earlier today and as some of you know we were in court you know uh for quite a while and didn't have a chance to prepare so I'm not even ready to move forward tonight and but if
what you're saying uh Miss Garvalo is that we can look at this at the next council meeting for notice for Thursday okay so the CDBG grant uh that one is 530,000 i mean I'm sorry the project
cost is $530,000 for which we have a a grant amount of $300,000 if you look at the response email that I did send to the entire council I do have it breaking down and I highlighted in yellow so the first one it needs to go out to bid like ASAP
um if we want to be able to use the grant otherwise and the reason why and I actually I I gave you guys the information it says it is under design currently and it needs to be basically constructed by December 31st of 2025
which is the deadline that the uh Essex County Community Development Group has given us the next grant that is already out to bid and the bid opening is April 23rd is the 2023 LTPF NJ DOT which is the one
that I just said for the Walker Road South Valley Road and Rooney Circle the grant amount is definitely $1 million i must award this project no later than May 6 it has to be awarded by the May 6 council meeting otherwise we're going to lose the grant there is a
deadline so that typically so that you understand NJ dot grants but they give us two years to basically design it and award it obviously there is no rush to award the project so we wait until the
last minute more or less to allocate the monies unfortunately there there wasn't a hearing last year when we were ready to do so the presentation of December and here's where we at okay so can you just walk us through the timeline of of
if we approve this on first reading at the next council meeting and then approve it on second reading at the next council meeting then will we still be fine to meet the deadlines for both of these
projects you you said May I think it may council meeting I must award the DOT job the $1 million grant so we not only have to approve uh the bond uh authorization the the bond ordinance but then you but
then you also have to send out uh for bids is that correct or do you I have to award a bid so I'm receiving bids or the bid openings April is April 3rd okay i do the bid opening i do the review the contract must be awarded or rejected
within 60 days in accordance to the to the law and like I said I have it has to be awarded by the council on May 6 okay if we want to really go ahead with it and not lose the $1 million grant right so it sounds like we are still on the timeline if we postpone this so that we
can we can means you're going to have to award the contract and also the uh what you call it on May 6 you're going to have to do both award the contract which will be a resolution from me and then also the uh bond well you we
have April 8th and April 22nd i'm sorry april 8th and April 22nd are right so we'll have we'll have done the bond in April there are two meetings in April at the second meeting we'll approve it on second reading okay and then and then we'll be able to is May 6th the next council meeting after that is that I
believe so okay okay so that that still works okay and Councilwoman Ruden did you have your hand i do have a question i I'm noticing on this that the first five projects are tied in with grants and the others are
not so are they integral to the projects of the ones that are tied into grants or can we can we cut that out and just do the ones that are tied into into grants
it is so I'll I'll answer one question i I think save Mr to one of the purpose of throwing your microphone i apologize uh one of the purposes of throwing in this uh big grabag of all of this is that it's much more efficient to issue the debt so we
save a lot of money that way uh but Mr dinak it sounds like what Councilwoman Ruden is talking about is is maybe uh a carving out part of this although I don't I although I'm not not sure that we need to carve it out we should just get everything modified and amended if
we're going to on first reading at the next meeting but anyway let me just leave that to Mr diniac to answer your question instead of me fumbling around as far as debt issuances go we can take multiple bond ordinances and and group them together so it doesn't there's no
efficiency in issuing the debt but um if we were to make changes to the ordinance they'd I would assume be substantive if we were carving out pieces and I'd have to recalculate the section 20 costs and all that so not something we could do
really on the fly it would have to be you know modified for the next meeting um but if if you'd allow me just to to go back to u what you spoke about council president and what councilwoman Castelino spoke about for the next
meeting you know we will give you uh more detail and we can provide a slide deck that if you want to present it or let me present it or the township engineer you know that'll be fine um but it we'll provide you with the slide deck
yeah please do with it as you will does that meet uh everybody's concerns yes okay so we voted to table uh 2910 yes so that's is was that that's the capital ordinance though right or is that Yes capital okay so now we're on
2911 right make a motion to table 2911 as well a second councilwoman Castelino yes councilwoman Gerber Councilwoman Ruden yes councilwoman Scarpa yes council President Kovia yes the motion carries
to table and I make a motion to adjourn the meeting there's still some matters yes so we you you're correct we don't uh but before you leave
the situation we find ourselves in is that the mayor vetoed the ordinance for the transition to uh electric blowers she did that on Friday the council has somewhere between
Well maybe I should just let you Mr vera since you're the only lawyer uh what we're trying to do is figure out what our next steps are going to be i think we've got three options we can just let the veto land and we don't do
anything about it or we can do something about it tonight take a vote or we can create or or come back at a special meeting on Friday which will give us additional time to consider and do
whatever else we can to maybe further move this thing along but Mr rivera please you have between three and five days to to take action three calendar days and five business days which means uh no sooner
than Friday's yesterday and by Friday you have to make a determination of whether you're going to seek to override the vehic well because we have to do the notice so either you got to get 48 hours tonight and if and or call for a special meeting
at a later date but it has to be done by Friday so make a motion that we call for a special meeting on a later date well it would have to be Friday yeah Friday i We got three meetings Friday i'm sorry what's going on what's going
on Friday uh Coun Oh Counciloman Castelino yes you and I and the board of ed 12 right and then I have a downtown meeting at Sue the developer okay so you're quite busy so do you have any openings to have that
meeting on on Friday we have it Thursday evening it has to be noticed 48 hours don't you have emergency notices you can do it's not an emergency that wouldn't be considered an emergency wait you got to speak into the microphone please i'm
sorry i apologize i Why wouldn't you want to vote now why prolong this to Friday well if we move it to Friday that gives us some an an extra few days to further discuss and consider this and uh we
might come up with some different solution that's that's why I'm talking about Friday as opposed to taking the vote now we can certainly take the vote now if that's what everybody wants to do uh but uh this is a
rather I don't know big decision so it may be something that's subject to further consideration or maybe negotiation uh for Friday so that's well how transparent is that is to do it during the day when all the people that came tonight wouldn't be able to come
back on Friday yes we we have a very difficult situation you're totally you're totally correct so the the six seven people in the audience would not be able to come back no I but I I'm just making a joke but I understand what you're saying uh we just don't have any
other we we don't have an alternative except to have a special meeting in order to meet the deadline but how much more can you discuss i don't know i I I'm want I want to leave it up to to everybody to decide we had
Councilwoman Gabber Michael make a motion to have a special meeting on Friday we need to make sure that that we do everything we can to get Councilwoman Castelino there she's got a a full schedule and part of that is me too but uh you've got a meeting at two o'clock
with the alliance that's not anything you can No no one of our business owners I mean our committee members set it up okay so how long is that meeting going to last 2 o'clock on them hour or so oh okay so you want to make the meeting
want to make the special meeting at 4 pm on a Friday it'll be a Zoom It'll be a Zoom meeting so people can can attend the Zoom meeting uh remotely out of school she asked
I could do that i could do Friday okay so unfortunately at 4:30 we're not done i don't understand why you can't vote tonight the councilwoman stated how she felt you stated how you felt i really don't understand why you got to prolong this to Friday well we'll take votes we'll we'll take votes on on on
the motion we have a motion uh on the floor that requires a second but uh I'll send that motion if you want to vote now I have five minutes and I'm leaving i know i don't think we should be voting on things that are important like this we say at night at 11:40 and
then we have disc we can have discussion or we just voting let's just vote % well what what I'm trying to figure out is what do people want to do do they want to vote now or do they want to set a special meeting for Friday i say special meeting on Friday we set the special
meeting on Friday it sounds like we can't do the special meeting until 4:30 so we have two options we can either vote now or we can vote on Friday vote on Friday yeah I know but what we have to do is make a motion and vote get a sec if it gets a second then we vote on
it i am not available Friday after work i have plans yeah I resend my motion let's just vote now well the other option is to have the meeting earlier Friday than our first meeting which is at 10 but this meeting is not going to take long so again it's
not going to take long but you have to open the public comment and if you get a a bunch of public comment on Zoom then you're you could take two hours we were here three hours tonight i I understand i understand so I that's
what I'm saying i don't understand what what you're you know well we'll just if that's if that's what happens we're we're going to have to decide on priorities what's our priority is this our priority or is the priority go to the board of ed meeting or the county meeting and well the board of ed is to
talk about this so we're going to the board of ed on Friday morning mr yes if we do a special meeting on Friday yes you have to have public comment correct absolutely means you have to come in person i can't come in person on Friday
no it wouldn't be you can have the meeting remotely just have to have a portion for public comment yes we don't have Zoom for public comment well we will we will have to do that you would have to allow it right yes many public entities do public do meetings virtually
and they have public conferences but I don't know if you you're set up for using the N word and saying very profane yeah there's there's a way to do it with the webinar but I don't know if you're set up that way we're not actually oh well go your decision is in front of you
vote now i don't think it's going to change is there a motion is do does anyone want to make I'll make a motion to vote for I second it okay discussion to vote if you want to go to so Councilwoman Castelino the vote is for what vote now override the vote is to
override the No no no the vote is the vote is to vote on it tonight that's what we were trying to determine whether tonight or for tonight or can they just call for a motion they need a motion to add it to the agenda and then they vote on it okay
all right so is there a motion to add it to the agenda i make a motion to add it to the agenda i second councilwoman Castelina yes council I'm sorry councilwoman Gabber Michael no councilwoman Rudy wait to add it yes yeah to add it councilwoman Ruden no
councilwoman Scarpa yes council President Koviaak yes okay so that was uh that was 41 i'm sorry I'm a little crazy and it's this for clarity it's a motion to I mean the vote is now to override the mayor's veto blower
ordinance right okay so is there any discussion do we want to discuss it discussed enough vote and move on from this and take care of other matters okay in town exactly okay so is there a motion to override the mayor's veto i
make a motion to override the mayor's veto okay is there a second i'll second okay councilwoman Castleino to override the veto no councilwoman Gabber yes councilwoman
Ruden yes councilwoman Scarpa no council President Koviaak yes so that was three to two yes so the motion fails y can I have a motion to motion to adjurnn good night West is there a second all in
favor i seconded