Good evening, West Orange, and welcome to our continuing series of West Orange Township Council budget workshops live streaming from inside council chambers at 66 Main Street. You are welcome to join us here, but there will be no
public comment on Zoom or in person. At this time, I'd like to turn the floor over to our council president. Thank you, Mr. Fagan. Welcome everyone uh from West Orange uh to our 12th workshop for the 2025 municipal budget.
This one today, August 7th, 2025. I now turn over to Madame Clerk. This is to inform the general public that this workshop is being held in compliance with section 5 of the Open Public Meetings Act, chapter 231, public
law 1975. The notice for this workshop was emailed to the West Orange Chronicle and the Star Ledger on July 30th, 2025. Councilwoman Castelino, Councilwoman Ruden, here. Councilwoman Scarpa,
present. Council President Koviaak, present. Thank you. Thank you. Depending on which clock you look at, if you're looking at my laptop, it says we start on time. Look
at the real one. It says we may have started a minute or two late. I want to thank everybody for being here so that we're ready to go pretty much on time and hope that we can continue to do so going forward. The draft budget from the mayor proposed to raise municipal
property taxes about 6.2%. We've knocked that increase to less than 2% and we're looking for additional efficiencies and savings. If you want to follow along, please go to the township website, westtor.org, use the search box in the upper right hand of the page, type in budget, and
click on the first result, and you'll see the top item is the budget version dated July 22nd that we'll be working from tonight. And in a little bit, Mr. Datiniac andor Mr. Fagan will take you on a virtual guided tour. Tonight we're
going to begin with the workshop with uh the public works budget and then continue our discussion on CBA's uh preliminary report. That's the citizens budget advisory board's excellent preliminary report. It's also on the township website and in some of the
Facebook uh pages and it's it's really excellent and I encourage everyone to uh take a ride through it. It's not it's not that difficult, but it's it carries a lot of insight uh and a lot of data. So, if you're looking to understand the
budget better, highly recommend it. Um some CBA members have joined us on the Deis or at least one of them has uh and we expect others to come uh a little bit later. Uh and there may be
one or two others chiming in from Zoom. We are not taking any public comment as Mr. Fagan mentioned, if you want to comment or ask questions, please send an email to council@west orange.org, which despite what you may think, also goes to the mayor and several people in her
administration. If you want to send just to the council, send it to one of us and ask for a distribution to each of us. If you need email addresses, search for council on the township website. Recordings of the workshops are on the township website. Find them by searching for video gallery.
uh citizens budget advisory board uh has a seat at the table and tonight it's M Edie Bear uh they are not like the ursine killer of humans but the paint uh just want to advise everybody remind
them to try to speak into the phone at uh at the highest volume that you feel comfortable doing especially when the air conditioning is on to make sure that people in the in the room uh can can hear you. And if you're a council member
or SEBAB member on the Zoom, please raise your digital hand so Mr. Fagan can see and then wait until the chair recognizes you. If you see me pointing or nodding at Mr. Fagan after you raise your hand, that is my acknowledgement that I will call on you as soon as I can. When you're finished, please say
so. I think we've settled on thank you. Uh lastly, I urge everyone to consider time efficiency in their comments and questioning to be sure that what we say is necessary. The faster we carefully go through the budget, the better. 12
budget workshops notwithstanding. And Mr. Diniac is uh acting as his what do you call those tech guys that help you get through life? Help desk. Help desk. like a roadie. Uh, council president, if I just may say
there are several people in the Zoom audience and they um I'm going to ask them if they're a member of the board of the advisory board to please uh uh change the uh name that you entered the meeting with to your real name so that I
could recognize who you are um if that's at all possible. Um and uh Mr. Dutiac will momentarily give us a tour of where to find this online. Thank you, Council President. Perfect timing.
Yes. Thank you, Council President. Um, so all of our budget documents live in the finance section. So, I'm on the front page. I'm going to go to departments and I'm going to scroll down to finance.
And on the left side, we have our budget section. And I'm going to point to two important documents here. The first one is the 2025 citizens budget advisory board preliminary report to the township
council on the 2025 budget. Um I believe we're going to look at that after DPW or Okay. So, we're going to look at that in in in a little bit. Um, but we're going to start with the budget document that we've introduced and that we've been
working off of these last few meetings. This document can be saved. So, if you want to open this up at home, you can save it to your computer. You can print it out. And it is a searchable document. So, it recognizes text. If you want to
put some keywords in there and search for different uh items, you can do that as well. Sounds good. I think we are ready for our first uh not sure what what correct word to use but our first
department head. Let's just leave it at that. But I think we were going to finish up on page 78 or we are we going to jump ahead of that? Um because I we did right we finish on se 79. We got through some of 79.
Oh did we did we finish 78? We did. Did we consent on that? Okay. All right. It was an amendment on 78. Uh and it was a 30 vote. It was a reduction of 5,000. Correct. Yes. All right.
So, can I kind of take the lead on this one? Um, let me just pull up the page for those at home. Uh, so we are on page 78. I mean, uh, 79, excuse me. Um, public building operations and maintenance. The
introduced budget was1,9,93763 and we have Mr. Reynolds uh from public works that also includes the public buildings uh sitting here to advise us. Now, uh I'm I'm happy for whomever is
should take the lead because I know that uh Councilwoman Ruden and Mr. Reynolds have had some discussion since the last uh workshop and uh we're just going to try to get the through those uh proposed changes as uh efficiently as possible.
So, Mr. Tiniac is is it okay for Councilwoman Ruden to sort of take the lead here or Of course, Council President. Absolutely. Okay. So, Mr. Reynolds and I have gone through line by line and made adjustments based on what has actually
been spent and what has been encumbered and what is anticipated. And this is an area where there are substantial substantial need because these we're talking about all of our servicing all of our buildings. So, um, together we
were able to reduce this budget, um, $16,550, which is not a tremendous amount in this huge budget, but this is this is uh an accurate reflection of what is needed. And and just for context, uh, I'm
looking at the page. You can see the yellow highlight is uh how much we've already decreased uh uh the public works budget if I'm reading this correctly. So this was an increase uh this was a big increase and it was be it was because of the
reallocation. It still is a decrease, but it's a reallocation of of 10 Rooney, which was $700,000, but it was it was allocated to the library budget, the outside cap library budget in previous years. We reallocated
that and we're showing that correctly in the INCAP public building operations and maintenance section. And then we reduced that from 700,000 to four uh to 300,000. So there there is a net decrease overall in in what we were appropriating to
maintain our buildings and grounds. Um but again with that reallocation, it looks like an increase. So and so Councilwoman Ruden, you said that you and Mr. Reynolds had discussed uh an appropriate level and that would be uh
uh a reduction in this in this budget for public building operations. Is that correct? Yes. So this is over page 79 and 80. It's a reduction of $16,550.80. So if we are if we are settled on that number,
we can go ahead and either confirm it or if you want to discuss it further. I don't want to I I director Reynolds is fine with it then administration is fine with it and you want to consent we can move on.
Can I just ask please is this in addition to what was removed Monday? Uh yes yes it is an addition. No no no on Monday we had reduced 29. Is that what you have?
I have 12. Um I have 18,000. Yeah, I have 18 as well. So this is the actual number that we're reducing. Okay. So then do we have to basically
amend because it was on consent the other night. Correct. Which was the 18,000. I have the line items. janitorial services service contract HVAC miscellaneous repairs town hall and fire and rental valley road right and I think after our discussion
uh council Men had a few more line items there which we discussed today where I need that spending we're only into August right now to get me through uh December and I provided quotes for services that are up and coming and I think how that's how we came back to that adjusted number if I stand
corrected please let me know council that's correct All right. So, so I'm not sure. So, I think we're going to have to withdraw and then Yes. Okay. Well, hold on. We can
you could make a motion to put back $1,450. That might be and then you get to the the number that you wanted. Still have to vote, but oop, sorry. I can just withdraw it and then Okay.
Yeah, it's the same thing, right? Mhm. Hopefully the math is the same. Yeah. So 18,000 minus 16,550. So we're putting back,450,
right? That's how I understand it. Yes. Okay. We can do that. It's okay. You have the right. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Um, so then someone would have to make a motion for that.
So, a motion to add back the difference of Can you say that again? What that number is? $1,450. Okay. Motion to add back in $1,450 to I'll second the public um public building and
operations maintenance budget on pages 79 and 80. Okay, I'll second it. Thank you. Right. Any further discussion, Miss Bear? Yeah, I remember from the first
testimony that there was some dis or not discussion but suggestion that dog park fees might be increased to pay for some of the maintenance at 10 Rooney. And I just wonder is that something that should be considered at this time or is
that something to discuss at another time? Well, that that if we decide to do that, even if we decided to do that tonight, if it still takes some time to actually effectuate that because the uh we're
going to have to change an ordinance. Um we we can certainly discuss that now if if we're ready to to discuss. I was I'm trying to think back the first time we went through the budget what we had decided on that issue. Uh but I I I can't recall what we decided.
I'm done. So, are you saying that right now the money that is raised from the dog park is going to with to health to the health department or to public works? To the best of my memory, it came up during a discussion of mowing and
maintaining the property. Right. I thought it was a I thought it was part of this budget but so we we really can't dedicate revenues to certain functions. Um there are
instances of that like with animal control where the collection of the dog licenses uh directly go to pay for that service. Um, that's called a dedication by rider and you know the state allows for those
things because there is uncertainty in what you're going to collect and uncertainty in what you're going to spend. Um, but for an item like this, it would just end up being a miscellaneous revenue. So, it's it's going to go into the revenue pot. Okay. the it still helps offset taxation
because that's the formula is you take your miscellaneous revenues, you take your total appropriations, the difference is what we ask our taxpayers for. Um, but as council president said, this is like a long way off from having any sort of impact on the budget because
you're going to have to do an ordinance and um establish a fee and there's going to be a period of time from when the ordinance is is adopted. So, you know, I it's a worthwhile conversation to have, but it would just go into the general
pot of revenue. Okay. So, and I think just if people are wondering, you're supposed to have a license in order to use the part and uh I guess the suggestion was that we should perhaps charge more to uh to lar
to defay more of the operating cost of it. Mr. Mr. Fagen, do we have a a hand up? Uh, no, Council President, I was just getting prepared. I'm sorry. Wow. So, let's uh let's plan to to bring this up.
Uh perhaps it's too late for the August 12th council meeting, but uh the second uh the one after that uh is something we should focus on how we would do this. Maybe we'll add it to the uh new business and have a discussion and go from there. Um, and I just want to go
over one little point with that. Um, is it correct that if we do this by resolution that the fees only last for a year? So, I the way that I've always approached resolutions and ordinances is that
resolutions, you know, typically are good for one year. So if you do move to a model of like what we have now where where fees are set by resolution, my recommendation would be to do them on an annual basis. Um whereas when you do it
via ordinance, it sort of can live on either at infant item or to when you've put a specific expiration date on the ordinance. So again, my personal recommendation, not as I'm not an attorney, um would be if you're doing
fees by resolution, I would do them every year. You know, I would just start the year off with I mean, you don't I'm not saying you necessarily need to change them. I would just recommend these are the the fees by resolution you do at the first meeting of the year. Um,
so would that also mean that if if something is being held by resolution right now that it is no longer in effect if it was No, I I I I wouldn't say that it it expires per se, but again, I'm not a municipal attorney. Um, so
Okay. It's just, you know, my own personal opinion. Okay. So, I think we just have one more page. I think so. I just want to get back to what we discussed the last time we went to both the signs and posts. So just as of today when I read another budget
report. So we have paid $8,31 towards that we encumbered 2873 paid and committed total up to this year up to this to this morning was 11,17464 which which I the sign post the one we just told right
there. So, I know we wanted to put something back to there because I got a I got a a big order coming in. Yes. For that due d to uh new ordinance changes and new signs being ordered. I think we have in excess of over 60 signs coming in. Okay. Let's deal with it when we're on that page. Okay. I just want to do I didn't want to
get too far off and said we left and I forgot to make notice of that for you. That's all. Okay. That we still have um to move on to page 81. Uh page 81 is shade. We have to do consent. Yes.
Yes. Consent. Consent. Consent. Okay. Thank you. Uh council president page 81. Shade tree care. Uh the introduced budget was for $395,18410. Okay. Counciloman,
you have also had discussions about this with Mr. Reynolds. So, please. So, we have we have discussed this and agreed to lower the budget $81,383 to a total $81,383.
So the total amount is reduced to 300 thou 300,000 um 308,81. Oh no, it's 313. That was our first one. It's 313,81. So yeah. So for for for the record and clarity for Mr. Diniac, can we just tell
them how we took those monies away from each one of the line items that we spoke about? Okay. So line item 91 was reduced by $41,33. And line item 200
was reduced by $45,350. 45,000. Yes. 350. Yes. So that's 86,000, not 81,000. Oh. No, we I think we initially had 86 and
then we initially had 86. So then I'm sorry the second one was changed 200,000 was changed to 40,350. Okay. So those are both substantial cuts on a percentage basis. Is there some uh
reason or some activity that's associated with the reduction or is it just that we don't think we're going to spend it this year? It may be a little bit of both. I think for the contractual tree removal, I think that we discussed with this little bit of reduction, we
can concentrate mostly on the top priorities as far as removals and trimming and pruning. I think we should have enough to get there through us. I we settled on a number before and we just made an adjustment to to give us back a little bit more. Um and then with the tree planting, we re we reduced that
by some. uh hopefully have a a little bit more successful tree planting this time around. Um which it will go out to bid next year. We'll encumber everything and put it out for another early fall uh early spring bid rather. And I just think with a little bit lesser of a
budget for that now, a little bit maybe more control on the trees that we plant that we can oversee them and make sure we get the best possible job possible. Agreed. And hopefully we can increase it after another year. There's there's so many more trees out there that that haven't been planted
in years and and I understand the concern with, you know, maybe putting too many in at one time and not having a full gauge about how they're doing the health of the tree into whatever. Although with the performance bomb, we are covered to replace any trees that are dying or have failed. So, we'll have
to take a look at that and get us a um a little survey going to see where we stand with that. Mhm. So, we're all good on the numbers, right? Administration's okay. Yeah, sounds good. Do we need to uh add a motion here or can we just do it?
I think you just do consent. We're okay with it. Okay. Page 81. Consent. Consent. Consent. Uh, page 82, parking facilities. This is rent that we pay to New Jersey Transit. It is what it is.
I say it's the only way to say it. Consent on page eight. Consent. Thank you. This is a fixed fixed fee. Um, page 83 is the public works salaries and wages. Um, it's page 83 and page 84.
The total ask is 3,19,385.70. Okay. So, the the one thing that we had we had discussed a bit earlier was the it's a it's a very large overtime budget. Um, Mr. Reynolds, is there any way to tighten this overtime budget going forward?
Last time I spoke with Mr. Diniac, I think we were probably very comparable to what we should be as far as overtime is concerned with our department. I mean, most of our overtime or call backs or emergencies. And like I said, we work an 8 hour shift, at least 16 hours out
there for our guys to be called back for a tree down, wires down, barricades, a dead deer, whatever the case may be. So, it's it's pretty hard to tighten down. Those those services will go unrecognized and and not taken care of when they're called upon. So, I think where we're at with that that budget
reflects on what we do, whether it's 1:00, 2:00, or 3:00 in the morning under under any circumstances and weather conditions. So, I think we're we're good with that. Would the overtime be reduced if if you
had more staff? No, it probably go out more. I have more step I got to have. I can't hire somebody say come on in but I can't give you over time. So these are all emergencies that you're saying a lot of Yeah. You know a lot of callbacks and like I said for sewers and trees and everything else you know it's not something I can say listen I I'll go
look at it in the morning. And the public works people uh also support virtually all of the events that we put on as a township. So unless that changes. And then we have snow plowing which
obviously you know big storms we're running crews 247. Yeah. But if we get something big we're 24/7. We leave removal then you know even worse. So the days on the difference between public works OT
and and like a public safety OT is you know we're not generating OT because of minimal staffing with DPW. So, as Director Reynolds says, it it's really for the emergency call backs, it's for the the snow removal, it's for the
events. Um, you know, if someone calls out sick, there's just simply one less, right, individual, right? We we don't on the crew that day. We don't have three shifts that, you know, overlap and have someone. We don't call back anybody who's out. We just make do.
Okay. Any other discussion? We want to do consent on page 83 and 84. Consent. Consent. Consent. Thank you.
Uh now we'll move to page 85 salt chloride and plowing. So, um, Mr. Arounds and I have spoken about this. Um, it's a it's a very large budget, but at this point, this is what he anticipates spending. He does not
have enough salt capacity right now and has to buy quite a lot. It's very expensive and and the price has gone up. um and he has heard our request not to have any emergency purchases so that we can avoid that expense next year.
Right. And I think we I think I filled you in on how that all went about. So that's pretty much understandable. That's not a common practice. But unfortunately sometimes in those situations that I was in in prior years, you know, before this, we were in those positions a few times, too. Like I said, if if I know I have to pay a nickel for
something, I don't want to pay a dime. But sometimes I'm forced to and it was very minimal for both locations. It was 200 tons to each location to get us through the holiday week. We had a snowstorm December 20th which was a Saturday. Can't place an order to our
supplier or the trucking company until the Monday. So happens that Monday was that holiday week and supplier wasn't there or neither was the trucking company. I had four other storms predicted that week through our weather works reports. So, I figured I have to
make a decision, do the emergency service, get the salt that we needed. Uh, the last storm that we had through that projected week was on December 27th, and I finally received my salt on December 31st. And we do stockpile salt, but we
stockpile salt. We can only hold so much, right? We can only hold so much. We can only, you know, it's we're limited down below at 25 Lakeside Avenue as opposed to 590 Mount Pleasant. uh two locations definitely need it obviously because of the way the town is split and you know have routes and and snow plows down the
bottom of the hill as we do up the hill. So be nice if we can find another place for another salt shed sometime soon. And we also provide salt for Yes, we provide salt for for all of our trucks for the contractors. We we provide salt for the board of education
and also for the lawn part. Does the board of education pay us back? No, we do that as a sheriff service like when we need things from then and and they don't take much. They have two small trucks that come in. Usually they have a contractor that does their plowing and salting certain certain
certain circumstances in c certain situations something happens overnight that they're not prepared to call the contractor because the contractor will only come out over x amount of inches, plow it and then salt. They'll send two of their trucks out just to take care of their their parking lots and driveways through the day so school can be open.
Okay. Miss Bayer, I had a question come in from another SEBA member. Does the township also hire outside contractor for snow removal? For snow removal. Yes. Yes, we we hire for snow plowing and for snow removal.
Believe me, I may have stepped on you. You had the floor and I No, it's good. That's fine. No problem. So yes, there are there are annual there are annual contracts uh that are that are competitively bid.
I assume that's more cost effective than having our own guys do it. Well, well, first we don't have as many people as we'd like to have and and the equipment we don't have. We don't have enough equipment. This this town, if you're from the town, you know anything about the town is all hills. the the
geog reference of this town are are killer and it's a lot to maintain and take care of. So the coverage which we came to find over the years is much more effective, much more efficient and much more needed. And there's certain routes. So we bid it out yes by the routes.
Thank you. Okay. Do we have uh do we have consent on page 85? Yes. Consent. Consent. Thank you. Page 86, street cleaning and drainage. So, we we didn't get a chance to talk
about this this time, but last time we had talked about this. Um 70 dredging brook. Um I believe that zero has been spent to date. Zero has been spent to date. Okay,
I have quotes with me now. For how much? For two of our locations to to be cleaned. I I have more than two locations, but I didn't know how to go go about this if the the budget was passed to spend the money. So, with the two quotes I have right now for two different locations are just under
30,000. Okay. And do you are you planning on doing any more dredging this year? If if I could with with with the uh the budget, I will. Is it needed? Yes, it's needed. Yes, we we've had multiple complaints about one area
George Street in concern. One of the concerns I think council president is aware of that and uh we're trying to set our sights on to have that taken care of. And we also have a uh an area in Lalen Park where we're on the head wall and the great over there. That's the only thing that we worry about for drainage in in in Llewellen Park. That's
our responsibility. If we don't get in there to clean it at least twice a year, the people behind them in the neighborhood of Park Drive north to south, they get flooded. Okay. Do you need need this entire budget? The 50,000. Yes, I do. Okay, we haven't gone through this one.
I'm sorry. So, um, safety gear. Safety gear is always needed, right? But I think you've spent zero. Um, where on which line? I'm sorry. 110. You have you have some safety gear.
So, that the payer charge. We have $2,400 actually spent on safety gear. Yeah. Next 111 brooms. Brooms. Yes. They are not your street brooms that you push by hand. So there
are for mechanical sweepers. Uh they take two side brooms and and a back gutter uh two gutter brooms and a back broom. and they're always needed because a lot of sweeping 100 lane miles that we sweep throughout the town and then more so throughout leave season.
Is this is this the real cost? So, we we've spent $3,400 um so far. Yeah. Okay. All right. I know the next one is has been spent and they have to be replaced pretty regularly. You you'll probably see these. Yeah. you don't get a really long shelf
life out of it, you know, especially with with the sweeping that we do. Okay. And um street cleaning zero spent. What is that budget for? Now, like we said when we were back in June that some of these line items how
they're specific to their wording, we're like, okay, street cleaning. So, this whole thing pertains to street cleaning in itself. So, I'm like, you know, nobody dares to touch it because they're like, what do we use it for? I mean, if it's incorporated in this budget for for for street cleaning and and and and drainage, I mean, I could probably use
it for any one of these other line items if needed. Okay? Because that you're going to fill in on some of the others that have safety gear comes up or anything else comes out. Now, safety gear, what I mean by safety gear, I'm not just talking about hats, gloves, vest to that thing. I'm talking about cones, barricades,
caution tape, uh parking sign, emergency, no parking signs. And do you do you constantly need to replenish that? You don't have the cones. Yeah. I could put 10 cones out here tomorrow today. They'll be gone tomorrow. People take them. Yeah. Yeah. That's
What do you do with a traffic cone? And you got There's a lot of lot a lot of a lot of contractors out there want safety cones. Yeah. So, you get a landscaper truck pull up to them and they go back in in the trailer with them. So, yeah, it's it's a constant runaround for them.
Should put West Orange all over it. We do. We have them stamped. We We burn in West Orange on it. We spray paint it blue. But okay. All right. I move to consent on this page. Consent. Consent's on page 86.
How did we miss this? This one. Yeah. Page 87. Street repairs. Yeah. um cold patch on 112. Oh, the advertising budget. Have you used that at all? And and why would you
need that? Like I said, going back to the to to the old system and just putting down advertising. Maybe back in the day we did, but you know, everything now is electronically and on the website and whatever. So that's zero. Um the stone uh line
item 111 stone road oil. I think we we cut that 5,000 last time. Gives me $49.89. This is for our stone that we use in stock. 3/4 clean stone with 3/4 uh dense grade aggregate road stone for road repairs,
excuse me, road jobs, concrete work. So you lay down a sidewalk, you need to put stone as an underllayment. Have you used any? As of this year, I haven't ordered any, but I I do need to make an order for it. Okay.
Um cold patch. whole patch winter mix. What we use when the plant closes for the hot mix to get us through the winter and back to when the plant reopens again. It's a temporary mix for potholes. But are you doing this repair? I thought we hire people to do this.
No, that that's in-house repairs. We hire people to do the road improvements in those jobs in their entirety. We do the the patching and the maintenance of roads that aren't being paved or haven't been paved in a while. Okay. Um, and this is the this is the amount you feel you need for the coal patch.
Yes. Yeah. You know, a coal patch is probably even is more expensive than the hot mix. Okay. Let's go on to 114 equipment curb drain restoration. That's a big ask. That's a big ask. And we see that we put
out that actually comes from all our catch bas and blocks and bricks, concrete and all that stuff for for all those repairs. Um and what has been spent? This is what we have spent we have covered.
So 6,100 60. Okay. 6,500. Excuse me. Can you reduce that to 13,000? We're almost at the end of the year. I'm just trying to think what I have up and coming as far as my my list of to-dos and everything else. So,
are you going to need it for when you clean the Brooks? I won't need it for the Brooks. No. Okay. Yeah, I think we could take that down a little bit. Okay. So, reduce that five. And street resurfacing. I know you've come down a little, but how much has
been spent to date? A little over $7,000. $7,200. Okay. And you have 17,000 left. That's a lot. That is a lot. That's for our hot mix material. Mhm. Which I have a detail tomorrow to do
with that. And then all the way up until the time we go on leaves, we'll be using a hot mix material. So, I don't know what the what the price is right now for per ton, but can you bring it down another five this year?
What we're also renting some equipment from here out of this forward. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Right. Right. Yeah. So, that's that's going to be uh ongoing also there. Yeah. It's $700 a month. Right. Right. So, with that being said, 700 a month being only in August and
moved to December, I think I think five may be a little bit too much to pull out of there. 700 a month for how many months? Well, we have still have to go from that to the end of the year. And these are the uh the lights, correct? Oh, those are the
these are the lights that are that are up by the uh Do we really need that a month lights? There's four of them. Yeah. Or six of them. Four of them. Plus four up there. Yeah. Do we need four? Yeah. It's a big lot.
You need It's a big lot. People trip there during the day. I mentioned that at night if I don't have enough lighting. What time does library close? I don't know what his hours are. I I I believe sometimes he's there till 9:00 p.m. at least. And the these these uh rental equipments for for the last
they're on timer. So they they come on. Is there any any better way that we can be doing this? Putting lights attached to the building and lighting outside the building. The lights, I don't think you could cast light from the building far enough into the parking area cuz
these these are like freestanding trailers. Generator. Is it diesel they run on? Yes. Terrify. And they're noisy. Why Why not put posts up there like a regular parking lot?
You'd have to run new electrical. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's a it's a that's a big undertaking. Bigger than spending seven 700 a month all all the time with no no end in sight. So you would run the conduit but then
you'd want to do a resurfacing program for the whole lot. Mhm. The lights don't work. So none of the conduit works. I don't I don't know how much that would cost. The the parking lot itself is has two lights. One way down at the end by the pond and one up
closer to the building and that was it for the the park lot from its original days. All the globe lighting around the perimeter of the library is is done. We've I had test taken with them with conduit on the ground with brakes and all the conduit. The globe lights all work. Few lights on the building, a few
lights on the roof of the building. That's the only ones that work, but that's not enough to uh light up the parking lot for safety. Yeah. the uh the proposed uh bond ordinance for all of the construction up at 10 Rudy that was voted down earlier this year had a substantial amount of of
electrical and Yes. Yes. All the way down from from from the bottom of the uh the park lot all the way up to the top and around the whole building. I think there's also some added landscape not landscape lighting but like the globe lighting around the interior part of the the building also. Do you think that you could work on
coming up with another idea for lighting? Yes. I mean using this I don't see any other then portable generators that we're using now without hard you know hardwiring everything which which is a big project that's you're talking like we said we have to cut into asphalt and run conduit run
electric by the poles has an electrician ever evaluated this yeah in that in that project yeah with the practice went on it was engineered and architect there's there's plans for it but you know I understand that would you know we not may not be moving with
that sooner or later, but that that is the ultimate fix for it. Okay, Miss Bayer, have solar lights been considered? I I don't think there's enough solar light up there that I don't think solar
lights can handle what we need to light up there. I I don't I don't think they cast enough of a light to to make it safe up there. And I, you know, I don't know anything, you know, solar lighting is is is probably going to be put on a pole somewhere and that's going to take
installation, everything else to put it to put into the the asphalt or the concrete or around the building. You could get those solar lights that you put into the ground and line all the way around the property and they do actually light up and somebody walk away with them too.
They might. I put them up there, don't you? There's cameras up there, but there was cameras up there when when the library project was going on. It didn't stop somebody from coming inside and robbing the copper. Okay. Well, continue to think about that
one because this is not a good solution and burning diesel in our in our public areas doesn't seem like a sensible environmental move. How How long? Although with the the close proximity of
280 there and probably every third vehicle is a diesel vehicle driving by either a trailer or a dump truck, you're still getting a lot of that. That's true. But we're adding to it by by having them there. I think a lot less with the lights than than the traffic. They the the cost is 700 no matter how
much they're used. Right. Right. And and then we have another electric bill on top of that or No, no, no. But they're just burning diesel. Yes. And who's putting the diesel in them? We are township. We're paying for the diesel, too. Do you not have any idea how much that is?
Whatever per gallon for a diesel is at at this month through our co-op. That's what it is. Yeah. We And they're small tanks. It's not like they're 50 gallon tank. There's no other way to do this without doing diesel burning. think these generators are made that way because when you run an engine that
long, they look they run a long time. Long time, right? The diesel blow burns at a slower rate and you're able to to keep the engine running for a longer time without having the gas engine either warp the engine, overheat. Okay.
Yeah, it doesn't sound like we're going to to fix this uh Yes. and you guys continue to talk and uh uh if any other council person wants to to get in that that's fine too, right? Or if anybody hearing this has any other solution to this problem, let
us know. So, okay, on this page, page 87, we're done with this except for the uh the $5,000 reduction on uh line item 111. Well, I'm still going to try and see if if this can be brought down a little.
You said five was too much. Can you bring it down four on which one? Which line? 4200 on the street resurfacing. No, we've already brought it down 4,800. Correct. You right. Prior to this? Yes.
And you want an additional four from it? Yes. Okay. Okay. We did bring down this line item 5,000. Just make you aware from the current legislation. Carbon dice. Okay. Just you're okay with the both? Well,
the the the street resurfacing I I think we're okay with because we'll we'll continue services with hot mix up until, you know, November till we switch the leaves. Then we switch over to coal patching for now. Uh the curb and stone drainage and restoration for curb,
we got a few more repairs up with that. I think we have enough block to get through there right now. So I I think I could sacrifice that for for this year, but going back next year when I have a full season to go into. Okay. Thank you. All right. So, um I
make I make a motion to reduce this this budget by 9,000. A second. Okay. Any further discussion? Madame clerk.
Councilwoman Ruden. Yes. Councilwoman Scarpa. Yes. Council President Koviaak. Yes. The motion carries. Okay, now we're at the signs and posts. Okay, on page 88,
page 88, street services and traffic, the budget is 16,500. What has been spent is 5,428 and I believe that there's an order for something else. There is but as of today we have paid and charged $8,31
and covered 2873 paid and committed total 11,17464. Do you anticipate anything more beyond that? I do these these orders are coming from the engineering department. Street studies and surveys have been done. These orders
have been placed multiple times this year that that that are above any usualist stock that we that we use to replace signs with. So these are more additional signs needed and being put up either for the ordinance that were changed for for parking regulations, the
ordinance that were changed from a 25 mph speed zone on Gregory to 20. Okay. So no wiggle room. I don't think right now. Like I said, we we have a big order coming in now. I I don't know what's
anticipated after that, but I'm sure there is. And there, you know, it's not we don't stop signs and and anything else like that because we'll keep going if there's an emergency. I mean, even what's out there now with the stock I get a knockdown stop sign, there's an accident, they take down speed limit signs, pedestrian crossing signs,
whatever, they all have to be replaced, though. Okay. All right. So, I move to consent for this page that page 88. consent. Yes. All right. Next page is page 89.
Sanitation and pumping services. I think we we did this. We talked about this. Yeah. Did we do consent on this? There there was a discussion last time about reducing the licensing fee
at the compost facility. That's that's by the state. Correct. The the amount is $4,5335. Is that correct? For the licensing fee license fee for the compost facility. Yes. Uh well, I have a budget
modification here that indicates 395614. We haven't paid or charged or encumbered anything year to date, but I'm sure that's the way it's been build, how it gets build out from the state to us. Okay. I'm sure the state's not going to miss their assets.
Okay. And and nothing has been paid to date. No, I have a note that it's $3,000 for the year. Okay. That's what I had from you, too. So, can we reduce it $4,535.32? Because that's just a fee. Yeah, that's that's the licensing fee.
So, I can't argue with you on that. Okay. So, what's that number again, Councilwoman? Please. It's a reduction of $4,5352. Um the portaotties we've spent 615
out of a $1,500 budget and these are used for St. Patrick's Day. They're they're they're used for the events yet. Okay. So are there any other events this year that you needed for? I don't know. And do you hold on to this whole year? You rent it and then return
it or you have it for the year? It's $1,500 for the year. Right. Right. Are you moving these around to different locations? No, they're they're used for the event then picked up again and then do we pay 1,500 for the entire
like as many times as we want to use it? I think that's where you Yeah. So we paid the first payment we made was $61,54 and we have a remaining payment of $8.84. 84.96 84 884.96 Why do we have a remaining payment?
I I guess that's the the contract that I I don't know. It was It was The contract was encumbered for $1,500. I know it was encumbered, but are we really using it? Well, it's only encumbered when you're certain that you're going to have to pay it. There there has to be
there has to be an invoice or a proposal or something because uh they wouldn't have encumbered it for 1,500 otherwise. Okay. So then I'm going to make a motion on this page, page 89, to reduce $4,5352. I'll second it.
Further discussion? It's from the compost fee for the facility because it's $3,000 this year. I I already have the number. Okay. Administration is good on this. Yes. Yes. Councilwoman Ruden.
Yes. Councilwoman Scarpa. Yes. Council President Koviaak. Yes. The motion carries. Thank you. Next page is Central Automotive page 90. The introduced budget was for $770,3949 and that was a reduction from the
previous uh the previous year. Yes. Budgeted for 2024 of uh 20.56%. What? Page 90. Page 90. Yeah. Central Automotive. Yeah.
Oh, big. Um, Steab was interested in a little bit more detail on the $600,000 um, auto parts item number 151. Could you tell us what that in um, includes reflects?
Lou, you want to talk about it? And also the increase the increase from spent last year to probably be of interest. So the I mean the auto parts is is basically all of the everything service as well, right?
Um all parts needed and services. Yeah. It's not just we're buying oil filters. It's, you know, we're rebuilding in a truck engine. Um so it's all the repairs as well. So that is a very large number. I know
you've spent 27,000 to date. Is that right? And you've encumbered 317,000 for auto parts. Yes. For 151 auto parts. No. Auto. So So what I have for auto parts paid to short
got to be way more than that. 186. Yeah. 25838 encumbered 131. 11426. Paid and committed. 317 37264. When you go out to repair vehicles, is
this competitively done or do you use the same? Both for co-ops. Yep. Both for co-ops. We have certain co-ops that that handle heavy duty trucks, light duty trucks. We have a co-op for our buses to be handled. Enterprise handles our light duty vehicles. That means all the municipal
vehicles, the SUVs that they have, the police departments, uh, cars, and our vehicles from a pickup up to a 450 go to go through Enterprise. You want her to do it? I think we need
this one. So the question um from CBA relates to the fact that the um the original budget was $430,000 and it came back with a $600,000 number.
Um it it the number the request changed. Yeah, I know. I I I I answered this several times when this was brought up. I made a mistake, so I put the right number in. Um, so it's been the six00,000
number for months. You and then he introduced it at this this amount too. So are any of these parts covered by insurance? No, this is maintenance. So yeah, maintenance.
Okay. So can you just give me a total of how much has been spent this year? You rattled off a lot of numbers, but I don't have a total. So actual cash out the door on on the auto parts is $196,989
202 21 and then we have encumbered because I have the most up to date today. Encumbered right now is $120,41743. Now, some of that incumbrance might be a blanket with with a vendor where we say,
you know, we've authorized $10,000 with you. We may have not have brought anything in yet and incurred the liability, but we've authorized $10,000 with you. Some of it may be actual work that, you know, we brought a truck in and somebody said, "Okay, it's going to
be $17,000." So, we encumbered the PO and it's not done yet. So we haven't paid him yet. So you know that encumbered is is a mixture of the two. Okay. So first of all, why are we giving out blanket
you know licenses to spend money to anybody? So the the reason that you do that is um you want to you want to reserve it on your books. So, like with a professional, if we do a
not to exceed for $50,000, really we should do, and we do this, we do a blanket that says, "Okay, we gave ABC Company or we've authorized ABC Company $50,000 in work." And we do that so that, you know, we're not promising all these different companies contracts and
then when all the invoices come due, we've overexpended. So, we do it internally um so that we're not overspending our budgets. Um and then what would happen would be, you know, we would have the
vendor sign the PO for $10,000 and then they still have to bill us and we simply pay down on that that PO and then if we need to spend more than $10,000, we got to do a new blanket PO. How much how
much of the 120 is a blanket? Uh, it's it's kind of hard to say because I literally have like 25 different vendors here that have blankets. I mean, okay. You know, we have Select Auto for
miscellaneous bus repairs. We have $1,200 still left on the blanket. We have Jesco, $210 left on a blanket. Um, but then we have uh a limbo, which this is DBW26 transmission repair. This is
probably a regular job. Um, then we have a blank with Fred Small Engine Sales, $1,500. Foley, $1,500 for miscellaneous repairs and parts. Champion Tire, Bristol Donald, the list kind of goes on. Timberman for
our sweeper. Okay. So you have a lot that has not been spent that may may be spent or may not be spent. May be spent and then at the end of the year what you do is you liquidate your blankets where so you say all right we didn't spend it by the end of the year
we're now liquidating the blanket and returning the money back into the account as unencumbered. So, it's not we're not telling anybody like if I give someone a blanket PO for $10,000, I'm not promising them $10,000.
I may never call them again and never use them again. They're not going to get $10,000 for nothing. It's it's only authorizing it from a budgetary perspective. Okay. So this was a very one of the key
recommendations from CBA which you know they met together for for weeks and their very strong recommendation was to reduce this a lot since a lot of this money has not has not been spent. So, um, I'd like to
to make a strong suggestion since some of this has not been spent and you've only spent 196 that you cap this at 450. That's pretty significant. I I I think that might be too much. the the the the further we move along into the winter
and the fall. So now all my bigger trucks, heavy duty trucks right now, we'll go out there and you run them hard. They're going to break down. They're going to need repairs. My equipment's old. It's not new. I have run 1991 garbage trucks. I run a 1987 plow truck.
Your trucks are are old and you do need to replace them. They are. But we just keep patching them and we should be we should be spending money on getting you new trucks. But if we just keep patching them like this, we're just throwing good money after bad. That's what I have to do. I don't have
anything else in my fleet to to say, "Okay, park this one, take another, you know, that's what we have to do." And some of these repairs get get more and more expensive with the age of the truck. Either they don't make that piece of equipment. It's got to be manufactured. It has to be machined. And and then it's a long process to wait for
it. So, I get a snow truck down that's a 1987 and it's out of that route and it needs a piece of whatever it may need and they don't make it and it's got to be manufactured. Say goodbye to that truck for the rest of the winter. Okay. I'd like to hear from um our board
on this. Well, there are two of us here. One says it's a reasonable request to reduce and I know it was our our first highly recommended um recommendation in the report. The report is draft. My personal
feeling is that the reason it had such a high priority in our report is that it seemed counterintuitive to have the budget jump from the four whatever to 100,000. But we've just heard from Mr.
Datiniac it was an honest error. They need the money. I feel uncomfortable because I don't think that the sebab is um speaking with one voice here. Um you know, we're hearing very strongly
from the department director that he needs this money and um from the council person that we really need new equipment and these repairs are expensive. So yeah, and we are upwards of 150 or better in
the fleet that we maintain. So it's not just DPW, the fire engines, the pumper trucks, the ladder trucks, whatever. They need to go to a special vendor who deals with that specific piece of equipment with pumps and ladders and everything has for for all kinds of reasons just because they're specialists in that the safety checks, everything
that has to be maintained according to that. And our police vehicles are included in here, too. Yeah, everything. We're either up to 100 or over 150 vehicles have been maintained. And as Director Reynolds said too, um, West Orange is hilly like where the
vehicles out, tires, it's they're 24/7. The cars are just constantly running. Constantly running. So, and and and with the hills, tires, brakes, you know, cooling. Cooling. Yes. Transmissions. It's
What about repairs for um township cars that are used by employees? Do we pay for repairs for those cars, too? Yeah. Anything in the fleet? Yeah. Okay. So, can you can you break that out?
I mean, so we we could break out the repairs for any vehicle. So, especially those that are in that enterprise um the vendors enterprise FM trust. So enterprise is running like a fleet management for
not every vehicle that we have just pickups up to 450. Yeah. And the police car and and the police cars. So Enterprise what what they do, not only did they source the vehicles for us, which is is is advantageous because it's
difficult to get police vehicles just going through the state contract vendors or even if you can get a co co-op in Pennsylvania or something like that. Um, so they can source them from throughout the nation, but they manage um the maintenance and repairs and then
they can track it by vehicle and they can tell us, okay, you know, here's the gas mileage for, you know, radio car and you've spent $4,893 on repairs and it's got 60,000 miles, now's the time to get rid of it, sell
it, and put it into, you know, a new vehicle repair. So, long story short, yes, we can we can provide the maintenance on any one of our vehicles, especially those that are in the enterprise fleet management. I'd definitely want that. And I I'd also
like to know when you you mentioned today that there were two two vehicles in accidents. Yeah. Yeah. I got to the garage this morning and I was there and they were fueling up, do what they had to do. 15 minutes later, they came back, somebody sideswiped the car. Okay. So, are is that covered by our insurance?
That would be covered by insurance. based on the the the amount of the the repair and our deductible. Yeah, we have somewhat high deductibles. So, you know, a lot of times we're going to be paying out of pocket, you know, unless it's totaled or, you
know, it's a really expensive vehicle and someone ruden if you don't need the floor. Okay. Yes. If you just do a Thank you. Thank you. So, I'd like to amend my reaction from before because my numbers I had double counted some numbers. So,
it looks like we've had 186 out the door and we have 196 20 196 196 Okay, my numbers are wrong again. And 120 encumbered. So that's 316,000
against a request for 600,000 with how many months left in the year. Um so again the CBA thinks that that is um a lot that that perhaps that is a line
item where we we know we have a lot of repairs but we're more than halfway through the year and we're just about at half of that budget. So again, I would support um the notion that we could ask for a
reduction, maybe not to the 450, but some reduction in that line item. And while I'm have the floor, I have another member who's asking how much would a new truck cost. That just depends on what you need. I need a little bit more specific than a
new truck, right? $300,000. It can be $75,000, right? Whatever you need it for. Uh, Miss Barry, you make a very good point. I just want to follow up on that. You still have the floor, but I just want to say I is there ways or is there
a way for us to track the line item data going back a few years so that we could see, okay, in that line item, we've asked for $600,000, what if we've asked for $600,000 last three years or whatever the number is, what's the percentage that we used at the end of
the year? And of course, everybody knows, at least they should know, we don't lose this money. It's just money that that goes into our surplus. We don't lose it. The downside of that, of course, is that uh it's added to our tax
levy. And so, I certainly understand the concern, but again, I just wonder if we're not going to be able to get to uh a a number today because we don't have the data. I do we we can supply that. um you know in a
separate email going back to 22. Let's let's pick a number there. We'll we'll we'll send that. Okay. Yeah. Cuz if if if every every year we uh got within 90 95% of that, then we know that it's it it's probably pretty sticky, but uh if if it's going
up and down, we need to figure out some way to to gauge this. Uh maybe even look at it on a a monthly or quarterly basis. uh you know during the year like what what most good budgeting businesses do.
And I will say too like you know we exist in the high inflationary market as well as anyone else. So you know the vendors are the prices are increasing every year. The cost of the the auto parts are going up every single year.
Not to mention you know you have the tariffs now. Yeah. Not that we have a lot of, you know, foreign made parts, but you know, still because Canada does a lot of parts. Yeah. That is true. A few uh quotes just
for for knowledge saying what's going moving forward with a truck to be built for a snow truck. He says, "Well, here here's here's what it is, and if you place the order today, I can probably get get it to you in 18 months, you know, but here's and and there's like $35,000 put on top of the price tag for
the tariffs. So we still have come back and miss be I don't want to take your floor from you. So uh I just one other observation you know it or question or what 388,000 appears to have been spent in 2024 again
this $600,000 request for this year. So I mean that's just another reason to think about you know maybe 600,000 is too much. Uh thank you. Thank you. So we are left to uh make a decision on
this this line item. Uh as as Miss Bear has pointed out, we're quite a ways from that uh $600,000 bogey, right? But of course, you're the you're the one that has to try to project what we're going to spend. Yeah. Usually from this point on to the
end of the year, it's much more spending for mechanical because of the snow because of the leaf season. You know, I think I said this at the the u the June budget meeting. I have a payloader. We were running on the road. Somebody decided to put construction debris in the leaves. We run it over. Blows out a
tire. The tire is $2,500 in itself to replace $500 for the road service to take care of. So, they're they're costly items. They're big ticket items. We get it. So I don't want to drastically re reduce everything. All I do understand that the tax basis and it goes back to
surplus and do whatever you know everybody likes a little comfort zone you know and that makes us feel more comfortable too moving forward. So, you know, like I said, any given day something can happen to my fleet and it does pretty much, you know, or I turn around like like today and I look out
the door and there's a police car damaged and then there's something else damaged, you know, and I and I and and we're going back and forth with with buses and and the way they're running now, the jies, they're running full and strong and hard and and it's a great program and do whatever, but with the hills and a lot of travel, it takes a
lot out of them. And then this is something that you can't sit there and wait on and say, "Let me go to this vendor for this price because all the vendors that we have are co-op or state contract and they're pretty much based the same amount that they charge you for mechanical work and and for parts parts you'll get the little bit difference
here and there, but they have the luxury to say I have it going back to like somewhat of that blanket order whatever." So you cut down all that in between stuff to get these vehicles on the road for services for our residents as quickly as possible. Mr. Reynolds, how would you feel about a
cut of $100,000? That still gives you plenty of uh uh plenty of lead from not only last year, but also so far this year. Not too good. Not too good. Okay. Not too good. So, you think you're going to spend 500
grand this year? I 600. That's a lot. That's a course from from June when this came out. on what we spent to what halfway what we spent to or to the end of the year. I'm a I'm a little bit more comfortable
with that. I'm a little bit more comfortable at 50. You know, I'm that guy that now, you know, goes through every night going through leaf season, and snow season, everything else, and they don't sleep or wake until April comes around again. then we don't have to deal with any of that stuff worrying about what's going to break down next, what's going to
happen next, you know. So when I then then I do that, I don't have a replacement for that. Maybe through the automotive budget somewhere some way through her rental or another company, I could rent a vehicle for that to get me through this the the snow season at
least. There's there's some options I have to look at as backup plans. That may be one of them. So, I just try to throw everything together and see see what's going to be the best fix for us moving forward. So, you want to meet in the middle
75. And if you haven't come back to us, if you have to come back to us, we'll uh we'll authorize at least I will. At least I'll You live on a hill. You live on a hill in the snow. We You know where I live.
He's not getting He's not getting How do How do How do your street look every time we're plowed? You're not getting that argument from me. I not argue about this is just excellent uh excellent street uh snow removal. No question about that. Leaves.
We do our best. There's no there's no complaint about that. And I think we've been told that by quite a few other people and quite a few other towns that say you guys do leaves and snow like nobody else. Yeah. I would say right at our house the
the street incline up to the top probably goes up at about 20 easily easily and then try to make it out to Northfield. Forget it. Yeah, that's that's not a good call. But so 75.
So we're comfortable with 50. Um, this budget supports all the operations of the township, police, fire, our code enforcement, ambulance, our DPW, heavy trucks, light trucks, plow trucks, leaf trucks.
Um, all the municipal vehicles here, all the municipal vehicles. So, um, I think Director Reynolds just feel more comfortable with, uh, a cut of 50k. And um you know I think this is
something we could revisit as well in 2026 and and maybe look for either capital purchases to replace you know our alien fleet um or looking at different ways of uh
you know shared services for for u you know uh auto body not auto body work what do I say automotive work um those exist out there. Um maybe looking at some different ways to reduce this further, but this year I think we feel
like a reduction down to 550,000 which last year was 799,000 in the budget. Um but it wasn't spent. It was less than 400 spent. So it's still I mean it's it's eyepopping the increase. And I know
that there's really a need for safe safe vehicles, but again, I always go back to how much of this is is being spent on usage of cars that are being used by employees full-time. Well, all of our only our employees
drive the vehicles, so that um you know, we brought up the take-home vehicles. There's there are take-home vehicles and they are serviced. No doubt about that. Um, but the vast majority of our expenses
come from our radio car fleet and our heavy trucks and our sweepers and our buses. Those the buses are Yeah, that's mostly, you know, they they're constantly needing work. And
so I hope you see our side of it. I certainly do. And we have to rely on you to uh a significant degree. But I do want to start tracking this uh more closely as we can uh as much as we can.
you know certainly on a quarterly basis but maybe even on a monthly basis even though it starts getting susceptible to ups and downs but uh so we the historical data and then you know I could talk to the BA about um you know data we get from enterprise fleet
management it's not going to cover every vehicle um but it covers a big portion of the fleet yeah uh and it has some great data um not just on maintenance but fuel efficiency
and um and all that. So, any more discussion? Council Ruden, I'd like to hear from the board. We're going to stop calling you Miss Bear. We're going to start calling you the board. The board. Uh I don't want to bend the rules. Uh
you're you're up here because we're eventually going to get to the to the preliminary report. It's just that had we gotten to the report first, we would have discussed this. So I like and I would have been speaking about it. Had we gotten to the report, it's one of the three items and I'm receiving messages
from other board members who know that I'm sitting here. So I what's tricky is I'm happy to share them with Miss Spar, but it's a game of telephone. It makes sense to have her speak. Oh, no. It's it's also I'm I'm just trying to keep, you know, order in in
the meeting. That's that's all. And uh we we took the move of of putting somebody up here so they can engage. Uh but it doesn't seem to make as much sense to have multiple people engaging uh in this. I I'll tell you what, I'll just make the exception now, but I I
don't want this to be uh requested uh going forward, please. And council president, I appreciate that and I I I won't speak up again. And in fact, I'm going to remove myself until it's time for the CBA to sit up here. I was under the false impression that we were all participating including those
who are um online um watching online. So I apologize for that. I the po the point that the SBA member who raised this issue the point that he is making over and over is that the actual spend was
$388,000 last year. The ask is for $600,000. and that absent evidence of the actual spend being more at this point, then the reduction should be down to what was
originally proposed, which was 430. Now, you've proposed 450, and I heard 500, and I'm saying that something in the middle makes more sense. Something between 388 and the 600 makes more
sense. that that I think that that's really the point that CBA was trying to make was that this is an area that should have actual justification in numbers and the numbers say as of right now spend or encumbered is 316.
The proposal is 50% adding in another 50% of that amount for the remainder of the year. And as you say, you're open and available if the spend is more that they can come back to you. Right.
So, here we are. We can either make an agreement at uh at 50 or some other $50,000 or some other as in terms of a cut or we can either move on or go to a motion. So, uh
what's what's the uh council's pleasure? Do you want to just uh accept the $50,000 and and look to make much more progress next year? I'm inclined to do that. It's just to a certain degree, we have to rely on the people who spend
this money, who are in the trenches day after day. And if they're telling us that they're concerned that that cutting more than $50,000 will be an issue, then maybe we accept it now. But we're going to have a lot more hard data for next year and and we'll we'll try to cut that
closer going forward. But I'm only one person on the council. So what's the council's pleasure? You want to take $50,000 as a reduction? I hate to do this to you, Mr. journals. But I think that because this is such a strong recommendation from and we really
only got three recommendations from the from the board that and they are all weighing in on this that we have to do a lot better than 50 and we have to have evidence that you need this.
Um because right now you have less than 200,000 spent and you're asking to spend almost another 400,000. I think I think we've said everything we need to say. Um if you don't agree with
it, we ask that you make an amendment for the amount that you want. Um we agreed to $50,000. Uh we think that's a meaningful reduction. Um and that that's it. I think you know Mr. Reynolds has justified it enough.
Okay. So you've already heard that if something happens and you need more to come back. So I'm going to make a motion to reduce this by 100,000. Councilwoman Ruden by May. Hold on. We got a We got a motion. We
need to see if it's got a second and then we can move on. If you can just be a little patient. So, Council, I'd like to hear what Mr. Datiniacs has to say. I just want to be clear. Do you mean come back prior to adoption of the
budget or after the budget is adopted? After the budget is adopted. Okay. So, or I mean even even if you can come back prior, if you can show us more, we absolutely show us prior. But right now, I'd like to make that amendment right
now. If you can get us more evidence, I think we'd all feel a lot comfortable. And I I feel very responsible to the the um budgetary board that spent so much time and this was a key recommendation. The the only reason I ask is if if we do
adopt the budget and then Mr. Reynolds has to come back because we need and what is essentially an overexpend then ask the taxpayers for that money. We've already set the levy. We're going to have to ask them for that money in 2026. It's going to be a deferred
charge. That's the only reason I I I bring it up. So if it's prior to adoption, you know, we can amend it and make sure that it's included in the tax levy, but after the budget is adopted, the deferred charges, we can't get that from the taxpayers till next year. Um,
just want to throw that out there. Okay. Because if we pull it out of surplus, we're going to have to replenish the surplus. So it's going to have the same effect next year. Yeah. I mean, there's really nowhere to to pull it from. We can't get the cash because we've already set the levy. And so now you're adding to the budget
without actually getting it from the taxpayers. So the state would say, "Okay, raise it in 2026 as a deferred charge." So, you know, you get that lag in terms of the cash flow. Not Not that a $50,000 or $100,000
charge is going to bury us with cash flow, but I just want to put it out there. Okay. So, we have a motion on the floor to reduce uh this line item by $100,000. Do we have a second? I'll second it.
Is there any further discussion? Madam Cler, Councilwoman Ruden, yes. Councilwoman Scarpa, yes. Council President Koviaak, no. The motion carries. Thank you.
Okay. Page 91. So, wait, did we do this? Can we do this with Z? I think so. Possibly. Oh, we went through this with what size. Oh, I guess we never voted on. I'm
sorry. Uh, sewer and pumping stations. Um, page 91. We had talked about this. Yes, we did today. And, um, I think this needs to stay Yes. Stay as is. Yes, that Thank you for that. Yeah. Mhm.
So, do we have consent on page 91? Consent. Consent. Consent. You do need to move the budgets around a little to reflect what actually. Okay. Sure. Yeah. And we can make those other changes as well from the previous departments that we voted on for the
subs. Okay. I think that's it for Mr. R. I think we've tortured you enough. Thank you so much. We really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Reynolds. I know it's difficult and you can you can give us evidence and
we can Yeah. I mean, listen, I I I get it. I just don't want to be, you know, hanging out there and saying, "No, I can't I can't get work done because of this, this, this, and this. I cut the budget too much, you know, so right, I'm going to be that guy."
Well, we we really do understand what you're doing for us and appreciate it. I appreciate that. Thank you. So now we have another major decision because Mr. Johnson has been sitting there in the back row for some time and the issue is do we want to move to the
uh further discussion of the CBA report preliminary report or do we want to take Mr. Johnson? What's everybody's I know I'd like to hear what's Oh, can I talk? Well, you're talking council. I'll wait
if you want. I I would like to hear what CBA has to say before we, you know, move on if possible. Okay. I'm I'm sorry. There's there's a lot of talking going on in the council chambers. Could you repeat that, please? Yeah. I'd like to hear what the SBA has to say before we move on.
The CBA say about Oh, about the preliminary report. Yeah. The assistant director will uh defer to the sebat. Okay. So let's talk CBA. Is there the report?
Is there anyone online from the CBA that we need to make sure is brought in on the Zoom discussion? The only name I recognize, Council President, is Phil Litwinoff. Uh Mr. Charles was on earlier, but he is
no longer on. Sometimes that's an indication that that individual may be on their way in. But uh that's all I see is Mr. Litwinoff. So can you bring in Mr. Litwinoff when he raises his hands? Well, I can bring him in right now and
uh have him ready to go and then he could raise his hand when he's uh when he has something to say and I will uh uh inform you. Okay, sounds good. I tell him uh Mr. Litmanoff, welcome to the
meeting. Uh as you may have heard me say, uh if you have uh something to say, raise your hand and uh you know the procedure, I will indicate to council president and he will recognize you. Republic, will you tell me what page you
want to go to or? Yeah, I think I think if I remember correctly, at the last meeting, at the last workshop, Miss Bennett was uh may have been cut short a little bit. I'm not sure if I if I remember that
correctly. Uh but you were I'm just looking at my notes. Um I think the last thing you talked about was the first thing you talked about was the three bullets that you brought up again today. And then there were footnotes regarding compensation.
Um, and I'm not sure did you drain that subject as far as what you wanted to discuss, you know, so council president, thank you. I um I I was under I guess the instruction and
maybe it was a false understanding that we were to just highlight you know one to three items for you in a brief introduction. I thought we would then pivot to receive your questions and provide responses. I thought that was the I thought that had
been the plan or the model. Um I will tell you that I just messaged a couple of the um SBA members uh to let them know that if they join they can be promoted to panelists. So you may have others joining who when they saw that
you were hearing from department heads might have ex stepped away. So I just if we can maybe um five minutes maybe if we can take five minutes there might be people who do want to be heard from the group. I know when you extended
the offer to join by Zoom, several had conflicts with tonight, but wanted to try to participate that way. So, I'm sending the messages out as quickly as I can, but I don't know if it would be prudent to take five minutes to see if anybody else joins. Okay, we could take a five-minute break
or I I think we also the other council members I don't think got a chance to uh respond or ask any questions at the last at the last discussion. So maybe that's where we could start or unless you want to just wait five minutes. May maybe we'll wait so that they can get
their members on. Plus, Mr. Charles, I think bus is about Mr. President, I'd like to take this opportunity to just check Mr. Lutnoff's uh Phil Caner because I had brought him into the meeting, but I also see another
individual in the uh Zoom audience with their hand raised. Cynthia and Phil. I don't know if that's Phil. Um, we're taking a break. I I I'm not sure. Mr. Fagen, can we take the break and you can figure
out if you can get in touch with Miss L. Okay. So, we'll take a five minute. We will restart hopefully at 7:41. 5 minutes from now. Whatever your clock says. Thank you everyone. Uh, Cynthia and Phil, can you hear me?
the members in the zoom. It's we are on break and I'm muting the audio feed. one. Welcome back and thank you for your patience to those members in the uh Zoom audience. Somebody has a microphone
open. You're going to have to mute that. So, sorry. That's okay. Is that what I sound like? Yes, Mr. Okay, we are ready to continue. I turn the floor over to council president.
Thank you, Mr. Fagan. You're still You have disconnect from the Zoom. Jesus. You can just turn it off. I'm trying to. So, Miss Bennett had the great idea of
letting Miss Bear uh start us off because she was not present uh at the previous workshop and didn't get a chance to give her one or two uh most important points. So, we'll start with that and then uh I'm hoping we'll get
some questions from the uh from the council members. Miss Bear. Thank you, Mr. President. And um thank you to the council and thank you to the board who you know one after the other was so eloquent on Monday night and really did highlight a lot of our recommendations. We have a lot of
recommendations in this preliminary report. Um I'm going to focus on fiscal responsibility and in that I'm going to incorporate planning, debt,
capital plan and fund balance. So in terms of planning we the town needs to prioritize what services it wants to provide to the town.
We've had some discussion or there have been some comments about differentiating between services that are mandated or required and other services that are nice to have but might be too expensive
for us to afford now. So the first part of planning is to determine what the priorities of the town are. Then um I want to move on to debt.
So we have a lot of debt. 11% of our 2024 budget was comprised was comprised of debt service or debt service comprised um 11% of our budget.
We need to reduce the debt. Now it's not as easy as all that. There are a couple of ways to reduce debt. You can pay it That seems counterintuitive when we're trying to reduce the operating budget.
We might get a grant or two that can be used to reduce the debt. If interest rates um fall or or lo are lowered, we might be able to refund some of our debt at a
lower rate of interest, thereby reducing the pressure on the budget. And last, we could set a policy for ourselves that says we will not borrow more than we're
paying off in any given year. And over time, that would result in lower debt. Then I want to move to capital planning. We have enormous requirements
needs in this town. We've heard session after session from the department directors about the needs for infrastructure um improvements. We just heard from public works about
how dated our our fleet is and how expensive it is to repair them. We need to have a comprehensive capital plan that says this is what we need and this is how we're going to pay for it. And furthermore,
I would suggest that we need to have part of our um plan be funding a capital budget. Can't happen overnight, but we have included in the report a formula for consideration about how we could
fund up such a capital um reserve. And that would allow us to pay for capital expenditures without issuing debt. And and part of that is that we wouldn't
have to pay for emergency appropriations which are very costly to the town. The last thing I will talk about is fund balance. The current fund balance is about 6%
of our operating budget. Our CFO has suggested that 15% is a much better number. If we have that, we'll have more of a reserve to call on for expenditures if we need them
and also we'll have a better chance of maintaining our double A rating. If our rating slips, our costs of debt will increase. So maintaining that rating is important and part of that is funding a
fund balance. That's concludes my remarks. Thank you. Great. Thank you all of them. Great recommendations. Uh I just want to open it up to uh the other council members who I don't
think have had a chance to ask questions or follow up. And we don't need to limit it to just what Miss Bear just talked about. It could be anything in the preliminary report that you wanted to follow up on, get more detail, or more explanation. Uh, Councilwoman Scarpa,
um, yeah, could you just briefly describe the formula for funding the capital budget that you've referenced in the um, report? I don't remember. I think that we talked about um finding out what the historic amount is that you know the last five
years or so looking to see how much we've spent on capital expenditures. Um getting an average of that number and then taking that average taking 20% of that and funding it each year going forward so that in five years we would
have a roughly appropriately sized capital budget uh reserve. Great. Thank you. Of course, that means delayed gratification. Anyone who has a child understands the
conundrum. Uh but again, it's a it's an excellent idea, Councilwoman Ruden. So, would that capital um expenditure be a line item in our budget? It would be a reserve. I'll defer to the
CFO about how that appears in a municipal budget. So, if you're if you're putting cash to something doing a pay as you go, um you reserve it in the capital section, the outside cap of the budget, uh usually
with um some sort of description as to what it goes for. And it can be as general as saying, I have a reserve for street improvements. I have a reserve for equipments and vehicles. Or you can be
very specific and say, you know, putting a reserve for uh a ladder truck um if you're if you want to buy a ladder truck in a few years. Um, and then that money will move to the general capital where
the cash because it's it's coming from the operating fund, the cash will sit in the general capital until such time as um the ordinance is passed to to spend against the reserve for whatever the
project is. So, you know, it's it's a pay as you go formula. um you know so that's that's how you would do it. Um so that reserve is what maybe the federal federal government calls the
emergency fund. It's not so much an emergency fund because you have to be you have to give a reason for it. So it it couldn't just be for anything. um you would have to reserve it for I don't want to say a
specific purpose but at least a general purpose. Mhm. So if you reserve money for street improvements, you know, you can't then say, "All right, I'm going to buy a snow plow out of there." Okay.
Do do we have any funds for an emergency? We don't we don't really reserve like do a pay as you go for an emergency. The emergency would come from existing
um capital ordinances. So, you know, it's probably been built in over the years when they do a capital ordinance. you know, maybe you do an ordinance for uh sewer repairs and you put a million dollars in there and some of it is for projects you intend to do and some of it
is for when something breaks. Um so, you know, you can do that. Okay. Thank you. And we have another job. Mr. Lunoff, please go ahead. I didn't want to interrupt you, council. No, please. And I apologize for my late
appearance. I was trying to watch and participate on Zoom, but unfortunately, as another individual had said a few weeks ago, our technology is kind of lacking and I could not be heard when Mr. Fagan tried to ask me if I was on.
So, I said since I'm only about a half mile away, I'll drive down the first mountain and come down to appear. Um, so I don't have a prepared comments either on it, but my my general reaction
is when I listen to uh the gentleman who heads up department of public works and he talked about the fleet and I'm sitting there and because I am a CPA and a former v CFO in the seauite of many corporations
where we have to deal with this including Hertz which is a fleet operation. And I listen to what happened with the fleet and I I'm saying to myself, this doesn't make any sense. And it's not an issue that was created this year by this current administration. This was an
issue that's been created by the township over a number of years without any regard to updating its fleet. So we now have a situation as he reported that the trucks are breaking down. We have how many did he say? Oh, I forget how
many 150 vehicles and it's incredible. And now we're faced because of the tariffs are hitting in. It's going to cost a lot more to get this back up. We cannot fix this in one year. And I'm not I'm not trying to say
that we should. We have any responsibility to, but we need to in the process of doing a comprehensive budget build a system where we start to rotate this fleet. We should have been purchasing x number and I'm not I'm not
the expert in the fleet. We should have been ex you know purchasing x number of units every single year. And if we haven't then we got to start to bite that bullet unfortunately now with this year's budget because there's no more
time to let it sit. You know there's a number of other areas within this budget that I think need to be dealt with. I think this this council and I gotta, you know, isolate, you know, and point out, you know, councilwoman Roden Ruden with pointing
out a lot of the waste and things that have not been spent. We need to get tough and start to say if we haven't spent it before, we can't afford to spend it this year. We have bigger priorities to deal with. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Lumo. I was just uh throwing another hurdle into the whole issue of debt which is that our debt over I think the next three years is actually going the debt service requirements the minimum debt service requirements are actually going to be
going up slightly uh over the next I think it's three years. So once we get past that, we will have a significant decline uh over our minimum debt service costs,
which will free up a lot of money that we're spending now on debt service. It will free us up to pay down some of this pay some of this debt, but of course it's it's three years away. Um
thank you, Council President. So, I just wanted to follow up on something that uh both Miss Bayer and Mr. Litmanoff uh raised and um just I guess continue the conversation around the fleet.
I understand that the uh forfeite funds have been used to purchase a brand new vehicle for the police chief. the police chief who is no longer showing up to work and those forfeite funds. If if the
car parts line item is for all vehicles in the fleet, police cars as well, I wonder how well the forfeite funds could have spread had they been utilized to improve the fleet.
It's that sort of entitling ourselves to the extra and the more purchasing a vehicle that then needs to be retrofitted with a police package that costs the township money or the
former um CFO who returns a vehicle that he was entitled to but returns it in a condition where it was um it needed to be repaired. the idea that the township paid for that repair rather than the bill going to the
individual who crashed the vehicle. These are the types of um fiscal decisions that alarm people in the community that we can agree to 3% raises
at a time when people are shouldering tremendous burden associated with a a a budget such as this. So if the goal is to be responsible, prudent
um good uh fiduciaries and fiscal stewards, then we should be looking to have actual spend and um expert analysis. I don't doubt
Mr. Deniac applies expert analysis to his recommendations. But the idea, and I'm just using car parts as an example, the idea that, and I'll say it one last time, I promise that our actual spend last year was
3.88. We're asking for 600 and we can't agree on a number somewhere in between is alarming because we are asking the taxpayer to pay for that extra. And I think that that's a theme, at least for myself, but I know for other members of
this board, where we're watching what the recommendations are of this administration in align with some of the spending that occurs, some of the salaries that have been um provided to individuals and it just um it's it's
hypocrisy. I mean, I don't know of any other word to describe it. So, I think it's very important. um that we are um looking at the opportunities to be as prudent and as
responsible fiduciaries as possible with the taxpayers's money. Many of the re I just just one other many of the recommendations that you'll see for fiscal year 2025 in this report talk about that that because you have
these um salaries that you have to now contend with because they were approved the raises that you probably should freeze anything that's not health or safety related. um unless there's a good argument not to, right? There might be a good
argument to bring in more police officers to reduce an overtime budget as the as the fire chief had had expressed. But um in many ways, we're in a situation where we should be approaching this as a crisis. I think uh Councilwoman Scarpa describes it as a
budget crisis and we should be applying crisis related interventions. I'm done. Thank you, Miss B. Uh, anything else from our council members? Yes, just a quick question. One of the three recommendations, we've dealt with
one, we've dealt with two, but there's a third one that we have not dealt with. We tried to reduce the police OT, but that did not get the majority vote. The last the last recommendation that you have has to ha has to do with the IT
departments and we're going to be doing that tonight I believe. Are we doing that tonight Mr. IT departments? I don't know if we're going to get to it but Okay. So um I'd just like you to discuss
your recommendation for that. Yes. I'm sorry. You're not me. Well, I be very hard. Mr. L. I want I want to be recognized. Thank you. Appreciate it. No, thank you. Well, I just I've heard enough people in
taking a test since I'm the person who part of our as part of our board brought up the issue of the IT. There are five departments involved in the IT budget and there is not one item of detail
listed in any of these five departments. It is a total of and I don't have it with me. Roughly $700,000 that was budgeted last year. There we go. Thank you. 676 676,000.
Not all that money was spent. roughly twothirds of was spent yet they came back and they asked for an increase. Yes, a decrease from the prior year-end budget which is I guess blessing. However, I don't look at it that way. To
me, what was not spent should not be asked for in addition for the new year. Without any details at all to support what is being requested, why this money is needed, I would say that the council should not permit it.
It's roughly $195 $95,000 of an increase they've asked for over what they spent. If you want to be gracious, take away 150,000 of that ask and give them 50,000 of it and let them still
support what it is they think they need. But without any details to support, you have no base to say it's a good number. Thank you. Thank you. And I'll just bunch a lot of these recommendations
under the bucket or in the bucket of we have a great deal of opportunity to improve the budget process and you guys are part of that that answer and you have jumped in with both feet and and uh
brought up all of these uh all of these ideas that we really need to uh dig into and pursue. We are trying to help you. No, no. I And I appreciate it. And I'll bet you Mr. Datiniac, who just arrived here in the second half of last year,
also appreciates, but it, you know, I realize that Mr. Diniac, this is his budget for better or worse, but I don't I don't believe that Mr. Diniac would have this budget process this year if he could possibly avoid it. So, uh, this is
all being discussed in the in the, uh, uh, in the best interest of the township and, uh, I don't think I'd get a different from, uh, Mr. Tiniac. I, Councilwoman Scarba, I'll get you just a second. Think Okay. Think Mr. Diniac may want to respond to
this. I Yeah, I just want to echo the sentiment that you you said. We appreciate the work of the CBAB and and the council and you know we're all here for the same goal and that's to provide
the best service at the best price. sounds like an advertisement for something. I'll let you know it's sometimes, you know, it's it's it's difficult to hear, but uh you know, we you know, we respect the the CBA the
administration as a whole and uh I do as well. And you know, this is an excellent report. And again, if you're at home, I recommend downloading it, printing it out, you can search it. Um there's a lot of great recommendations and you know
just what we've talked about today in terms of debt and and capital planning and you know e even I understand looking at the spend last year and and you know having to justify anything uh more than that makes sense and you
know we definitely for 2026 are are are not going to come unprepared which you know why we'll take full responsibility for I I I don't think I prepared my departments well enough to defend the budgets and um you know we'll certainly
learn from that and so you know again we're all the same team all the same purpose and uh I'm I'm thankful for the group and and everyone here at the deis thank you Mr. Councilwoman Scarpa.
Yeah. One of the things that I've bit of concern about um and I wanted to know if the uh citizens budget advisory board has looked into is the use of consultants um you know across all departments IT planning engineering. It's um an area that I think might be
worth looking at and I was wondering if they had done anything like that at all. Miss Ver. Um, yes, Councilwoman Scarpa, there are a couple of recommendations or examples within the report, and I can't cite them off hand, where in the
discussion, I think you raised the uh question about whether having a part-time employee might be more coste effective than hiring a consultant in a particular uh situation. Uh, again, I if
you search the report, Mr. toiac for for consultants. You might find the examples. I can't remember what they are offhand. Obviously, we use a lot of consultants in this town. Um, and it it does warrant looking at what serves the
town best. Okay, great. I'll take a look. Thank you. Thank you. Uh, Mr. uh data, one of the suggestions uh by uh Mr. Libmanoff was that we need
a program to cycle through all of our vehicles over a period of years and in a in a capital plan, but I think we are already doing some cycling right now. We through enterprise fleet management
um they're assisting us in in that process and um but not it's not the entire fleet. You're right. Um and and the heavy trucks, like we brought up a 1987 truck. Um you know, I think the responsible thing years ago
would have said, you know, we get 15, 20 years out of it, maybe we can sell it, uh and make sure that we put aside the money to buy a new one. Um instead of, you know, band-aids and bubble gum and
all that keeping it together. Uh but Enterprise Fleet Management is there to assist us with that. Like I said, they track the fuel efficiency, they track the maintenance totals, um
the mileage, they monitor the the market value of the vehicle. And so they'll make recommendations of, hey, you know, let's take these six vehicles out and maybe we can get $40,000 for them and roll that into the the capital
lease, which again is a purchase of some new vehicles. Um, it requires us to in inject cash into it and we do that through a bond ordinance because we are buying the vehicles. Um so you know we
wind up having to give them you know the rem the remainder of the amount versus what they're going to sell um our old fleet on. So we've started that process. they help us with that. Um but we have not expanded it out um which we
should for the heavy vehicles and um but I mean we can do these things internally and and just projecting out like again you know a 1987 vehicle is not going to last much longer. Um, and we need to have a plan of replacing and you sort of
getting into the pay as you go or the preserving, you know, put we can put money aside for the things that we know we're going to need in a couple years rather than, you know, in three years coming to you with a bond ordinance saying like we need all this right now.
Uh, so I ag I agree with them on that and um you know I know the engineer and and and director Reynolds and the chiefs would agree with me on that. So I think one of the other improvements
that we're going to see if sometime next year uh you're planning to roll out a new uh software application that is actually going to be resident facing. Yes. Yes. So that they will know a lot easier if they care to uh where we are
in terms of spending and spending against budget and that sort of thing. It will all be on the websites. Yeah. So they have some really great KPIs that you can put out there. Um and they update nightly. Um I don't think it is a a real time update. I think it
updates nightly to the website, but you know it can give you different spend and all that. But what the system also includes is a really robust fixed asset system. Um so that we can better track our fixed assets because what we have now is well we don't really have one
now. I'll say say that. Um cuz the old Munidex had something this doesn't. Um and that's important. I mean, you got to know what you have and um not that we depreciate with our form of accounting, but still you need you
need to have values and and and and salvage values and all that sort of stuff on there. Um the other thing we've looked at uh just because um the engineer and I have looked at it is um software for capital project planning and tracking and that has a really great
forward- facing public um side of it where you know you can see timeline of a project, the capital spend of a project, the funding. It's it's it's really cool stuff. Um we're going to try to bring it to the council. It's a little pricey, but I I still like it and I'd love
everyone to see it, but I don't want to get too off topic. Um, but yes, getting back to Edmonds, um, because I I know transparency is important to to everyone at the Deis, maybe not Dena, the the council members,
it is for Dena. Um, and so we want to deliver on that and and I'm sure CBAB is that's an important uh um you know item for them as well. Yeah, I think you hit the I'm sorry, Mr. Law, did you want to say something?
I didn't want to interrupt you, Albert. To Mr. to the next comment and I endorse completely everything you just said. But the other side of this thing is that we as the administration of this township need to figure out are we going to
listen to what all this good software is telling us in Starbucks. Sure. We're going to say we're going to spend the money because it's a nice thing to do but at the end of the day I know better than the software and you know look from a candid candid stamp standpoint as a personal level. I've
done the same thing in my life. I bought software that's going to advise me and then I said nah but I'll buy it. If we're going to buy into the software and I think everything that Mr. Dutin said is right on point then we need to create
an atmosphere within this administration that we listen to what the software is telling us to do and if it says that say in terms of the fleet this piece you know these article the items need to be turned over we pay attention to it. We just said, "Oh, I know better." Cuz
otherwise, we just wasted all the time, effort, and money on the software, and we don't get any value for the township. It's enough said, Miss Bennett. Uh, thank you, Council President. Just another point to that end. Um, it's not software, but it is the League of
Municipalities. League of Municipalities has plenty of great advice that it provides different municipalities and the municipalities who take that really smart advice. If you look at municipalities that present their budget
in a timely manner, you can also um bet that that um municipality is also um fiscally uh healthy. And I know I raised this the last time, but our financial
wellness is directly related to how we have um approached uh funding our budget. And if it doesn't change, we'll continue along um the track that we're on. The I know I raised the footnote last time and I won't go
into great detail, but I will tell you that that footnote um is really uh where I'm spending a lot of my time. extending out into different roles and responsibilities and extending beyond um
just the um just the functions mentioned in the footnote. And I will tell you even assistant directors in their roles are being paid in excess of what directors in their roles should be paid or are on average are paid according to
the League of Municipalities. It's that um sort of um guidance, recommendations, advice that software provides or that the League of Municipality provides that we should really start to adopt in this um community.
I I totally agree with you. Uh looking at these numbers in the in the budget just it just shocks the conscience how we got to this point. And uh it's as you know compensation is very sticky
upwards. It's like when you try to pull it back it's very very difficult uh uh to do so. But it is clearly an issue that we have here. And unfortunately it's likely to get a little worse before
it starts getting better. And there's a there's a different uh perspective here on the deis that I hadn't seen in a while. So I I uh I look forward to trying to address that issue. I wanted to follow up uh on something that was
said earlier about software and I wanted to ask if any of the new software that's coming in is going to help us with budgeting. I know you had a really tough time getting the yeah the software that you needed to uh to get
the budget out, but I just wonder if is that something that's going to help us going? Yeah. So, what's nice about the system that we're getting is that um number one internally I will be able to push budget requests
out to all the department heads. So, they'll be responsible for their sub accounts. they can, you know, if they want to put attachments to their requests, they can do that. You know, if you have like a big item or something and you want to put a contract into the
request, you can do that. It's also going to give them the the prior five fiscal years. Now, that may be a little bit difficult because we're going to be loading in Munex data and Zen gov data, but the hope is that we're going to have historical data in there. But as we
continue to use it, you're going to get five years of spend on that budget form. So you're going to get a package that says here's the ask and then this is what they spent in the last 5 years. Um, and that includes
because the software is smart enough to say that includes what was spent at the end of 1231 for that fiscal year and then what was spent against that fiscal year in the the next fiscal year. Whereas here I have to do manual
calculations to do that. It it would just it just aggregates the two numbers and shows it as the one fiscal year spend. So, um, it it's going to be easier for our department heads to make their requests. They can simply sit at their computer
and make their requests. And then when you get the document, you're going to have not only the last year spent, but you're going to have a history to it. So, um, and we could even set it up that you could make your own requests, um,
you know, electronically if you really wanted to. Um, so hopefully it's going to make some more collaboration rather than having to do it all up here. Um, yeah, and it all goes together because if the department heads have current
information and have going back and I I don't know if there's a projection uh function on there too, they can defend this a lot better. And uh I think everybody who's come up here is now on notice that uh we need to have a much
more uh disciplined approach to how we we budget and uh get out all these line items that nobody can knows why they're there or it's never questioned why they're there. So yeah, I think it's going to be a much different uh process
going forward. Uh I have I have two questions and I I just want to ask the question get a get a response from the board and from Mr. Dinacc and then ask another question. So we you have pointed out in the footnote
three employees who are should not be receiving longevity but they are receiving longevity. I'd like to understand the process of pulling that back. So um at the time that this was written,
we were under the understanding that these were the only um non um union noncontracted employees of the town and that's why we pulled out these three um
roles. Since then we've been told that only one of these positions is non union non-contract. So um you know to the extent that anyone
is not cover that a an individual is not covered by a union contract and does not have a contract with the township. They serve at will and salaries and compensation are negotiable.
Now, you could have a very good debate about whether you want to lower someone's salary. Um but there are there is precedent and council president and I have talked about a situation where I actually um
activated something like this when I was the executive director of the healthc care authority where I actually froze salaries for individuals who were paying being paid um more than their positions called for strictly because they had
worked there so long and had enjoyed the benefit of cost of living plus increases. So, one way to address the overpayment, if you see it as an overpayment, is to reduce the salary, to reduce longevity,
maybe eliminate longevity for those people who are not covered by contract or union agreement. Or you could freeze their salary and not
continue to feed fuel to this fire of being paid more than comparable positions in similar townships. And what is the process of doing that? Is that something that is done by the administration or can the council I have
do that? Mr. Diniac, I defer to you. So, and if you could just speak up a little louder than you normally do just because the air conditioning is we actually have people in the audience. So, the governing body is the one who
approves the salary ordinance. So, you would change the salary ordinance for unrepresented. You know, you can't do it for the unions because we've signed a contract, but
you would simply change the salary ordinance. Just a point of clarification, council president, if I may speak up a little bit, please. M just a point of clarification. Um I the the report that's been submitted,
the preliminary report has that adjustment um already included in the report where we had originally said three but it was caught and it was adjusted. So it does not read that way any longer. Um and these individuals in
the footnote that have longevity included is for the purposes of understanding total compensation. Um total compensation in comparison to what the League of Municipalities suggests that should be total compensation. So just just a point
of clarification because those are not the individuals that are either non-contractual or or um not represented. I another point and just the pragmatic side of me and just because I know about this um civil
service I don't know if civil service rules would apply to anyone. I I don't know if Mr. Deniac knows and I don't know if it's because there's only three people or one or two people. We don't know how many people but it's a a limited number of people that this might
impact it. it may be wise to just make sure it doesn't happen again which I think longevity has been taken out of so that's out of the equation but I wonder if you could look at because there are still people longevity is a very
interesting and we call it longevity and I know at least two members of the SBA didn't understand myself included that longevity doesn't mean that you get to the max of your salary and then you get an additional amount Um here in this
township with 5 years service, people were receiving longevity payments, 5 years, 10 years, 15 years, 20 years. And so um these are multipliers that people were
receiving at 5 years um employment. Um and maybe what you can do is while not denying longevity, reducing the actual percentage Who came up with the idea of 10% longevity? It's like municipal standard. It's It's
Yeah. Before I was even born. Yeah. It's always been 10%. As the max. I've seen as the max. Yeah. I've seen 12%. We give the max. All right. So, we The way the program ran was,
you're correct. It was like after your fifth year you went to 2% and then to four then to six then to eight then you hit 10 when you finished your 24th year
be and it was set up really for public safety so that you hit 10 the year that you were you could retire with a full retirement. So, you hit your max salary, max compensation. Um, we still maintain
the program for police and fire. We still have it. It's in the contract. Um, so we still have that longevity program for for public safety, but for the unrepresented and the um the ASME, which is the white collar workers
uh and blue collar uh DPW like rank and file, that went away. I I don't know exactly when, but that program's gone. It's just they were grandfathered in um these individuals. So, I think
anybody that has longevity in those in those groups, they're at the 10% because they have the number of years. So, is there any statute that would prohibit us from reducing that percentage?
I don't know. Um I I'm not an attorney. I I I don't want to say like there is or there isn't. I don't I don't really know. Um I know with being a civil service town, you probably would want to consult civil service or you'd want to consult an attorney before you did
anything like that. Um but back to the the idea of like freezing salaries, I mean, you do control the salary ordinance. Um, so if you change the salary ordinance, you effectively would freeze
unrepresented salaries. Someone's going to knife me when I uh walk out of here. Yes, but that's that's true. I mean, I'm not going to lie to you about that. Councilwoman Ruden still has the floor. She No, I think that I think that Mr.
Litwinoff has something germanine to what I'm talking about. Please. Well, I don't know if it's Germaine or not because it's my reaction from my experience as a CFO of many many companies, but I think if I had it to do
over again, same tongue and cheek, I'd probably have would have decided to work in a municipality instead of a for corporation for profit corporation because the salaries that the people are making are out I shouldn't say the word outrageous, but
they're way over the skill bill of what any else gets paid. Now, in order to answer the the council president's, you know, pres president's question, what do you do to fix it? That's legal. You need a lawyer to advise you as to what to do.
I don't know enough on it. All I'm going to tell you is that we're out of bounds. I mean to have an employee who gets paid longevity after whatever the number of years and built out of it. There is no for-profit corporation that I am aware
of that ever does that. You get paid based on your performance. Some of them are outrageous. I agree. But you know, but you get paid based on your performance. And when you stop performing, you're out and it's over and you walk away.
So, in order to fix this situation that we're in, I do think we need legal counsel in order to figure out how to do it. I have to believe that there is a way to get this back into a realm of of sanity and starting with the the
longevities and the other, you know, little perks that go along the way. I think step by step it needs to be done, but you need legal counsel on this and not the current counsel. You need employment, you know, uh, labor labor lawyers in
order to advise you properly on unconlicted, sorry, council president. Unconlicted attorneys who did not participate in what got us here. Yes. Great. So, Councilwoman Ruden still has this.
No, I wanted this is still pertaining to my first question. Yes. Um, thank you. So, one practical way of addressing the salary or the compensation issue aside from what my colleagues have just said is that when
there is a turnover and we hire someone new in the same position, we need to rightsize their compensation. Wholeheartedly agree. Yes,
Mr. Tinian. Oh, I'm sorry. Council me. Um I you know I just want to say you know in in support of of all of our employees you know not the vast majority of our employees are are not these these high salaries that we were discussing
and um you know the township employees work very hard. We feel they're fairly compensated. Um and that's just the statement I want to make just so again I don't get knifed by someone. Not that anyone would knife me.
Sorry. Sorry. So, I think we've we've covered that topic. I wanted to go on to another very strong recommendation from the board, which was that we should be doing a forensic audit. I'd like to hear your thoughts on that. Mr. Loot went off. Since I have the
floor, okay, I got the floor. I I kind of made the same comments that I'm going to say now earlier this week is that with the situations that we've been dealing with, we believe as the board that a forensic audit is called for
the the as everybody knows uh uh PKF uh whatever Connor Davies they they were no longer rehired. Another firm was hired. When the when that firm did the 2023
correct audit, they issued a man as as accounting firms generally do. They issue a letter of recommendations to management as proof. This was a 33page letter and it's not Mr. Dateniac's
problem. He inherited this when he came on board, but it cited a number of issues and significant issues that happened within the administration of this township over the past several years.
I think that what we need in fact uh page I'm not sure what page it was on page 10 and 11. Yeah. Yeah. Bottom of page 10 in age is where we started to address it. Mhm. And I mean, I reached out because I'm the CPA and I know, you know, accounting
firms, you know, and I reached out to another firms. Now, in all honesty, and I didn't say this the other day, in order to certify the financial statements of a township, the auditors have to be a registered municipal
accountant, not just a CPA. And there's not a lot of them in that area that that go after this. However, when I started to look into forensic audits the way this board, this council had asked us to do, what I discovered is
that in it it's a requirement in order to certify the financials, you have to be a registered municipal accountant. You do not have to be an RMA, a m registered municipal accountant to do a forensic audit. And I spoke to a number a few firms that I've got connections
with. And the one that I referenced here, and I'm not going to mention the name. I don't want to bias anything on it, you know, gave me some examples of forensic orders they have been doing in the municipal area. And a number had been tossed out earlier. It
could have cost them a million dollars. Well, nobody, you know, this firm at least was nowhere near that in anyone's even with the three-year audit. You know, we're talking about, you know, I guess a maximum of about a hundred grand. And we talked about the reason to do it.
And what they were pushing forward to me to consider to bring to the council is that you have to understand what are you trying to accomplish. Are you trying to do a clawback to go after an individual? They recommend not to do that because in addition to whatever the cost of the
forensic audit would be, you're now going to deal legal fees. And the potential of clawing back that money, it's not so high on the scale. And I as as a financial officer, I advise companies all the time. When you have a lawsuit, you got to look at the
practicality as to what the dollars are involved and make a decision based on that. However, then we went on and we talked about responsibilities to the readers of the financials, in this case the township residents,
and do we have a responsibility to get to show them that we are doing the right things on their behalf? Personally, I believe we do. The third thing is that as part of a forensic audit, which would uncover potentially uncover, you know,
impropriets, I'm not going to say illegalities, but improprieties. We also use that as a vehicle to evaluate the internal controls of the entity, namely West Orange. What are we doing? What are we doing right? What are
we doing wrong? what should we do better in order to protect the integrity of the financial system and therefore the readers, the township members. So with all that behind us is where we came out as a board and we talked about it and we
were all in agreement that we believe that the town council should agree and endorse doing a forensic audit. Our suggestion and you can always override it is to go back three years. You know to go back further you deal
with statute of limitations. You do other things and it gets very expensive. But I think a three-year review would do a couple of things. It would give us the the opportunity to evaluate what are we doing right? What are we doing wrong? it would certainly give us the opportunity
to support our current CFO and what he needs to do in order to write this shed. And I just believe that's the way we should go. I've said enough, Miss Bennett. So, just um adding on and not um not
underlining, but I mean I agree with everything that Mr. Litman just stated. If there were impropriety that rose to the level of criminal, it could easily be referred to authorities. That's number one. So that's um while I agree
that you don't do it simply to look for the opportunity to claw back, if there were the potential of um improprieties that rose to the level of criminal, you have the opportunity to then refer that to um either uh county
or state authorities. it. I'm going to say this because I don't think that um I don't think it'll be stated other otherwise. Mr. Dateniac deserves the benefit of a
full stop with the prior CFO. He deserves the benefit of a forensic audit that says what was done correctly and what wasn't. So that when he's trying to unwind something he's inherited, he has
the ability to do so with reports and measures that are recommended by neutral um third parties. Um, and then just highlighting the internal controls.
I don't need to tell you that that there are many people in this township that do not trust the administration and how their money is being spent. And if you have the opportunity to provide a roadmap for how to never get into that
situation again, it's money well spent. Thank you. Thank you. Done. Yes. Let me let me just add my thoughts to this. Uh because I've had this conversation with a few people. I think
this is a an example or an opportunity, I guess, to build a robust business case that says, "Here's why we need to spend this money. here are the knowns, the known problems, but perhaps more
importantly, what we can apply going forward. Now, that's part of the issue here because I suspect that Mr. Dutiniac would carry on few if any of the practices that were
highlighted in the corrective plan. And I'm sure you guys are tired of hearing me say this. I was on the council for 10 years and and uh there were serious problems with the the
financial reporting and controls of the township but they were never changed. Now they are changing. I mean I think if you ask Mr. to act give us a list of everything that you have changed in controls and processing and
responsibilities. uh it would be a long list but we now have uh two people who are are new to this to this situation that the the top two people uh in the CFO's office and
I sus again suspect you probably will learn a lot about what had happened in a forensic audit but I'm not sure how much of that would be able to be applied going forward now I may be wrong I may be wrong but I I
think if we put together a business case and when I say we, I'm really talking about uh CIS budget advisory board because you have uh you know a CPA who can really guide you on this. I I
would like to see a strong a robust business case that lays out why we need to spend this money and and it would include the research that you showed uh is relatively not that much money over and above what we had been previously
understood uh uh to be the the range. But so I I would like that if if uh uh I'd have to talk to the other the council members about how you'd want to proceed on that, but I think it would be a really good exercise to identify
what we can find out and see if there's much of an overlap of what we can apply going forward. And we also have the uh uh the corrective action plan that we didn't even have to pay for. Uh but it
was uh it's quite illuminating. It's quite illuminating. So anything else? Yeah, I would I'd just like to respond to to what you said. Um I think that the board has has spoken very clearly on why
we need this. And I don't think that the there's necessarily a financial analysis that they can provide us because a lot of this is we don't know what we don't know. And when we get this information, we will know where we went wrong and we
will have a very clear analysis of how to correct those. Now, maybe we won't be able to to get back the money that we've lost, but maybe we will by looking at some sinkholes that we have built into
our system and closing them up. So, my recommendation would be we've heard from the board. They've they've spoken unanimously on this. They've put it down. I agree that you like to have more data. I just don't know if they can provide that to us, but I think that
they have provided us enough reasons to move forward with baking this in tonight. Mr. Litwin off. All right. So, just to add to the com just to add to the comments that we made, I mean, Councilwoman Ruden is
right there. There is no analysis we can provide you that shows you dollars and cents as what we think would happen. My recommendation to the council is that if you believe there is any value whatsoever in pursuing this, you permit
us to arrange a meeting with at least the one firm who I've been speaking with with between the CP, you know, the our board, the town council and them. and let them present what they believe would be the reactions. I think Mr. Tia needs
to be part of that meeting as well. That's the recommendation. So, tonight I'd like to move to make that part of part of your your budget. And um go ahead. I'm Thank you. I'm
done. Councilman Scarpa. Yeah, I um very much appreciate uh Mr. Litwinoff's um idea and I think it's vital that we do that that we meet with uh the firm with Mr. Datiniac with all
of us so that we can get a clear understanding of what we might be able to gain from from the audit. Thank you. Anything else? Nope. I'm done.
I I just have something just on a completely different topic. We have we have some loose spending here in our budget. We see it every every other week or every you know when we have a council meeting people seem to feel free to
order on Amazon. Is there some way that we can stop that? I mean Amazon is commonly used by municipalities. Um, you know, we encumber the money before
we place the order. So, you go on and so we're not like ordering and then going back and doing the PO. We, you know, we do utilize an incumbrance prior to actually placing the order. It It's a pretty common thing.
Can we stop that given given where we are? I see I see orders for Otterboxes. You got an Otterbox. I got an Everybody gets an Otterbox. I mean, that's part of the IT plan for protecting the telephones and the
tablets to use the Otterboxes. But you probably also have a protection plan as well, right? Aren't there protection plans that we're also paying for? I don't believe that they get protection plans when they buy the phones. I think
I think the box is the protective is there some way that we can say that there has to be another level of approval for all of this free ordering on Amazon. I mean the level of approval is it has
to be within the confines of the the appropriation line. So I mean what you're asking is sort of on the administrative side of things that would be an internal um edict I guess to not order Amazon. I
it just I I don't know is what is the issue that it's Amazon or is it just it's too easy to order? I think the it's just too easy to spend and I see a lot of small purchases that add up
and people feel I guess I don't know I haven't spoken with them but that they are entitled to just order what they need without going through some sort of central purchasing and getting approval that we're going to order this amount of paper and we're not going to just order
more on Amazon because suddenly we ran out. So, I mean, their department head would sign off. It's no different than any other PO because again, just because they order from Amazon, they need a a purchase order first. So,
the department heads do um sign off and the QPA signs off on on the requisition prior to making the order. So the only way we can address that is by tightening the line items or the over overall budget because I see
a lot of times they I you and I have discussed this that you're you're trying to put in place a a a stop if uh do not exceed. Right. So we we're we're turning that on on all the sub accounts um so that you can't overexpend the sub account
anymore. Um, prior to the old version was you could overexpend the sub account, you just couldn't overexpend the total budget. But now we're turning it on for the sub accounts. So, you know, if you had
I think this gives us more reason why if it it hasn't been spent, we're going to zero it out unless there's compelling reason why we shouldn't. I just want to thank you guys and the rest of the board because this has been an amazing help for us and you know hope
we we can institute as many changes as possible and we definitely need your help going forward. So thank you. Would everybody uh be okay with a another fivem minute break please? Thank you. We will we will try to get
back here at 8:53. I will try. In the Zoom audience, we are taking a break. short five minute break and I am putting the audio feed on Welcome back, West Orange, the members in the Zoom audience. We have returned
from break. At this time, I'd like to turn the floor over to our council president. Uh, thanks everyone for sticking around. Just want to point out we're only one minute late in our return. So I want to say thank you to everybody uh who has
been uh I don't know what the word is prompt polite. Anyway, Mr. Dinier, we have a new person in the hot seat. Perhaps you could introduce him. Um thank you, Council President. So we
have from the recreation department, Deputy Director Edwin Johnson. Um he's going to be here to take us through uh the next few slides which Oops, I just went too far. Sorry. Um so for everyone at home, we're we've
moved off from the preliminary CBA report and we're back to the the budget document and we are starting on page 106. Um, this is the salary and wages for for recreation.
Do we have any questions for the deputy director? Um, yes. I know you Good evening. I'm I haven't met you before. I'm Joyce. Oh, good. Um, I know you spent your your um overtime.
Is there a reason why the overtime? So, I actually just had a conversation with with the deputy director about this because I asked him about this and and what we've actually figured out is that some of his hourly employees were charged to that line.
So, we recalked um the OT and the the actual OT figure because there's only a couple of employees that will even get OT. Mr. Johnson is exempt along with Mr. Kho.
Um, so the the OT figure is more like uh let's say like $4,500 um year-to-ate spend. So that's well within the overtime budget of 15,000. Okay. Well, that requested budget of 15,000.
So um what's your need for overtime going forward since you've spent only onethird of it? We still have a few special events left. Um tree lighting, Halloween. Um and also a lot of our time also too is also out
supporting other events within the township. Uh you know the um anything the special event permit applications come in for or just general general emergencies where somebody's got to come down, there's a problem uh somewhere in the park, field, pool, etc. So
um you know, we do have a little bit of flexibility there because that number wasn't correct off the bat. um something they're getting falsely charged. But okay, so how many hours of overtime does this represent? I I don't have that figure in front of
me. I guess it's all over the map, too. It's It's a couple different employees with varying rates. So, is it predominantly one or two employees? It's there's only two employees. Two employees over time. two employees
have had overtime and and do you know what they've had it for? Fourth of July, you know, um the bunny event, um some of the events down here at town hall, like the downtown Thursday events where our our uh our PAS was requested, stuff like that.
Okay. And then there's general if you know something breaks the pool, somebody go fix it or you know emergency purposes show up for a game, right? So, it seems like we have two two big events coming up, which is Halloween and and tree lighting, right?
Um, is tree lighting always overtime? Yes. And is Halloween always overtime? Yes. And tree lighting is like only an hour, right? No, our event is more so about 4 hours cuz we start at 4:00 here. Um, at least the public events start at 4:00 here about 3:00 setting up. And we have, you
know, the petting zoo, um, a couple performances, um, then, you know, the tree lighting and the arrival of Santa. So, it's really about a half a day's worth of work. Okay. And Halloween, how many hours does that mean? Halloween the event itself is about 2 to 3 hours, but there's a little more setup involved in Halloween cuz we're um
setting up stations and etc. Um you know. Okay. So, this is Do you at both of these events, do you use two two employees or one? No, usually one and we back fill it with part- timerrs or volunteers. Okay. So, it sounds like you need eight
more hours of of overtime. So, approximately what would that be? That's in a perfect world, assuming there's nothing. Yes, I know. I'm going to give you more and I'm going to suggest to my colleagues that we get more, but I'm ju just trying to get it down to like what it really is.
So, I don't have my my phone slashcal on me. Um, can you give me any clue? I think we had another $2,500 in overtime that would probably cover us the rest of the year just to be, you know, being knowing that something's going to
go wrong. Something goes wrong every day. That's That sounds even like a lot. It may be, but um now we're asking for 4500. About that. What? Now we're asking for 4500. No, you you you've spent4500, correct? Yeah.
So, um I'm I would like to make a suggestion that that it'd be brought down to a total budget of 6,000, which will give you $1,500 for overtime. And and that's predominantly for the eight hours. And
then you have cushion. I don't think that's enough. That's yeah, it's only eight hours. That's for the events. I couldn't set a break though, right? So, we have, you know, there's there's time built in for that. Um, you know, what about a lot of a lot of our events, not even our events, like
we're going out supporting uh downtown senior services with our PA system, stuff like that. A lot of our equipment goes out and we can't just send the equipment out, you know, without a staff member with it. Um, and a lot of times we do try and fill that with a part-time, but it's not always possible.
Okay. So, how about if we bring it up to 5,000 and we reduce it by 10? What is that? Less less.
Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. You're at It was a curveball. It was She was just testing. Okay. Um, I just I You mean make it 10,000? No, I don't want to make it 10,000. I think that's I You've only spent 4,500.
I'm only hearing that 8 hours are absolutely needed. And then eight hours of event time. It's probably closer to those those two events just for those just for those two events. But those are the two events that you need manpower. But he's also talking about there's emergencies at the pool and other
events. It's just not eight hours. just come back eight hours. So with the you know the pool has there've been two employees they haven't been used for the pool during the summer. There are lots of employees at well that's only because I've been handling most of the pool emergencies. So
okay well that's good because the overtime good and bad. Yeah. So we asked for 2500 that's a total 7,000. You get an 8,000 savings. Um, yeah, we'll basically offering to cut it a little more than half. Um, which protects us from whatever we may need to
do throughout the remaining months of the year. We still have four months to go. So 7,000. I think that's that's fair. I think we can get by with 7,000 per total for the Yes. 25 year. I think we can do that. Yes.
Okay. All right. So, I'm going to make a motion to reduce that by 8,000 the overtime. I'll second it. Is there any further discussion?
Madame Clerk, Councilwoman Ruden, yes. Councilwoman Scarpa, yes. Council President Koviaak, uh, yes. The motion carries. Thank you. Okay. So,
consent. Consent on page 106. I told you we were missing you terribly. That's Look at that value added. As soon as you sat there, thank you. So, consent 106. Did we get all three
consents? Okay. So, I had the opportunity to go through a line item with uh Mr. toiac today and find out what your actual spending is versus your request. So your actual spending,
excuse me, interrupting you. We are page 107. Sorry, we're on we're on 107 and 108. Okay. Thank you. And is this parks and playgrounds? Thank you. Um so the actual spending is 89,571.33.
Your ask is $157,314. That's a significant difference spend for this year. Right. Right. So far, but again, remember, we're running on a temporary budget. So, he only has a budget of 89,000, right? To to utilize. So,
Right. But in some of So, if you want to if you want to do line item, we can do that. But I think some of these some of these items that we discussed like the sports have already passed like the the the spring track, the b the uh
basketball um well basketball though picks up in the fall. So basketball is not completely done. Basketball is one of those ones that kind of spans calendar years. Um not that any sports have seen anymore because they all go year round but we'll start picking up with our in-house and travel level basketball programs in
October and they carry through till March. So it kind of splits. So we're not done with basketball yet. So here's the thing that there's a big gap between what you've spent and what you've asked for. And some of the spending is over in some of the categories and some of it is under. So
it needs to be moved around so that the appropriate categories are filled and the ones that are zero should be should be eliminated. Um you've spent 89,000. You're requesting 157,000.
I would like to see if if you had a built-in $11,000 to bring you up to $100,000 whether that would be acceptable, but we haven't gone through every line item. So, I'm not sure if you know if you want to do it that way.
11,000 for the rest of the year. Yes, that's could be. This is just for these things, not for your whole department. Just for materials. And a lot of these items I don't even think you spent anything on. Well, you know, this was a temporary
budget, so a lot of things are kind of out of place. Um, but there are some line items here that that we've not spent money on yet, but they're probably going to be spent in the fall. So, it's easier to go line item. We can go line up and I can answer any questions you may have about it. Thank you. Okay, I'll do it that way. To the best of my ability, I'll
So, um, printing, almost everything that you do for printing right now is online. you've spent $85 out of 1343. Printing is um kind of a catchall like I kind of heard earlier tonight and throughout the nights that a lot of these titles probably need to be cleaned
up in the future to be a little clear. Um a lot of our printing stuff is graphic design work and also signage that we get made. We need to make a lot of signs. So we've only spent $85 so far, but that's just what graphic design work so far. There's still some signage we need to
make. Um, you know, we're constantly doing every time we're out, we got to make new signs for the pool, kind of help guide people. We signage for events. So, printing kind of is a catchall for that kind of work. Now, do your signs also come out of the DPW budget because they had a very large
sign sign. Um, no, it's mostly for our stuff, the pool, um, events, etc. Okay. So, you spent 85 and you have 13. You think you're going to be spending all of the rest this year in the next four months? All of that
I would we're going to spend a good portion of I would say. Yeah. I mean because we have these events coming up uh Halloween tree lending we're going to be getting signage made where it's you know direct people guide them parking this event over here that event over there. So that's almost the entire budget you're going to spend in four months and you haven't spent it the whole year
cuz July 4th July 4th those signs were already made last year. So there's you know as we're reinventing our events the signs do change. There are some events where we don't need signs. Um, really our only big event so far has been the Fourth of July. Once we get into later on the year, the tree lighting, Halloween, that's where we start to spend a little more money on signage.
What kind of signage? Directional signage guidance. People told them where to go, where to line up. Isn't that the same thing every year? It depends on it. It changes by the event. A lot of our stuff for July 4th was food truck, but festival related. We found that we kind of needed to have additional signs to help guide people
where they need to be and help the event run smoother. Okay. I I still find it hard to believe that you're going to spend that entire budget, but we're talking about a very small number. Small number bigger numbers further down the P. I understand. But can can you bring it
down 500? Yeah, we take 500 off of that. Okay. So, um, advertising, you spent $650 out of a $7,000 plus budget.
Advertising is the um, if you guys recall when we were back here, I believe it was May, we talked about that mailing card that we were going to send out to the entire every household in the district. That's what that money is for. Um, after that meeting, we went back and we looked and the last time we did it, uh, it cost about $6,000 to mail postcard every single house sold in West
Orange, which is how we, uh, ended up with that cutting that line in half last time. Okay. So, that's, we still have $1,200 excess in there. Even when is that the roundabout figure I gave was Okay. When is that when is that card
going out? That's going out in the fall. going to basically announce the tree lighting and also list the events for 2026 where um you know port dates to remember early bread deadline for the pool our special events uh spring spring break events basically trying to provide every resident with a calendar of events
important dates that they can stick on their fridge so they know what's going on. Okay. So last year you only spent $671. Last year we did not do the mailing card. We did not do it last year. That's why that line item. Did that affect the participation at all? I believe it did to an extent. Yeah, we
get a lot of people that tell us like, "I didn't know about that. I didn't know about that. I missed that." So, it's where we're trying to, you know, as great as social media is and the internet is, some people still respond to having a nice postcard on the refrigerator that has all the dates they need to remember. Okay,
Council President. Yes. I'm just going to feed my floor to Okay. to uh Councilwoman Scarpa. Do you want her to speak now? Yes. Councilman Scarpa, he knows I'm not done with Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry. I don't mean to
interrupt, but you know, given we are in a budget crisis, is that is that mailing something that's absolutely necessary? I kind of see that as a want to rather than a have to. It's nice to do, but you know, it's not something that is, you
know, absolutely in essential. It's a fair point. Um it's just some part of part of community outreach that we're trying to do. Um but if the council, you know, believes that's where we can save some money and as councilwoman just mentioned, it's more of a luxury item than something we can discuss.
Okay. Yeah, I kind of see it as a as a not as a have to, but a want to. I don't. Okay. So, could you repeat could you repeat yourself? I I don't think we heard you clearly on the deis, please. Oh, I said I think it's a want to, not a
have to. in a good place to cut. Okay, thank you. Are you finished? Yes, thank you. Okay, so we're going to continue on. Um I I understand the value of getting a piece of paper in the mail. It's very
nice. But I do agree that this for this year where we are that we should try to do without it one year and see see how participation is reflected. So I'm I'm going to make a make an I mean, do I
have to do a motion on each one now that we're doing line by line? I was hoping to avoid that by just coming up with a number that you can then play with. And well, I mean, that's that was an option. I knew I understood you or used to, hey, you know, try to find $11,000. I mean,
um, I think you're off to a good start right now with some of the items that, you know, there are valid points on. Um, but I'm not sure the rule of that if if Okay. Sorry. Yeah, Mr. Br some clarity here. So, if if you want to offer up what you
feel the total cut is, yeah, I think Edwin can Okay. But if your if your ask is only to give him an, you know, $100,000, which I think was your initial offer, I
think that's wildly underfunded. Um because I mean he's shown he spent his entire temporary budget of 89,5 really you went over $200. So you spent
everything that we made available statutoily because that's how we have to do it. So I I don't I don't know if $11,000 is going to work. And the, you know, the problem is is that we're by going through the line items and cutting
printing, we're still cutting overall. So maybe it is just better to say I think what's what's the number that you want to cut it to? I agree. Overall, and then we can say yes or no to that or you vote on it.
Okay. So I I I was requesting that you cut it by 57,314. What was that number? 57,314 to give you $100,000. Now, I hear I hear
both of you and um I'd like to come up with something another proposal that you can live with because we all have to absolutely have to show some change right now. So, I'm
going to suggest that you reduce your budget by 40,000. 40,000. Yes. No, I just don't know where we could find
that and still have we just found we just found 7,000 right now. Yeah. And everything else I mean from last time we met and we kind of moved a lot of things um closer to the actual spend was okay. What do you think about 35,000? Can you
do that? You know, I kind of looked through this um before I got down here today in the past couple days and you know, we already took I believe took 26,000 off of that budget and
it's still a big It's still a very big budget. It's a very big budget, but it's, you know, it's as lean as we can make it. I mean, yes, maybe we find some few other places, but a large room like that is going to be very, very difficult for us to do. If I may suggest, yes, Mr. Johnson, why
don't you just throw out a number that you think you can live with and then Councilwoman Ruden can respond to that. I think that's probably going to be faster than going down incrementally. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, right now we just found 7,700 that I did
not have on my sheet originally earlier. In my notes, I found another 8,000 that I think we could probably cut back on. And that's probably that was basically getting everything to where we pretty much were spending with adjustment of
cost of everything going up. Um you know seasonal minimum wage is 1693 now I believe or 1643. So it's you know there's a little bit of cost that went up but it kind of gets us closer in line to uh what we actually spent.
Okay. So you just came up with 15,000 7 and 8. I gave you 15,000. Yeah. Okay. I just want to now look drill down into some line items and see if we can do do some more. Um the lumber on line 115
you have spent nothing and lumber was one of the ones I had on my list. Oh that was the one that you I now but lumber's on but that's ironically enough we just spent money on lumber the other day we had fixed eventually the bowling bar. So, it's not a ideal situation, but in looking at our numbers, what we spent previously, even
years before that, we could probably safely take another $1,000 off of lumber. Okay. Materials and clay, you have spent, I'm correct, 5,000. And you have clay
clay 120. We spent 15,000 on that. And and will there be any more expenditure this year? Uh a small one. I think it's closer to that number we have in the budget. Um you're going to spend more than $6,000.
That's a fourth of the budget. We probably have one we do generally in the fall um tend to get clay for the fields especially as we're transitioning to soccer. So we want to try and create as level as possible. Unfortunately, some soccer fields do cross over into dirt. Um,
do you seed in the fall? We seed in the fall as well. Yes. Yeah. Okay. So, why why doesn't the municipal um landscaper cover your properties? I don't grass seed. Yes. That's part of the contract, but they
just cut and maintain it. We do the seeding ourselves. Oh, okay. So, so how much does grass seed cost? Grass seed and there's also clay and clay is about $35 a ton. So, usually each field takes about a,000 tons. But that's Yeah. And the clay is
separate, but for for the seeding you you have a budget of almost 7,000. Oh, we're jumping. So, I thought we were still on clay. That's why I was we jumped in. You you said that you need that and that you're going to get it. Um for fertilizer
that awesome. We're on the same page with that was another line that I said 127. Yeah, I was another one that I believe we could probably cut another thousand off of. Okay. So, and all of this is within the 15 that you just said or that's an additional the first two
items we discussed. Yeah. And also with the fertilizer grassy that includes, you know, flowers, plantings, you know, park beautifification. How many fields do you have? 27. 27. Wow. Okay. The trophies.
Trophies. You've spent $325 out of a bigger budget. 244. That's line 129. Uh we spend we spent another $1,000 on trophies for our swim team. So trophies
have been flow. Um so it's not really u you know this what currently spent is not indicative of what we still have covered in the fall. um programs that wrap up like that too. So can you give certificates instead of trophies? Oh no,
you know we say to trophies honestly a a how about a medal? Well, that's what I was going to say to you is that we've kind of gotten away from trophies. Yes, we've gone to medals. Okay. And t-shirt some cases. So um cuz trophies just collect dust. Exactly. And then they get thrown out.
So um can you reduce that since you're using metals now? did last time we were together and we've reduced it closer to our 2024 spend. Right. Can you bring that? I think that's kind of that's So, were you using metals last year? That's pretty standard to what we've been doing. Metal has been the thing for
the past uh couple years now. Okay. So, that's pretty close to what we do on an annual basis. All right. Um let's go to 141. You've spent $8,000 on maintenance and line airators out of a 15,000.
We're at 15,000 savings so far. There there is another um contract coming in the fall. Mhm. Uh there's but we each year we get a contract from a company um to remove, install, maintain, and winterize our air raators. And that's a contract that runs
starts in the fall and runs through the next year. So how much is it? It be the other $7,000 $8,000 that we uh spent last year. So, we will meet that budget line item with the uh air raators. Okay. The programs you spent five approximately 5,000 out
of 155. What other programs are you planning? And and by the way, those programs were porto johns for programs and um for $3,000 for the portag johns. Why
why so much? Not all port johns. Those are senior uh senior golf events, um supplies for programs. Portig John's we we've put them at pretty much four or five facilities now, playgrounds, uh fields that get a lot of
use. So, and that is at the state contract rate. We've just found there's been a need for that, a demand for that. So, that's why they've had them there. And the increase there, um $10,000 would help defy the cost of the senior golf tournaments. Uh the cost for those rose exponentially over the past
year. Why should we be paying for the senior golf tournaments? So, our residents also our res. Didn't that come out of the senior budget? That has been a program that was run by the recreation department. So, there's kind of a little bit of a split in the program responsibilities there. We've had the uh senior golf tournaments under
the rec umbrella ever since uh Mrs. Bernon retired. Is there some way to reduce that? You only have four months left. The senior golf is the way the way the year went. Honestly, the um most years we have a lot of our tournaments in April and May. This year,
because of uh work their town, the golf course are doing plus some other issues, uh they didn't start uh giving us dates until September and October. So, we do have three more events upcoming. Okay. So, there are a lot of other things that we could go through. I'm going to throw out a figure so that we
don't have to go through everything. And I hope that you can figure out a way to make it work. you I I requested initially 57, you said 15. I'm going to request 25 and that's my final offer.
I don't know. I mean, where are you going to find I mean the one one large number I can say is that if you go to celebration public events um you know fourth of July Oh no no no that's another number though. That's
another number to get to that. Only on this page. Okay. I don't know where you're going to find that much more. Excuse me. Are we on page 107 or 108? 108. 108. Thank you. Um, we're still Wait, wait, hold on.
108. Well, we've gone through Yeah. I mean, there's a lot. just trying not to I just don't know you know what else we could do. We kind of like site man site managers on 270 you've spent 1,400 out of 10,000
site managers are predominantly used in the fall and winter months once we move indoors to our um you know programs that are indoors basketball stuff in the gyms programs like that um they become very important just in terms
of uh being a friendly face in the gym helping us solve any issues uh addressing you know any concerns residents might have. So, all right. Yeah, it's site safety. Yeah. I mean, if there's something if something's wrong at a gym, um, you know, our facility, so or just our programs just making sure
people that are in our programs register for our programs for our liability purposes. Spring track done. Spring track is done. Okay. So, you you spent nothing. So, can we zero that out? We can zero that out. That's fine. And just can I just interrupt? Uh, Councilwoman uh Councilwoman Scarpa has
raised her hand. I know you sort of deferred to her or yielded. We'll yield to you. That's okay. No, that's okay. I just wanted to talk about, you know, the part-time workers, you know, can you maybe be a little bit more frugal in um
the number of, you know, part- timerrs you have managing some of these events? C could I just interrupt here? Uh, Councilwoman Scarpa, can we just hold off on that until u Councilwoman Ruden gets through the line items? Sure. Then we can I was just thinking of it in terms of
the site managers. You know, perhaps we could have less, but go ahead. Okay. Yes, that's that's a good point. Can the site managers be reduced? Yeah. The number of managers, I wouldn't recommend that just from safety perspective. It's not like we're sending people out just to sit in empty
gyms. We're sending them when programs are in place. It's really a safety reliability. We have amped that up for the past several years because as you guys have both seen in the news sometimes crazy things happen at these youth sports events and it's in our best interest to have uh somebody there to
you know be a witness to it or relay information in a timely fashion to us. Um just you know that last raintorm of the summer um you know we were in one of the gyms and the the gym started flooding because of the rain and you know our site manager was there so that we helped get the board to resolve the issue quicker than if they had found to
the next morning. Mhm. Um, is lacrosse season over? Lacrosse season is over. Yes. Okay. So, that's 17 and that hasn't been any of that this year. Zero. So, that should be zeroed out. School
break programs. Are there any more school break programs coming up? Yeah, we have convention coming up. Um, we may be doing something over the Jewish holidays depending on if there's a demand for it. So, um, you know, school gets back in session. Um, you know, the big one is going to be that uh
teachers convention election day week. Anybody else? Okay. So, so where are you with as I um gave you the other item, one item I did have that we didn't mention was uh 137 motors.
Mhm. You know, we could probably take a thousand off of that to match closer to what we spent historically. And you've spent nothing in the maintenance of the scoreboard as well? That's noted. That's most our scoreboards are indoor stuff. Um, and
the number that's in there, you know, might just cover the service call to get them out there, but that's um, most of our scoreboards aren't indoors in the gyms, whatnot. So, that's more of a um, you know, fall, early winter. Okay. Can you agree on $20,000? $20,000. Yes. Where?
Just this whole this whole just tightening just a little. You you've offered 15. I started at 57. I think everything but I think right now where we're at I think we've kind of cut it as lean as we can without really starting to impact our programs. I mean we I I
before I even came here today I sat here I went through our you know through Munex looked at what we spent and try to you know match these numbers as close to what we're actually spending as possible. This temporary budget is really just a picture of right now. It doesn't affect a lot of our stuff is
fall and winter early winter. So, we have a lot of things upcoming. Okay. I I'm doing the best I can to work with you, but I think some point, you know, I'm looking at I understand the situation we're in. It's a $157,000 budget, and you're willing to do a 10%
discount. Well, we did 10% last time we were here. Okay. And now just come up with some more. I didn't give a Ryan's tally, unfortunately, but Um, and I said before I came down here tonight, I said I went through munex 2024, 2023 and even looked at just the temporary budget now and
said, "All right, what are we actually spending?" Okay. So, I'd like to to just um make a I guess time for a motion to reduce this by 17,000
and and um hope that works out. I'll second that. So, we have a motion. The 17,000 is to take from what uh number council
from the total budget of um 157 314 and 80 86. So you would bring that down to 140. Yes. No. Yes. And Councilwoman Scarpa, you seconded that. Yes.
Is there any more discussion? I' I'd like to know. Uh I would like to know from Mr. Johnson if this takes uh if this takes effect if this is is voted what what impact will that have and if
if it reduce if it causes you to reduce where would you reduce? Well the other concern is that a lot of these line items are used to support programs and keep our registration fees low. So unfortunately if we had to start you know um we lost like site manager
money or you know the just any of these line items we might have to you know either a as you mentioned you know reduce some of the programs we offer or b increase some of the fees which we do not really want to do. Um we pride ourselves in trying to have our programs be as affordable as possible and walk
that fine line of using our budget and our registration fees to create high quality programming. Right. So, so just to clarify, at least in my mind, if you are if the budget is reduced to $140,000, you will either have to uh negatively
impact a program or programs or you'd have to raise fees. Yeah. I mean, unfortunately, now sports are year round. I mean, back when we all probably first started, you know, basketball season was basketball season. Now, this stuff is year round. So, the expenses just aren't defined to a season anymore. They're just year round. The stuff gets worn out. We can only uh wear
pennies so many times. Cohens can only take so many beatings. Um, so you know, and and like the deputy director said, these programs are are supplemented by the participants, too. It's not like we're paying for the entire basketball
program. We just we just collected the league fees for elite basketball, you know, a few days ago. Um so again if the money isn't there from the operating budget it has to be supplemented by um
the participants or it needs to be cut instead of eight weeks maybe it's six and it's you know and again we have 27 fields you know how many indoor facilities I mean on a given night let's give you just a January night a random January
night we have eight gyms in operation you know some are just practices some are games require site managers, but that's eight facilities where we have to do something or something could go wrong. So, you know, personally 6:00's my least favorite time cuz one of the gyms open, so I wait for the phone to
ring, but that's just a personal problem. Thank you. Is there any more discussion? So, just so we're clear, it was 7,200. It was 7205 made a cuts that we discussed. So, that's an additional $10,000 he's going to
No, no, he offered he initially offered 15,000. on top of the on top of these 7,000 we took that advertising, right? Well, no, sorry. There was 5,000 that I market firefight. Sorry. There was 5,000
out of fourth in July that I was going to talk about. Okay. So, that's a separate page. I didn't realize that. That was that was a rookie mistake on my part. First five here with you guys. So, I'm learning too. My first time, too. So, we're really pretty close. We're only talking about a $2,000 difference. Yeah. That five there is good,
right? I completely understand the situation you guys are in and you know I'm not up here haphazardly. I'm looking at everything and trying to be as fair and saying you know not have a wish list but have a this is what I need to run programs as effectively as possible.
Okay. So we have a motion on the floor. Is there any uh addition just a question. So when you talk about um maintaining fields or gyms and the equipment it's used, you need to replenish it, whatever.
Is some of that equipment school district equipment? No. So it's it's all municipallyowned equipment like basketball hoops or Well, the the infrastructure is the schools, but I mean, you know, each team has their own basketballs, their own
pennies. Uh there are some schools that we do use their scoreboard, but there are some schools where we use our own stuff. Um so it's it's a very unique shared agreement um with the board and the township. But as far as supplying the coaches with the equipment they need
to run the programs, that is at our expense. Okay. So I just to continue. So the when you talk about uh replenishing or repairing or whatever the equipment needed for the sports programs, you're talking about things that are strictly
for the municipal programs and not for the schools. I'm talking solely just for Township of West Orange needs our programs, our coaches. Thank you. You only bounce a basketball so many times because they just they got to excuse why doesn't win. They need to do ball. Okay. Okay. So, the motion is to
is to reduce $17,000 even. Yes. Uh out of the budget, which would leave 140, $314.86. Correct. Okay. So, we got it clear. Any more discussion? Madame Clerk?
Councilwoman Ruden? Yes. Councilwoman Scarpa? Yes. Council President Koviaak? No. Motion carries. Thank you. What's next? Okay, we can't wait to hear. Can we just consent on those pages?
Consent. Consent. Consent. Thank you. Consent. Um, appreciate you being I want to hear. Okay. So, now we're looking at uh celebration of public events. Yeah. Could I just uh again just interrupt because uh Councilwoman Scarpa
said she wanted to have a separate discussion on an issue. I I don't know whether that's still going to come up later on, but I just wanted to flag that in case if it was it's an appropriate time to talk about it now or whether Councilman Scarpa, you want to wait uh a little.
No, I'll wait. I just wanted to look at the issue overall and that was related to staffing. Okay, thank you. Back to you, Councilwoman. Okay. So, did we already I would like to get to that also. Which topic? discussion of of staffing, but let's do this first
and then we'll go move on. Um, the celebrations you have you have a present for us. Is this I did I don't know that the last vote. I'm not so sure. Yeah, we're not cutting anything. Page 109. Okay. Page 109. We're not cutting anything.
You want to if you want to cancel Christmas, you cancel Christmas on your own. Okay. Fourth of July. I mean, Fourth of July, you know, we've kind of changed our format over the past couple years. So, now we have a couple years of data. So, um, you know, we were
looking, you know, and again, in an effort to be transparent, fair, and honest here, you know, we that, you know, maybe that $35,000 number was a little high, but um, you know, it kind of just got hurt a little bit on that last page there. So, I'm not sure. You know,
that was a little little tiny little boooo. A little boo boo. Yeah. Okay. So, so you want to we can reduce fourth of July by 5,000. Okay. So, 4th of July has already passed, correct? And you spent 19,200
out of the budget of 34 349. So, why don't we just reduce it to what you actually spent instead? Because last year we went with last year, sorry, sorry, last year we had three bands, which is why the number was a little higher. This year we only had two bands. Um, that kind of gives us a
little bit of flexibility with terms of by even taking that by $5,000, what we previously had, it gives the event a little flexibility where if we want to have three bands because what we saw was with the two bands, the crowd left very early and it hurt the food trucks.
Okay. So, this is just for this year. We're going to do our budget early next year and you're going to have more money. So, I just want to zero out what what you've actually spent this year and next year we're going to give you what you need
unless you don't have it. So, that should be a reduction of 15770 since it wasn't spent. And and we're going to do this soon. So, you have to put in your budget request and have it reflect what you actually want to Absolutely. bring to the town. Okay. So,
that's that's a reduction of 15770.53. Um the tree lighting has not been done yet. No. And one of the things that I've noticed in the tree lighting is that we always pay somebody $500 to to sing
at the tree lighting. Is it possible that we can use our talent from the high school instead? Pay. Well, last year was the first time we paid entertainers, um, the singers. That was the first time in several years we paid most years as June mentioned it was from, you know, we rotated between
the middle school, Satan prep, the high school, the marching band. So, we're probably going to go back to that. I'm I'm not really sure last year what this why we couldn't get anybody from the high school, but that is always our first effort is to get some of our local talent and have them be the entertainment for the night. So that
that was probably just an isolated incident last year or just that we had no other alternative or else we would have been singing ourselves and I'm not sure anyone wants to hear me sing. Okay. So why does tree lighting cost that much? Don't you have all of the supplies
yeartoear? We do. A good portion of that is um the inflatables for the event like the trackless train ride. Um the giant snow globe that people take pictures in and we pay a vendor to set up and take down the lights and the display just the
lights of the tree and town hall because we don't have the ability to do that ourselves. Okay. So last year you actually spent $4,000 on all of those items. This year you're requesting $9,000.
between yeah I think there was a in the budget we talked about last time too we weren't sure that was an accurate number that that is accurate now right now yes that's the AC that's the accurate number um
the only thing I will say about fourth tree lighting last year which probably you know Um, you know, maybe it's not the 9,000 number, but last year tree letting was the first event for our special rights coordinator two terms two times ago. Mhm. Um, so, you know, she kind of jumped in a little bit there. So, we kind of
didn't really have the full event on scale. So, you know, we could adjust that a little bit closer to the actual number, but I know we didn't do all the bells and whistles that year. Okay. So, I do 5,000. Yes.
Okay. 1.5. Yeah. Have a $5,000. Right. That's a We're taking out 4377.72. Yeah. Okay. We as you mentioned earlier, you know, our um decorations are getting a little old, so we may come back for the next
discussion to Okay. buy some new decorations. Yeah. Um the old times day didn't happen. Can we September 6th? Let's take that out of the budget. That's 3455. No, the event didn't happen yet. It's
event September. It didn't not yet. I'm sorry. Not that's event September 6th. Okay. And and it's the oldtimers. Yes. It's missing a R there. Yeah. Okay. And and old time Veterans Veterans Day is over.
No, it's November 11th or Oh my god. Really? Yeah. Yeah. I'm thinking Memorial Day. I'm so sorry. We're We're past Memorial Day. Actually spend on that because the last year you paid only $48 and you've requested $800. What do you spend on that? I'm not fully confident in that. So, but
I'm my best of my knowledge um that money I believe was spent to support the event. I think past years they paid towards the uh lunchon at the Elks or something like along those lines. Let's get some Let's get some data on that. But there's also flags and uh
Oh, there's a lot of flags that we bought this year and a lot of flags. I heard we bought a lot of flags. A lot of flags. But I know in years past, I believe we paid for the lunchon back at the Elves. So, okay. Didn't spend anything. Just be that. That's the only thing I'm aware of.
Okay. So, let's bring that that down to $50. I don't think that's accurate. Last year, last year you spent 48. He may charge us. It might have been charged somewhere else. I mean, I don't again I can't speak confidently.
Well, we went you you've you've merged 20. Yeah. So, yeah. I mean, there there wasn't anything charged outline item in in the two, but I'm sure that they spent something on Veterans Day. So, I think we need to just be realistic and say, "What are you going to spend on Veterans Day?"
And $200 some seats. Let's call it 250. Okay. No. No. Is that enough? I think I think that probably is for for it's it's so wait. So small lunchon. That's probably what it is. All right.
So that's a reduction of 575. All right. For Halloween in previous years, previous year you spent 2,300. The cost for Halloween is going to vary year to year because of where the date
falls. Uh last year Halloween was on a weekend. So we were, you know, we were had low attendance. Um so is you really what we we're not going to go and spend money on an event that we know going in that we're fighting uphill battle with the event itself. What what what day is it this year?
On a Friday. Is that a better day? Yeah. Okay. And so last, okay, so last year we since we didn't um weren't expect a large crowd, we just kind of did more of a festival type thing. Our plan this year is to kind of bring back that haunted pool type setup,
which has a lot more decorations and uh involvement with it. Do you have to buy all these decorations? Not all of them, no. But something How much do you need? $4,210. That's a weird number. So, really, how much do you need
to buy decorations and Well, there's entertainment, there's uh food. Well, I got candy, I guess. Yeah, we had a photo with last year was awesome. We hire a DJ, so we're probably closer to that 4,200 number.
Okay. Easter egg hunt. You spent $870. Can we That seems like a very low number. Um I know um as I mentioned earlier, we had a transition again with our special events
coordinator. Um the one we had in place, she left us about maybe a month before the event. So we were trying we were trying to you know fill in the blank. So we didn't really put on again a full event. Okay. Um so you can have a full event next year.
This is just we're just taking toll of what happened this year. As long as we can if we can go back next year bring nothing back up. Um that is event that had occurred all the bills are in but as long as we're of the understanding that you know for 2026 we can go back to that number we're okay. Okay. So the um sports and games night
when was that? That was in June that event has occurred. Okay. So there that was that's also a reduction right there. That was 1180. Yes. So that that event has concluded. So for 2025, we can close that out with the understanding that 2026
and that's closer to what it was anyway. So that's that's a reduction of $997. And I think I think the rest you need. So let's just add that up. Do you have
all of that? I have all the numbers. Do you have all the numbers? No. Okay. So, do you want me to review that? You can give a total. Okay. You have to vote first. So, Okay. So that is a reduction of
$24,517.98. So why don't we just make that even 245 because these it gets a little silly. Okay, I'll second that. Okay, I don't think it was an emotions. Oh, I'm sorry. Okay, happy with the number.
Okay, trying to move it along. Yes. Okay, so when I had originally gone through this, I thought it was going to ask for a lot more. So, this is this is good. Glad I got off easy being a rookie. Yes. So, um, so I'd like to make a
motion to reduce this budget by 24,500. I'll second it. Any further discussion? Madame Clerk, Councilwoman Ruden, yes. Councilwoman Scarpa, yes. Council President Koviaak, yes.
The motion carries. Thank you. Okay. And is there a consent? Consent. Consent. Thank you for reminding us. I'm going to stop calling you Dina. Okay. I'm going to call you Miss Consent. Okay. So, I think is that it for you? I
think that is, but I I think that Councilwoman Scarpa wanted to talk about and I don't know what what page that's on. That was page uh 106 to start, right? I re I remember when I had asked
Mr. Kio about uh the $250,000 of part-time workers, which I thought was incredibly high. and he referred to it as a mulligan stew and was kind of unable to tell me, you know, like
approximately what he needs all of these part- timerrs for. So, I was hoping that we can get some savings from that line item. And um you you know I think you guys know how to cut that because I can't do
anything with mulligan stew. But I I was you have to cut the fat off the mulligan stew. But what I was hoping was that maybe you could have a few less of these part- timerrs in each space because, you know, I know that we do sometimes, you
know, we worry we do worry about safety and we do tend to overstaff some of these um these events. Well, I can clarify I mean to clarify the mulligans too, maybe give you the uh recipe with the ingredients here. um you know that part-time hourly the hourly
pay there that covers you know our permanent part-time employees that we have um some office support staff part-time maintenance people that have in the parks and also at other sites our special events coordinator um our special needs program uh year round program the camp um somebody year
round um also you know in the office kind of keeping the programs going doing outreach uh our site managers at CATS um we also have you know the uh the footsteps program so it's their their programs their activities throughout the year, their coordinators, which is um you know position we're looking to fill. Uh we
have the camp going on and uh also our park state patrol that goes out um you know nights and weekends just kind of going through the parks interacting with residents, you know, checking on things, bringing things to our attention. So it's a lot of people that have functions. It's not just um you know
people hanging around. It's um kind of essential people to help us do what we need to do and also sometimes you know let us know what we need to fix. Can you right can we do with a few less in maybe in each um in each uh place and maybe
cut, you know, 25 to 50,000 out of that? A lot of these position people are, you know, they're part-time, they're hourly, so they're hired for what they're needed for. They're not just hired to be on paper. Um you know, they're out at events, planning events, site managers at CATS, uh which is, you know, pretty
much booked every weekend throughout the year. Um and then we have our, you know, our special needs camps, their counselors, and the uh program. So, it's they're all people that are working because they're needed. So, one of the things that I could I'm so sorry,
Council No, go ahead. Go ahead, Counciloman. I just I just wanted to follow up on that. you do great work and you provide so much for our kids and our community, but I have heard that there are some places
like the pool where there are people sitting around when you come in at the booth there like five people working there and they're all getting paid as part-timers. So, I mean there's one example and I don't know all of the rest but that's been pointed out to me by
residents. Yeah. you the pool like the example you made there um referenced you know you have we have there's four people working in there so there's two windows when people check in we have two people at the front counter to process memberships guest passes and also checking in the
tough part about that is that we're really busy then we're really slowly busy really slow so we're trying to keep people moving helping them with what they need whatever and to your point though and this has happened over the past several days we get these days where we're not that busy we do go out there and go hey guess But we're cutting
staff in half and we're sending these hourly people home. Um, but you know, if our our high points of the day are from 12 to 1, 3 to 5, you know, there's going to be that gap and we're not going to set them home for an hour. But we are cognizant of the fact that there are times, especially at the pool, that we do need to reduce staff because they're
not needed and we do do that. So if your busy time is 12 to three, I just use that example. It flows. It depends on the day, right? But but generally speaking, can't you just bring on more people during those hours and less people during
Yeah, we do we do pair down the staff as the day gets in later into the day. So it's all shift work. So these most uh most office staff has a like a 5 hour shift. The guard the guards are a little more towards seven or eight hour shifts. So we do staff the most for our highest
points of the day, but we do pair it down at opening and closing so it's not overwhelmed. But the mid part of the day is when we have the glut of employees. Do you honestly feel that you can't do without two of those people? Because what I've heard is that they're sitting there all day and maybe maybe that's a
misreporting, but maybe they get really busy when I walk outside. They hear the door slam and they all get to work and I come outside. I don't know. I don't know. I mean, can you evaluate that? Absolutely. I don't know where there are other areas that could possibly be, you know, appropriate for for cuts, but that's a
lot of part- timerrs, seasonal employees. Yeah, they're summer jobs. These are kids. These are kids. These are most of them are yet. You know, high school students, but they all make different salaries. Some of them make
depending on their their their um how many years they've been there. Yes. But we do start all of our employees out at the seasonal minimum wage. Okay. They're mostly West Orange residents. Almost all of them are western res with very rare exception. Most the only non-residents usually
typically are lifeguards but as far as our other staff goes it's west residents. I see the floor. Councilwoman Scarpa. Yeah. I would just like us to be a little bit more frugal in the way we manage our staff and I'd like to see us
take at least 25,000 out of that those part- timerrs. No, I just don't know where I again these these that's this this number we see on the screen right now the hourly employees those are how does that to years before
it's I think the same amount as the prior year do we know what we've spent to date Yeah, we we just consented to this like 15 minutes. This is It's crazy.
What page is that? This is page 106. So we spent $11,000 so far out of 200 out of 215. Yeah. Okay. So there seems like there's a little bit of room there. You know, we
only have we're on the last quarter. Oh, we still have another month of few months left. uh cats is going to come back online soon. Um you know, the park safety patrol is going to be out, you know, doing their things in the park. So, it's, you know, it's we're about halfway through the
year and we're about halfway at that number. So, I think we're being as frugal and lean as we can we can you compare this to last year spending. Could I just wait? Councilwoman Scarpa, have you Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead,
please. Council, yeah, I just like to see what where you were at this point last year. Sure. the hourly. We're at 101,000 last year. Yeah. And how much as of uh August 7th?
And how much was spent? I just said 101,000. You mean for the full year? For the full year. Okay. we spent against hourly. Make sure I'm covering here. I take this
29 182,000. Okay. Okay. I think there's room for considerable savings. We're not going to offer up a cut for hourly. So, the
we just consented to this. Wait a second. I want to reopen it. I'd like to reopen it as well. Okay. Go ahead. Yeah. I mean, given that last year it
was 180. I mean, we I think 25,000 is a good number. Well, there were also some vacancies last year, too. Our special events coordinator left. Um, our footsteps coordinator left, which resulted in the loss program. So, I'm not that's not really an accurate picture of our
because we had some staffing issues. that it's been resolved. So that, you know, that could account for the $30,000 right there. You know, having a not having a special event half the year, footsteps program being down half the year. Um, park safety patrol is down some employees
and you know the only four months left. Can we cut some of those? Councilwoman Scarpa. Oh, sorry. Try to wait until Mr. Johnson finishes speaking before you. Sure. Please. Um, you know, there were some vacancies and um, so that could account
for the $30,000. I think we're pretty much in line with where we are previous years. And as I mentioned, this work is all assigned work. It's not, well, this place is open from 12:00 to 8. You know, you're going to show up from 12:00 to 8. This is actual activities, actual
programs. Can M. Okay. Councilwoman Scarva, please. Go ahead. Go ahead. Councilwoman Ruden, I just was wondering if if Mr. Datinia could bring us back one more year. And I can't. No, this Zengov only goes back
to 24. So, okay. So, you're halfway there. You have only about four months left, right? Five months. And I do I do agree that there has to be some sort of savings here. Um,
Councilwoman Scarpa has suggested 25. Um, I would like to suggest that it be double of what you have right now. That you keep double of what you have. So that you you keep 202.
That's double of what you have right now to spend in less than in in in the rest of the year. So I'd like to see it brought down by 13,000 and I think that that's a fair
representative because you only spent 187 last year. I think there were vacancies there were vacancies last year not having a special events coordinator for six months. um other people that were that there were spots that were vacant, park patrol,
footsteps program. So I mean again you guys are the council you guys can make your choice but cutting that 13,000 this is actual people many of which are our residents that are running programs for us. So it's going to have an impact on maybe it turns you know the cat site
manager in this it's going to limit rentals and that's a building we want to rent to West Orange residents. So, it's I understand what you're trying to trying to do here, but there will be an impact on what we're able to offer people. Okay. Council, you have the floor.
Um, I will seat it to Councilwoman Scarpa. Do you want to make a motion? Yeah. Why don't we just um stick with your 13? I'm fine with that. I think, you know, we can maybe be a little more cognizant of the amount of staff we use on each event. I'm comfortable with the
13. Okay. You do you want to make a motion? Sure. I'll make a motion to cut 13,000 from the part-time workers and maybe you use our staff a little more efficiently.
Okay. Second. Is there any further discussion? Yes. Mr. SMO, just to add that the administration still does not support this cut. It was said by the other two. So I want to make sure that we it's on the record. We do
not support this cut. That's it. Any more discussion? Madame clerk. Councilwoman Ruden. Yes. Councilwoman Scarpa. Yes. Council President Koviaak. No. The motion carries.
Thank you. Now we're done. Okay. Aren't we? Yeah. No, but before we leave, I think we are done. Thank you so much. Oh, no problem. Thank you. Thank you. And let us know how everything goes and how the attendance. Yeah. No, I mean, we're always
monitoring our events, look for ways to improve, look for feedback, and trying to figure out what works. Yeah. I I would like to to do something before this evening is over to to make um not related. You're free. Thank you so much.
Um, I'd like to um, you know, we we I think this is our last time really getting the benefit of the of the community budget advisory board and I'd like to take the recommendation to add in a forensic
audit into our finance budget. So is do we need to have any further discussion or can I go to a motion because I think we discussed it quite a bit. In a in a budget you'd have to find the
budget line item to put it into. So all right. So your your page is 50. Council President, if I could. Um, yes, please. So, I I think this is a pretty
substantial change to the budget. And I mean, I've I've sort of held my tongue this whole week, but not having Councilwoman Castalino here has certainly led to I don't want to speak for her, but probably significant reductions in this
budget and now a another significant change. So, I you know, I don't know how any of you feel, but she should probably be a part of this vote adding whatever you want to add $50 $100,000 to a
budget. That's just my personal feeling. Yes, Mr. Tin, I I agree too. And I'm not going to vote for tonight for a forensic audit without any proposal, without any business case. I I'm telling you, I I just I I don't agree that that's the way
we move forward, spending $50 to $100,000. We don't even know how much it's going to cost. So, uh I'm not voting for it anyway. So, okay. So, we do have to find the page and correct me if I'm wrong, Council President. you're going to add to the
budget. You need Councilwoman Castellino anyway. That's right. You're exactly right. You need the fourth vote anyway. So, this is this is a point tonight. You're exactly right. This page 52 you could add. Thank you, Mr. Smalden, for doing my
job. Once again, is there anything else? I I'd just like to understand that why adding to the budget requires four votes. We've subtracted without four votes. Why do we need a super majority? Is it you need a super majority to add? Uh no, I don't believe that you do.
Yeah, I believe we do. You do. Ever since I And we've mentioned that the whole time. We've mentioned that the whole time we've been talking here because I mentioned on the record several times where it said it only takes three to reduce here, but if we go to add to this budget again, we'll do a supermajority. I think I've made that point several
times. We we have I have also made the point but we do have a supermajority here right now tonight and super majority is defined under state law. Okay. Council's five people. This you have a
vacancy but it's it still requires four people to be supermajority. That's my understanding of it. Okay. Well, we can get a legal opinion. We're going to be back here tomorrow, right? I'm not sure I'm going to be back tomorrow, but Okay. All right. Well, I mean I don't know what to you know. So I
mean we can get a legal opinion on it and by that time Councilwoman Casoon will be back anyway. So if this if if I make a motion to add this in tonight and it is legally a
wrong decision, then we'll retract it. But I'd like to get it in tonight, especially because we have three people tonight and I know that um council president is not feeling well. Councilman, I appreciate that sentiment,
but I I think what you're suggesting, while it may make sense to you, is not in conformance with state law. So, I'm not going to to do that. I'm not going to do it. We can come back here tomorrow with a with a legal opinion. and we don't have a legal advisor
in here to to have this vote. I am not going to do something that I firmly believe based on 15 years of experience on the council is improper. Is there anything else? Anything else? Uh just just to follow up
on this, I am not feeling well. Uh, but I wanted to come in tonight to get the citizens budget advisory board and try to move this forward. Uh, but I'm just felt worse and worse during the evening. So, we'll see about tomorrow. I'll uh I'll let you know if I can do it
tomorrow. But if this is something we need to do, I will I will come in. What time be 11 o'clock? 11 o'clock. 11 to 3. So well, Council President, just so for
purposes of the emergency, we'll have to inform Miss Kazinski as early as possible and hopefully you feel better and hopefully you're going to be here. But if not, you know, if it's and if you want us to do that tomorrow morning, just let us know. Just call me call me as early as you want and I'll
Okay. Well, I I I think uh Councilwoman Ruden uh made it clear that we that she thinks that we should get a legal opinion. Yeah, I I will do that, too. Okay. I will I will get that. I I will I will send out an email tonight to our our legal team. And
I I don't really trust our legal team to give us advice. I'm sorry. Yes, I I understand. But I was going to say I could send it to Mr. Burke who represents. We have a super majority here tonight with two out of three. And if this vote becomes
invalid, then it becomes invalid. But I'd like woman super majority would be all three voting and the council president has already indicated he's not going to vote for it. So you don't have the majority as it is. Do do we need a super majority or a simple majority? No. To add, do you need it to be a 3 0
vote? It has to be 3 0. That's what we followed all week was 3. That was the advice given to us by Miss Carnival. We followed 30 vote to add back 21 to take
away. So that we followed that all week. Correct me if I'm wrong. You've been monitoring because we did some adbacks, but they were three 0. They had to be 3 0.
So much and the adbacks were to existing budget items. You're adding a new item to the budget. So that's going to be the question that I will ask for Lee. We added back,450
to page 79 and 80. It was uh 30 on consent. Um, we added, this was on the 4th, we added 4,000 to pages 93 and 94. It was a 30
vote. Um, as far as when I've been covering, those are the two additions that I have, but that's what we've been going by. Like I said, if uh if this is something
that's important to do tomorrow, then I'll come back in. But uh I'd really like to go now, please. A motion to adjourn. Second. Second. All in favor? I I
I consent. Yes. I finally got it.