Good evening, West Orange. Uh, coming to you live from Council Chambers, 66 Main Street, West Orange. Welcome to the West Orange Township Council budget stop workshop. Uh, there will be no public comment heard in council chambers or
online. At this time, I'd like to turn the meeting over to our council president, Joe Kovac. Thank you, Mr. Fagan. Uh welcome everybody uh who are those of you who in the chambers and also online. We appreciate your interest and uh your
help in uh the budget. Uh let's see. The draft budget from the mayor proposes to raise municipal property taxes by 6.2%. So we're looking for efficiencies to lower that increase. 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 the word budget, then click on the f and the first result will be budget and you'll see the mayor's draft budget that we'll be working on from tonight. We are not, as Mr. Vegan said, we're not taking
public comment tonight. If you want to comment or ask questions, please send an email to councilwwest.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,
you can send it to one of the council people uh and they can send it around to the rest of us. If you need email addresses, search for the council the word council on the township website to get the email addresses. Let's
see. Tonight we are reviewing the proposed budgets for multiple departments in in uh the uh township government and uh we're going to be starting with the engineering department and
uh when we are describing a particular page that we're looking at it will be the page that is printed on the actual page even though in PDF format that you also see a PDF page number on the right
side. You want to look for the numbers that are on the printed budget. And lastly, we I I urge everyone to consider time efficiency in their comments and questioning to be sure that what you say is necessary. The faster
that we carefully go through the budget, the better. Any questions? Yes. No questions. Madame Clerk. Yes. 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 April 25th, 2025. Councilwoman Castelina will be
here shortly. Councilwoman Gberichel, present. Councilwoman Ruden, here. Councilwoman Scarpa present. Council President Koviaak present. Thank you. All
right. Director Carbalo, welcome back. It seems like we were just seeing you. I know. Uh for those of you who don't know, we had a a council meeting last night and uh Miss Carvalo was one of the last
people here and uh you're not paid overtime, are you? Okay. Anyway, how would you like to start the present? Oh, Mr. Zinak, I can I can recognize that that facial expression. Uh, Council President, I
just want to point out to um the public watching at home um through through the the Zoom broadcast uh you had mentioned on our website um if you look up the department section and then finance and
then go to budget. Um we have for tonight we put together a packet of the uh departments that we are going to be looking at tonight. the engineering department, health, um parks and recreation, uh and um and the department
of public works. So, we have a packet so it's much easier to follow along from home um for the uh those budgets that we're going to be looking at tonight. So, if you click the May 21, 2025 budget
presentation, it will bring up um a 29page packet. I feel like it's going to be much easier for everyone at home to follow along and we've printed out copies for everyone here. Um, so, you know, again, I feel like it'll be a lot easier to go through this. We won't have
to worry about the pages so much. Uh, it's just going to be easier to go through. I also want to point out that um we have the debt service schedules that were presented at uh the the previous budget workshop meeting um available. These are all of our bond ant
amortization schedules for our permanently financed debt. It also has a schedule of our bond anticipation notes and the authorized but not issued. Um these were all the things that I talked about last week. So for the public if they want to look at these schedules, um
we have them up on on the website. Uh what we're going to do um hopefully before the next meeting is put up the 2014 um budget presentation schedules as well so that um you know if you just wanted to look at what happened last week and
the schedules we looked at uh we'll put them up on the website as well. So we're always going to keep the the the major document and we'll be updating that as these proceedings go on. But at least you have the more bite-siz presentations. Um, so we hope it's
helpful to the public and you know anybody else that wants to look and the members of the citizens budget advisory board. Correct. Yes. Okay. Director Carvalo, how would you like to start the process? Would you
like to present? Should we go through the budget line by line? Do you want to give an overview of perhaps what happened in 2024 and what you're looking for in 2025? Uh how would you like to how would
you like to proceed? Well, let me give you an overview of the 2024 uh budget. Thank you. The engineering department currently has approximately um two keyboarding clerks which are
full-time. Um one administrative analyst which has been with us for over 11 years now. Uh he's part-time. He comes two days a week. Uh we also have an engineering aid that is also
part-time. Uh we recently just hired another engineering aid full-time and of course there is myself as the uh director of the department and the municipal engineer. So that pretty much wraps up what the engineering department consists
of. There is also chair services with uh the department of public works in terms of the uh construction inspector which primarily works for the department of engineering as well as the um forester who also uh
works for the department not regularly but only for the um assessments for all the different capital improvement projects for the roots. um when he has to do assessments for the trees. So that pretty much is the um I
would say the staff for the department uh is very small. Uh right now we primarily depend on consultants to do the design and bid documents for the department. Um I am hoping to sort of
uh distance uh the department from 100% dependency on consulting services. I would like to see the department in the future in the near future to be able to do at least some of the road projects as well as the uh specifications. So in
that way we wouldn't have to be depending on consultants to do that work which is primarily the reason why there's some increased requests in the operating budget for this year and there's the open position do you
have a status for the I think it's deputy engineer uh the assistant municipal yes so the open position for the assistant municipal engineer we actually had an interview uh a few interviews last week uh we do have a candidate and we're routing right now in
the process of hopefully uh him being hired. U I will have an actual hopefully a starting date once the process is completed. Um can you give us a a quote of how much CME and Matrix have have
cost us as consultants? Sure. As of right now for this year, uh I would say CME we have spent with them close to I would say $120,000 if I'm not mistaken. And for Matrix New World, I
would say probably close to $400,000. And uh Mr. Dinia, can you confirm those figures for us? I mean, I couldn't confirm them off the top of my head. I I believe that the director when she you know states those
figures um the majority of those are are against capital projects as part of our section 20 cost um uh with Matrix New World. A lot of it is is related to um the remediation efforts at uh 55 Lakeside and some other properties of
the current uh DPW facility. So they're not technically operating. Um I you know I will add just in as a general point to this department's budget discussions that you know the township is
extremely lucky to have um you know pees on staff because it's increasingly difficult to to hire pees as municipal employees because they command very large salaries in in in the corporate
world. Um, so you know, having a PE on staff and and hopefully bringing on another PE. Yeah. EIT in his steps to get his PE on his this particular person on their way. He or she um you know is is advantageous
for us. We are still going to require the use of outside firms that will not go away um just because of the different Oops. Mr. Cabaro can speak more to this the different disciplines and you know the
fact you're going to need an LSRP and that's you know one sort of specialty and structural engineer and this type of engineer. So we're still going to rely on on outside firms but as Miss Cabaral stated you know things like road
projects if we can bring that inhouse you know we're going to see savings on on those capital projects. we're not going to have to um appropriate as much section 20 cost. It's going to be more for just the bonding side of things and less for the
the engineering. Um and it'll be just really for the the buildout, uh you know, paying the contractor. So, so I I've also been trying to figure out how if we bring somebody in house because last year we spent like almost three
quarters of a million dollars on um outsourcing engineering. How much do you think that we could save if we brought somebody inhouse? So, let me put it to you this way. Okay. For every single roadway project, you're
looking at spending between 35 to let's say $50,000 just for the engineering company just to do the survey, the engineering plans or design as well as the uh bid phase which is basically the preparation
of the construction documents and the construction plans for bidding. That doesn't include the construction administration. Luckily, we have people in house who are knowledgeable uh to do that, which is what we share with the DPW uh one of the inspectors
and I am hoping to break in our newly hired engineering aid in that aspect. As everybody knows, people eventually will retire. So, that is the plan. And for the construction administration, you're
looking at at least I would say at a minimum 50 to $60,000 per project. And that will be like for I would say not even like full-time inspection. We're talking about like three quarters or a
half of you know part-time something like that. Right. So, do you anticipate saving if we spent in one year almost 3/4 of a million, can you anticipate what the savings we would have when we have an in-house um assistant municipal
engineer? Right now, I really cannot give you that number because we haven't really been quantifying, you know, how much would it cost. I mean, I could tell you on the projects that we have done if I actually sit down and start looking through them how much money we have been saving with the construction administration. And hopefully in the
future, like I said, we'll be saving at least, you know, between $35 to $50,000 per road improvement project in design if we do it inhouse. Obviously, it will take a little bit longer. Obviously, we're going to have to train personnel
and that is something that, you know, is going to have to be done inhouse as well as, you know, be well equipped with, you know, software, etc. In order to be able to do that, what are the major type of projects that you will still have to outsource? The mostly first of all for every single
project I will definitely going to have to outsource what is called surveying. All right? So surveying and civil engineering go hand in hand. You cannot do anything without in civil engineering without the surveying part. So you I must going to have to go get a land surveyor
regardless to do the field work to give us what is called the base map. The base map is then passed on to the civil engineer and the civil engineer from there will be able to take it and do the plan. I figure we could be able to do the road improvement projects, the
design of it. I envision also that maybe in the future if maybe uh a recreational project comes along, maybe I could go back and start designing maybe some of those uh sport fields uh if they're synthetic, you know, turf.
um if they need replacement. Uh maybe we could do some of our you know site plans like for example maybe something for a firehouse or a police station if it's needed or maybe for one of the parking lots. We be able to design those because
that's basically my and all of the remediation work would still need to be outsourced. Yes, because you need a licensed site remediation professional an LSRP. I am not. Mhm. So, I won't be able to sign and seal any of those documents. You still need to have a
licensed professional from the state to do that. A lot of the LSRPs are also pees if they do that kind of work. Unfortunately, that is not my area of expertise. I'm smart enough to know what my limitations are as a professional. Is
there ever a engineer who can also be a surveyor as well? Do do people have that dual role? I do have a dual license. I used to do surveying. Uhhuh. And also I'm a professional planner in the state of New Jersey.
But like I say to you, you need personnel. If you want us to do the survey work inhouse and if that's what you're envisioning then I would recommend the council then that we will need to have an opening position then or
we need to advertise let's say for a land surveyor. The reason being is because it's very difficult for someone like me to be able to do both. I would not be able to be your municipal engineer and land surveyor at the same time. I could sign off on the stuff if I
check it. You know what I mean? all the work after I review it, but I still will need a person in the field that I could trust. You understand where I'm driving at? There will be my eyes in the field. Sure. Cuz I cannot be in the field every
time that we got to do field work. I got to be in the office taking care of other issues that need to be resolved just by the engineer. And every time something breaks, every time there are questions during construction, I have to stop what I'm doing. kind of have to go
out there. So if that is something that the council No, it would only be based on your needs like in survey. Uh yes, it's it's it's it's possible to do it. I do know for a fact that many years ago that's the way the department was
set up, but I think um little by little that got phased out. Um but yeah, it is something that is possible. We're definitely willing to hire somebody with some sort of like surveying experience, if not licensed to assist me, and then, you know, I'd be able to sign off on both.
Would that save us money if we also hired a surveyor? I don't see why not. I mean, a survey regard like it depends. A boundary survey, as you see on boundary surveys,
it could be a little more difficult. Although we have a lot of our own stuff on record, we might be able to follow it, but I really won't be able to give you that number from the top of my head. Can we save money? Maybe, maybe not. I mean, serving is a very time consuming
um process. A lot of people just see it as like math. You go set up an instrument and you just start taking measurements. It's not that simple. Um serving requires somebody to really know the area where you're working at. You need to understand the history of the
area. There are surveyors who were very peculiar and particular in the way they did the work. Some of them will put, let's say, crosses on curb. You see that? Especially like in some sections of orange, but only a surveyor that knows that does the work in the area
knows what those crosses mean. You understand where I'm driving at? Not all of them also set up like, you know, corners and stuff like that. So, you you need to do you need to know the history. You need to do research. You're going to have to spend some time maybe on the courthouse pulling plants and stuff like that and also doing the field work and
then also the work in the office where you take the field data that you collected as well as the data from those plans and putting it together and see how the puzzle fits there. Theoretically speaking, there shouldn't be any, you know, overlaps or gaps when if we're
talking about boundaries, but unfortunately, you do see those sometimes more common than none. Thank you. Uh, Mr. Diniac, you u mentioned uh section 20 uh costs. I just think of
them as everything in a bond issuance that is not going towards uh debt repayment and uh debt service. But perhaps you could just explain to everybody who may Right. So, so it's it's the soft cost for a project. So, I I had mentioned um you know, it's costs
that go to pay for our financial advisors, but there's also costs that go to pay engineers or an architect or surveying. Um it's anything but the actual, you know, project build expenses. Uh and we're allotted a
certain percentage based on the bond ordinance. Um but you know most of those soft costs are going to go for design and and construction administration and all that. So um we'd be able to hopefully for certain projects cut down on that. Um I think it's also worth
mentioning too that um you know when we deal with the engineering firms they're obviously operating in you know a market where inflation has gone up and costs are constantly increasing and they pass them
along to us. So, you know, we have to sort of look at um what our costs have gone up over the the past few years with the engineering firms and what we sort of project out those costs to go up. And we we know what our salary and wage
costs are going to be um moving forward uh based on the contracts and the salary ordinances that we have in place. And then again, we can project out our fringe benefits and you know, we're going to look for that delta. So if if we're projecting out that the uh
engineering third party firms are going to be billing us more and more every year, you know, again, there's that opportunity for savings because of our own costs are growing at a slower rate. When when we're looking at salaries for this department, you have the base rate
of over 400,000 and then you have the hourly. Why is there an hourly rate? Aren't these all full-time? No, because we have we have some part-time in here. Um, so like uh Mr. McCarthy is it's a
it's a part-time position. Mr. Santos part-time position. If their salaries were bigger, could we cut down on that hourly? Yeah. I mean, if they were can can either of them be full-time? Uh, right now, no. Uh, Mr.
McCarthy is actually already been retired from the Department of Public Works. actually he used to be the superintendent for public works. Um but he's very knowledgeable. He actually I even tell him all the time, you should have been an engineer. Okay. He's extremely good when it comes to our
FEMA applications for reimbursements. He's excellent when it comes to like, you know, putting everything together, all of the paperwork. Um he also assists me uh reviewing bids. you know, I have him call the uh the different references for the uh contractors and find out, you
know, how they are before I award a project. Um he also assists me in doing the ordinances. Um but yeah, he he cannot work full-time. Okay. Okay. And and Mr. Santos, Mr. Santos is currently going to school. He's going to NGIT to be a civil
engineer. So there is that, you know, limitation, but so far he's he's he's working out great. He's learning and he's eager to continue learning. Whether or not he's going to stay with us, that will be a different question. But I'm looking forward that sometime next year prior to his graduation that we'll be
able to make him an offer for a full-time. So this the total SNW is you have to add in on top of that their health benefits, right? So we we we break out the health benefits as a
separate line item um you know pursuant to the state statute of how we need to show uh health insurance but yeah on top of um all of our salaries there's there's fringe benefits including our our part- timerrs. So our part- timerrs are not getting health benefits they're
not getting um pension but you know there's a workers compensation fringe benefit to being a part-timer. uh there's days off um that are allotted to our part- timerrs that you would you would add on. So the total compensation package is much greater for our
employees. Um you know it can go anywhere to you know almost like 50% of a salary when you tack on the value of uh a family medical plan. you tack on the contribution to the pension especially when you're looking at our
our police and fire where you know it can be close to you know 38 39% of the pensionable base salary our our PERS employees are much lower um I don't know 17.5% sort of comes to mind on on PERS
but yes there are fringe benefits for all of our employees we are very lucky that we can get a retiree to come back and work because they have all that institutional knowledge and they can't be in the pension. So they are limited in the amount of hours they can work. Um
if they work more than 25 hours, it can trigger an investigation by the state of New Jersey division of pensions and you know they would their retirement could get revoked and all that. So, um, so we're very lucky when we can get a part- timerr from, you know, a retiree because
they're not going to get the health benefits. They're not going to get pension. Um, you know, we're going to pay, you know, 7.65% FICA for them. And that's really the the only fringe. So, their salaries are all hourly. Is that what you're saying? No. Uh oh. So
the McCarthy and and Santos, yes, they are hourly employees. Yes. Okay. Um you know, the other employees listed on here uh are salaried, technically salaried employees and eligible for health benefits and uh must be enrolled in the
pension. I want to make that very clear. They must be enrolled in the pension. We don't have a choice. If they meet the hourly and and salary requirements, they have to be enrolled. So, an employee can't say, "You know what? Forget about it. I'd rather just put my money
elsewhere." Um, we're not allowed to do that. We have to enroll them. So, so this might also be an opportunity to explain to everybody the uh concept of slippage with regards to the assistant
uh engineer that we're talking about now because you can be that excellent point uh council president. So you know when we put the budget together the open position contemplated for the assistant municipal engineer is for a full year as if they started on 111 2025. So
obviously you know we are closely approaching the end of May. Um so this amount here is going to be prrated for whenever we determine what the start date for um our particular candidate is
and and also the agreed upon salary. So this this number can and will change. Is this new assistant engineer? Um he's getting 80% of your salary. Um
is is that is that person as qualified or is it a junior person? Where where does this person it's a high salary if it's a junior person? So the person that hopefully will start within a month or so um is someone that
has been in the business I would say probably by now at least six seven years. Um I would say it's a well-rounded individual in terms of design and project management.
So, I'm looking forward to to bringing this person to the team and being able also to train the engineering aids on staff when since obviously I really don't have much of that time or leeway because I have once too many meetings,
right? And you need to sit down with them and really show them step by step how to do something. For somebody who's sorry for somebody who still needs a considerable amount of training and is sounds like far more junior than you, is
this is this a large salary? If you're if you're hiring a PE, okay, as an assistant municipal engineer that already has experience, I would say probably the starting salary will be around maybe between 125 and 135 depending on what
they do. Okay. um the person that we're looking to hire will be starting at a lower salary than what you see there. But that doesn't mean that in a year that person will be getting that salary once they get their PE license, right? I
mean if you want I would say staff or employees to stick around as they say um we also have to uh take into consideration their you know professional you know accreditations and everything else. Mhm. So I'm sure once
the person gets their PE, you know, everybody expects to make a little more, right? Is there any leeway with this person's salary for the first year or is this has this salary been offered already? That is not the salary that I was that I
was offered. It was lower. Okay. So just just we should get the real numbers of what's what's being offered. The offer was made. We did a conditional offer to the employee the other the potential employee the other day. the the amount that was offered was $114,732 or something like that. That
was based on the experience of this particular individual based on what the director felt was a person who's ready to grow within the position. It gives us the opportunity to to see this person flourish in the position plus with the salary step guide, it gives them ample
opportunity to earn additional income as they grow within the position and they make it through the probation. Okay. So, shouldn't we reflect that on here? Well, we just like I said, we just interviewed him last week, right? No, but that's that's a considerable saving
for our township in terms of salary. Yes. Okay. So, we should Can we correct that so that we know where we are? I'll get you the the number in a moment. What the number is. So, yes, I I'll note it and we were going to prorrate it anyway. Um, and then whenever there's going to
be a vote later on, um, you know, you can you can vote on the the new number. So, I I'll note it and when we go through the voting process, we'll we'll see. If if I could, I just wanted to follow
up on my question several minutes ago about the significance of slippage because we, as you pointed out, we budget for the whole year. When we don't when we have a situation where somebody either comes in in during the
year or leaves during the year, we have the concept of slippage. How does that impact our budget in terms of where that money that was proposed or you know if it's actually budgeted how does that how does that impact us because if it's if
it's a savings that we can make we should take that into account. So right so let's say you know for an employee we budgeted $100,000 and you know 6 months into the year they retire and they leave so we've only paid them 50,000.
um that money would remain in the line item through the end of the year and then it remains for another year as an appropriation reserve and then that unspent money would go back into operations and increase our fund
balance. Um so that's sort of like the timeline for that that leftover money. um when we can we can if we can predict hey someone's going to retire on this date you know we can budget uh you know
uh a lot uh closer and say okay well instead of budgeting for their full salary of 100,000 we can prorrate and we have some proration built into this budget because of people that have already left um so you know we accounted for January and February but you know we
we only, you know, paid them for what or we've only budgeted for what they were actually paid. So, um, my personal style is I like to have a little bit of cushion in there, but obviously it is up to the council if you want to keep cushion in there. Um, which
allows you to maybe hire someone else or the ability to move money between budget accounts via resolution later on in the year. um allowing for that slippage gives you that flexibility. Budgeting a lot closer, you know, will probably mean
less of an increase to the taxpayer. So, u a more conservative approach that um you know, has a current year impact on the on the taxpayer. So that's what I wanted to ask you about the current impact because it sounds like in some cases there is no positive impact on the
current budget because it's gets rolled over uh in future years. Is there is there a particular circumstance where we could uh incorporate whatever savings from the slippage in the current budget year? And I and I thought that you were
saying that because we haven't quite hired this person yet. If if we indeed hire him, then that would allow us to reduce it for this year. But absolutely, absolutely. I I agree 100% with you. We would take that 135, which you know, we're essentially asking the taxpayers
for in total, and we would cut that down. And the offset of reducing this appropriation, if we don't change anything about revenue, reduces the amount to be raised by taxation. It's a direct effect because the budgets have to balance. Um, so yeah, if we reduce
that to, let's say, $75,000 or $70,000, that would directly impact the amount to be raised and reduce it. Okay. Thank you. Uh, Councilman Ruden, you had the floor. I was just wondering what is the hourly rate for each of the
part-time. Is this based on 25 hours a week? No. Mr. McCarthy works two days a week and Mr. Brandon works four days a week. So Mr. Brandon could could be
between 24 to 28 hours a week depending on, you know, how his classes are. Sometimes he needs more time off. And then Mr. McCarthy, like I said, is two days a week, seven hours a day, so 14 hours a week.
And just to um follow up, it was 114301. That was close. 11430. Yeah, that's for the assistant. So, obviously that's going to be prrated for this year. So, shouldn't we get an actual number that shows that it's
prrated for this year or do you need to budget the entire salary? No, we we'll we'll prorrate it. Um, I mean, I I'm not going to do it right now, but um, you know, I'll note it and when we when you're ready to vote
in whatever time, um, you know, we'll have a figure in there. Council President, may I just quickly point out uh Councilwoman as uh Gerber Michael has lost a signal at the site that she's at and uh she said that she will listen to this and will be
joining us later and I'm sorry for the interruption. Thank you, Mr. Fagan. Councilwoman, you got more questions or I'm just I'm just a little confused in terms of how we as a council can
um um determine what numbers since half of the budget half of the year is almost gone and we don't know what we've spent to know what's what's left over so that we're we're passing appropriate amounts for the rest of the year.
It's hard to tell because this is a this is a number for the entire year. Yes. Oh, please continue. Oh, okay. Talk. So, how do we know like when we're voting on this? How do we know what has already been spent and what we are
authorizing for the rest of the year? So, I mean, we're we're giving you the full salaries of of all of our our personnel. Um, in in terms of the open position, like I said, we can we can prorrate. So, there's nothing spent for an open position. There's nobody in
there. Um, so we will I even prorrated actually because I forgot I was on the screen. I thought it was just my own uh notes, but um so we will prorate that. Just just to give you an idea about the true budget process is you're going to
have these hearings, right? And you're going to vote and do whatever you do. We're going to have an actual legal budget document too that you're going to have to truly approve via resolution. So there there's going to be, you know,
even more steps to this. But if if you want and I would not do it in the public meeting, we can provide um payroll records. Again, I will not do it in the public meeting, but if you want payroll records to support all of the
departments that we're looking at, you know, whether you want a a year-todate figure based on, you know, as of this most recent payroll, we can do that. We can we can give that to you payroll because that's that's a flat rate. I'm more concerned about when we go down to
the to the itemization of knowing you're asking for X amount in advertising. Okay. So in the in the be spent how much do we still need to authorize? So about run rates and I don't know how
frequently you do a run rate but so you know we we can we can provide those uh those reports from from Unidex. Yeah. So because that's all we have control over. We only have control over what has not
yet been spent. And that isn't covered by employment contracts and uh labor contracts and debt and pension and health benefits, all the real stuff. Yes. Are are you finished? Okay, great.
Councilwoman uh Celina, before you go on, I just want to acknowledge uh Councilwoman Scarpa that we know that you're waiting. Uh, Councilwoman, uh, Castelino had her hand up, so uh, I'm gonna let her go first and then we'll get to you. Okay. No problem. Thanks.
Thank you, Council President. So, I So, I guess with the date, um, we don't know yet. Like, we talk about prorating. When do you think we'll get this budget done? So you can prorrate because you
know we could say that he could prorate to July but if we don't get this done to August 1st. Well I mean for this particular individual it's when they accept the the job if they accept um when they're going to start. Yeah. So then we would make sure that we have
their salary covered. So Okay. But the other items I I mean because but can you can you implement this person um before we pass the budget or would this was in last wasn't this line item in last year's budget? Yes, it was.
Okay. So we can do that for this position then. So this person can start right away because this was from last year. Yes. This item was actually in last year's budget. Okay. Unfortunately, we were not able to hire anybody. Um actually we had a tentative candidate that accepted the uh offer I would say
maybe about I don't know a month and a half ago and then two weeks before it starting sent me an email said that he took a better offer somewhere else. So we've been trying to fulfill this position for I would say two years now.
Yeah. No. And this position hasn't been filled in many many years I think prior to even Mr. Leapor being there. Well, I was hired in 2022 and as far as I know, he didn't have an assistant for over a decade. Yeah, you were the first one in
in a long long time. Um, okay. So, I just wanted to ask that question. And in regards to um we're just going to stay on this page for now, I guess, until you go to the next page. Yes, we're hoping to drain this and move on. Okay. All right. I'm
drained. I'm good. Thank you. Thank you. I just want to ask the audience uh can you hear uh the director clearly? Why don't you Okay, great. Councilwoman Scarpa. Yeah. I just want to ask if there's a way we can revise and prorate this more
dynamically so that we have real numbers that we're working with from week to week because obviously if we need to cut close to a couple million dollars out of this budget, we need to be working with real numbers and we need to be able to really see where the cost savings can come from. And you know, we need to be
able to calculate all of this stuff and and our citizens budget advisory comm community also needs these numbers. Um, so is there a way that we can get this information a little bit quicker so that we have a more realistic
picture of what we're doing? Kind of what Councilwoman Ruden was asking for. Uh, okay. So, I have on the screen I I I I prorated here, but I can think I think until we really know when the person's
going to start, I would just be sort of guessing. I mean, I could come close to estimating, but if you're looking to be like on the razor edge of budgeting, which I will come out publicly and say I don't recommend, and I think has been a
problem with West Orange for years, looking at the fund balance, it's just been budgeted too tight. Um, I would need to know exactly when this person's going to start and then I can I can adjust. So, you know, I I cut
it in half essentially. Um, so instead of being 488, we're at 420. Um, yeah. Or at least put it on the side as a, you know, as a, you know, I have I have a note for myself. Right. Yeah. So, we can see that when I bring this back when we
actually go through everything and then the B budget advisory board, citizens budget advisory board reviews and and makes their their recommendations. And you know, we're probably going to pass information along to to each other. Um, I want to have
everything that we talked about last week and anything we talked about this week available to the council so I can say, you know, we brought this up last week. This is the change that you wanted or this is the change that I made like in case of proration. Um, and then you
can vote on it. And then we also have after we go through everything based on all the changes that were put in, this is the new amount to be raised number and exactly. I just would like to be working with more realistic numbers.
And for Miss Cabalo, how have we gone about um advertising or looking for this person, this assistant engineer? What have we done? We actually had the um an advertisement in the uh New Jersey legal
municipalities. It's being advertised I don't know how many times already, but every time that you know the time elapses, we put one back out and wait and see if anybody applies. Is that the only place we've advertised? I believe that's where we have been
advertising and also I believe on our own website. I know I also take a little different approach. Yeah. I also email some of the uh colleges like New Jersey Institute of Technology, Stevens and
get much response. So you haven't gotten a response from the colleges. not anybody really applying and I am looking for someone who actually has not only the education that is necessary uh to be the municipal assistant municipal
engineer but also someone who has some credentials after their name. Have we ever looked at student interns like seniors to see you know to kind of get a sense of the person? Well, right now I have Mr. Santos who is actually going to NGIT. Uh he was actually my
student I would say two years ago or three in Middle Sex County and he's currently now a junior. Next year we'll be a senior. Should be graduating in a year. Okay. We got to say Mr. Santos is doing a great job for us and we actually are
hoping to keep him because he is he's getting familiar with our infrastructure. He's doing a lot of the designs. He's learning from not only his school but from from one of his former teachers. and um and from the staff. So, we we're we're trying to groom him to go
into this position as a full-time, which is what we really need. Okay, great. Thank you. So the the one thing on um recruitment and and this is for the future, but the the payroll system uh Prime Point as part of their HR module included with
that HR module um we can put um you know a job description up advertisement and they will send it through to like you know all the different job platforms career indeed and you know all those good. So we we
hopefully will cast a much wider net um when we seek out uh candidates because traditionally yeah the the municipalities use the League of Municipalities website and everybody knows to go to the classifides there and then their own website and that's like what all the municipalities do but this
will at least cast a wider net. Um I think I think that's that's prudent. We need to cast a wider net and do a more strategic job in in recruitment. Okay, so we started 10 minutes late. We're now at 7 o'clock. That means
we spent 50 minutes on the first page of what we hope to review this evening. So I just want to again reiterate uh to my colleagues to try to pick uh
your questions with the idea of efficiency in mind because we have a lot more uh to go. So if if we can uh director have we pretty much drained this first page can we move on to the operating side of the
I don't see why not at your pace. Okay. So again, did you want to describe uh I know you had said originally that you wanted to talk about uh last year and then in perhaps in the context of this year um on the next page which is page
71. Let's see. So last year uh for advertising printing and photo that's basically for us to be able to advertise for bits uh we have to advertise in the newspaper um we also need some printing and photos
sometimes for exhibits is needed but we don't spend that much money on that now that we have a color printer. Um, so typically the budget um was approximately $3750 and we expended or paid
approximately $2,000. I would like to keep it the same, but if worse comes to worse, I would not recommend going any lower than $2,000. Okay. Like next line. Yeah. So, so
actually I misspoke. Uh the the the p I'm looking at the digital version of the budget. So I'm looking at it page by page, but that does not appear to be what's what's here. Mr. Diniac, the under division of engineering. Yes.
Um like at the bottom of the last column under the adopted budget, uh you've got a number 62.43% 43% and underneath that $21,000 and change. And that's not what's on the budget on page 72 for
engineering. So I I know I've had some problem page 7. I mean it's I'm looking at it right here. It's 62.43. Well, this is this version's dated May 21st, this run date, and this other run date was April 29th. Were there updates? Maybe just should we just go off what was
given to us? This was the This was the version that you sent, Mr. Tiniac, with the slight uh correction in it. 72 is the fire department. What? Not what page council pass. So, I'm just uh
This is what's up on the screen. Yes, it is up on the screen. I'm just telling you the digital version that I have is different. So, you've got the you've got the And I'm just trying to figure out why because I'm all digital. I put all my notes in the ver in the in the uh
document. So, uh as you can see, so then the next page in the document is page 71. Oh, right. Yeah. So, we Yeah, we had changes for the license collection. That That's why I'm printing this out. Yeah. Okay. I I see the Okay. Okay. So, I should stop looking at that now. Even on
the second page, what's the page number that we're looking at here? Do we It doesn't appear to have a page number for the the packet I printed out. Yes. No, it's just we would go through them. Okay. that we set up the presentation just go through. So I
apologize. So I'm digital. All of my questions, all of my notes are in the digital version and it's apparently an old version. So now that we've clarified that, I'll just go by this. And if you want to pull the
um the PDF from the website, um it's the same as the packet we're looking at. Okay. Will our advisory board also get the paper copy if it's been updated? Yeah, we have we have a bunch of paper copies out there. I think we can send it out.
So, I have two versions of this now. Did you just give me yours? Oh, did I? I think I gave you an extra. I apologize for causing so much trouble. Okay. So operationally uh director you have
described what you you feel comfortable with describing things that happened last year things that you want to happen this year just to highlight the major things that major initiatives if if any that you're trying to talk about and then we go line by line. All right. So the two biggest changes I would say are
from last year to this year will be for the uh license collection system operator which we need. Um it's typically 17,000 almost $17,500 a year. Um but for some reason this has always
been $6,000 on the operating budget which means I have been paying the rest of it from my capital budget which makes no sense. So I will recommend that that gets increased to what it needs to be. It's an annual uh charge. Also the
other bigger increase would be um account number 131 for the computer software and CAD. uh we definitely need to have the computer software necessary to be able to do the work meaning the uh civil 3D for AutoCAD in order to do the drafting and also the GIS that is needed
for us to be able to review uh some of the work that some of our consultants do. And I will say those are probably the two largest changes or significant changes to from last year to this year. And this is an additional AutoCAD
license. Yes. So, you know, we're increasing the the engineering staff. Um, we need an extra license so that they could use them for question. Yeah, I I would like to
just ask long as we're on the the this line item 070, what exactly is a license collection system operator? Is that a person or is it software? It is a person um that actually reports to NJ and all the different events for our
wastewater collection system. You were charging a person was getting charged to capital. Okay. We do our actually DPW staff actually like you know inspects they have to write down every single incident that there is with our sewers any
backups anything that happens that is an issue and we have to report it to D and the licensed operator then reviews the information and the data collected and provides some um you know not only reports to D but also provides some um guidelines on what it needs you know
what might improve it. Okay. Sometimes there's not much we can do. Council, I'm going to get you to a second. I just wanted one more question. So the the budget that we have indicates that there were no payments made on this line item last year. So could you explain how that
happened? So it was taken out of capital. Um taken out of capital and you know it's it's an operating expense. There's there's no way around it's an operating expense. That's why we're fully funding um that in the 2025 budget is it's not
an proper capital charge. No, it's not. No, it's not. Okay. Counciloman Castelino. So, with with the systems upgrades, the uh now have an assistant, are you able to save a little money from the utilizing the consultants on certain
projects with having the additional staff? Um, so what I'm looking to do is to have the staff work on the um, you know, the some of the road projects and maybe some of the other, you know, smaller site plans, but I still going to need to use
consultants for all the surveying work to do the base mapping. Um, and also anything that is not my expertise, like for example, a structural, right? You need a structural engineer. Let's say if you need to design a foundation or
something like that or a wall. Um you also need um an LSRP or site remediation expert for all the various sites that we have all over the township that are contaminated. um anything that deals with let's say
mechanical right like anything for our like interior buildings MEPs you know so we're still going to need consultants but I am hoping that maybe we could like decrease the use or have some savings with our you know smaller projects and
road programs very good yes we had an extensive discussion before you got here okay Sorry. No, no, no. You were doing help. No, no. I just wanted to I thought you were doing help. If you watch if you if you watch the video, you can see the
discussion. Council Councilwoman Ruden was leading that. Councilwoman Ruden, do you have any questions uh from this page? No. Councilwoman Scarpa, do you have any questions from this page? No, I do not. Actually, I do. I'm sorry.
Perfect timing. Councilwoman Ruden, the computer software CAD, you you last year you you had 10,000. This year you're asking for double that amount. Yes, because last year we only had two employees. Um then we were actually sharing the license at the time. That
was Mr. Brandos and myself. So right now we have another engineering aid who's actually full-time and then the incoming assistant municipal engineer. So we need four licenses. This is based on usage that you that you pay for it with four
users is going to go up. Yes. Because the license actually individual licenses. I need to be able to review their work and even if I need to do some of it myself, I will do it. So let me give you maybe a
perspective on why this is worth it. All right. Every time that we do grants, if I am to go to a consultant to do an exhibit for me for a grant, they typically want at least between 6,500 to
$7,500 just for one exhibit. I've been doing all of the exhibits for all our grants inhouse since I started working here. The program literally will pay for itself, especially with the number of grants that we apply for.
Thank you. You're welcome. Since we don't have any questions on this, does any of the body on the council want to take up uh the director Carbalo's offer to uh cut the budget by two the cut the proposed budget for 2025
by $2,000 by 2000? No, she was saying cut it for 1748. decrease it so that the amount is 2,000, not cut it by 2,000. I would just leave. I'm sorry. Could you just clarify that? Yes. She was talking about
advertising and printing. I could go as low as $2,000 instead of the 374. So, we're saving 17821. Yeah, I I would say yes. Let's I already put that in as a savings. Thank you. Okay. We can't actually do that unless
we uh have a vote. So, and I think we'd agreed or the majority agreed that we were not going to make any actual changes uh uh until sometime in the future. Is that is that the case? I don't know whether I guess we need to making a note that make a note making a
note that that's a possible area and bas we'll wait until we we get our advice from the from the advisory board if they concur with that. So next, if there are no more questions, director, I think you can go home a little bit earlier than
you usually go home. Thank you so much. Thank you. And thanks for staying so late last night. You're welcome. Have a good night. Thank you. Good job. Good of you to put her up first tonight.
That's good. Yeah. Purposely. Yeah. Mr. Fonino. She bless the woman. [Music] Okay. Welcome, Mr. Fonzino. We are now ready to discuss the health department.
And uh this is the next page on the packet that everybody had uh listing the employees and the information about them. Uh again, Mr. Fonzelino, if you want to talk about what happened with
personnel in 24, whether there are any changes, anything that you're expecting in 25, that might be a good place to start. Okay. Good evening, council president. Good evening, council members, members of the public. Um, I'm going to start out just with a statement real quickly and then we can go through each. We got a couple different
divisions here that the budget is broken up into and then I can answer any questions you might have and I review what we're looking to increase. Much better idea. Thank you. Okay, please. So, I just want to start out by saying the health department has secured nearly $2 million in grant funding since
2021, which has helped us offset salaries, fringe benefits, and operating expenses. uh which has obviously resulted in an enormous savings to the township over the last four years. Regrettably, the federal
government cut two of our um larger size grants uh this past March due to the change in the you know presidential administration. Um so we are looking to um for some increases to cover those costs in our missile budget that were
cut from some of those grants. So, um, this evening I'm going to go over, um, specifically those, um, those items that we need to rely on the municipal budget for. So, uh, I will start with the, uh,
if you have any questions on this, nothing's really changing with the salaries. Um, in general health, um, everything is is, um, filled. Every position is filled in that and everything's contractual, right? Correct. Council, I
was I was just going to mention if if you allow me to to speak briefly on that. So, um, in the the health department that we're looking at right here, um, you know, we have a a new member, um, the deputy municipal
department head, uh, who was hired, uh, early this year, um, January 27th. Um but all of the other increases for the employees and and again you're going to get we're not going to show it here but you'll get the 24 to 25 breakdown and
that'll go to the the budget advisory so you can see the increases but it is all COLA increases and I say cola it's contractual um as I mentioned in the previous meeting the uh ASME um union who is represented here they
received 1 and a half% on 112024 1 and a.5% on 71 1 2024 and then 3% for 2025. So those cola increases are are reflected here. Um most of the employees in in the
general health department are at a max step, but we do have other employees that are in the step. So they received a step increase as well um for 112025 pursuant to those uh those contracts. So
um there are no promotions that are included in here. These are contractual increases. Thank you, Mr. Tak. Please go on, Mr. Fon. Okay. So if there's if there's no questions on on the salary page, um go
to the next one. This is our uh transportation division. Um, as you'll see, there's um, this includes our full-time drivers. We have, um, four full-time driver, I'm
sorry, five full-time drivers, and then the rest are part-time, which um, operate our Jity service. And then we have one one open um position for a part-time omnibus
operator because we're looking to add uh another route for our jitney because the services, you know, put a demand on us to do that. And again, you know, we'll be prrated again because it's the end of May. Um, so we have a sort of the full
part-time full boat part-time salary in there of uh 36,000 but you know an opportunity there uh to reduce based on you know when we think we're we're able to hire. So so that that bottom 36,000 open
position can be prrated. Okay. asteris excuse me Mr. Tak you'll you'll prorrate it like so when you give us say we say we in uh July 1st we all agreed we're done with the budget process and
we're ready to vote on it so everything will be prorated to that date and I will give you the automatically update yeah and I will give you the detail of of I won't just say like all right I prated it to 12,000 I'll say you know I prated it for x number of days or months or
I'll give you the the reasoning behind it along ong with that number. Yeah. Any other questions on this page? Um, actually, I want you to go back to the employees. Are all of these um contractual? Are all of these contractual? Yeah. On this page here?
Yes. Are they all are they all part of a union? Yeah. Yes. They're all ask me. Yes. There's a I'm talking about the the employees. the first the page general health. So well not all of them except
yeah general health we do have some non-union so uh who was non-union so director fonino is is part of the management so we consider him unrepresented or non-union just as all of the uh the directors are and our
deputy municipal department head falls into the non-union management um was was that position authorized last year? Yes. And they're all covered under the salary guide ordinance we pass in. Yes. So they're all contracted.
Yeah. They're not considered a union. Well, they follow the ask me follow. Yeah. Okay. Are you finished? Councilman? Yes. Councilman Castle, did you have a question follow up at all? No, no, I
just wanted to help council on. Okay, so second page of the employees. Have we drained that? Sorry. There any other questions? Shall we go on to the next page? Animal control. Same thing. Okay, so this is our animal
control division. We have two full-time animal control officers. Again, this is all contractual uh increases. Any questions on this page? Shall we go on? Sure. Nurses.
This is our public health um nursing division and for as it's outlined in the budget, senior uh citizen health. Uh we have two full-time nurses. We have a senior public health nurse and a public health nurse and we have a keyboarding
clerk um who will be retiring as of August 1st this year. So again, we have an opportunity for proration um for the particular employee because when this was contemplated and put together, we didn't
know if anybody was retiring. So, well, are you replacing the employee? Like, don't you need someone there? Well, I'll leave to the director. If you want me to address that now, I was going to address that in the operating part. Um, I could tell you what my plan was going
to be. Okay. Um, but to the short answer is I'm not looking to replace this keyboard and clerk right now. I have a different plan. Okay. And just to follow up on that question, because when I first started 10 years ago here, the
nursing staff, you had more nurses. How you only operating with how you operate with only two full-time nurses. You have part- timerrs. And how are we functioning? So we're doing a lot less services because we have a lot more
around us with Zoo Fall and Barnabus and so there there's a lot of competition out there and over time it's just kind of morphed into you know we we do minimal stuff inhouse and refer people
out you know for other services. Okay. I mean we bring services jeopardizing or no residents but you have them supplemented through the other programs. Correct. They're getting we're getting the same level of service but we're not having to pay as that many you know many
nurses to do the work. All right. Do we need to have nurses? Absolutely. Yes. What can you explain? I'm just not So the main function of public health nurses they do communicable disease investigations on a daily basis. So what
that means is when somebody is diagnosed with a communical disease, it gets reported to the state department of health through a centralized system through you know a laboratory, a doctor's office, what have you. It goes to um to the state department of health through the um communical disease
reporting system and then that gets funneled down to the local municipality where that individual resides. There's certain diseases that the nurses are required to follow up on to make sure they don't spread. Like we had to investigate every single COVID case that
came through this municipality, which was thousands and thousands um to ensure that people don't get sick and die. So that that's their main role. and um schools, school audits, immunization
audits. Children are required to have certain immunizations to enter school and daycarees. Um so they're going out to all our schools and daycarees and and making sure that they're in compliance with all those regulations. Don't the school nurses take care of that? Yes,
but they they check the school nurses. So they're auditing the nurses. This is a state requirement. Yeah. um you know like we do um homebound you know assessments and vaccinations to people who can't get out
to a you know to say a doctor right away and you know we'll do like an initial screening we don't do treatment per se it's more screening we run educational programs um we coordinate you know vaccination clinics you know flu clinics covid
clinics Mhm. Those types of things. Our seniors. Yeah. And it's it, you know, it's mostly for our senior population. Yes. They're based out of their office space is at the bottom of uh the Rena House. Any other questions?
Let's move on to the next page then, please. Ah, the operating budget. Okay, so this is our general health operating budget. Um, I'm I've asked for pretty much the same as it's been in previous years. You might question why,
you know, some of the spending was less. Uh again, we were using grant money to offset costs over the past four years, so we haven't had it used the full amount, but always want to have it there um in case we need it. So, the only
increase that I'm asking for here is in line 041 under the Essex Regional Health Commission. I'm asking for an additional uh $10,448 um to that line to uh provide rodent
control services which entails baiting. We have a serious rodent problem here in the township that needs to be addressed and it's getting worse and worse every year and we're trying our very hardest to combat it not only with um pest
management but with uh containing garbage throughout the township. What about investment in better garbage cans? We're looking at that as well. Wouldn't that say wouldn't that be a better investment than going after the
rats? It's no. It's got to be a combination of a bunch of different things. So in here, where are the gar where's the budget for gar better garbage cans? They're not in here. We They didn't approve got approved. Actually, council woman, you brought up a good point. So we have been in contact with our caller and what we would like
to do and what we wanted to present to the council when we get through this is that we're looking to do a pilot program with um the um lifting containers such as the carts. the carts basically that we brought to you last year when we were talking about um you know doing a
garbage and and the council at the time asked for data. So we have contacted our our vendor to see that we can do an area of town we which we've identified. We're not going to talk about it now because we don't want to get people but it will be it would be a controlled a controlled
area. It would be a volunteer plan. Okay, we need we feel like we need about 500 carts and our provider our service provider said they would want to they would help us uh get the data with readers. Each cart would have a chip on
it so we can actually see um how much garbage we're collecting and how it may reduce uh the vermin infestation problem in that specific area of town. So, and that's a program we've been contacting one of our attorneys and we've also
spoke to like again to the health department. So, this is a a pilot program that we would like to bring to you if if you if this council so inclined to um love it, you know, to uh move forward with it. So, that's just something it's not for tonight's consideration. It would be it would be
something with the capital. Um but it is it is a program that we we've been working on and um and we could talk more about it offline if you need to. But um you know that's just want to throw that out there because he's mentioning about the the verb control and the garbage. Well, he still needs to do the baiting
because that's what started this problem was when the baiting wasn't being completed because the rules got changed from the state. And I I mean all I know just in my section of town it's been a nightmare and it continues
to be a nightmare through a lot of sections of town. So I'm very happy to hear you're able to bring this back. Yeah. So what we would be doing is using the additional um appropriation to contract with Essex Regional for that specific service. They provide several
services for us. So that that number includes all the services with the addition of the rodent control services. Um so since we've talked about this from last year, uh they've had all their staff certified as New Jersey, you know,
pesticide applicators. They have the appropriate license to do this work for our township and any other townships they contract with. You're awesome. We don't need to be on channel 2 news again for having rats. Correct. You also have a line item in here for pest control rodent bait. Isn't that the Isn't that
redundant then? That that that's just to buy the bait. Um you know, so it's a small number just to to purchase bait. But the bait is also included in the uh Health Essex regional. Um I'm not sure
at this point if that's going to I don't have a draft contract yet. It may um but it it's it's you know minimum it's only a couple hundred dollars. I mean, where can you save money? Where can I save money? Well, I I'm
going to get to that. Not here. What is this EIG enforcement? So, we have a local ordinance for ecigarette. Um, so, so establishments that sell vapes and ecigarettes are required to
get a license through the township. It's a $2,000 license and it's an annual license in order to sell those products. And we the enforcement line that you see there is for our inspectors to go out.
Um this is outside of their normal work duty. So, it's done as an overtime um activity to to go out and make sure they have one they have the license and that they're in compliance with all the um guidelines and as set forth by the
ordinance. Why is this an overtime duty? Because we do a lot of things during the day that would never get done. If this if this can't be done during the day and we're paying overtime, should we eliminate that? I wouldn't suggest it.
No, you ecigarettes. You want that regular. We collect 2,000. We have right now we have we collect $30,000 a year in licenses. In the ordinance, it specifically says that the money goes back into these funds to do education
and enforcement for our school children and to make sure that these establishments aren't selling to minors and things like that. So, I don't know that you want to eliminate that. What is the maintenance noise meter since we don't have a noise ordinance that that
regulates? We have a noise meter. Okay. But why does it cost $500 a year if it's not being used? Um because when it has to be serviced, you have to pay to get it serviced. So shouldn't we eliminate that? We don't have a decibel um enforcement code right
now. Sure, you could eliminate it, but then we can't use of equipment that we purchased. That's going to be, you know, money down the drain. So, if it ever when we do when we do have a decimal uh requirement, we can we can use the we
can we can use the maintenance policy. We can get it maintained. We don't have that now and it's in the budget. It's $500. I I would just every penny counts. You know what, Councilman? I know that but at the same token they need to function. So if you if say but
in the ring it's not being used guys guys I have one at a time. I have no I have no object. Can you just hold on a second? I just want to make sure this No, that's okay. I just we need to talk one at a time so everybody can keep straight. Did you guys finish your
conversation? Well, we don't know what we're doing yet with the noise ordinance. But say if we do decide, you know, if it does go metered, I don't know. I just hate we have the machine. I'm kind of aggravated that we don't break it down and use it
now to tell you the truth because we've had some issues that it could register if if we could figure out enforcement. I mean, we've been racking our brains with this noise ordinance and but that's only for your department to use it. It's not
for the police to use it. It's just one meter for the health department. And honestly, it's it's not re really even being used for enforcement purposes. If if we had to do a screening just to get an idea of something, I have a machine to get an idea. I'm not using it for enforcement
purposes. It would be a lot more money if we were using the meter for enforcement purposes, for the maintenance. So, if you'd like to cut it, I have no objection, but I will not be able to use the me if if the meter breaks down, I won't be able to use it for those purposes. That's all. Can I
make a recommendation that we that we cut it? Sure. We're looking for cuts. Yeah. I'm just saying like that that if it break if it breaks down then I won't be able like if you ask me to just hypothetically go out and take noise readings to get an idea of where we're
at and it's broken. I won't be able to get repaired. It's it's junk. That's all. Does it not you does it not work right now? No, but it needs to be calibrated. Is it calibrated now? It it has to get calibrated every year. Okay? So, it
costs a couple hundred dollars to get it calibrated. So, what I'm saying is if I don't mind you cutting it, but I would never be able to use the equipment because it's not calibrated. Right. I understand. But right now, we are we don't It's due for calibration. I understand. So, you haven't you spent it
this year and you're requesting to spend it? Correct. Okay. And since our noise ordinance is not approved by the state and we cannot use anything having to do with decibb, it's just a an exercise in it would only be used for screening
purposes. It would not be used for enforcement purposes. Correct. Okay. Correct. So I'm I'm fine with you cutting it. Just understand the ramifications if we need to use the machine for screening purposes. I see the hand up. Just a second. Mr. Fanzino, what would be a typical use of
this if it wasn't for enforcement? What would what would you use it for? Again, it's it's just to get an idea. Like we we use the ES regional to do the enforcement part of the noise ordinance. But before we call them out, like I would say, oh, it would just go out to
get a rough idea. You know, people have these apps on their phones now and things like that which are not really accurate and they could never be used for enforcement purposes, but they are essentially a screening device. That's essentially what this meter is that we have. So, in essence, somebody calls the
health department and says, "I'm I need to complain about this noise." You go out and you see if it's anywhere close to taking the next step to see if it's uh enforceable. I've had we've had issues up at the environmental center in the past where somebody's complaining and noise before we we get Essex Regional
out there and say I go up there with the meter and say, "Oh, do we have a problem here or do we not?" That that's really what it's used for. Okay. Thank you. Uh Councilwoman Scarpa. Yeah. I just wanted to better understand this. So, um is this piece of equipment any better than using a cell
phone app? Is there any I would say yes. probably hear them. And and what does Essex Regional do? Like if we have when do we call them and for what purpose? They do it they provide a number of
different services for us. Councilwoman, they they provide uh air pollution control services, water pollution control, noise pollution control. They're they're agents of the D. So they enforce all the the seha which is the county environmental health act
regulations through the D. Okay. Can I ask you something? a cost to have them come out or do they do that? Well, we we we pay them uh we pay them a fee, a yearly fee, and that's included in the $35,000 line that I'm speaking of. So
then why do we need to test it first? If we hear that there's a noise, why not just let them go out and do their job? We can, but that's not there. There's it's not always a circumstance where they can enforce that particular thing. So I'll
give you a for instance. If somebody is um again somebody's comp a neighbor is complaining about another neighbor's pool pump, let me just go out with this noise meter and see how loud it really is just to get an idea. That's not something Essex Regional enforces. They enforce the state noise
code and they would enforce the model noise code if we had adopted it. Okay. So it gives you a realistic picture of the problem. Yeah. Health. Okay. Thank you so much. Is there a question?
Yes. Um, how often have you used this? And and since we've had so many complaints recently in our neighborhood um institutions, have you used it to check out whether or not any of those complaints are um valid? I have not.
Okay. So, and have you used it at all this year? No. All right. So to me that seems like it and and and we do contract with an agency that you can call in if there's not for screening purposes. No. Right. Not for screening purposes.
However, we cannot write a summon based on your screening because that it does not No. That and that I'm trying to make that clear. I'm not using this piece of equipment for enforcement. Right. Yeah. Helps him do his job. But he says he's
not using it so far this year. But he when the environmental center gets noisy, he'll run up there. This is the season. If we wanted to have a screening done on something, you'd have to hire a consultant who would pay who would charge a lot more than $500. But it
listen, if if $500 makes a different in your budget, I have no objection. Just understand that we can't use the equipment if it's not calibrated, even for screening purposes. I think you got to pick and choose your battles. That would be that would that's an item that I would say that that we can okay
we cannot use but that's a that's a judgment that we can make when other people weigh in too. You might you might want to come back to it when I I show you where I can save more significant amount of money of course down the road. So he might change your thought on that but
please go ahead Mr. Fonzino. Okay. So is that was the only line there that I I requesting an increase in general health. Moving on to we're going to the next page. That's just a continuation of Yeah, just
totals. Yeah, those are just the totals. So the next OE is the senior citizen transportation program. Um, this is a pretty straightforward um, operating budget. So, I don't know if you have any
questions and do remind the council the senior transportation program was part of what we spoke about last night with the whole transportation division. Um and so this was included in into um also part of supporting the Jity service. So
it's all one office now. And um and when we when we assumed the responsibility of the entire Jity service, we took the salaries and wages of what we were paying or I should say what we were paying the vendor at the time and transferred over to run the system here.
Um Mr. Tinia, can you tell us why we we're not seeing what was actually paid or charged in 2024 on these items? You are um that's that's all that was paid or charged. So, a lot of the the the cleaning was was charged to other
departments. Um for 2025, u we're going to make sure that it is segregated to the CIT the omnibus. I know it's a senior citizens transportation program. It's the omnibus program. Um but that's that is what was
charged last year was $19141. We were still using a lot of stockpile from COVID that DPW had in terms of cleaning wipes and and things like that. So you depleted all We've pretty much depleted that now.
We had a bus load. [Music] any other questions on this page. Okay, moving on to uh animal control. Um everything uh I'm requesting here is is the same as last year. So if there's
any questions, I'm happy to uh answer them at this time. Is there a plan to move the animal control location? There's no concrete plan, but um as you know, it's it's part of the
redevelopment and um you know, the administration does want to keep the facility in town. Um we've looked at different options and there's not a lot of people out there that want to take us on as a contract. So, u but we haven't
found a location at this point in time. So that's not part of the the the over um view of of you know where things are going to be relocated at this point. Is that not part of the plan that this is going to
be relocated someplace? This particular building was if you're talking referring to what I we talked about feasibility study that I mentioned last night. This particular building was not included with that because this is for for the animals themselves. So, um we are
looking at a couple of um areas that we we've had some discussions on how maybe we could do a public private partnership with people because this isn't a building that is similar to what we have to do for staff. So, we did not include it in that that study um because we just
don't quite frankly don't have the land on our property as of right now that would be amendable to this. So, um, so we're looking and it's and this is not something that we're forgetting about, but it's just something that, um, this is this along with where our vehicles
for the DPW is something that we're trying to find to to put together. So, we're moving staff in the feasibility study, equipment and supplies such as this or, you know, a facility such as this. That's a separate um a separate
discussion and it's it's an important discussion. We're not we're not dismissing it any any less than we're know we have to worry about where we're going to put our our vehicles and things of that nature. Right. But these are these are animals and there are people working in the
building and you were testing it for asbestous which it probably has and it's also in a contaminated zone. That's a statement you shouldn't make without validity. Just because you think it may have asbestous doesn't mean it. I didn't say it did. I said I said it was being tested for asbestous and you said
possibly have it. So, so possibly means it could have it, it could not have it. We wait for the results and then we will share those results with you. So, any other questions from this page or anything else you want to add? Mr.
Fonzo, do any of the uh veter um any of the vet doctors in town able to partner? We're looking at public private partnerships. What does that mean? means we're looking at public private partnerships. We're
looking to get in contact with somebody in the private sector to help us out and facilitate. That's what it means. Probably which would be in the veterary field. We've had some discussions and we're trying to figure that out. It's unfortunate, but it's not as simple as
just finding a spot and building it. you know, we want to make sure that the animal control and the animals being taken care of are in a way that represents the uh philosophy of the of the health department with the no kill shelters and things of that nature. So,
that's and that's why we want to we need to find out what we can do with that. Let me just further that point. I mean, it's important to understand that we're not a shelter. We're we're we're No, I I'm just saying for everyone's benefit here. Our facility is a holding facility
and we're not a no kill shelter. I consider us a low kill shelter because we do make every effort to adopt out animals that are adoptable. We work with a number of rescues. We have a a huge success rate. You look at our our annual
statistics. We we kill very little. So with that being said, the shelter being a holding facility does have to meet certain requirements and things like that. We are not operating a shelter like we don't have attendance there. It's not
open all the time. The animal control officers are in and out of there every day, seven days a week to attend to the animals, but that's not their office. And it's primarily like Mr. Smaldo said, it's housing for the animals, right? But when when animals are there for 2 years,
it's no longer just a holding facility. It is operating as a shelter. So my concern is that I I wish that this would be a higher priority to move this. We are exploring it. I mean, I'm not saying we're not sitting here saying we're not looking at options. We just have not
found a viable option at this point. And we haven't we've looked to go to to other towns like Montlair and we even looked to partner with Livingston and we're we have too many animals for them to take us on. Nobody wants to accept us. So we are we are actively trying to
find a solution. We just haven't we're not there yet. It's been the problem. Nobody wants What is uh the vet service trust? You have 9,000 but it looks like nothing was spent. So the if if we look at the bottom line for the animal control
budget, we're really asking the taxpayers for, you know, $2,100 because the majority of all of these services are paid for out of the animal control trust. So the receipts that come into the animal control trust come from
selling dog licenses and, you know, I'm sure there's donations and Yeah. cat licenses and adoption fees and all that sort of stuff that goes into the trust and then it pays for these services. So we ask the the taxpayers for very little
to run this particular department. Um so the previous CFO and I guess the way it was set up before was to sort of show um you know anticipated costs but it gets charged to a trust so it's not getting charged to the line item budget.
So that's why I say the the real ask for this department is $2,100. Thank you. Anything else? How much do you bring in in terms of licensing financially wise? I don't have that number off the top of my head, but we
could get it for you. Okay. and and a portion goes to the state on on every license. So there's there's a revenue split. Did you have a question on that line item or are you good? I'm sorry. Okay. So this is the senior citizen
health center operating budget or public health nursing division. Um, so this is where I'm looking for some increases, but I think we can save some money for the township by doing what I propose as a plan. Um, so just
going from the top, I'm requesting an increase um line 050, a $360 increase for um the nurs's uh liability insurance. Uh we have two nurses. the figure was much lower when
we only had one nurse. We now have two nurses that we need to reimburse um for their personal liability insurance. That's that's the ask there. Um the next line uh 081 asking for an additional
$250 for nursing training and um for their lensure reimbursement costs. It looks like there's a big jump in um professional services. That's that's going there next. Okay. Okay.
So, we are asking uh for $30,000 in the professional services for a consulting public health nursing supervisor. This position was previously funded through our um Nijacho enhancing local public health
infrastructure grant which I stated at the beginning of the the hearing that got cut this past March. This is a mandatory position as per the public health practice standards of New Jersey and we're looking to fill it with a
professional service agreement with a um a nurse practitioner uh who is you know was currently filling the role through the grant. Um my plan here is to um take the money that would have gone towards the keyboarding clerk, the 59,
take the 30,000 out of there to fund the public health nurse supervisor and the balance would go back into the the general trust question. So without lo losing your keyboard person who's doing your
administrative duties for that nursing department, there really isn't a need at this point in time that the the the um the nurses are able to manage. I'm not saying we might not need it down the road, but right now
it's more important that we get the supervisor on staff. So, I I get that, but there's a lot of paperwork, especially down with the school. And did they all get online? Those blue cards? I know when I was at the school board, they were supposed to get the programs and get online. There's some It's some
of it's automated. I'm not 100% familiar with the whole process, but they complete a lot of the paperwork out in the field. It's not something a keyboarding clerk is doing. Okay. Yeah. The keyboarding clerk was doing more scheduling when we were doing more clinics and things like that. We're doing a lot less of that now. So the
demand is a lot less. The the need is really for the supervisor technology. Yeah. The technology you know they have iPads and I mean that you would know I did you know in the past they may have collected data brought it back to the clerk. Now it's a lot of the stuff and
and the goal of this administration and prior to is that we we want to become a paperless community. And so with the technology we're using we're becoming paperless. you know, each year we're getting more and more closer to that goal. You we're trying to go like paperless charts and things like that.
So, it's a lot of a lot of the stuff is is online one day. We'll see. Well, the thing is you're already there. I' I've got a digital copy of the budget. So, just to I'm just saying. Anyway, I'm sorry. I should not
have interrupted. Please go ahead. So, are welcome. Sorry. What are the utilities fair amount? Okay, so utilities um so in the past um it hasn't we haven't
had to pay them uh recently but we used to uh pay the rent a house for gas, electric and water utility. Um, we haven't been invoiced, but we have the money there in case they ask us again. But we are using a portion of it to
supply portable drinking water because there's no drinking water fountain in the center itself. Uh, a person would have to go, you know, get water out of a bathroom faucet if they want, you know, if they wanted a drink of water. Okay. So,
so we provide water, right? And is this something that can be cut? I mean, everybody who's there also lives there, so they can also go to their apartment for water. That's not necessarily true. Or bring a water bottle. Yeah, it's not necessarily true. Um I I wouldn't cut it because if they ask for utilities, uh
where are we paying it from? Question with the retirement. Um until the person retires, you really can't pull them from this budget, right? No, but the in the date is August 1st. So, was it theyated from they pulled
back their papers or that's happened? Yeah, I mean they that that could happen. They they can they can pull their retirement. That's that's kind of why I don't bring up these things until they happen. But it's for Yes, it's a possibility. That conversation
truthfully, it doesn't happen often, but it does happen. People say they're going to put in Yeah. and then decide. And especially with those who are in the PERS because they want to do something to protect their pension and the insurance. So some and they have a right to do so. They can submit every year not retire. We don't we can't tell them not
to. Not so much with police and fire uh but the the pers because it has to deal with their their pension and the insurance in their pension. And the $2,700 Rucker's charge I assume that was a grant that's going to get funded again. No, that um Councilwoman is uh
for tuberculosis control. Yeah, they Ruckers University Hospital was receiving state funding for many years and they didn't um offset that cost to the township because they were getting state funding. Their funding has been cut tremendously. So now they're asking
for some money from each municipality for their services. Okay. I just want to go back to 140, the utilities. Go ahead. Um you you mentioned that it's for providing water. So the space is out of the rena house.
Yes. So this is way before me, but the whatever agreement was in place that the township paid the utilities, gas, electric, and water. Okay. We haven't been invoiced. I haven't been invoiced. I didn't ask for an invoice,
but that money is there to pay those utilities for the building. Should they bill? How long have they not built? I I don't know. How long have you worked here? In this capacity? Yes. I've been the
director since 2021. Okay. So, it hasn't happened in 5 years almost. So, can we eliminate this as a line item? I would recommend if we need it or or cut this drastically down because it's just it's just holding
money in a space and we we need to cut at least a million dollars from this budget. So, we're looking at everything. You have 356 that you actually spent last year. I would cut it. Did you you think you can pull it from somewhere else? If
they start charging us, if they start charging, then you'll come back to us and we'll authorize that. They start charging us in the middle of the year. I mean, right. But in 5 years, unless they're listening to this broadcast, they're not coming, right? I don't know, Councilwoman. I I can't predict the
future. Okay. Okay. I would say Mr. Tatinak says we could find for So, if you want to reduce it so that we could just provide water, that would be fine with me. Wanted 500, change it to 500. Well, they've only used 300 last
year, so why don't we just say 300 in this? And we used more than 300 last year. I think 500 is fair. We cut it in half. It's more than you used last year. Councilwoman, I'll ask for five. Whatever you decide.
Okay. We'll mark that as a I'm sorry. What's What's the final number? 500 to to to make the budget amount 500. Okay. Anything else? Question. Oh, Councilwoman.
Yeah. Um, why do we need a supervisor for nurses? There are professionals. I know we have in the schools a number of supervisors which are not exactly the most necessary. Is there a reason why we have to have professionals supervised? Yes, it's
mandated by the public health practice standards of the state of New Jersey. And the cost of previously covered by a a grant a grant and and and and historically we've it's always been a full-time employee. We're dealing with a part-time consultant. We're able to fill
that requirement with a part-time consultant as opposed to a full-time employee with benefits. So the nurses aren't aren't um certified to be one of the nurses couldn't isn't certified to be a this to take on this
responsibility. It has to be a separate person supervisory person. Yes. The supervisor has higher credentials than the other two nurses. Correct. And Mr. Fonino, I'm sorry to interrupt Councilman Scarpa, but maybe just clarify. This person has already been
doing this job for us. Correct. Just wanted Okay. And right now she's doing it pro bono because the grant ran out. It's a West Orange resident. And how many hours do they need to be supervised? I mean, can we cut the
amount of this PRA person? How much supervision do these nurses need? So, she does a lot more than she's paid for, but it's about eight hours a week of oversight.
And what does she actually do? She makes sure that we're adhering to the public health practice standards, all the deliverables and things that we're required to by state law to do. Disease investigation, outbreak
investigations, school immunization administrative task. She's a supervisor. Well, I guess it's necessary. Can we cut the hours? I'm sorry. Can we cut the hours?
That I mean I That's really not a lot of hours to be honest with you. That's not a lot of hours, but it's $72 an hour. She's She's a a DNP. Okay. Yeah, she's a professional. I mean, she's not just a
registered nurse. You have a much larger nurse. Yeah, she she's able she has been she's been a huge asset. She's been able to write um prescriptions for vaccinations for our homebound people. Um she's been a tremendous asset. I I I
Is she doing this position that you were training to do? Is that what this is about? Is this the position that you're training for or me looking to to get Yeah. Wasn't Wasn't there something you public health nurse that No, I'm not a nurse. Please, Mr. Fonino, please don't
respond for a second. Councilwoman Scarpa, I know you are anxious to get the information and and I I I know you're you're focused on uh benefits for the seniors. But please let Mr. Fonino finish his question. Okay. Please. Sure.
Thank you. Please go ahead, Councilwoman. No, that I mean that's I just you know was wondering if that's something that there could be some economies in of scale there moving forward. That's all I was alluding to.
Mr. Fonino. Oh, I I was just saying I'm I'm not a nurse, so I I'm not I would not be able to this is not something I'm training for. It's not a role I could fill. Right. And every other municipality has to have a professional like this in addition to their nursing staff.
Well, I'm sorry. Can you repeat the question? Yeah. Do other municipalities have to have this supervisory person in addition to their nursing staff? Yes. Okay. So, this is a let's position that as it's required by the practice
standards. That's you know across the board. Okay. Anything else on this page? No, I don't have anything else. Mr. Fonzo, do you have anything else? That's it. That's all I have unless
there's any other questions. Uh I I I just have a question in terms of uh longer range thinking. I I I I'm impressed with how you wanted to handle the retiring the potentially retiring person uh to fill a gap caused by the
loss of of uh funding. Is there anything else that you see on the horizon in the next two or three years that uh we should be thinking about keeping in mind in terms of where you want to take the department or where you think that the
market demand is taking will be taking the department? No, I'm I'm I'm pretty comfortable with where we're at right now. Um in terms of funding, we're always looking for additional grants. We are still getting um one grant through the Department of Health. Still remains
to be seen if they're going to renew it for the upcoming year. It expires in at the end of June. So, we're still waiting to hear on that um and how much the money is going to be and and um but again, we're always working with the grant writers to to find funding to
offset our cost as much as possible. We're pretty diligent about that. I mean, close to $2 million. I'm I'm pretty pretty proud to say that that we we did a great job in conjunction with the grant writer bringing those grants in and offsetting, you know, portions, not all full salaries, but portions of
the nurses and the environmental health specialists and some of the admin staff. We really spread it out. My my salary. Um so I think we do a pretty good job where we can. So, I'm, you know, I hope you would support, you know, these
increases that we're requesting so that we can continue to operate the way, um, you know, we'd like to be able to serve our residents. I have another question when it's appropriate. Please go ahead. Uh, Councilwoman. Yeah. Moving forward in terms of streamlining
costs, couldn't one of the uh, nurses who are currently there be elevated to this supervisory position in the future so that we don't have this additional $30,000 cost. Eventually, I would say yes, but she's not there yet. She's she's relatively
new to public health. The two of them, the two nurses are relatively new to public health, right? So, how quickly could we accomplish that? I I don't know, Councilman. I mean, it's it's, you know, experience is gained over time.
So, you know, they're they're they're good nurses. I I would assume that, you know, they're they'll they'll gain experience pretty quickly. I I can't give you an answer as to how quickly. Um, but, you know, we're certainly work that's the goal is to get them to that
point. Is it a degree that they need or is it clinical hours? They have the degree. Um but um yeah, it's it's experience. It's not clinical hours. It's just experience on the job and learning, you
know, all aspects of it. And then is it a test that they take? Um, it it depends how you fund it. I mean, the only test that would be for this would be a civil service test, but that's not applicable the way we're looking to fund
it. We're looking to use a consultant. So, we have no idea of the amount of hours they would need to be able to take that test and to get this certification. There there's no certification. This is strictly based on experience.
Council, I'm sorry, Councilman. In order for a person, if we wanted to make this into a full-time position with one of our staff, we would have to uh notify civil service, go get a um a test administered. It would be an open and competitive test. Um and they would have
to sit for typically a test like this would be what they call a desk audit. they would look at their credentials and things of that nature and realizing that even while it may be saving on this part-time um vendor salary of $30,000, there will be a a cost to promoting a
supervisor from within. And with that cost that also elevates the amount of their contributions and everything else. So, I'm not sure what I don't know what the figure is right now in our salary guide. It would make it could potentially be a savings, but it's not going to be as significant savings as as
eliminating $30,000. I just like us to look at that moving forward. Sure. Okay. Thanks, Councilwoman. I I just Mr. Pony, I just want to thank you since you've taken over the department last year, you know, unexpectedly with the death of the prior
supervisor. Um, you you've done a tremendous job. you had a lot of challenges between the garbage contract and navigating uh you know the legislative body and uh all the other challenges that were thrown your way. So I I want to thank you. I think it's been
an outstanding year for you and all your efforts and uh you know just just I know former director would be proud. Thank you counciloman. I I greatly appreciate that. But I enjoy what I do and it's my pleasure to serve in this capacity and I'll do whatever I could do to make it
better. Great job. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Fonzino. Thank you. So, is there any other questions or Well, I'm sorry to ask just a few more questions just because I'm looking back. Do you actually use typewriters? We do. You do? Yes. And do you maintain
them every year? We do. Okay. and um the medical equipment. I mean, I'm just seeing in certain certain areas you have not paid any there were no no um charges for the 2024. Yeah. Again, going going
back to what I was saying earlier, the grants that we lost funded a lot of this um uh a lot of this equipment. We got a lot of uh PPE, protective um personal protective equipment from the county health department, which you know, these stock piles are good, but they're
starting to dwindle. So, we're going to need to replenish that stock uh because it does run out. So, but that's why there's no, you know, expenditure there. And as crazy as it sounds, things such as gloves and masks and stuff, and I know this from my previous career, they have an expiration date on it. Correct.
And you can't you cannot allow your personnel to wear something. It may have the same p uh capability of protection, but if it has an expiration date, we've had to take ambulances out of service by the Department of Health because we had an expired gauze until we replenish the
gauze. So, it's just it's a it's a matter of safety and and um POS and and OSHA and and and office of public health. Thank you so much. Okay, great. Thank you so much. Thank you,
Council President. Before we bring up our next director, I just want to pull the council, as I spoke to you before, at last night's meeting, we spoke about uh changing um our budget meeting next week from the 28th to the 29th. Um what I need to pull the council right now is
um and Councilwoman Scarp, I know you've been uh tied up at home, is that is everybody coming in person next week, anticipate, or are we going to do it online? And the reason I asked is I spoke to our IT department today and depending on how we deliver this meeting
depends on what kind of of platform we have to use and we have to figure out that logistically. So I'm just asking your choice as to what you're going to do so I can help coordinate this with our IT department tomorrow. So I need to be online. You had the need. Okay, Councilman. That and that that answers
my question. Basically, if one person's going to be online, then we're going to then we have to do it that way. Um, you're talking about the 29th. Yes. So, we do have council connection, right? We spoke about that last night. So, I guess we'll be here. We were going to have I think we it's 5
to 6 and then you have 5 to 6 and then you would have your council meeting at six o'clock. Physical therapy. So, I'm not going to be able to make the connection, but I will join virtually when I'm done with therapy. I'll That answers my question. If if you're not accessible to be here, I have to I have to talk to the IT department to make it happen. Thank you. All right. That that
was a quick easy question. Thank you. Can we have a two-minute break? Certainly. We need a health break. Let's have a five minute break. It is now 8:10. We will resume at 8:15. Bill's not here. Who you bringing up next?
Members in the Zoom audience, I will be putting it on mute. There is nothing wrong with your computer. members in the Zoom audience. Thank you for your patient patience. Your computer did not break. We are on mute and we are now resuming the meeting. Council
President, thank you Mr. Fagan. We now have Mr. Kio, who's head of the recreation department as our witness to go over his section of the budget. Mr. Kio, welcome. How are you, sir? I'm doing okay. I hope you are too.
So, as I do with all the directors, is do if you have a particular way you would like to present uh your operational or or budget uh position, I'm we're happy to listen
to it. Or if you would like to just start at with the budget, uh we can do that, too. It's uh whatever. And let's just start with the budget. Okay. If you'll just give me a second. This is all you have in your department? These four people. That's it. Other than
the park. Yeah. For full time. Mhm. Cool. Wow. Okay. We are now on the next page of the packet that Mr. Diniac provided. It's the page uh following the one we just
went over with health and uh open to any questions about this page. It is the uh the page of the personnel in the department. Yeah. Going to make a comment. Councilwoman, please do. Yeah. I I am in shock
um that they are down to four full-timers. I know you've had retirements. You never replaced anybody. Well, don't forget there was a restructuring many years ago and a lot of the people that were um fulltime were out in the field in the
maintenance, you know, uh area or whatever and they've since kind of morphed into DPW titles. Well, well, no, I'm talking your office staff. I'm like thinking of who used to be in your office and and you know you they so like Candy Mrick she like some Candy was
part-time. Okay. So they're all under parttime. Yeah. So if you look at the if you look at the part-time hourly um you know there's really a whole breakdown on that. That's the mayor's program, Footsteps program, all our site managers. Yeah. All the people that work
at CATS, you know, the people that help us at our different special events. So, um, that's a lot of lot of part of part-time, uh, staffers. So, everybody that full-time through the years, you didn't replace and you have just part- timerrs then. Yeah. Okay. Wow.
Any other But anybody else have questions on this page? This this part-time salary we will see on the following pages. Yeah, it's a couple pages. All of the Where are all those salaries? is the $240,000.
You're going to see all of Yeah. No, there's a there is a lot of individuals that make up that in following the practices of the previous CFO. This was just a one line. It was not detailed out in in the packet. So, I I kept with
that. And so, you know, you're not going to see I don't know how many Oh, god. dozens. Dozens dozens of people part- timerrs you'd have. Yeah, we have site managers. We have people that like will go out in the field and and and and supervise a a lacrosse game or go in a
gym and supervise a basketball tournament or something like that. We have um you know our special events coordinator. It it's a whole range of of all the support staff that we use across the board. No, that's just a second. Probably not
following the practice of the Paul of the previous CFO is is maybe a good idea because we don't see where this where all the money is going for the 240,000. I mean, you want to see the names like I'd like to see the names and I'd like
to see the positions and to understand where $240,000 is going. I have to I have to say we used to get that has the floor. Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. We used to get that though. Uh and I think you were talking to Mr. Datiniac. So, okay. The one thing
I want to be clear about at the last meeting we we started going through personnel and you said no, we don't want to do this. We don't want to go through personnel. And now it's we want to go through individual names and personnel. If if you want all the individual part- timerrs, we will give you the payroll
records of every single person that works for this town through whatever payroll date is tomorrow or two days from now and and and we can go through it that way. Again, this is how it was done. I looked
in the packet from last year. It was just listed as a part-time hourly and it was a a gross amount and we kept the same amount as we did last year. Um, but if you want to go through the individuals, we will provide every
payroll for this year individual. I do not want to show that on the screen, but we will give that to you tomorrow morning. I don't know how that's going to affect your your decision-m, but we will give you all that tomorrow morning. We'll send you every payroll register.
Could I just offer a potential compromise which is to uh list not the individuals but the areas where they are employed, where they work. So, for example, if you have a budget line item
for personnel for lacrosse and let's just say it's $8,000, that might be a little bit easier to deal with. I think, and I'm asking Councilwoman Ruden because she's the one that made the request, that maybe that's uh a shortcut to
here are the categories that they fall into. Okay. the mayor's program, uh, which is our adult program for special needs, the supervisors that that work that program, and the event staff for each of our monthly events. They have a
summer camp director, they have counselors, a bus driver. We have one open position as a footsteps coordinator, which is the program for special needs, uh, younger kids, not adults. Our rec support staff is made up
of part-time office. These are all part-time o uh office office personnel, event staff, site managers, park patrol, and and summer maintenance workers. Everybody is in there doing some facet
of that. You know, for each of these things, there are multiple people that fall into each of these categories. So, you're looking at an awful lot of people. Um, and they're all just basically working, you know, for an hourly wage. And some of them are
retired and some of them are one or two of their college kids, summer jobs. Uh people are just looking for a little extra side money or whatever. It's the backbone of what we do. I mean we rely on these people around the clock. Where
the where are the staff who are doing coaching? Coaching coaches are are volunteer. The coaches are volunteer. Mr. Kiho, can you just make sure you talk? Our teach our coaches are volunteer. We don't pay
coaches. Well, in our budget list that in our bill list that we get um every two weeks, we see a list of of people who are working as like basketball officials. Officials officials. Okay. I'm using the wrong word the games. And
so I'm just curious about some of them have different rates. Yes. Yeah. And what is that based on? Um, all of the officials that we use are in associations, certified, you know, through certain associations and the league sets the rate and that's the rate
we have to pay them. You you you include fees as well. I mean, they have revenue that come in. So, I know you're worried about the cost, but they also have revenue through the um program. Parents pay for the kids to play. I'm one of them.
I used to be talking about the the programs that that you just listed, the special needs, the monthly events, the summer camp, the footsteps. How long have each of these been in operation? Mayor's program is
probably 45 years and I would say that footsteps now is probably 18 to 20 years. and the summer camp. That's part of the mayor's program. Yes, same thing. And is there any cost to the public for
these programs? Do they register to attend these things? You Yes. So, do you make money for it? Is is it is it a a wash in other words for to pay
for this on its best day? Some are maintenance. I'm assuming that's the pool. No, that Well, yes, some of them are the pool. They're they're the the kids that do maintenance work at the pool, but they're also um our Franklin Avenue unit. Are you familiar with that? No. Franklin Avenue
unit is the group of DPW guys that are assigned uh specifically to us doing field prep and and and maintenance of uh of flower beds and all that kind of stuff in and around the pool. All of our buildings, they hire summer kids
sometimes. If the kids apply for jobs there, they'll they'll put two or three of them on for the summer. Are there any is there any area in this 240,000 that you can see cutting program? I
could that's a tough one. I mean like I say you know the work's got to be done. You know, you every site manager that's assigned and every official that's assigned and each person that's assigned has a specific job that's integral to that particular program. I mean, I could
go I could look at a fine tooth comb and, you know, maybe come up with something minimal, but you know, there has to be certain when it comes to like camps and things like that, there's certain ratios that you want to have, especially when you're dealing with, you
know, um kids, you know, kids and and special needs and needs. Yeah, you have to have a certain ratio. Okay. Can I ask a question? Um, only one council just finished with her her questions. You'll be the next one,
Council Scar. Okay. Thank you. Counciloman Gruden, you want us to have done Oh, I'm sorry. I missed that. Councilwoman Scarpa. Yeah. I would just like to some oversight of a quarter of a million dollars. I'd like to know who, you know,
who is staffing each of these positions, what their job descriptions are, and what the salaries are. It's a lot of money, and I think we should have some oversight of this. Exactly. Yeah. You're going to have it tomorrow. I think Mr. Dutiniac said he could
provide all of the payroll uh run rate or Well, I also want a job description of what they're doing. I mean, we're not going to give we I can't give you a job description tomorrow. I can give you their title. I can give you what they were paid. Um you know, maybe Director
Kho might be able to to sort of fill in like a blurb on each employee, but If you get your report and you have a question about what one particular person's title is and what they're doing, just shoot me an email or whatever and I'll I'll answer it right away. Yeah, I like to know what each
person's making. I'm sorry, I didn't hear. What did she say? I'd like to know what each person's making and how many people are staffing each individual, you know, department or whatever. So, yeah. Yeah, you'll you'll get what everybody's been paid through u 523 because we have
a pay date on Friday. Well, I'd rather just have their annual salaries like what they're actually make, you know, that's what we have that's what we have in in all these these reports, but you'll be able to see, you know, paid through um and then you'll see all the
part-time hourly uh that director Kho has and what they've been paid to date. Now, they're not going to be salary. They're they're hourly. They get paid for the hours that they work. But say what department what what they're actually doing. So I'm asking that's why I'm I'm I'm typing an email right right
now to say it needs to be broken out by department. So it would be employee title each department and then uh and how much they've been paid and and their annual salary. Yeah. Ju just be one I was gonna say just so just so we
understand this is a part-time hourly. So the the CFO is going to get you the what has been expended so far this year, but some of these positions haven't even started yet. You know, we have part-time summer. So, you know, we don't even know how much the hours that's going to be
yet. We can get you an idea. Well, we must have an estimate, right? If we have a budget for it. Well, we have we can give you an estimate for it, but I'm just saying that right now we have different seasons and different employees. So, we we'd have to give you a rough estimate of So, Right. And that's how you do your budget, right?
That's how you get that budget number. You have to estimate this. They are. Well, it's part-time seasonal. So, we we'll get you the numbers. We'll get you the figures and we'll get it to you tomorrow. Okay, great. Can Can you also break that down into
what the hourly is, please? You mean the hourly rate? Yes. You mean the hourly rate? Yes. Anything else on this page? No contraction. I'm good. Great. Let's move on.
Oh, okay. advertising. Yes. Why so much for advertising? Uh that's a huge uh annual booklet that we put out and gets mailed to every home. Um we didn't do it last year because um we
were in the middle of transitioning to a new special events coordinator and a lot of things were in flux and getting revised. So we are preparing to complete that in December. So it will be budgeted in
2025 and it'll actually be for the following uh fiscal year. So it's a big big project. Advertising for what? Everything that we everything that a parent needs to know about what's being offered throughout the year, the special events calendar
and the different things they could sign their children up for. It's a whole promotional thing. It's like a It's like a year almond manac of all that all that is wreck. Do you do you have um advertisers who can be in this advertising book who can help pay for
this? Not not to date. No. Has there been been any thought about just making this an online since everybody's looking online for this type of information anyway and eliminating the the printing of this?
It's a very good compilation. It's necessary, but can can we just get it online and direct our parents who are all online anyway? You want to talk a little? Yes. So, basically what we've done in the past is that we try to do is you're
correct that people do look online now, but we our goal there is that we want something on people's refrigerators that says, "Hey, this is the special events for the year. This is the pool early bird pricing deadline." So there's something that's constantly bringing the recreation department to their forefront and to their mindset. So that's why we've kind of tried gone back to
traditional mailer cuz some of the feedback we're getting from the public is that they're not finding the things on the website they want to find or they forget about it. So we're just trying to have something that is constantly going to be in their face and remind them, hey, it's a beat the bunny event. Hey, it's a tree lighting. So they can kind of plan out their year and also know
what's going on. Is this in the calendar that West Orange provides? No, this is something generated strictly by our department. Is it possible to merge this into the calendar that is done so that when people use the calendar and they see when the bunny thing is?
I think that's easily done. We'll do we send all of our stuff to Mr. Fagan anyway as each thing approaches. So, it's on the West Orange Facebook page and all that stuff, but he also does it too. Yes. work with different community partners, the school, um different organizations
in town to get this information out so they can e blast it out to the We do that. We do that already. Yep. I'm just, you know, and I mentioned this in the last budget meeting, but you know, we we have to make cuts to reduce the 6% proposed tax increase. And as you know,
every 600,000 is 1%. So, we have to start somewhere. And I I don't envy you. Some people say it's just 13,000. Is this something that we can forgo this year for the sake of our budget? I have a comment.
I'd rather not, but I mean I'm sure you you'd rather not cut anything and but you have a job to do. So, how do we get to reducing our budget if we can't make, you know, cuts? You know, it's tough. It's not easy to sit up here. I support the wrecks, the parks, and Oh, I know.
You know, I know. I mean, especially, you know, everybody loves us. We're the ones that put smiles on people's faces. So, I understand that you got to do what you got to do. If you got a problem with something and you guys decide, then, you know, we'll pivot. At least until we're in a better fiscal house, you know,
we're unfortunately we're just not right now. Understood. And I love I love the idea, you know, I'm supportive of this idea, but I think we have to Yeah. do this in another year when we have the funds. Well, we have done it in we have done it. We just missed the one year and
it was it was successful. We also made a lot of cuts last year and the year before from 16% to 8%. You know, it's we have to start somewhere. If we don't make cuts, then we're going to be stuck at the 6%. I understand. Thank you, Councilwoman Scarpa. Yeah, I have a
comment. This is a good example of havetos and want to. This is something that's really nice to have, but when we have to cut a couple million dollars out of the budget, I think that this is a good example of something that could be cut. It could be brought back later when
we have the funds to do it, but it's something that we definitely need to look at cutting. And I think it would be um good if each department director would look at all of their costs and see where they think they could make some cuts because we're all in this together
and we're all going to have to do it together and they know much better than we do. What are their essentials that they have to have and what are the things that are nice to have? You want to take anything out of Are you
done, Councilwoman? Um, yes, I am. So, I mean, you know, if you if you get to the bottom and you tell me a number that's different, then I'll I'll I'll work it out. Yeah. Can you can you cut can you cut 10% out of your budget? 10? Well, I
would like everybody who comes before us to do that. We, you know, it's easier for you to decide what's what what can go and, you know, 10% across the whole thing or that would be $18,000, Mr. How much? $18,000 from the your budget
request. You got with your advertising. I would have to cut. You want me to cut 18,000? I'm just giving the number. You didn't seem to have it at your hand. So, that's all I'm You comfortable with that, Councilwoman? That's a good start. I think I think
it's a great start. Okay, everybody. Everybody, we have to speak one at a time, please. so we can understand. So, Mr. Kio has the floor. I'm not sure if he I'm just asking for a little guidance here. Okay. Uh,
Councilwoman, what are you looking for? Councilwoman Gruden was the one who's I think suggested this. So, let's let you guys talk and then Councilwoman Castelino, I I would like to go through it, but I'd like you to be thinking in terms of we've got to make cuts and if we're looking at just 10%, then you're
talking about 18. If you can make more, you get a gold star. I do. Oh, jeez. Consider it done. Okay. All right. I I I know. I'm just trying to see.
Counciloman Ruden, are you are you finished or can we come back to you? I'm done. I just want to continue down the line. Okay. Okay. Council Gelino and then Councilwoman Gabra Michael. Yeah. So, um I rather see Mr. Kio make his cuts
and and with the 13. Yeah, I know the value of the book because I we've been there before with many multiple conversations of of what parents didn't know what and why did the event was lame and if I they know how I am if if the
event is lame, we all get very disappointed and and we freak out. So, we go the extra mile to make sure it's on social media. And no matter how much you put it on social media, and I can tell you right now with working with the PRC,
um you know, uh the the uh holiday openhouse event, I mean, that's they get it in the backpack at school. Yeah. And because they get in the backpack at school, that event is very successful. And I I'm one that
intro, you know, talks to every person that comes in the event and asks them, "How'd you hear about the event?" And it was through the flyer. I'm trying to explain to you guys what how important this is. So that the flyer is, you know, they saw it through
the flyer and not the not the online. So to his point, he's going to need to do some kind of advertising. He just can't wipe out. He may not do the book, but he's going to have to do the paper flyers to bring to the school for his bigger events, or we might as well just cancel the events if he can't get
attendance because then we're just wasting taxpayers money. Well, what we're what we try to do is we're try we're trying to hit them from every everything we can short of going to each house and knocking on the door. So, you know, we we we do send stuff through the
schools. They are very cooperative. If we do something that that attack, you know, is is geared toward kindergarten to fifth grade, we simply tell the board, distribute this to K to fifth grade, and boom, out it goes electronically. Now, is every parent of
every student opening that message up and reading it? You know, I don't know. That's that's why we try to go multifaceted on this thing. We're trying to leave no stone on uncovered here. I I'd rather be fair to him and say just see where you
could cut 10%. I'm not going to tell him to cut his lacrosse line or his swim line or I or any program line that I think that's up to them. They know what programs have high attendance, what have low attendance, plus they're also bringing a revenue to offset some of
this programming. Um, so I'm I'm happy just to go with 10%. But I want to just remind and we talk about the halves and have nots next year. Uh, the state is pushing for New
Jersey tourism and Mr. Kio's department is going to have to be a part of it. And at the tail end of this year in the planning stages, uh, Revolution New Jersey 250 where we're celebrating the country's 250th year anniversary. Also,
the World Cup is going to be here in New Jersey next year. So, 2026 is a big year. Uh, downtown Lions, we're organizing two steering committees um for the summertime to to get folks on board with this. and the township is
going to have to find through the recreation just a couple dollars. Not a lot of money, but this will bring tremendous um tourism and economic development opportunities to our town if we do it right. And um you know, I'm just going
to I'm just going to put that out there to remind Mr. Kio when you do make your cuts, you know, see what you could do. I don't I don't know. I don't know how we could cut and add at the same time, but you'll have to advise me on that one. But I could tell you that that you know, my department
um ran this centennial celebration in town. Um I was proud to be the chair of that. There it is. There it is up in the box, the green box. Um and and we did we did have funds. I mean, the township did provide funds for us to to to do
different events and and to hold things. So the Vietnam wall. Yeah. If if it come if it comes to that that that that it happens in this year that I need these funds, I may very well end up back here and saying, "Hey guys, by the way, if you if you want us to be front and
center with this thing, going to have to help me out a little bit." So, you know, I just wanted to preface, you know, that with that to you that I may be back knocking on your door, you know, come November or something saying like, you know, I need some I need some money if
the township is going to be active in these events and and it's going to turn into a big thing. We have to we have to, you know, we have to be prepared. And I know Mr. Fagenson there probably biting his tongue because he's, you know, on the state commission. So, it's a big pu
a big push and for the right reasons uh it brings but whatever we're asked to do we'll do. You know, you can count on economic development to the towns. Okay. I said my piece. Councilman, give her my I said my piece with this one,
too. Oh, okay. Um can I make some suggestions? Maybe. Mhm. The fertilizer, grass seed, and mulch is that we It's not really fertilizer because we don't really use much fertilizer, but it's it's it's the grass seed and the mulch
and the flower beds and and all that kind of stuff that you see in front of all of our buildings and all that stuff. And that is not done by the township. We just It is. It is. That's the supplies. Is the parks that's for the supplies, the actual bag of stuff. And Right. But
we we we had a contract last night for a landscaper. The landscaper doesn't do this that supplement work. This is this is the parks department does um our facilities contract last night were for
other public areas that are owned by the town. Mr. Lator was here last night overseas not only cutting some of the um taking care of the parks, but these are also other areas of the town that we just don't have the staff for. It's to supplement. So that that vendor last night was a supplement, but we still
have our own people to do this work. Excuse me. And that's that, you know, that's that's that's field prep, too. So, you know, you have a you have a softball field and it rains, you got to reline it. You know, the the infield gets gets a mess, you got to put the
quick dry on it and and then you have to put clay on it. When this before the season starts, it's a whole big thing. And there's like, you know, we're doing like 15 fields sometimes in in this particular season. So, we need to have the supplies on hand. It's not like you can run out and buy this stuff, you
know, as needed. You have to have a supply of it. I like the idea of asking the director to to um make his own cuts because you know best. But I would like to to look at the celebration of public events. Well, not right now. We still have to
finish this page. Okay. If you're finished with that page, Councilman Ruden, then Counciloman Deber Michael's next. So, there are a few line items here where there was a certain amount budgeted last year that either the whole amount wasn't spent or very
little was spent and you're requesting the same and or more. Okay. Can we remove some of those? Could you be specific and maybe I have an explanation for them? Sure. Um 071 new signs park regulations 1300 budgeted nothing spent
last year. Maintenance building 4200 budgeted nothing spent last year. I want to give line items. Uh that was 072. I'm sorry not series 112s. Both they did both 71 and 72. Pardon? There's
several like that. I I see them. Yeah. So I mean can we make cuts there? What what what I want you to think of for for a minute here is that this is a little bit antiquated. There's a lot of things in here that are
all being mulligan stewed, so to speak. So, the money is being spent. Some of these lines are dead and and we don't really use them anymore. And, you know, in my conversation with Mr. the datine act. That's that's one of our objectives moving forward is that we're going to
start, you know, putting these things into a 2025 framework because this is the same framework that has been here for 32 years with me and it's never right because there's just things that we just don't do anymore. Uh so so these
are budget lines that all fund all of these things together and and and and maybe we don't buy a sign, but maybe we buy more more more grass seed. Maybe we don't buy lumber, but we buy more more uh garden materials. You know, I it it
it's a little confusing because if you look at if you look at some of the other items like like look at maintenance fence 073 budgeted 500 and we spent 280. So so it's it's this it's the ying and yang in
this thing. It's it makes it makes it difficult for us because when we view these line items like I came in prepared to be like all right on this page I can remove about $20,000 worth. Right. Right. So, right, it's it's just so how do how should we do it? Like for an
example, um line item 120 materials clay 31,000 was budgeted and 19,000 was spent. Can we reduce 10,000 from this for this year? Well, it's probably just being spent somewhere else or was taken out of somewhere else. If if you go down to 135
maintenance scoreboard, it's 30 $340 budgeted and and we spent 3,800 on it. I understand. So, so you know, you you break a scoreboard, you're not going to worry about whether you're taking grass seed, mulch money, lumber money, or anything else. You're getting the
scoreboard fixed. But there's an Hold on. Hold on. Let him let him finish. Okay. Go ahead, M. Skio. I'm I'm just trying to to to make sense of this antiquated system to you that it's a mulligan stew. You have to look
at the whole thing. How much money do we have to accomplish everything that we need to accomplish and and and go from there. And I think that, you know, if if I'm going to cut 10%, I I will certainly look at this page. Can you cut more than 10%? Can you cut? I I don't see that. 15
20%. I don't think so. I know. I do not. I would love to help you out. I'd love to help you out, but I mean, you know, we're we're we're we're pretty small potatoes here and and we're pretty efficient. So, I'd like to ask Mr. Datiniac, if if we get all the budgets
to reduce uh all the departments, excuse me, to reduce uh 10%. Where will that bring us in terms of our tax? It's not going to be enough. No, I mean your heavy hitters are your police and fire
and debt and pension and health. This is the small potatoes. One tax point is $998,000. So to reduce your taxes, one tax point, you have to cut
$998,000. Um what does that mean? What does a tax point do on the average home? Repeat that number again. $998,968 because we have an NVT now after the revaluation of 9
bill989,000 and 687 million. But um so to to reduce the taxes by one point you have to either raise revenue a
million dollars or reduce expenses. Um, so to go from 6% to 3%. How much do we need to reduce from the budget? I don't have the calculation in front of me, but um, let's
see. I don't know. I I'll I'll work it out rather than me looking at the numbers and trying to guess it. But, um, Council Giver, you'll have the full. Yeah. But the one tax point is is a million dollars. Literally a million dollars. Yeah. And we're willing to do
our part. Well, the rebell killed us. Yes. The rebell. All right. When you say all right, are you are you finished, Councilwoman? I am. Thank you so much, Councilwoman. So, let me try to simplify this further. So one one
million off the budget is how much per household per year? So like one penny is $61 on the average home. Yeah. You're going to have to do the math for me. Well, so if you cut a million dollars, you cut $61.
$61 a year from from the year. Yeah. For the year. Okay. So, I hear where we we always we always talk about percentages because that's what's in the the the um headline so to speak. So, for every
million, it's really got to look like our increase to the taxpayer uh per per household like the actual dollars and cents because, you know, we beat the directors up every year. We've got to try to get it down. But the the
moral of the story is is you know we gave 3% contracts out last year to all our employees and um you know we that was after a year that was you know they were be behind a
year right so we catch up an entire year with without an increase and and so it's going to be impossible to get that down to 3% because a lot of that is contractual uh which We well the two new you know
two new two people u didn't vote for that but we voted for that so so that's that so I think we need to focus on if you get it down $61 that's going to you need a million dollar right
there you go right a million dollars just to get it down $61 so you have to look at it that way do we know what the school increase is per school increase per household is $275. And what is the county's increase? County increase is, and we just got the
numbers from the county in total um with open space is $5560. 55. We we need that revenue from the county that they generate. And then we're at right now with this budget we have, what are we per household? So with
with with the changes, we're at $270. $270 per household yearly. That's per year on the average home. On the average home, $270. So if your home is worth more than the average
home, which is now, you know, $615,472, um it's higher. If it's lower, the increase is less because that's now this is the impact of the revaluation. So right now our end is $270 a year. Okay. So we we need to go off that and keep that in mind. We
always get tripped up with the percentage and um we need to follow follow that. So I mean if you wanted like a zero% tax increase, you you know you're looking at four plus million dollars
which I don't not realistic but we but we have contracts to pay. So that's not happening right contracts. If governments operate in the function, too. Well, we we know how much can you stomach? Can you stomach cutting all the rec programs
out and make them go down higher and have all the parents call you? That that's what drives our budget is the salaries and wages. Seniors, it's it's it's the debt, it's the pension, it's the health. Okay. Thank you.
So I am uh just giving a note that it's 5 minutes before 9:00 which is our proposed end time. So it might be that this is a good time to uh take a break and look at what may happen next because
it sounds like Mr. Kio that you get your wish and you come back here. Oh no. Come on. Yes. Yes. I know. I know how much you enjoy this. No, no, no, no, no. I want a raise if I have to come back here. No.
Well, thought we only have one page left to do. Public events, right? Well, yes. I I do have a question on the previous page, the one that we were on now. It's line item uh 208. It's It has the word programs. Yes. What What
exactly is that? because we spend programs is our safety net line. It's it allows us to be creative. It allows us to to uh to to fund something that may be underfunded otherwise. It's kind of a
catchall. Um, part of that money that is in that line right now was money that was appropriated um last year to help um offset the uh senior golf program that was experiencing
uh an dramatic increase in fees and uh very much in danger of of falling into extinction or driving a lot of our participants out of the program uh due to rising cost. So that's that's where
that extra money came from. Okay. So, not to be uh negative at all, but it's essentially your slush fund. It's the it's the it's the fund that you go to when you need when you need money. Yes. Well, it allows us to be creative, too. I have a special events coordinator. They come up. We just had a mommy and me
tea. It was outstanding. We had, you know, 40 people, you know, moms and their daughters and and sons and stuff all dressed up. Uh they had a nice tea party up at Cat Civic Center. Cost us, you know, 1,200 bucks or whatever. We collected a, you know, a good bit of
that, but not all of it. And and you know, you don't you don't want to stifle creativity. You know, it's just like, you know, just like teachers need creativity. We need to have it, too. Okay. Uh there's also another line item, uh 120 materials, clay. I guess it's
calcium. Uh last year it was uh a little over $19,000 in expenditure and the proposed uh budget for this year is 30 a little over $31,000. Okay. And did he answer the question? He
did. Okay. And what was the answer? I'm sorry. It that's for that's for our 15 uh fields that we No, I I understand that. But I guess the question is we haven't changed the number of fields. I don't think we've necessarily changed the number of programs that are playing on
the field. So why the the big uh delta on those two numbers? Often often times that number fluctuates based on the severity of the winter. What exactly do we have to do when the winter passes and everybody wants all their 15 fields up
and running? What do we hit with this particular year? If we have a mild winter, we don't we're not in such bad shape. We get a bad winter. Now we're looking at more, you know, we need more materials and and you know, all the way through. Yeah. Has do a lot to do with
the rain, too. How often does it rain? Okay. Uh 090 officials. Did I'm not sure we asked that before, but I I remember you answering that depending on the organizations that the officials work for, that determines what
the compensation is. Is that what this is that what this number represent? Exactly what it Okay. And they like to get, you know, every couple years they like to get $65 to work a game rather than 55. And, you know, they pass it all on to the recreation departments. And
they do the same thing to the schools, the athletic directors at the schools. So, I I just want to uh just make a comment about the uh the advertising line item 031. Mhm. If you are planning
to send this publication to every household in the town, that is gold to certain advertisers. And if it's if your project is
$13,000, you should be able if you go to people in in this town who want to reach every household. You you I'm sure you can appreciate you used to be able to reach every household with newspapers and and flyers. You don't do that
anymore. Hardly anybody actually reads the newspaper, the print the print version. But I I would be surprised if you couldn't find a professional or two who would welcome the opportunity to sell space in this thing.
Just throw it down. Okay. Okay. Just just something to think about. Please for I apologize to everybody that I keep missing this stuff. I'm trying to run the meeting as efficiently as possible and I am and I am missing stuff. So I was just taking I just was
taking one opportunity here. So I won't I won't I won't take up any more time. But it is 9:00 now. I I think we should start talking about Councilwoman Scorpa. Oh, I'm sorry. Counciloman Yeah, I have a quick suggestion. You know, we have that West Orange magazine, that big
glossy things that comes to everybody's house. Can we do maybe some advertising in there? She's a private vendor. Yeah, she's her her her advertising is expensive. Oh, I Well, I just wanted something to look at.
Yeah. If you're going to deliver to every household in West Orange and particularly about activities for children and some activities for adults, I I really do think that would be potential gold that she might welcome
that. So, you can mail this and the mailing costs are this the printing and the and the postage. That's the big nut. Yeah, mail's expensive. Oh, it is. But that's what I'm saying. That's This is not expensive. If you're figuring you How
many pages are in this? It was a single page like a postcard. Oh, it's a single page. Okay. I thought it was an actual book. Okay. Would you have opac stuff is on there? Yeah. You could do that on one one page front and back 8 half by 11 double side. And two summers
ago, we had really good attendance at cow. What about people that have to wear glasses to read? Then we'll make it uh six by eight. Okay. I'm I'm sorry. I'm sure everybody wants to go home. Uh the the next
workshop we had uh has to be postponed and I think Mr. Tin has to go to a beauty pageant. Um so we don't know when we're going to meet next time, but when we meet next time we So council president, if um I may So we did discuss. First of
all, we It's 9:00. I I don't know. He sat here all night. I mean, we should have only done three to begin with. I don't know. Four. We're never going to get done. We can't do Mr. Reynolds. He's right here. We didn't even finish parks yet. We still pages. I jumped to public works and we didn't finish parks. So, so
council, originally when they you guys scheduled the three meetings. We tried to fit this in. Hopefully, we could get it. Um, I spoke to the council president the other day. I I honestly think in my experience that we're going to need five meetings. That's just my opinion. Um, 10. Well, I'm just being I'm being
cautiously optimistic. So, um so what I would suggest is that I I'm trying to work out for the 29th next Thursday, which I should have an answer for you for that tomorrow. So, we should pencil that day in. I'm looking at the calendar here. Um June
11th is another day. And I'm only asking that because if I can get these days to you, I can I can preset it with the IT per people. June uh June 11th is um there's nothing on the calendar as I could tell as far as planning board spe
uh um zoning board or any other board that would interfere with it's the middle of the week. It's another Wednesday day after election day. Day after election day office is going to be exhausted in your buttercup. Can I say just make sure the
planning board doesn't throwing out some dates. That's all because on the 12th we have the 12th we have a rent leveling board and the 10th we have this primary. I mean we go the following week too but I'm just I'm trying to push this closer than to go further. How about a Sunday?
Ruden has uh has the floor and then I'll get you. Is there a Sunday that we can do? There's going to be no Sundays to do. Our staff is not coming in on a Sunday and I'm not doing a Sunday. We're where our staff is is here all the time and you know that's a day of rest for
for most of the staff. Um and and you got a lot of holidays coming up and you know in you know Father's Day, Mother's Day. Well, Mother's Day passed. I'm sorry. I apologize. My wife's going to kill me. Uh yeah, you're gonna have 10 June 7th Town Street Fair that the the seventh is
going to be at Okay. Councilwoman Ruden has the floor. Do you still need it? I'm I'm just wrong. All right. Councilwoman Ruden, do you need the floor or can we give it to someone else? You can give it to I I just would love you had you would I just want to say um I could save you a little bit of time.
You got the celebration of public events. I'm already cut I'm cutting 10%. You know, I will certainly take a close look at this page and and and this will some of the cuts will come from this page. So rather than come back again and go hash through the whole thing, either
you trust me to do it or you don't. I mean, I'll do it. Okay. But but s seriously and sincerely, we we do need you to come back to discuss this. I think there's only a couple pages left. Can we
just finish off with parks and then go home? I'm okay with saying another Yes. We can't run. We can't finish it off because he's got to get 10%. And then but we're not voting on it. He's gonna he'll just Why can't he email us the his changes?
Well, we have like what 40 50 line items. How are we going to make a statement? I didn't get a chance to talk. I I'm Okay, Councilwoman Castelino. Okay, so I know I sound frustrated
because let him make his cuts. Email us. If you have a couple questions, ask the questions. We need to get this done. I I don't mind staying for Mr. I know he's he's he's leaving, but I mean, he's here. He sat here tonight. I don't know
why he can't do a quick overview and we even if it takes us an hour, but now he's you know, we got to get this done. I I just don't understand why this is taking so long. I I mean it if you want to give the initiative of who could give
10% or they're coming here with with their bottom line like they have to come with their bottom lines. I I I mean, we're that that has to be it. Otherwise, we're never going to get this done. Like, we're we're nickel and diamond in here and there. And I I know
you want to cut the the one point, but at the end of the day, maybe make the recommendation, send it to them, so when they're here, they could either tell you they're going to cut it or not. To to do it this way is just really taking forever. and and we got we can't hire
staff or move forward without a 2025 budget. We can't keep practicing. It's bad enough we have a third quarter another third quarter estimated tax bill again this year, this third year in the row. So that's it. I said my bees we used to sit here all day on a Saturday
and get it done. I don't know why we we can't move towards that. The administration doesn't want I could be wrong, but to my recollection, we did not have Fourth of July last year. Oh, we certainly did. We just didn't have fireworks.
Oh, and how much did it cost with fireworks? We didn't have fireworks. I know. But when you did have fireworks, what did that cost? It was about the same, about 35 or whatever. So, fireworks are really expensive. How? Very expensive. So, shouldn't there have
been a savings since there's no fire? We tried we tried to replace it with something that was significant and meaningful to the community and we did. We had we had a food truck festival. We had two very good musical acts. And we had a whole six-hour celebration up at
the library that was very very well attended. When when this came up last year about the fireworks, the the first thing that I said to everybody was don't think just because we're not having fireworks that you're going to save money. We're getting out of the fireworks dilemma.
That's all you're doing because it's the 4th of July. It's one of the major events of our in our community in this country. And we have we as a community have to do something significant that day, something that people are going to look forward to. And we did that. and
next year's 250 years should be something special. So, I I guess we need to take a vote as a council to decide what we're going to do for the next five or 10 minutes because it seems like we're all over the map. People want to keep talking, keep
going. Other people want to set up uh for future meetings. Uh somebody wants to come in on Sunday and I I I can't control this. All right. So, you guys talk it out and decide what you want to do and we'll take a vote. But
this is this is this is not the way to run a budget process. I went through 10 of them. This is not the way to run a budget process. You guys decide what you want to do. I make a motion to uh finish this
section with Mr. Kio. Now, I second that motion. All in favor? Well, we need further. Does anybody want to further discuss this? Are we still then asking him to come back with 10%. It makes sense for him to come back. I think we should discuss this and then
let him send the proposed cuts. Yeah. Because we're not going to vote on it anyway until the end until we vote through everything. Yeah. Okay. Fine. So, let's go through this whole list this line by line and then then you don't have to come back. You'll just send us all your changes. Got a deal.
Okay. Let's go. So, everyone's in favor of that. I I'm not in favor of that. Scarfa, I'm not in favor of that either. I'd like to see Mr. Kio clean up all the the mishmash a little bit. I mean, th this is what we went through for years with Mr. Gross and we said we weren't
going to have budgets like this that we were going to have all of the line items realistically represent the costs. We're still discussing. So, Councilman Scarpa, you are absolutely correct, but you might have missed it, but Mr. Diniac was saying
that he's stuck with the same old system that m that our previous CFO used. So, next year it'll be a different version or a different software system where it'll be more accurate. So, this this is the last year of and and and and to be
honest, this is not even the oldex system. This is the new version of cloud munex which the budget prep does not work. So I had to create all of these manual excels and put this information in. Next year when we have admins it will update every time I run a new
budget report. They'll be able to make their requests electronically. The account structure will make more sense. We will dramatically cut down on the line items. I mean if Mr. Kio wants a line item that said fishing derby, we could have that. But we're going to get
away from all of these very specific sub accounts. Um, so it'll be a lot easier for everyone to to sort of digest and it and compare. You know, we'll be able to run a report that says, hey, professional services across all departments, what are you spending? What
are you budgeting? You know, we can do that. Um, we can run project reports of, hey, Fourth of July, what did it cost? Well, there was police presence involved in that. So, we needed to pay, you know, $10,000 in OT and then there, you know,
we can do things like that. I am very limited in what I can do with this old version or new version of Mr. Kio must know what I mean just the fat and the slush fun. Mr. Diniac has the floor. Please raise your hand and I'll be informed by
Mr. Fagan and I will call on you. Please stop interrupting. Timmy, I I apologize, but as and and as part of this process, and Mr. Kho did, Director Kho did bring this up before. Um, we are for this year going to try to clean up the existing accounts, you
know, maybe changing names or but I can't get rid of accounts because of the history that's tied to them, but we're going to do what we can to to work with what we have and make it more realistic. So, thank you. Does anyone else want to discuss this before we take the vote?
Madame Clerk. Okay. Uh to stay for Yes. Okay. Councilwoman Castelino. Yes. So quick. Councilwoman Gabber Michael. Yes. Councilwoman Ruden. Yes. Councilwoman Scarpa. Yes. Council President Koviaak.
No. Okay. The motion carries. So Mr. Kio, I guess uh is there are there any pending questions or are there other people who want to speak? uh ask questions or do you want to just go through and tell us what your 10%s are? I I don't know what I don't know where
we're going from here. I thought we were looking at the page that said celebration of public events. Okay, let's do that. Let's cancel the road and have some questions. I'm ready. I just want to go through each one. The for the tree light tree lighting. Last
year you spent uh 1,900. This year you're asking for 11. um the these these um the the tree lighting is the last event of the year. So again, you got to go back to that mulligan stew concept. So as when when
the budget opens up and it's a partial budget and we can only use certain amounts of each budget line, that's when we start begging and stealing from one thing to another. So, so that's why the treelighting being a December event, the
money was probably, you know, pirated from some of these other special events. And then when the budget became full later in the year, everything the bowls kind of all got filled back up again and that's the way it landed. So So you
didn't actually pay 19? Not not even close. So, I mean, I saw a lot of charges in there, including paying a a resident $500 to s, you know, to entertainment. Is there is there a way that some of this that you can look for since we have
such talent in West Orange that we can get that for free? We usually do, to tell you the truth, we usually do. Some a lot of times we'll have the high school uh high school ensemble or we've had Satan Hall prep, we've had the Vienna School of Music, you know, we do that. It it rotates from year to year.
That particular year we had a uh it was I was approached about having the the two ladies perform and and I agreed to it. Okay. But coming this year probably will not be that scenario. All right. And also like hot chocolate
for $500. It wasn't just hot chocolate. I know it was really good hot chocolate, but she did other stuff. I know it was she was great and it was cider and it was and there was so many people that I mean it ripped right through her supply and plus they came they brought their own tent they they said they did they
did a great job but I'm just saying that we need to we need to find ways to to cut in that I'm not sure why it costs that much to light the tree and to have it's fun it there's a lot of things that go with it I'm sure it's fun but I I'm
just a lot of it is decorations but Isn't it the same decorations that we pull out year after year? You still got to you still got to bring them down and put them back up and things get broken in the process. And every year you can figure that, you know, you're going to have to spend some money on replacement
and installation. Okay. Can we Anybody else have questions on any other item? Um He's flunk with one, you know. Yeah, these numbers aren't accurate. Yeah, you do look at the bottom. That's that's
that's that's the the proof of the pudding. It was budgeted at 72 and we spent 67. So, you left some money in. So, but that money went to other line items in the previous pages.
Um, no, we don't usually do that. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. We're there. We're there anyway. So, I mean, that's that's the one of the first things I'm going to look at, you know, when we start talking about the 10%. Good. What is the summer series? Those
are the two um concerts at Ospac in the summer that are directly run by my department. And what does that cover? Oh, it's uh it's the sound text, the the musicians, uh the event staff, you know, we we we
we kind of run the whole show up there on those particular two days and they build it right into their regular schedule, you know, between plays and different things that they do. Is that already scheduled for this year?
Oh, yeah. Everything's everything's scheduled. What are we doing on Halloween? Um, h Halloween morphs every year. Some sometimes we do haunted rides through through the woods. Sometimes we just do
like a like a Halloween fair. Uh, sometimes on the pool grounds. We move around a little bit on that. Sometimes it's simple. We've been at Liberty Middle School. We did the haunted school, you know. We we we change that up. It rotates. Well, good luck cutting.
It's It's hard for everybody. But but really, Mr. Dutin, it would be helpful for us if if each of the department heads got that request before they came before us because they know best what was expendable. Mhm. Especially because the
numbers aren't accurate. We've been we've been around. We were prepared for this. You know, we we know surprise. Don't get hung up on the sub accounts. If you look at the bottom line, he spent 92% of his budget and his
overall budget is an increase of 2%. Uh not even $2,000. So yes, we have this sub account detail which we allow the departments to overexpend the sub account. They cannot expend overexpend the controls. You
can't go over to 72,000. But if he wanted to charge $70,000 to Veterans Day, he can do that through the requisition system. So, the the detail is is there and it's nice, but if you just look at the overall
total, he's spending 92% of his budget. Um, and he's only asking for a 2% increase, which is not even $2,000. So, I I know you want to look at Veterans Day, you spent $48. Can we cut
it? But it's like, let's look at overall what did you spend for celebration of public events? Because when you look at a legal budget document, it's not going to list all these accounts. It's just going to say celebration of public events budgeted $72,000 bet or charge 67,000. You know, that's how it we look
at it from a legal budget perspective. And and my staff is is is always on me about this. You know, they'll tell me like halfway through the year, hey, this is how much we have left in in in public events here. You know, don't be adding stuff. You know, you're not going to
have enough later on. So, so we're we're aware of this and we monitor this as the year goes along to make sure that we don't go over here. I just want to make one last comment. Thanks. And and to the their
credit and the job that they do, our residents, if you attend a lot of our townwide events, you will see how much our residents enjoy the events. And we're, you know, years ago, you get more
criticized of certain events and and now you people are just so excited and happy. You guys been really doing a really nice job. And he's been working with less full-timers in in the office cuz when I saw the list in the beginning, you some people that I've
known that have retired, he never replaced. So, um that's says a lot for them doing more with less. Well, the two the two full two full-time people that do all this programming and everything is is
this guy right here, Edwin and Juan Pentado, who does a fantastic job. And as far as keeping us all online, Joan Npalitano does a beautiful job watching all of our lines and all of our accounts and everything. So, we got a nice team and and we, you know, we're going to do the right thing. You know, you ask us to
do something, we're going to do it and we'll do it right. Thank you, director. See you next week. We dismissed, council president. Thank you. Are we dismissed? I I don't know. Does everybody want to dismissed? Yeah, you are dismissed.
Thank you, Mr. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Thank you, Mr. Mr. We have the next date. So, is there a second? Second. Thank you. All in favor? Mr. Johnson, the workshop is
ajourned. Thank you committee for hanging in there. Thanks everyone. Michelle, I get that you're orange. We are signing off the air. Fault. We just got it. that we're having you.