Okay. Like to call the 700 p.m. work session meeting to order. Please have a roll call, please. Mansky here. Mr. Lane here. Mr. Madigan here. Mr.
Mr. Nancy, could you read the uh open work session statement, please? Yes. This regular work session meeting of the township committee is now in session with the open meetings actual schedule
4 hours Okay, thank you. Confirm that the uh all papers have been signed by the finance committee. Okay. Can I have a motion of 10 minutes public comment? 10-minute public comment period. Two minutes per speaker for
public comment on any governmental issue that a member of the public feels may be of concern to the residents of the township of Wikov. So move I uh yes motion approved.
Okay. Any member of the public wishing to address the governing body? Please come forward. Identify yourself. There being none a motion to close to the public. Seconds.
Yes. Hi, Mr. Madigan. Uh, yes. Mr. Yes. Okay. Uh, we're going to review the 8:00 PM business meeting agenda. Matt Kavalo, our administrator. Matt. Thank you, Mr. Mad. We have several
resolutions. First off is the review of our 2025 best practices checklist. Uh, we've completed checklist. We've uploaded fast. We are receiving our full a lotment. We will be receiving our full aotment of uh
state aid in 2026. Pretty much the same questions last year. 226 authorizes a shared service agreement with the brow of park for the bidding, awarding, and administration of Park Avenue. Park has received an NJ DOT grant to pay
their portion of park. Our portion of park gap is very small. So we'll be covering that uh with our own funds instead of wasting a year of DOT funds on that. But what we're doing is park will include our design.
They will and what this does is guarantees that we are setting aside the funds so that when they award the contract, we'll do it just like we do with Bridgewood Water, they'll award the contract. We'll concur with the award of the contract and then we'll enter into a party agreement. Uh
that we pay for our portion, they pay for their portion, but the entire road. That's great. Uh 227 authorizes a contract for to prime point for our payroll human
management system uh human resource management system and time labor management. Currently we're using pay and prime point is the premier payroll company for municipal governments in New Jersey. They know the
ins and outs of the pensions in the DC and they have a really stellar time and labor system. U currently we're tracking time and labor u on paper. Uh we did
transition to uh uh online time cards uh for employees two year about a year and a half ago with pay velocity but the approval portion doesn't work. Um it just it doesn't work in real time. It's delayed
two weeks due to payroll time and labor through pay point is done in real time. So the employees will be able to submit their time off know how much time they have uh submit their time card uh
directly uh through the system. U the cost is roughly about the same. What it also provides us is a document management system. So we'll be able to push out our policies uh and procedures and any notices that require employees
to sign off on them as well as workflows and onboarding for transition every year. person gets a raise or has some sort of work change whether it be unpaid time off or all run through a workflow system where everything will be signed
off electronic. Um previously we had police department still has it and the name of it is DMS where we were spending a lot of money just for our town hall employees. about $7,500 for document management uh in
this to do that. We're actually able to terminate that and we'll move it over so that everybody who has a paycheck will actually separate login separate appances for just excuse me. So, so this is overall
major systems improvement plus greatly enhanced efficiency. That's great. That's good. Thank you. Any other questions? Okay. We have two ordinances for introduction. The first is ordinance which reduces the speed limit on Mount
25 or road. Same road, same speed. That's great. Cedar Hill and Smack to our list of traffic signals. We have a list in our code that lists all the traffic signals we have in town and that one.
All right. So, just can I ask a question on that? Sure. So, that's still a temporary signal. It is. So, it's going to be listed as a temporary signal. No, it's listed as a traffic signal. Okay. We do have plans currently under review
by the county of Bergen to convert the temporary signal into a permanent signal which will have uh intersection uh intersection improvements, add crosswalks, add uh pedestrian crossing
uh pedestrian crossing lights, you know, push button. So, it's currently under review downstairs. We should be providing our comments back to the county about All right. So, just for clarification,
the fact that it's a temporary signal, the fact that Bergen County wants to do something within the intersection, whether we agree partner in it or not, in no way does this hurt us later on that well, you already have a traffic
signal. So all we're doing is it doesn't hurt us in any it's really for more traffic enforcement purposes that we're supposed to have this ordinance. Okay. But it's not going to hurt us should the county come out with some plan that we're not too thrilled with.
So we already have it. So okay. Thank you. Several motions that'll be the record at the 8:00 meeting. And moving on to uh some administrator policy action items. First, thank you
all for the attendance at the fireworks and thanks to our PD fire department and for their participation and protection. Um as you may have heard in the newspaper online, health benefit numbers for 26 were released by state
health benefits program and for lack of a better word they are sickening. They are roughly 37% increase to our health plan per employee next year. Uh we are investigating possibilities to help save
us and the employees money will require some negotiations uh some back and forth. We'll have more of that in the future. Probably not. At least not initially, right? The walkway at the front walkway at the
risky house is currently under improvement renovation. It should be completed in about two weeks. Sorry. And in time for Halloween, our new tax assessor and assistant tax assessor have started effective October 1st. Uh office hours for the office are
1:30 to 4:30 Monday through Thursday and 8:30 to 4:30 with on Friday and our assessor is available by appointment from 5 to 8 Tuesday and Thursday. What a welcome announcement. That's great.
Uh the DPW has completed a repair of the store on Hill Avenue. They expect it to take up to a week. They were able to complete it in a day and do will begin the replacement of the trees and shrubbery in the of the 200
block of James that were removed when the covert was replaced under Route 208 that were should be completed sometime between October 15th and December 1, which is the end of the DO two or three emails. And finally, we do have a close session
this evening for contract negotiation. That's it. Okay, that's great. I reported township committee members to my left, Mr. Melion.
Thank you. Um, fireworks. We actually had fireworks this year as Matt mentioned. It was great. So, I obviously thank everybody that was involved. It was a great night. I love fireworks. And personally, I thought it was one of the best finales I've seen in a very long
time. Great. So, I also want a special thank you to Joe. Joe goes above and beyond his duties as uh with DPW and also the fire department. So, I also want to thank
Joe. very essential for making the the fireworks happen. Uh along with some of the township committee members and the our district 40 legislators and Matt was there today and commissioner of DOT. We
uh went to the guide rail infrastructure project that will be coming up on 208 and just another part of our commitment to not just pedestrian safety but car safety. So we want to thank especially our district legislator, Senator
Colorado, Senator Phillips, Senator for making that happen. Much needed safety improvements along 208. And just lastly, Centennial Committee is still meeting, still planning, and we're going to have some exciting news coming in the future.
That's all. Okay. Thank you, May. Um I want to say that the fireworks were amazing. Thank you to and
um and also the fire and police for keeping us all safe and making sure everything ran smoothly. Like Pete said, it was amazing. I think we do a better job. Definitely the finale was amazing. Um I also went
to my first safety meeting last week or two weeks ago. Um I have to I did voice concern about the ebikes around town. Um and I was really happy the next day. the police white police put out um a memo on social media and you know kind
of shared it all over the place because there's a lot of concern about the child safety um how the kids are riding the ebikes parents you know people distracted while driving and big danger we read about it in the papers all the time about kids getting hurt and killed
so we don't want that to happen or anywhere rather um and the police put a nice um poster up about the different classes of ebikes. Um class three is actually anything that goes over 20 miles hour. The bike doesn't have
pedals. It's illegal actually. It's considered like a motorcycle. Um if it goes over 20 miles, it has to be registered. It's like a moped. They need a license. Um anybody for class one and two bicycles have to wear a helmet. Um
they can't ride on the got two seats which most of them don't and I see that around so the kids are really riding carelessly and we're concerned about it. So I'm really happy about that. I do hope that we possibly
consider speaking to the parents in schools um and then also having a session for the children to understand what the rules are and the laws are they can use their privilege of getting their driver's license at their age of 17 if they do get a ticket. So, everybody
should be aware of that and I was really happy that we addressed that and hopefully keep our kids. Okay. Thank you, Roger. Try and set a record for you. Pete covered the press conference today
and the completion of certain portions of the guide rails. Pete covered the fireworks. Matt covered the DPW with regard to the storm drain repairs. Uh historic We have multiple applications for people to
join. I had Nancy send them out to all of us. Take a look at those. If you know anybody, please let me know. We have a meeting next week. I'll inform the uh the rest of the team there on historic. And uh lastly, um uh we had an
incredible open house last night at the fire department. It was so well attended by families. I got a new nickname. They call me Blue Knuckles now because They put me up on the ladder truck in the bucket and they went quite high and they know that I don't like heights. So, it was a real a
real joy ride to say the least. But, uh, it was great. I I mean, the kids had a great time. Uh, you know, so kudos to the fire department for just uh hitting it out of the ballpark just one more time. All right, that's that's it, Mr. Mayor. Okay, thank you.
All right, good. I'll be short for myself, but try that. Let's see. Fireworks. First of all, they were fantastic. Thank you to the fireworks committee, all the people that contributed in all aspects, including picking up afterwards and the food and
the grog was a big hit. So, kudos to everybody putting it in the location, everything. That was a really big hit. And uh couldn't ask for a nice night. Only took us three years to get it, but it was fantastic. I I agree with you, the fire fire department openhouse last
night was wonderful. a lot of people there and uh the kids really enjoyed it. Uh just remind everybody the senior picnic is next Tuesday which I think we're all planning on attending. Uh centennial calendar we think we're
finished and then we're going to get a draft going to share with all members of the governing body so you can just look at it and see if there's anything that we missed. The best part was we had gone to an Eagle Scout presentation and right
in front of me was group 89 Kerchief established 1926. So we took a great group photo because they'll be celebrating their 100th anniversary and we would have really been remiss if we missed them. It was a really nice photo.
And uh I heard about the sewer project. I didn't quite grasp the whole thing from I know a lot of people on Hillary. They were extremely complimentary. So, whoever was behind it, coordinated it, made it seamless for all the residents. Great job. And that's it. Port for
township attorney, Mr. Becker. Thank you. Uh, affordable housing still a hot button issue obviously. Uh, you recall our our plan, our housing element plan was challenged the last day they could August 28th. We thought we were
going to get an immediate date for some mediation. To date, nothing. So I'm actually on the phone with Beth McManus today because she's adjudicator with some she has other towns. I thought maybe she'd know a little more going on. Basically she said the word is they've
been they had so many basically fair share almost challenged not all but almost every town they challenge but what they have so many they start with ones that had challenges by developers then on developers with fair share.
got any justelves which kind of makes it sound like maybe they're not pushing us too much so many to do but no date so far this is supposed to be done by the end of this calendar year so I don't know yet
but I keep following that the litigation we're involved in our two state cases were dismissed we expected that basically and I read through the opinion the basically he doesn't want to go out
and say hey I'm going to be the judge at the trial level that says you know this isn't four doesn't matter so we expected it but we're filing our appeals the expectation is to take this all the way to state supreme court we knew that
going in uh we filed in the process of filing a second amendment federal complaint and we've got we've got five more municipalities just doing one Wood, Montgomery, New Milford, Washington Township, and just joined.
What's the total? I think we're close to 40. It could be 41 or something like that, but every time we have a Zoom meeting, somebody else jumps in there. So, it's it's not it appears we're not getting anywhere with the court, but it's
gaining some traction. I think, you know, it's going to be a slow process, but even politically, the people on both sides of the aisle affordable housing isn't really working. It's it's in fact my humble opinion it's made housing worse because people in the middle are
getting squeezed. That's right. They don't qualify for what's called affordable and the other housing is going up. So it's really the the consequences of this thing. Plus, there's a municipality, I think, I forget which one, there's a lawsuit
going on for 500 unit housing complex and the environmental groups are suing on that because I think um so it's obviously the other
consequences are starting to add up. So that's what's going on that side. Um that's really all I had tonight on the affordable housing except Matt mentioned that our tax assessor is on board. We have our assistant tax assessor on board. So we're certainly hoping we get
the office in short time here. Oh, one last thing. I was not able to go to the fireworks because unfortunately my mother will have another fall. But on the way back came through the section park and I saw the finale see park and
it was great. So it was a wonderful finale. So I got to see him even though we couldn't be I was driving through and Christine and I just stopped our car stopped and watched the finale not expecting to see the fireworks. We were disappointed we couldn't get there because we were tending to elderly people most of the afternoon. So it was
how romantic that you got to that's great. Did you get a hot dog while you were there? No ice cream. Ice cream? What you had ice cream? not great. That's it. Thank you. Okay, so we ready for a motion to go
into close session do we need anything? Nothing here. Okay, just that water.