Al to the flag of the United States of America and to the repic for it stands one nation under God indivisible with Li and Justice all moment silence this meeting has been called in accordance with the provisions of the open public meetings act and that an announcement of the same has been mailed to the local newspapers and to the clerk of the bu of Delmore and the minutes of this meeting will be available after board approval at a subsequent meeting loal commissioner Lynch is absent commissioner Orchard here commissioner Sher is absent commissioner Remy here commissioner cerly here commissioner McCracken here commissioner Masano here you have a forum the approval of the minutes of the May 6th 204e you just talk a little Lou I don't have it I oh no one's screaming at me yet no so I just need a motion for the approval of the May 6 meeting um I'll make a motion I'll second commissioner Orchard yes commissioner Ry yes commissioner cerly yes commissioner mcracken yes commissioner Masano yes okay we have approval close session minutes May executive minutes right yes okay sorry about that I'll make a I'll second thank you commissioner Orchard yes commissioner Remy yes commissioner cerly yes commissioner McCracken yes commissioner Masano yes right review and approval of the June bills any questions on the bills for the month of June just need a motion if there's no question make a motion second commissioner Orchard yes commissioner Ry yes commissioner cly yes commissioner McCracken yes commissioner Masano yes executive director is not here yes no report tonight from the executive director any uh correspondence no ma'am any old business no new business it's going to be pretty quick reports from the Commissioners anybody have anything I would just like to uh make a remark that tomorrow is primary election day please come out and participate in the [Music] process so we have any remarks from the general public okay mayor yes um I would rather sit if you don't mind because my back is killing me I'm just going to move this here Gerald buccafusco uh mayor of dalmar um around May 21st of this year myself business administrator Kevin Kane and councilwoman Maria raro met with uh director DeSantis regarding a um possible change to the admissions and occupancy policy for the Bellmore Housing Authority at that time we gave him a correspondence and uh I believe he copied that correspondence to all the Commissioners actually he sent it to me last week and I was away on vacation so they have not gotten it yet okay well since I'm here let me just when you get it uh this is what will be uh the the gist of that um in the in the process of trying to meet our third round of affordable housing obligations in the burrow uh which we're under a very very tight uh time frame to meet we discovered that obviously this building is not part of the affordable housing plan of the borrow it could become part of the affordable housing plan and if it did it would give us actually give you two two benefits number one uh the burrow as part of our plan has an affordable housing trust fund and based on uh the ordinance when certain residential and not non-residential properties are constructed uh Builders have to put money into this affordable housing trust fund and uh the way it works is if the building was part of the affordable housing uh system that we have part of our plan what they call our housing element the burrow would then be able to use those funds to apply to the Housing Authority for improvements and things like that so it would be a source of of Revenue that you don't have now um the other thing is that uh well let me just back up for a second the way that the Housing Authority can become part of the affordable housing trust fund is the residency requirement has to be broadened to the region that we're in which is Mammoth MCA and ocean counties right now you have a local preference for belmare okay so that local preference would have to be changed to Mammoth Mercer and ocean upon doing that then the Housing Authority would become eligible to receive funds from the borrow through the affordable housing trust fund the other thing it would actually benefit the the the borrow residents on is if if a borrow resident had for example a family member who who lived in Mammoth Mercer or ocean counties that wanted to reside in the in the belmart in this unit here this structure then they would be able to apply because that region would be encompassed in the uh in in this in your documents so it wouldn't be just limited to Belmore residents only um and at the same time it gives the burrow just a number we would we would get a number of affordable housing units credited to the affordable housing plan that we have here in Belmore it doesn't take anything away from from the units that are here it's just a number that is that is basically credited to the burrow for for having your 50 units here so basically when we talked to the director he uh he said he was going to distribute this so that the board members could review it and you know ask questions about it and uh you know unfortunately that hasn't been done but um when it is done I'd like you to take a look at it uh and some of it is you know it goes through the whole process of what the affordable housing process is for the burrow but the the the the important part for for the board is to is to realize that to get money from the burrow uh we would have to have you'd have to get it from this affordable housing trust fund and the only way that you would be able to uh access that would be to change the um The Residency requirement to Mammoth Mercer and um ocean now in speaking with the director he had said and you people probably know better than I do that some some residents I think two residents actually left Belmore and went to wall um senior housing because many of the of the other senior housing authorities are open to to uh residents from other districts so uh it's uh it's something that the board should consider I think it's a it's a win-win proposition because other than that that the burrow really would not have a direct way to help out MoneyWise with the with the Housing Authority uh and you know and again it would it would allow for people relatives of Belmore residents or anyone actually who lives in Mammoth ocean and Mercer to to come into into belmare and I'm thinking of you know people who live here who might have elderly parents living in in another County one of those other two counties and they would be able to to use the Belmore uh H the housing here Jerry can I ask you a question I mean Mr Mayor please uh is that with the voucher system or just regular no this has nothing to do with vouch with that other with that system that the guys came I am not aware no this if this was the same no but different yeah it's different but I one follow-up question though with that so does that make all of our units affordable housing so that when one becomes available now it has to go through the state process of being the um application process like I know for myself down in Manasquan we have nine affordable units we have it all the applications have to go to one centralized location or whatever and then it's picked that's this you're a Housing Authority so your processes would be all the same as they are now the only difference would be that instead of the preference for belmare residences residences residents the preference would be for Mammoth Mera and ocean residents other than that everything else stays the same so we would still take the applications in here yes yep yep it's just a taking a local preference and putting it to a regional preference and as I said other other housing authorities apparently have this um so it's not unheard of to to do that so no PA sent it to the attorney to review as well okay so I mean you know hopefully you'll be getting this out to them take a look at it and uh I think we'll plan to be at the next meeting also to answer any questions that you might have about it okay I have a question I may mayor the circumstance that the buau finds itself in at this point in time what has led this situation where affordable housing is such a priority for you and your Administration okay well just to give you a little bit of a history back in I don't know if you've heard of Mount Laurel opinions and whatever but back in the 70s the Supreme Court established affordable housing as a constitutional right yes okay it's like the right to have an attorney you know if you can't afford one we will apply one well the New Jersey Supreme Court said affordable housing is a constitutional right and every municipality had an obligation to provide their citizens with affordable housing and it went through a number of um rounds there was one round two rounds and the third round started in probably before 2015 and it got a little complicated because there was a and I don't want to go into all the little details but there was a an office uh called the um COA it was the Coalition on affordable housing that was monitoring all of this and towns would take their plans and they would give them to COA and COA would say oh we approve and then that plan would have to go into effect well what happened was as we Belmar did put in a plan with COA back in I think it was 2015 don't quote me on that but what happened then Co basically went defunct the courts took it over and the courts said basically everybody who filed a plan with COA needs to file it again with the courts okay unfortunately the burrow of belmare did not file again with with the courts so the third round is ending next July and when when I came into office because you know I realized that along with business administrator C and said you know we need to have our third round of affordable housing plan done so that we can you know move on to the fourth round which is coming up so uh and we're under constitutional mandate to do that if we didn't do that now let me just there's one side effect if we just said oh you know forget about it we're not going to do anything that opens us up to what they call Builder remedy suits which means a builder could come in and they could say to the court you know Court Belmar has not complied with the third round affordable housing they have they don't have enough you know there's a number out there how many affordable housing we're supposed to have and the Builder and developer could say I'm going to help them more you know I want to build an eight-story building you know on the corner of uh whatever I'll just make it up you know on the corner of 6th Avenue in Main Street and I'll put I'll put 20 affordable housing units in there to help belmare meet his plan and then the court basically will come to belmare and say what do you say about that and now we're on the defensive to say oh well well you know we don't really know that we should you know we want and the Court's going to turn around and say well Belmar you know you need you have a constitutional obligation to hit a certain number and you're not hitting that number so I might just let this Builder build and you know these afford these Builder remedy suits take precedence over any zoning loss that you have in the burrow or is they just get wiped away and if the court permits it you'll have an eight-story building you know with 20 affordable housing so what we did when we first got in instead of allowing those Builder remedy suits to kind of start we filed the action with the court saying we want to comply with the third round and you know we're willing to work with there's another group called fair share housing that basically represents the unaffordable housing um people population and they have to approve anything that we done so we went to the court and we said yeah we would like to do that and we would like to come up with a plan so that we can start to meet our affordable housing and in the meantime some of the builders who own property said oh yeah we want to help too but see it's different because it's not a builder's remedy suit but they come into court as interveners and they say oh yeah we'll help them you know and it's the same kind of thing you know we want to build you know we can give you 10 affordable housing units but I need a a 60 60 unit structure you know on this piece of property here or I need an 80 unit structure over here so and that's what we've been going through for the last year and a half it's a it's a give and take between the court we have four interveners right now is it four and the court the four interveners and the fair share housing and Belmar you know so that's the process that's how we we've gotten into this uh third round we we're trying to to get the third round finished but we still haven't made agreements final agreements with all of the different uh developers but it's all overseen by the court there's some the court appoints somebody called a special master who meets with us and them and tries to come up with a it's a negotiation as to what you know I could I could agree you you're if you're a developer we can agree and then it goes to fair share housing and they turn around and say nah there's not enough affordable housing in there you know we we instead of you giving me five units we really like to see you know eight you know so it's a it's like a three-way uh negotiation and that's what we've been doing for the last year and a half and we had attorneys come to the council meetings and explain it and we're going to have them come again as we get you know more and more down the road so that's how we got to this um affordable housing thing it could have been it could have been resolved years ago you know had this same action been done but it wasn't done and it has to be done well that that's a question I'm I'm going to POs to you so based on what you said I interpret it as an inherited issue that has that has come to the door of the current Administration is it safe to say that yeah yeah I mean and and yes yeah we we are obligated to to come up with an affordable housing plan for the third round and you know if we ignored it then we would open up the burrow to build Builder remedy suits which means we basically we the burrow would have no say and what is going on in terms of development within the town and the court would just make a deal you know sit with fish or housing and the developers and they would and they would decide what's going to be built but you still have a say with the interveners the interveners yes yeah we have more of a say to negotiate with them and you know the court In fairness is is looking to see that everybody's basically uh being reasonable in terms of what they're proposing and you know they take into account the area they take into the account you know that we're a small town um you know so they're not they're not going to certainly not going to permit a 10 story building on you know on Main Street because that would just not be uh you know consistent with the structure and and the the feel of the of the burrow but it's a it's a very long and tedious process because the builders they want they'll give you the affordable housing but they want something in return which is generally more apartments or more this you know so more units so they're so they're trying to get more for fair share housing is trying to get more we're trying to keep everything down you know we're trying to get less you know we don't want Mega structures to town and it's it's a negotiation going back and forth um and at some and then it it gets even more complicated because then there's much only so much land in the burrow to develop so even though there might be a number and I'm just making this up it might there number might be oh Belmore needs 100 affordable housing units but when you look at all the free property and all the developable property there it could be that we can only provide 25 units you know because there they call it a vacant land adjustment you know not all of the vacant land can be can be utilized for um affordable housing so we know we're trying to reach a number that is uh okay with the fair share housing and it's okay with the court and at the same time get the the the developers to come in to build what they can within reason so that we do get some affordable units that's the that's the backstory to all of this but uh and as it came out was though that whatever our number is let's say it was I'm just making it up again let's say it was 70 and you know and the de developers are giving us 25 if if for example if the Housing Authority structure was uh part of the plan you know we could probably get another I don't know if it's in the letter I forget I wrot we could probably get another 20 or some unit credits for that half a unit for yeah so it doesn't affect anybody living here or anything like that it's just that the fair share housing will say well yeah now we know that those you know that it's open to the region so that we'll count that as as some of you you know coming towards your affordable housing credit and um you know it's a lot it's it's it's very complicated I you know there's a lot of numbers there's a lot of uh uh things that have been done by the courts in the past that have established certain procedures but you know for the Burrow's point of view the bottom line is we need to come up with a plan you know with these interveners and with the fair share housing that gets approved by the court and the whole idea is once it gets approved by the court then we're pretty much home free until the next round which means that then we can we can uh you know go back to our zoning ordinances we can you know say that this is what we want you know on Main Street or different areas and we won't have to worry about build the remedy suits coming in but then we also then at that point have to start with every other municipality in the state and dealing with the fourth round and that's even more complicated because the governor just passed a new law uh and the I shouldn't say the the governor signed a law that was passed by the legislature redoing the all the procedures for the fourth round so no one knows how that that's going to play out so um you know we're trying to get to the end of the third round which should have been done years ago uh but it wasn't so um you know we're stuck now to to try to come up with a with a way to uh get ourselves this the Judgment of repose they call it from the court which says that okay balmore is okay and we're not the only town you know in this predicament if you've read the Asbury Park Press or the co star every once in a while you'll see articles about some of our local towns that have you know affordable housing issues um and you know they're making agreements to do this they're making agreements to do that and that's all part of this process that the court has taken over um so it it's it's complicated and it's uh again it's a constitutional you know right so we can't just ignore it and say oh we don't want to do it thank you I'll send out the stuff week and then we'll on the next agenda I know there was a resolution attached to it I'll probably just put the resolution on the agenda for next meeting and then if there's any yeah our lawyers Redevelopment lawyers did the the resolutions and all that and they already know that there were two two um off the top of their heads they they knew there were two towns where they used they did this and they used the affordable housing trust fund Monies to to help out their their housing authorities um so that's where we're at and like I said if you you have questions you know try to uh Trot them down and whatever and I guess we'll your next meeting is in July July first Monday what what is that Monday though hold on I think the first isn't it um I don't know the calendar yeah the first so it'll be July 1 okay and I would say if anyone has any particular questions I don't know if they can funnel them through you or or the director or you can just send them to me directly this way we don't have to wait to the meeting you know if there's if there's a question that might be useful for everyone to have an answer to before the meeting okay sorry for giving you the whole history of the I have a question yes we have a question question for the question is this a public document can I find this um is this yeah this is a public document so I could maybe maybe just give me your email address and I'll send it to you I will do that okay thank you yeah I mean there's no there's no secrets here this is uh this is all public information so this is mostly the law and what what's going on so okay do we have access to she's going to send you oh you're not on the board no um Let me let me um let me get it to the board members first right any other members of the public I'm Maria raro your Council Leon I just wanted to thank um uh Paul and Mike and Ellen and all of the volunteers um who helped us with our spring cleanup we did a lot of weeding out in the front um we did get our soil samples that we sent off to Ruckers we did get that back apparently our soil is poor um so it that just means that we just need to come up with a plan I don't think it's going to be solved tomorrow um but it needs to not I don't have a green Thum has to look at the nutrients in the soil um and things that we might be able to fertilize it with so they they'll be a plan coming um and you know maybe the environmental commission can help us with it um another thing I just wanted to point out thank you mayor for coming um is that you know it's so hard to get funds um in and I know you're looking at a variety of ways to do that with you know Section 8 vouchers this is not SE Section 8 vouchers um this is separate this would be just opening up um instead of just Belmar residents getting that prior it it would be to all of your you know to Mercer Mammoth and ocean counties so it's a a little different your application process would remain the same what it would allow us to do and this is what the the mayor was saying anytime there's a development in town um they have to the developers have to pay or the builders have to pay um a percentage into an affordable housing trust fund and we could have been getting that in for years but we didn't but we are now now we're able to collect it because we are in negotiation we are making strides to be in compliance um and so I would love that we could use the funds that all of these developers are taking it you know advantage of of our beautiful Belmar you know and being able to say okay well let's use some of that for us right cuz we're you're already here um let's not wait years for you know federal grants or whatever it is that we need it would be faster not to say we don't still need the federal grants so that's my so thank you hi um I have a couple of good things I'd like to mention first of all I'd like to thank the people who worked uh to clean up project uh it looks great um it improves the curve appeal it makes this place look welcoming okay that's very very important for people who are looking driving by and they thinking oh I wonder if I want to send application in for someone in my family so that's very good and uh we but four beautiful garden um geranium Planters the Patriotic theme you can see them around the building that's great too so it take teamwork to do something that is great great Toc um yeah I want talked about it did some research on the retaining wall I spoke to Mike about it he was saying oh paint it but actually with a rare of German shme and this is a motor that they used to put on brick and it's very drawable laugh using years prob Outlast this building and um it doesn't peel it doesn't crack the only con about it is that is labor intensive so let get get some young kids over here volunteer to help with that um on May 30th Ellen and I aranged from up County Sheriff Office uh come here and take pH photo ID for emergency medical emergency and about 15 ten got through book shots and the cards will be mailed individually to them within two weeks so they'll get them about June 12th or so okay and then uh we talked about Improvement plan about a month ago two months ago we mentioned about getting comfortable chairs with the front patio today when I was walking I noticed beautiful chairs on F Avenue 204 pip Avenue black metal great condition the only thing they need is a SE and back cushion if they would be great I think I can go over and check out check them and pick them up okay else um one thing I want to thank the Commissioners who show up every month there are about four of you that come every month I thank you for coming because it shows that you care you're doing your civic duty it's very very important I noticed this every time I attend the meetings I'm saying where are the other Commissioners and uh I feel that if they don't have the time or they're not the I let someone else buil the SE okay thank you okay thank you Miss thank you missy anybody else any other comments let me come up front so everyone can hear this this is something positive there's usually not much positive here not that I'm complaining the other day um I work over DJs so uh when I come home at 3:00 in the morning I walk the building to make sure that everything's locked there's nobody in the hallway and that my friends my sweet lady friends here are all safe uh two days during a week or so ago I think Amy probably might have been here when I had to talk to Paul about this I found the door by the laundry room was not closing correctly so I thought that somebody might have put something in the lock this has happened in the past I've called the cops several times we tried to take care of this so it's kind of invisible because I don't want to create any more tension this already here so I went to Paul about it Paul walked with me to the door I opened it it showed him the problem I went to get a cappuccino by the time I got back here from having the cappuccino Not only was the door fixed but a whole new mechanism was installed so I want to let you guys know if you're worried about Paul being slow that's pretty dog on Fast and I think you guys need to remember that this man does care and so does Michael I know there's problems here that's between all of you but man that's quick so remember that thank you so if you become frightened with something if you think something is wrong these guys are busy guys there's a lot of pressure on them yes is and try to understand that you can't be every place at once but that's impressive I couldn't even you know I know a lot of people here I couldn't have got it done that quick know thank you Paul anybody else we have a motion to adjourn I'll second all in favor I all right thank you everybody have a nice night