##VIDEO ID:m0D0Q6svR3s## e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e I open the Bernard's Township committee meeting for August 13 2024 please stand for the flag salute flag States indice opening statement adequate notice of this meeting was posted on the bulletin board in the municipal building one call your lane Basking Ridge on the township website and email to the Burnsville news whipy The Courier News Bridgewater tap into net patch.com and filed with the Township Clerk on December 18 2023 any motion to go into closed session will include that matters discussed at such closed session will be disclosed to the public when such matters are finally determined and there is no further reason to prohibit the public from disclosures of information relating to such matters the meeting rules adopted by Township committee no new business will be introduced after 10:30 p.m. public comment will be accepted at all meetings speak will be limited to 5 minutes each all meetings will adjourn no later than 11:30 p.m. Christine may we have a roll call please miss duartte McCarthy here miss Fields here Mr MCN here mayor AC here and Mr Balman as excuse this evening thank you then that brings us to Executive session resolution 2024 d352 authorizing an executive session meeting of the burnard township committee regarding attorney client privilege litigation Harrison Brook Drive may have a motion to temporarily adjourn to Executive session so moved second chrisy roll call please Mr Arte McCarthy yes Miss Fields yes Mr MCN yes mayor AC yes motion carried e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e moving on to item number six presentations none this evening mayor then item seven any public work session none this evening any reports none any correspondence none this evening May then that brings us to public comment comments are welcomed during the public comment period during this meeting on any agenda item or other matter over which the township committee has jurisdiction however if an ordinance is listed for its own public hearing on the agenda please hold your comments for that particular public hearing hearing the public comment portion of the agenda is not structured as a question and answer session but offers an opportunity to share your thoughts with the township committee the committee may or may not address the comments during the meeting however all comments are considered to address this body the speaker must come forward to the microphone and state his or her name and address for the record each speaker is limited to 5 minutes the clerk will keep time please promptly yield the floor when time is called and return to your seat your cooperation adherence to these Rules of Order will ensure an order and orderly and respectful meeting I open public comment came in just in time John Crane from 39 Decker Street um like to make a recommendation on uh we passed the tree ordinance I think it was June 10th of uh and the uh I understand there's quite a quite the demand for permits right now much is two per per day um for fortunately they they did a Township Rec a Township guidance for the permit U that that appeared to be the first week of August um the concern I have it it references our our ordinance which is e360 and the e360 only gets updated my understanding every six months so they're referencing an ordinance so if a homeowner goes to that ordinance the e360 is going to show our old cha tree ordinance so what I'd recommend in the engineering part where it says documents or forms that we actually put the ordinance my understanding is that we do have the ordinance on our web page the front page but if somebody's looking for that they might not see that part so um in the also the the uh tree removal permit we should put a link right on that so if somebody's looking that they can go right to the ordinance and also the tree uh guidance document should also have a tab on that that goes directly to our new ordinance and I would suggest uh an ordinance that this ordinance will affect about 5,000 homeowners that weren't affected before so I think there's going to be a lot of demand based on what I hear before so I'd like to make it easier for the homeowners to find that ordinance instead of being misled by the old ordinance that's on the 360 documents um I also like to uh thank the volunteers that are on agenda at all our Volunteers in the township and I'm very appreciative all the township committee people they work very hard too hard I think from f for based on their family members they they the family members sacrifice sacrifice quite a bit but thank you for your dedication thank Youk thank you thank you anyone else the title Stein Riv Side Drive um two things I've noticed lately the last two weeks at least on days that we're putting the garbage out which was a Monday the street cleaning truck would come down a couple hours later while there's still garbage cans still on the street and my suggestion is somebody could speak to somebody in public works and align the street cleaning not to be done on in areas where they're going to have garbage cans out doesn't make sense you're not going to get to the curb with those garbage cans out there and they'll be you know like my area it's Monday and Thursday so there's three other days they could get in that area of town and I think Mo lot of the town maybe it's just a coincidence but I noticed at least twice um other thing is um since there's a problem with people having to package just Stone off their um front walks and stuff like that maybe we get the police department to speak to representatives of um let's say um Federal Express ups and Amazon and see if we get them to put cameras in facing backwards and maybe if there's an area where we're having a problem we can see if there's a car that's actually following them in the area and would assist in identifying these um thieves and that's all I have for you tonight thank you thank you anyone else seeing none then I will close public comment moving on to staff comments Township committee comments and board leas on reports Pat would you like to start please uh thank you mayor I just wanted to welcome a couple Personnel appointments uh Carla pen funes uh PD senior records and uh specialist and uh Philip Kea is the fire prevention part-time inspector and then also congrats to officer Olivia strama on uh being the police department liaison to the deer management advisory committee so that's all I have there thank you thank you Christie none this evening thank you mayor we'll come back to Mr Bardo um Anna sure thank you mayor I wanted U also Echo Pat in welcoming our new hires Carla I think aena funes and Philip Kika uh it's wonderful that we continue to bring talent to our community and also adding congratulations also to officer Olivia strama on her appointment to the deer management committee and then the upcoming appointments to our fire company the Bas kingridge fire company which will follow our comments to Gary badish and CLA King and thanking them for that service and then just a couple of things because our the boards that I serve on mayor have not met uh we do have a shade tree Commission meeting tomorrow evening and Mr Crane I'll bring your recommendations to that meeting um and also from what we talked about at the environmental commission meeting and also thanks to our Police Department uh we know we were all very saddened that we were not able to have National Night Out it was a very prudent decision because of what ensued after you know had several inches of rainfall but nonetheless uh you know there's a lot of planning that goes into that event we had uh talked about it at our last meeting and so we just wanted thank the police department for their leadership and their role um in that Community effort as well as differently their leadership and role in the investigation and arrest of five defendants in connection with home and motor vehicle burglaries um and I was sharing that this just evidence of not only the effectiveness of our police department but also the township committee's decision to invest in new technology so that being said uh that is all for this evening thank you thank you Andrew yes thank you um with regards to U Mr Crane's comment on ensuring that the tree ordinance is prominently displayed um in places where people are likely to go looking for it I think that's a fine idea and I will uh run that down to ensure that that's there I think as everyone is aware uh that ordinance is a creature of a uh njd mandate it's not something that we would have done on our own and hadn't up until this mandate required us to do so so um uh certainly that's uh but nonetheless the law is the law and so we'll make sure that people can see that prominently displayed um I'd also like to um uh mention that uh this past weekend I and some of my colleagues here uh visited the bassing rdge fire company for their annual picnic it was a great opportunity to get to talk to uh the members over there and celebrate all the great work that that the firefighters and EMTs uh at basking Bridge uh do for all of us um I'd further like to um uh salute the police department for their great work on recent arrests as my colleague Anna had just mentioned um and further uh with regards to Police Department would like to reference uh something that we'll be voting on uh it's on the consent agenda and I'm content to have it stay there but I did want to point it out um resolution 202 24-0 338 uh which uh provides for the retention of the special law enforcement officers who uh will be at our schools for the upcoming year um this is a continuation of the you know historic uh uh meaning of the minds that we had last year with the Board of Ed to ensure that each and every one of our public schools has an armed police officer in it um so I'm very pleased to see that obviously this is going to continue I think it's extremely important and uh I'd like to um just salute the police department for their leadership in that regard that's all I have mayor thank you Janice thank you mayor um it's been a quiet summer with my boards and commissions also um but I would like to announce that Liberty Corner Fire food truck festival will be Sunday August 25th from 11: to 6 at the uh at the firehouse house and you can go online to the Liberty Corner uh fire company's webbsite to purchase tickets thank you mayor great thank you so I have some um announcements um so on July the 31st um it was a real privilege to get to recognize the PBP PVP pool staff it was lifeguard appreciation day so um thanks to again Jen Gander for helping to pull that together and celebrating not only our lifeguards that um do do saves and and help protect our especially our children um but also all of those that work at the pppp including the customer service folks and and maintenance folks so it was a great event um I also was disappointed along with my children around the National Night Out but nonetheless um some elements will be pulled into the um mayor's Fall Festival so all of that really great planning and work that went into that um that essentially got washed out some of it will be resurrected in in some forms at the uh mayor's Fall Festival on October the 5th so more to come on that but again thank you to uh our police force and all of the organizations that they pulled together um I also wanted to Echo it was a privilege to get to spend time with the basket bridge fire company um thanking all of those amazing volunteers and their families um for in their free time protecting us and um doing what they do best so it was a real honor um a couple updates related to Fabrica Bernards so um we just earlier today hosted our first new Resident welcome and website orientation so um this was something we hadn't done before and uh we thought it would be a nice thing for those that are new to town um to introduce ourselves and to answer questions they may have and to share some of the great things and my Shameless plug I really would love folks to get on the smart 911 alert system so they can get the important updates from our from directly from the town so um thank you to my colleagues for joining um and meeting those wonderful residents one Brave family oh my goodness have been here like three weeks and have like a newborn so um again it's just wonderful to to meet our new our new members and we look forward to seeing them um in upcoming events um pivoting to small business owners um I enjoyed dropping in um at the of the brba session this morning their meeting and again I continue to go door too and I bring up everywhere I go about the state grants again trying to get our businesses as a part of you know economic development for our community I shared before um another topic the U BCAA the mid-autumn festival is September 14th from 2: to 4: at the Pleasant Valley Park um one other fun thing that I've been doing behind the scenes is um in the spirit of Economic Development and and the film commission I've had the privilege to meet with three different Scouts touring them of 10 sites within our town for potential major motion picture uh locations so fingers crossed and uh we're waiting to hear and if there when we can communicate something we will I don't want to jinx it um but it's been a lot of fun and um it's really cool to see the town through their eyes um so it's been a great thing October the 5th so um the mayor's Fall Festival is a wonderful program that I believe our deputy mayor started um Janice fields and that is two to five now something that's new this year and I'm very proud to share that in the morning we are adding a 5k thanks to the generous leadership for parents of exceptional children our PEC group their leadership is going to run a 5k the PEC run with me 5K and all proceeds will be donated to our house so this is a wonderful thing special needs children and adults are important within our community and here's a perfect example of how important we feel that it is so the town is proud to partner with this organization more to come on this but not that is not only the highlight of that day um we will also do a fun run um related to that um but we will also then have a sensory friendly mayor's Fall Festival so we will have a special program for those folks um so they are able to participate in wonderful activities and then we will turn over to the regular program that we've done for years so again a huge thank you to peek um and all of the Town departments that are going to make all of this happen in short order uh with Jen Gander uh Department of Public Works and the police department because we are going to have to shut down a road or two uh to make this happen and but again grateful to our Township staff for their openness and to ensure that we have again continued um demonstration of inclusivity within our within our town another great thing to share uh that we just landed thanks to Christie um we are doing our business certification Workshop so partnering with the brba is going to take place on October the 8th at 9:00 a.m. so more to come on that and last but not least another awesome thing that we are announcing here on October the 10th at 6:30 we are hosting a program currently called connected Minds protected Hearts discussion and strategies for managing youth smartphone and social media use so in short we care about all of our youth and we are aware there's a recent book that's been published the anxious Generation Um has created a spirited discussion as to what is the role and impact of smartphones apps social media on our youth we are partnering with many groups including our library um our department uh health department and the Board of Education um I have also outreached to all of our private schools within the burnard Township community and our legislators this event that we are doing is going to be Solutions oriented this is for all parents of all children that care about their kids on this topic and we are going to discuss Solutions so we have invited Congressman Cain from a federal perspective to talk about Federal legislation on this topic as well as state leadership our state senator and our Assembly women are also coming and we're going to talk about State legislation and we as um residents we are going to talk about what we as parents want to do on this topic so this is an action-oriented discussion and we will leave that with things that we are going to do again in conjunction with the Board of Ed the Board of Ed is going to do a topic on September the 9th so this is a coordinated effort amongst all of these groups they're going to do a wonderful program on on September the 9th that's going to talk about some of the uh data and and um insights into the issues we're not discussing issues we're going to talk Solutions so I'm really excited and very grateful to all of our partners that we're going to pull this off and we're going to come up with good solutions to protect our children then moving forward um other fun things understanding Bernards not to forget Sean is going to present on September the 26th at 700 p.m. uh don't forget the townwide yard sale is coming September the 7th so keep your stuff ready and and get ready to pull those out all that information is on our website as well as the organizations that you can donate to after um this sale is over that will be happy to welcome your donations we are very proud to um continue the tradition of the September 11th ceremony that solemn ceremony that is going to take place again at Harry Dunham park at 6 pm. we look forward to um conducting that ceremony and a couple other updates safety as been mentioned perhaps you've seen in the news there have been multiple press releases from Somerset County we are very pleased with the highlight of the wonderful work of our burner Township Police Department the the Bol officers the detectives and the police leadership and as Anna said we're very pleased with the technical Investments that we've made um I also met with the Somerset Hills Public Safety Committee even last week and and we are continuing to share information that will assist all of the Somerset Hills towns great conversation that we have around sharing resources and um again coming together to protect all of the Somerset Hills towns and last but not least the electrical power outage concerns that have been happening in Bernard's Township we haven't forgotten um and I just wanted you to know that I continue to be in contact um we were pleasantly surprised that the uh the lack of the significant impact I think we were bracing for something especially last week um and uh you know I tried to communicate information around the the steps that jcpnl took um and I think luckily Mother Nature was a little Kinder than what we were bracing for which we very much welcomed but I want to ensure that everyone knows that um I continue the engagement with jcpnl we're waiting on a couple things one of those is the reliability Engineers conducting their reli ability investigations um these investigations are going to be very thorough they've been a little bit delayed because they've been buried by dealing with the the issues with the weather so um we're still waiting for those separately one of our awesome residents has over three decades of experience in the field and provided nine technical questions so instead of holding a public forum for folks to grill jcpnl we're using more of a um diplom atic opportunity where folks can we have a very uh someone who really understands the field to give some very pointed questions so we're waiting for information back on those questions um because that will also help get to the Crux of the issue and last but not least I am meeting with JC pel later this week um and talking about the status of all these as well as Communications that will be coming forward so please know that um you know we very much do care and are concerned around our electric um service reliability and we'll continue to partner and work closely with jcpnl to help ensure that we have what we need so that is I apologize for all those but you know everybody says the summer is slow but I don't know it seems like we got a lot of great stuff going on so love it and it's shaping up to be an awesome fall so before I move to the next topic Mr Bardo did you have any comments that you'd like to share I do not mayor thank you perfect if that then she let's move on to Fire and Rescue appointments please resolution 2024 d334 appointment to membership in Township of Bernard's volunteer first aid Squad of the Basking rdge Fire Company number one gari badish full member may I have a motion please so moved second Christie roll call please mrte McCarthy yes Miss Fields yes Mr MCN yes mayor AC yes motion carried thank thank you so for your service and moving to the next please resolution 2024 350 appointment to membership in Township of burnard's volunteer first aid Squad of Bas bridge fire company number one CLA King full member may have a motion please so moved second Christy roll call please miss DTE McCarthy yes Miss Fields yes Mr MCN yes mayor AC yes motion carried thank you and welcome aboard moving to the next topic please unfinished business ordinance 2563 accepting a reparan Zone conservation easement and a detention Basin drainage and access easement on property located at 204 morrestown road block 501 Lot 10 Z from Barbara Rogers vum Country Day School and this is a public hearing I open the public hearing and welcome comments seeing no movement I will close the public hearing may I have a motion I move that ordinance 2563 be adopted and advertised by required by law second Christy roll call please Mr RTE McCarthy yes Miss Fields yes Mr MCN yes mayor AC yes motion carried thank you then that brings us to new business and the consent agenda the items listed within the consent agenda portion of the meeting have been referred to the township committee for reading and study are posted on the agenda on the website are considered routine and will be enacted by one motion of the township committee with no separate discussion if separate discussion is required the item may be removed from the agenda by Township Committee Action and placed on the regular agenda under new business would anyone like an item removed from the consent agenda then may have a motion so moved second chrisy roll call please miss DTE McCarthy yes Miss Fields yes Mr MCN yes mayor AC yes motion carried thank you and that brings us to approval of minutes July 23rd 2024 Open Session minutes I have a motion please so move second all in favor I I executive session none further this evening mayor then that brings us to adjournment may have a motion so moved second