and good evening everyone and welcome to the township council meeting for March 25th 2024 everyone please rise if you can as we salute America with our Pledge of Allegiance remain standing for a moment of personal reflection I pledge Ali to the flag of the United States of America to the stands Nation God indivisible andice thank you P clerk Miss lawful please call roll and announce our statement of adequate notice Council M Hall here councilman wendal here councilwoman Winston here councilwoman zi here counc president president maoy here also present mayor BR Cohen here administrator Joseph kulo here and Township attorney Anthony aoka here adequate notice of this meeting has been provided as required under chapter 231 Public Law 1975 by specifying the time date location and to the extent known the agenda by posting a copy on the bulletin board located in the main lobby of the East Brunswick Municipal Building providing a copy to the home News Tribune and the as Park Press newspapers posting a copy on the Township's website and by filing a copy in the office of the Township Clerk which will be entered into the minutes thank you Council you have before you resolution 24 hyphen 108 adopting our meeting minutes from 314 2024 may I have a motion motion to approve second second any questions or Corrections on these minutes seeing none Township Clerk please call a rooll council member Hall yes Council Wendell yes councilwoman Winston yes councilwoman zimi yes and council president makoy yes thank you we have another resolution of recognition honoring and accepting the retirement of Sergeant John Breen resolution 24109 may I have a motion second second roll call please councilman ball yes councilman Wendell yes councilwoman Winston yes councilwoman zigi yes and council president magy yes councilwoman Winston would you please read into the record the uh resolution absolutely resolution honoring and accepting the retirement of Sergeant John Breen whereas Sergeant John Breen submitted written notification to the township of East brunic that he will retire from the East brunic Police Department effective April 1st 2024 and whereas on December 23rd 1996 Sergeant Breen began his career with the township of East bruk as a police officer he was later promoted to Sergeant on February 1st 2022 a position from which he retires effective April 1st 2024 and whereas throughout his 27 years of service to the township he demonstrated exemplary characteristics to the township of East brunic through his worth e ethics dedication leadership team spirit and enthusiasm to his duties be it resolved by the township Council of the township of East Brunswick that Sergeant Breen's retirement is hereby accepted with an effective date of April 1st 2024 be it further resolved by the mayor and Township Council of the township of East Brunswick that they hereby extend their sincere and grateful appreciation to Sergeant Breen for his 27 years of dedication and outstanding service to the township of East Brunswick congratulate him on his well earned retirement and wish him happiness and good health in the years to come counc president please M councilman Wendell John's been John John is a lifelong resident oh sorry John's a lifelong resident of East brunic um known the family since late 70s and uh his father was a police officer in town and his retirement will be greatly missed by the residence of East bronic he was a dedic ated East brunic resident and you know grew up in East brunic so I mean he he knew the town he knew the people and he knew what he was doing so while I wish him the best of luck it will be uh you know there will be something missing here thank you coun Council we have second reading regarding ordinance 244 C Clerk you please read an ordinance of the township of East Brunswick adopting an amended Route 18 Corridor Redevelopment plan dated November 23 in accordance with njsa 48 col 12 a-7 motion to adopt second second any discussion or points of clarification um just one thing council president yes councilman last meeting I believe it was we had a presentation by by the redeveloper um and and uh in regard to the changes and um the Redevelopment agency has adopted a resolution to put this forth to council to you know uh indicating that that the Redevelopment agency approves of this and requesting that the township approve of it so we'll be moving forward right councilman Wendell certainly certainly exciting time here in East Brunswick a roll call please oh I'm sorry oh we have to open this up to the public is anyone from the public wish to chat or speak to the council president on this matter and this matter only and seeing then we'll close the public portion may we roll call now thank you councilman vahal yes councilman um Wendell yes councilwoman Winston yes councilwoman zii yes council president mavo yes we can move on to our report section uh mayor con thank you council president just a couple things first as everybody in town should know we have um been in the process of wrapping uh and rolling out our uh new solid waste and recycling program and um despite some complaints on social media but by and large uh I believe that it's gone very well and most people are extremely happy with the the look of the of the new the garbage cans it's going to be a way in which we can uh I believe keep the community a lot cleaner uh a lot less cans and material blowing throughout the town from receptacles that don't have tops uh the schedule is pretty easy to follow uh there is still a little bit of a problem with some residents adapting to some of the rules even tonight as a councilman noticed on his way here there are people who have two garbages out they've got recycling out that's not going to be collected till when Wednesday but with their regular garbage in it if you put garbage to the side uh of the uh Township provided receptacles that will not be picked up you get one solid waste one Recycling and that's it not any of the stuff on the side the arms will not pick that up um yesterday um I mean Saturday uh unfortunately we had made commitment to pick up extra the garbage cans that people didn't want to use as long as they wrote the were trash on it but as we all know we had a deluge of rain and a lot of our DPW people were sidetracked to handling some of those issues uh but the rest of that was picked up uh today and and then I believe next week they'll be doing the south side of the township for those individuals that want that pick their garbage cans picked up uh so I think it's just going to be a little bit of adjustment for the township and all of us to get used to this new schedule um give it a couple weeks and I I think will be uh in in a really good place and most people will have picked up what the rules are um it's one receptacle for each family but Solid Waste as you know is picked up twice a week There's virtually no town that I know of that already does the automatic uh arms that does uh more than that in fact most do less most do garbage pickup once a week in the in the large bin and only get one bin so we're going to see how things go for a couple of months but but um we're going to stick to the um plan and that is one recycling bin one solid waste uh for each household what we have incidentally found in the process of doing this is that there's a lot of people that requested a second one because they're renting out their home and the town didn't know about that so now we do so uh so that was not a really smart thing if you're not renting as a legal two family house or or rental um so now those things are being cleared up with the township as well because we didn't know about them uh as you all know uh Saturday was a really uh big rain issue for the township I believe New Jersey statistics it said it was with in that same period of time the third largest amount of rain in the last 10 years what that ends up doing is it puts a incredible strain on the storm water system here in town and there will be some areas in town many of which we are already familiar with and the Township's DPW Department goes out and makes sure all of the storm drains are cleaned throughout the town but despite all those effort despite cleaning out some of the the drains themselves when you get that amount of water in that short a period of time it often overpowers the system uh which was never designed to be able to collect that much water and people will end up getting some flooding most of the time it's in predictable parts of town sometimes not um but those are not things that we can predict that's not something that the township can come in and redo all the Water Systems because of a once in a 100e type of flooding that can occur those most of the time will drain and unfortunately as many of you know February has been a really incredibly rainy month so the ground is already soggy and wet to begin with and now you have this massive amount of rain the systems just were not ever designed to handle that um but I'm just asking again people to be patient normally what will happen is even in those areas the the systems will catch up and it will uh eventually drain uh and uh and the town does a a pretty good job ahead of time making sure that we catch all these things uh but again there's going to be rare events and this was one of them where no matter how good of a collecting system you have the amount of rain just overpowers it and eventually we just have to wait for that to go down um other than that um no nothing else really new on the town side so I thank you council president thank you mayor our business administrator Mr Chris kulo uh just to elaborate with what the mayor stated before thanks to DPW for they were out Friday late clearing any problem areas did a tremendous job I was coming home on the parkway on Saturday they were literally using snow plows to get the water off the ramps I mean there were was that much accumulation so special thanks to them and to iws that was trying to go around pick up the old garbage canins they had I communicated with them today they had tremendous participation they had a lot of people that were in the program that some people not only that left their own garbage can but that can had garbage in it in those cases um when there was a bag in it they politely took it out and put it on the lawn and and took the old thing and you know resident has to put it out in their automated container cuz Saturday was really for just getting rid of the old can um the the cans themselves or carts let's call them carts because that's what they are they're for residential purposes only residents uh there were some small businesses that were running out of some places on Cranberry Road and stuff like that um they don't get carts these are our contract went out it was specifically for residential pickup specifically for the amount of residents that we have in town as the mayor alluded to we've had uncovered some places that they are in violation they'll get zoning violations from the zoning officer some of them were legal uh two family or three family establishments those are the places where you'll see you know uh one Whatever Revit Avenue ab and see there'll be three cans there because some residents are calling in and say my neighbor's got three cans it's just not true what it is it's either three official residential units on a given property that's been already approved by the zoning board or in some cases they're just two family houses and they might be in the middle of a development um in those cases there's many ways that we certify that there are many cases where on the books was a two family and uh they weren't paying two sewer bills so guess what they are now paying two sewer bills as a two family establishment for each of the units so as the mayor alluded to uh we are recovering that so we don't pick up the board of EDS garbage anymore we don't pick up anybody's garbage everybody is kind of on the on their own we're in the residential garbage uh pickup in the carts that is our agreement where iws um those establishments that need to uh get garbage uh service most of them or that we knew of were mailed letters early in the year to establish their own uh pickup uh there's been a couple of cases where uh they called in we referred someone over to Mr Baker's office before his retirement and he has handled those and those people have established their own collection so it was the Hot Topic um of the town for a while people don't realize that uh for this current year uh it costs uh $262.50 per residential unit Plus on top of that is the cost of the carts which are $70 each and then the disposal tonnage fee so it's a fair amount of money on each one of those carts so that's why people are not getting two other businesses aren't getting any it's resident IAL pickup only um and that's all I got to say tonight just clarification on with the school please mayor right with the public schools the public schools were always charged for garbage under our contract the township would charge them in the past we had not always been good charging them our annual increase but the schools were always charged uh for for garbage the difference this year is we stuck to our contract with iws and we're only doing residential pickup so the schools were asked to get their own contractor this year but it's not true that the the schools were always paying um they didn't get a free ride for garbage thank you mayor thank you mayor thank you Mr Chris koua our Township attorney Mr AA coka there's uh nothing to report at this time counc president thank you our Township Clerk M laul nothing to report council president uh a group that I forgot at our last meeting I did to believe Township councel nothing anything to report okay moving moving on let's move on to our public portion of the meeting Mr laul can you please read our public uh comment statement the public comment portion of our meeting is to allow the public to bring to the council's attention their concerns or comments in accordance with njsa 10 col 4-2a and the East Brunswick rules of council the council ask ask the public to limit their comments to 5 minutes or less at the conclusion of the statements or questions from a member of the public the council president at his or her discretion may choose to respond not respond or ask the administration to respond [Music] um H hit your mic did you just turn it off yes is it is it working can you bring that microphone a little bit closer and and read that public read that statement again sure you're more than welcome the public comment portion of our meeting is to allow the public to bring to the council's attention their concerns or comments in accordance with njsa 10 col 4-2a and the East Brunswick rules of council the council asks the public to limit their comments to five minutes or less at the conclusion of the statements or questions from a member of the public the council president at his or her discretion may choose to respond not respond ask the administration to respond thank you is there anyone who would like to address the council president when you come up to the podium please state your name uh spell your last name and give us your address am I on the mic or you're good okay I'm here about the um can we get your name and could you spell Force Howard malcin M K i n and Mr malcin your address 22 sagore Lane is my home okay in East Brunswick thank you Mike is regarding my property in East Brunswick at number one Ruth R Street I received finally a notice that there's a Redevelopment going on the way on Route 18 and it will take either some or all of my property at number one lot 6.02 I have a business there I I have an objection to that happening there at that site I'd like to know what we can do about it and I'd like to stop whatever is going to happen from happening and you're on the corner of 18 and Ruth is that where number one is that's my corner Mr Mr wandell can you comment on that as chairman of Redevelopment agency this Redevelopment plan that is is being or was adopted tonight is not involving any of your property it says specifically no block 6.02 that's my block I don't know um would you like to a look at at the map it does not it does not include any of the property in area one which is what your property is your property is area one we are talking about area 2A and 3A in this um about 1A well area one is including 1A but it is not part of part of any Redevelopment plan that is in place well we have a Redevelopment plan in place for that that those properties but there is no redeveloper and there's no um not according to the papers I have [Applause] here Mr Chris gulo can you chime in on this or as I'm looking at it is in an area in need of Redevelopment that was designated years ago the the the changes don't affect that area but 1A and so on was put into the Redevelopment Zone many years ago but this this particular Redevelopment plan does not affect that area no this updated plan doesn't affect that area but it is in an area in need of Redevelopment correct has been for years what what is the new plan but it affects all the property not on root not on your side of the root Street they haven't done anything for your property at all mayor my there's been no discussions I'm looking at your papers I'm telling you your property is in a Redevelopment Zone that was designated many years ago but the Redevelopment plan that's being that was adopted here and was amended just tonight does not involve your property and therefore anything else on that side of the street which includes the firehouse okay that's where Miss Winter's home is on your side of the property and I think there is one one house correct me if I'm wrong Mr Wendell in between the firehouse and your property that house is not cor that is not not not being affected by this we are looking at an amended plan it only takes block 6.02 and I do believe as you've heard from a couple of people up here it's referencing what was established 2015 pre me as mayor uh no or or is it all on you is it all during you I'm just looking at it I'm trying to get think we changed the designation to Redevelopment was done mayor stall 2015 as a non- condemnation Redevelopment Zone changed to a condemnation Redevelopment Zone but the Redevelopment plan here um only applies to the properties that are not yours it pro all of the properties in what we call 2A and 3A which is not your property what about onea that is not part of you're you're part of a Redevelopment Zone that might be why you're lot and block number is listed but any of the changes that are involved in this uh Amendment do not involve your property at all okay not from what we see here you've already been Des designated as an area in need a Redevelopment approximately 5 years ago yet nothing has happened that is correct and now we are in a phase of redoing the plan and the plan does not affect anything on the souths side of Ruth Street well if that's true I I just need it in writing it is in writing that's what yes it is look at the plan that that's mapped out for you is any of it involve your property I just had an attorney to look this over you could you could you're welcome you're welcome to hire an attorney you're welcome to have your attorney talk to ours but but but be assured that this Redevelopment Amendment does not involve your property if it involved your property we would have had to talk to you we can't just come in and take your property well that was my thought well but that's not happening certy to be clear you're still in an area in need of Redevelopment that that status has not changed correct but that was designated before covid okay what does that mean now that's all I'm going to say on the topic uh if you want to come up afterwards I'll show you the map which is in this um document that they agreed on and the area of Redevelopment that is being altered or amended does not show your property and I could show that to you but I'm more than will willing to do that after the council meeting it does not extend well that's okay street but according to this these papers and 1A is is marked very clearly on here cuz you're part of a Redevelopment Zone but we've not put any plan in place for that piece of property I I don't I don't want to belabor this we're saying the same thing about five times now what if that plan gets put in place there is no plan there is no plan right not at this time and if there is a plan it would have to be discussed with you right okay I'd be glad I'd be glad to see that with you okay okay certainly and if you're not happy with that sir you could you can set up an appointment for you to come in if you feel that the uh that the documentation is not enough so I guess I guess you're next I guess yes and you are uh my name is Alex trakman 47 spell the last name t r a k h m a m and your address Mr 47 doorchester Drive in his Bron thank you uh good evening Mr President Mr Mayor dear Council um I'm here to ask your help in uh repairing of L Park tennis courts it's my second time coming in here I had numerous calls with the park department for second year those tennis courts are unusable and no one can give me an answer when it's going to be fixed or repaired or replaced so that's that's the comment the tennis courts are not in place no they in place they just in dis repair okay for second year and you tried calling the I tried Parks par Parks and Rec Department yes with the Mike rner Mr Ryner with Ryner and he said as of right now there is no plans okay to do so um I sent email to Mr the mayor okay I didn't get an answer probably because he doesn't have an answer yet uh so I'm here in person asking uh if anybody has an answer when is going okay the answer would be give Mr uh Mr Ryner another call okay when it's tomorrow anywhere after I'm sure they come in to work at nine o'clock okay give Mr ryer a call you think you're going to have an answer tomorrow for me I would hope so okay because I use my name council president McAvoy okay thank you so much you're welcome good evening good evening glad to answer that Mr President if you'd like to I think the you want a clarification Mr CH Mr chis there's a capital uh Improvement plan that was put forth by Mr Ryner that went to the recreation parks advisory committee uh there's issues over in that particular park because we dealing with this South River river that comes up behind it which is a Tidal Basin that expands and contracts uh these courts have been a problem simply because the tide comes in and could heave it and drop it and it's cracking so uh they tried a new product of mats a couple years ago um which also had failed this is the park that we discussed approximately a month ago uh when uh councilwoman Zeki presented to you all that we were looking to put a uh apply for a grant for a million dollars to make a fully handicapped accessible Park and playground over there which is in the front of the property that's not affected by the title changes so there's uh water that comes in it freezes it thaws it cracks the courts uh at this particular time we did not feel that was on the list because we have plenty of tennis courts throughout the remainer of the town and this would be like throwing uh good money against something that's bad it it could potentially happen again because the way the tide Works uh with the amount of rain that we had on Saturday it came all the way up so at this particular point in time there's no way to install drainage or anything anything else there and with our limited Capital that we can do this year which includes the Cricut fields and the lighting and everything else uh we we're not sure what we're going to do there yet uh after we applied for the Federal grant for the uh fully cap handicap accessible uh uh playground so at this point in time we're not going to do anything because from an engineering standpoint uh it just does doesn't make sense because it's just going to happen again so if it was your own property you probably wouldn't do it either it just be like throwing money out the window but we got plenty enough tennis courts and and pickle ball courts throughout uh the municipality as you know you've been gracious enough to resurface quite a few of them uh over the last year but that Park uh is problematic there's huge reads that grow in marshlands um and I invite you all to take a ride over there take a look at it uh the way the title works there it's a a rough environment and uh that's why they haven't been repaired um that's all I got thank you Mr Cula Mr trackman you come back to the microphone please I may yeah sure when Mr trackman comes up just one second cman Wendell um and to your point Mr culo um we have been extremely diligent over the past seven to 10 years on this Council in repairing and trying different methods at different uh tennis facilities within our Parks we've done over bis sentonio Park we've replaced all of Country Lane Park we replaced Community Park all of those tennis courts are brand new you know I say brand new because they're probably only five to seven years old um this one was a different method we tried first to try to get a replaced surface at a much more economical price we realized after a period of time that that was not the method to go we tried other methods which were much more expensive and um and they mayor KH yeah I mean and Mike's been spending a lot of time while he has lots of parks throughout the township that he has to take care of trying to work with uh the different contractors to W establish what it was that caused the problem to begin with because you can't figure out how to fix a problem if you don't know what the problem is to begin with and all of the companies can't come up with a real good answer for why it's happening and nobody so far has been able to promise that it won't happen again so the township before they reinvesting in that Park needs to determine whether or not that's even doable and it might just simply be that the a tennis uh court at that site isn't really doable we may need to do something else but to keep throwing money away when each method that we've tried has failed is is um just a waste of money thank you mayor con Mr trackman thank you so much for answering me so quickly um I do hold hold engineering degree myself in the last 15 years that I have used those tenis courts water never I don't remember ever water would come close to those tenis courts so I don't know where do you have a data that they got FL ground under the ground it's under the ground yes so but it doesn't cover the courts no it's under the ground so it's freezes and thaws and freezes and thaws and it keeps causing cracks and bubbles and they've actually seen some retraction and expansion of the court that even the um uh the person who put it down has never seen anywhere else okay I see I understand thank you so much I just want to let you know that those courts represent 20% of of the courts in this bronic yeah we we we know we don't want to lose courts but we're not going to waste money either I I understand I I'm not asking you to throw money away but no one ever gave me this complete answer as I had it today so thank you so much I hope we can find solution to fix those courts thank you you're welcome do anyone else wish to take the podium and speak with the council president please Mr mayor council Mr President Tom inran Deerfield Road um I had somebody come over my house this morning to check my water meter um she checked it out and I was reading cin something like that old commment and she says something's wrong with your meting we can't read it so she your bill would be $660 so something was wrong so she gave me a card to call and um I called the number up to come in tomorrow between 10 and 12 to check out the wiring to the outside reading and um so let's hope that fixes it uh the other thing was um as far as like a spring cleanup with leaves and twigs what do we do with that did you answer that for me I H do we Mr Chris G as always the third week in the each month is Twig pickup so you got to cut them in 4 foot length that can't be greater than 50 pounds and you call DPW and they'll come out and retrieve those uh branches and so on and then they they mulch them up and they put them in in the pile some people utilize them sometimes we use them in Parks or whatever um leaf pickup is generally a fall uh type of activity but you're more than help welcome to bring those over to the recycle center and put it in the receptacle because we want to make sure they don't get it in the landfill that they go in the leaf piles to get turned over and returned into top soil and Mulch and so on so if we put leaves in the bed we got to bring them down ourselves or would they pick it up no you you'd have to break them down putting them in a b and yeah and we're encouraging people especially this year there's been a lot of summiters on this is mulch your lawn mulch it there's no need to bag it likewise with leaves if you only have a little bit of leaves on the lawn especially over the winter they've decayed they make great good fer great fertilizer if you just run them over I don't put anything in my trash just run them over and it makes good fertilizer shrubs and everything I that they still have some you know yeah I understand okay the other thing was about six or eight weeks ago I asked a question to that EPA person he never got back to me so if you could try to find out no just I put that in your lap that that's the the uh information that my wife put together for you he doesn't you keep call annoy I've spoke to Mr gr okay you if you want me to answer his question please uh you call the environmental division of the health department that's not anything that's regulated by the health department EPA I thought it was no it was the middlex County Health Department you called WR number so it's it's not regulated there's they believe there's no cause for concern of efus from a charging station so but the the gentleman that you're calling he tried to explain to you that they don't measure that it's the but you we're calling the Health Department all right but he never got back to me I called a couple times and oh get and when I saw Mr gross I asked him and he gave me that answer I I didn't realize he didn't call you back okay but that's his answer it's not regulated oh all right as far as bulk pickup that's is that the second weekend uh second pickup of the week you got a call you got a call right but they still will pick up both they'll give you a date okay that's what I want to know I did that already just want to make sure so right you call the number they'll give you a date the first available date on the schedule you'll get if it works for you and then they'll come and pick it up it's been working quite my neighb is askam me so I'm just going to tell them moment I heard thank you very much you're welcome Mr inini anyone else wishing to come to the podium seeing none let's close the public portion and resolution 24 110 which requires a separate vote Miss lawful please read resolution requesting approval for authorizing an emergency temporary Appropriations in accordance with njsa 48 col 4-20 may I have a motion motion to adopt second second Mr culo clarification uh we're rolling into the fourth fourth month I'm sorry we're rolling into the fourth month of the year if you remember at the beginning of the year um our finance department put together a temporary budget for the first three months and we amended some things in U early March Angel Abes is his group put that together and this is to get us at least through the next quarter I believe and um this is because we don't have an adopted budget tonight we're introducing the budget and then the budget will be sent to the state for a review and then we'll adopt it probably sometime last meeting in April or so and then at that point if it's approved by the council then we'll go on to a permanent budget but this is just so we have enough money to continue operating until our uh budget is uh approved by the state and approved by this Council thank you any further discussion on this seeing none roll call please councilman bahal yes councilman Wendell yes councilwoman Winston yes councilwoman ziki yes council president mavo yes resolution 24 hyen 111 Mr lawful please read resolution authorizing the introduction of the municipal budget of the township of East Brunswick for the year 2024 thank you may I have a motion so move second second we'll do a roll call after our mayor uh comments mayor K thank you council president um well for the tax year 2024 I'm uh proud to introduced to this uh Council which after it's approved becomes your budget uh a municipal increase in taxes of 0.56% which has been in line with the increases we've been having uh marginal increases we've been having actually ever since taking office uh in the seven years uh since taking office the average tax increase for the municipal portion of your tax bill has been under 1% per year so that's pretty good and I believe that we've made an Earnest effort to try to keep to that commitment of not raising tax taxes in town Beyond people's level of comfort this tax increase amounts to uh $11.97 cents for an average tax holder uh average assessed house in East Brunswick equating to 98 cents a month I went to Wawa today to look for something that was 98 cents and the only thing I could find was this little itty bitty cheese stick 98 cents a month so I think uh that 98 cents a month increase includes a balanced budget which I'm required to provide to you um it includes the $800,000 increase that we can attribute to the twice a week sorry about that twice a week pickup of garbage the entire Garbage Contract amounted to a for this year an $800,000 increase it also includes the over million dollars in losses we're experiencing in the parking deck as many know our parking decks have not come back since pre-co uh so in that regard um we were behind so on top of all of that uh We've not let any employees go which I think is a tremendous uh uh job on our h on our behalf and in fact includes some notable increases we are bringing on two new police officers in the township and two full-time employees in the department of Public Works so not only have we not let anybody go but this 98 cents a month is also bringing on employees that we could desperately use in departments that have been um pretty lean over the last couple of years so this is really great news I think for the township uh I I want to give full thanks to Joe uh who was on a daily basis our administrator making sure that we keep departments trim and lean um to Angel for putting together such a a terrific budget for us and being a good Steward of the taxpayers money and of course all of our directors who were told from the beginning of the year that they really needed to work hard to try to keep the flat budgets that we want to provide as many things for the township as we can possibly do um but at a level that we could afford and I think that they've all done a great job in doing so for the for the residents of the township if you even just think about Garbage Contract Alone um the average taxpayer pays about 101,000 a year in taxes 20% of that goes to the town so you're essentially paying for all of the township services in that $2,000 residents were just told tonight that the Garbage Contract alone is about $600 of that uh of that 2,000 we had thought in the beginning that we might have to cut back on leaf pickup and residents got upset about that found out from their contractors that if they had to do that themselves it would be another $1,000 a year so that's 1,600 of the 1800 just in refu that's not police DPW all of our departments uh parks and wreck senior programs so I think that um to only go up 98 cents a month and to provide all those services on an average of $2,000 per household uh I don't frankly think we could do better so um I'm proud to give this to the council I hope you um take that up with any questions we're more than happy on the administration side to answer that uh you'll be voting tonight on its introduction the uh full vote uh the budget then gets sent to the state for its approval in the Department of Community Affairs and then we will be asking hopefully at our May meeting that's anticipated that all of those uh approvals will be done by that point for a final approval of the budget thank you mayor con Council great work mayor and departments right councilwoman zamii yes I just want to thank Angel albanes for spending hours going over the budget very detailed explaining every aspect there is no doubt that in our Township there is immense fiscal responsibility and that was I can repeat everything that you just said mayor but we've increased Services we've increased positions we've increased items to the senior center to Department of Rex and much more part of that also because of Grants our Direct and employees spend an enormous amount of time looking for grants in order to enhance our Township and they do a great job of it and that was clear in the budget that you presented Angel so that was a piece of it but it's just such smart fiscal responsibility on your end Joe mayor councel and all of our directors I am very very proud of the work that's done here and um you know I was worried about this budget this one I was worried about because we knew we had the increased um garbage and then we knew our residents really really really demanded the loose leaf pickup this year and that was a problem we had to figure that out how was that going to work how are we going to be able to do that because there are stringent State mandates with that where the time period of when the leaves have to be picked up and that required hiring more employees to keep that time timeline but we were able to do it and I think we have something very to to say what 97 cents or what was it right a month yeah amazing right so thank you thank you to angel thank you to everybody for their diligence um I think we're a role model yes we yes councilwoman Winston I just I just want to Second what councilwoman zimi stated um Joe you're a great Steward of our of our our um resources and our money and Angel I deeply appreciate all the time you took to explain to me all the complexities and and the um incredible amount of work it took to put that together is um inspiring to say the least and deeply appreciated thank you council president councilman Beal yeah I would I would also like to thank mayor Joe and Angel and all the department directors for working together and uh keeping our taxes almost flat without compromising any of the township services so thank you very much I'll finish it off by sharing with you the the budget and you can see goes on and goes on and goes on and goes on and goes on and goes on and I'm not crying about it you you have elected us to be the stewards of this particular document and the amount of time that every one of us has put in not saying it's overwhelming because it it's it's a it's a plan to ensure that there is good governance in our community so with regard to notes number one was the vetting of the two police officers so we're not going to talk about that the mayor took that was that was big and I'm sure there's going to be more to come because safety is probably the number one priority in our community Solid Waste was number two everything's been covered there we've gone we we've done enough on that one but as you know I'm going to throw in the cleanliness of everything you know used to put used to put the two cans out and loose and the loose the loose leaves and then and may maybe one of the bags ripped and they said and you didn't feel like picking it up and it was a this machine comes it picks boom boom boom moves to the next one it's great uh how about gasoline prices right something that you just sort of take for granted but when you think about all the vehicles that we have here in the community especially with regard to police department and how they move around the community keeping us safe uh keeping an eye on that dollar and Cent Kudos de Marone um I can go I can go I can continue with um the library I parks and wreck ice skating rank improvements improvements improvements so let me praise where Praises do and I'm going to I'm reading now as the mayor said 0.56% increase which translates into a dollar a month on the average this Council and therefore the community say thank you job well done and let's move to for the good of cause just oh I'm sorry clarification when you say that the average assessed house is $100,000 realize that we only tax and 20 to 25% of the assessed value so a house in East Brunswick assessed at $100,000 is worth about four you please read the following items we have our own range in town why are we Contracting with yeah this is something um this is for long guns this is for shotguns special uh type of equipment that we have that we've always done Outdoors uh at ranges in the past they used to travel all the way down to South Jersey um the chief and I worked with several who's really close yeah you know uh that we can U you know that we would go there uh and in the future we are have open conversations where they would use our range at time too so we're we worked on this this was introduced last year to save his time commuting time yeah I remember it was one year yeah it was it's they always wanted just wanted to do one year agreement which I was fine with um and we're hoping that that when they're uh they're ready uh meeting saal that they'd be interested in uh doing a shared service for reciprocal type things in our range and as I read this is we only pay for our usage we it's not an annual fee or anything like that yeah it it's for when we have to do the qualifications for different teams within the police department I appreciate that thank you you're welcome therefore can I get a motion for Resolutions 24 hyphen 1112 through resolution 24 hyen 117 so move second second roll call please councilman bahal yes councilman Wendell yes councilwoman Winston yes councilwoman Z Vicki yes council president mavo yes now we can move over to go to the cause anything anything okay let's move for adjournment those in favor please say it say I the eyes have it and good night everyone