um the notice requirements provided for in the open public public meetings act have been satisfied notice of this meeting was properly given by transmission to the ASB Park Press and the two River times and by posting at the burrow of Highlands municipal building and filing with buror clerk all on January 1st 2023 24 and items listed in the agenda are subject to change Pledge of Allegiance please stand the United States of America and to the repic for which it stands one nation under God I will now do roll call council member santes here councilman chak here Council mik here council president mki mayor bran here first we have approval minutes February 7 2024 meeting minutes all offer I'll second council member santes Council chac yes counc Melnick yes mayor bran yes motion carries to approve February 7th 2024 meeting minutes next we have February 7th 2024 executive session minutes all I'll second council member svantes Council M chac yes Council mik yes mayor Bulan yes motion carries to approve February 7th 2024 executive session minutes next we have public hearing on proposed ordinance 0242 amending various Provisions regarding buildings and housing throughout the burrow code I'm opening up public portion do you have any comment on this ordinance I have no idea what it's it's changing the fees at the building department the fees yes yes they're in line with pretty much every other town in M County so see no other public comments I'll will close public portion and I will offer this ordinance council member svantes yes Council M chellac yes councelor melck yes mayor bran yes motion carries 0242 pass on second and final reading next we have resolutions R 24066 authorizing an amendment to the 2024 temporary budget I'll second council member svantes yes Council cha yes Council melck yes mayor bran yes motion carries to adopt resolution r2406 6 next we have consent agenda mayor would you like me to read the resolutions by title yes please R 24067 authorizing the execution of a RightWay agreement with the United United States of America Department of the army R 24068 authorizing the award of a non-fair and open contract for professional planning services in connection with the central business district Redevelopment plan R 24069 approving change order number one for improvements to Veterans Memorial Park project r24 70 authorizing the award of a non-fair and open contract for professional Engineering Services in connection with the 2024 njdca local Recreation Improvement Grants R 24071 approval of to submit a Grant application and execute a grant contract with the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs for the Improvement of Frank H Park R 24072 amending resolution 24 54 entitled approving request for waiver of alcohol ban for Community Center rental R 24073 approving first aid Squad application r474 certifi certifying and approving 2023 loap contributions R 24075 authorizing payment of bills uh before we vote on this I just want to go first does anyone have any questions because I was going to explain some probably my question okay so the first first um the first one um R 2467 that is a right away agreement to allow the Army Corps to come and take soil borings from both um uh Veterans Park and other uh areas of that are public lands uh to give them permission to be on those lands to take soil samps that's was my question um the second one is the Central Business uh Redevelopment plan uh the planner and actually pretty much everybody think that the the plan is so chunky and confusing and we wanted to make it easier uh so that we could get more businesses into the commercial business district which is the reason for the Redevelopment plan in the first G so we're just going to try to make it uh tighten it up a little bit and make it more easily digestible um the change order for Veterans Park is uh we purchased um we purchased two of the water fountains one for V vets Park one for huies Park and uh so because we purchased it instead of the contractor but it's in the contract that they were going to purchase it because we got that price um so we just paid them to install the two of them so it's a zero change order cost because now their labor is at a covered cost um I think the award of the um engineering to do the local Rec Grant is explanatory and then to actually go out for the local reference so explanatory are there any other questions on the consent agenda so so the grant is the application at this point so we're making sure nobody gets their hopes up just yet we're just making an application for the grant the money's not secured at this point for exactly they are putting in the Grant on Tuesday the 27th I want to say it is I'm going to do another blast around uh the socials and collecting paper surveys that were done and then uh put out a Top Line report so that Kelsey has that so that you can fold that into the application and for the business district that's the same firm that was for the Area Redevelopment for hire and Grove yes yeah great need to get about spe oh absolutely great any other questions okay then I'll offer the con council member svantes yes Council M yes Council melck yes mayor bran yes motion carries to adopt resolutions R 24067 through R 2475 next we have reports um the only thing I wanted to mention is that the grammar school is having their annual Tricky Tray on March 7th so if you're feeling lucky go over to the school and bring your goodies and and it's seriously it's a lot of fun so um that's the only thing that I had to elementary school elementary yeah on March 7 no no not really I'll have uh my full blown monthly report uh at the next councel meeting so with that uh the public portion statement individuals wishing to address the council shall be recognized by the presiding officer and shall give their name address and group if any they represent although the council encourages public participation and reserves the right through its presiding officer to terminate remarks to in or by any individual not in keeping with the conduct of a proper and efficient meeting if any individual refuses to conduct themselves in a proper manner they will be removed from the meeting the council will not during the public portion of the meeting discuss matters involving Employments appointment termin of employment negotiations terms and conditions of employment evaluation of the performance of promotion or discipline of any specific or perspective or current employee there's a three minute time limit Mr dor yes good even joseph2 Valley Avenue um I guess I'm going to be here every every two weeks or so and until we find some resolution to the problem behind my home with regards to the 14-32 North Peak Street project um as long as this continues the way it is my property remains vulnerable to Future stores is UN often s um that's my concern at the moment in the short term um that it's not abolutely secured um I was in touch with freeold soil um a couple weeks ago he did come down last week um I wasn't there um I asked him to call me so I could show him what my concerns were um they just showed up and I wasn't home but I did speak to him he told me he wasn't able to get a hold of Mr faru um I don't know if anybody's been in contact with Mr faru in recent months um I haven't heard anything back from Steve Winters yet um and I I just want to know is the town going to be able to try to do something to compel Mr faru to uh at least securely at least at least to uh secure the hill properly so that I don't have a I don't have so M down to my property um in the long term something's going to be built there or maybe it's not maybe Mr faru has really abandoned the project I know that he is still incomplete from the land fors perspective uh the engineer actually just spoke on Tuesday Morning uh with the land use board engineer and they're deeming him incomplete again because he still has just not given enough he's having his land surveyor asked engineering questions which is not he have a land surve I no no but I'm saying a land surveyor is not equipped to answer engineering questions to the board and to the board's engineer so they have taken his application and have said that you are not complete until you give us a list of things right now that that report goes back to AUST but I'm saying it he's he keeps on trying to to put something out there and then have other people answer questions that are not qualified to give answers that's I'm just giving you the latest update from he's not providing me answers well he's not an engineer either so he can't answer the questions right right but he's presenting the the requirements that are being asked of him exactly to go forward and for it your in the long run which is being addressed by the um the land use board architect not architect engineer and um and attorney are getting very close to uh at the same time fixing the tree ordinance and the slope ordinance instead of pretty much interlocking right so that would be the rule of law if he ever going forward exactly so we're trying to address the now and then at the same time yeah but the now is not going to be addressed by um my concerns with what's going what you're doing going forward so the mechanism is in place so this doesn't happen again so now that this has happened how do we fix it how do we how do we short of my going to to a lawyer and to the courts to compel the town to compel Mr faru to follow its rules and regulations is is is forgive me but it seems absurd to me that I should have to go that route and spend and spend to $100,000 I'm not an attorney so I'm going to this is my area of understanding but I I have questions that I don't think we're going to going to be give you the answers tonight so I think I'm going to have to think about it every tonight but uh my first notot is you went to Freehold soil and you complain the soil people did you file a complaint with f Soil Conservation District does that make sense I've been on the I I made I made emails to freeo soil I would have thought that because you reached out for them and it's if this is as bad as you're suggesting is that they could have issued some kind of violation to this person for not not complying with their rules correct we've been trying to get that done but they haven't done that no he hasn't done it all he does is come out there this just going on for two years I don't I don't I don't know what your POS is I'm the attorney I'm I'm substituting tonight as the attorney for the council but I but I teach zoning to everybody in the state okay so so this is a project that started in 21 I know I'm trying to get you a shortcut okay the second thing that we have to think about is do we want to become do the the most towns I I'll use it generally most towns don't want to use the resources of their own lawyers to solve these kind of problems but we couldn't other words we could go in and get a restraining order in other words our planning our planning people are are doing their job day to day but they're not solving this because not it's not emerging and they can't they can't do anything emergently they're waiting for the process to proceed hoping that he comes through for his application and that he does a few things that they're asking him to do in order to get the approval that he wants but it's taking as you've described it you know 10 months the question is at what point do we think this impact on the community is great enough that we should go to court and get in order to show cost to get a judge to order him to to stop the soil from eroding and going downhill really simple matter of doing something I don't know putting up a cloth there are ways it's a steep slope situation um there is a stop work order on the project but but a stop workorder the soil still floating down river right he brought Sil in on top of he on top someone again I don't want to know if to spend money to do this but one of the things one of the options that you have is for us to go visit a judge and say this has got to stop now okay and if it's bad enough I mean it's it's going into other people's properties as well yeah I do you have like Photo evidence of all this oh yeah I got pages I got a whole file the town has the town has has all the evidence I'm confident that everybody is done what they're supposed to do and these things take a long time to get to this point but then it gets to like how much patience do we have with somebody who's obviously not not coming to the table right I mean to to reiterate it The Sound redundant over and over again um what matter you want to so yourself right sorry I don't have any other for in which to come to um to to voice concerns and and everyone here knows I've been here I don't know the other thing too is I don't know uh when you're talking about I don't know our ordinances well enough to know about the dirt coming off of one person's property going to that would be basically defined by the soil erosion perm that I'm assuming this person has obtained at this point let's let's assume they haven't obtained it they haven't obtained it it's a nuis erion won't issue a violation that's where OB still come off the street as well in terms of I don't know what approvals because as long as it's still land I haven't reved anything for this project at this time understand too is that one of the things that happens in the zoning world is when somebody goes to the zoning board all enforcement operations stop their state pending the outcome at the zoning board but if he's never presenting his case at some point the land use board's got to deny his request dismiss his request and that makes him available for punishment right he's he's not out of even the engineering department at this point he hasn't even gotten to the L ju and and there also must be and I'd have to talk to our zoning officer but there should also be um we must have regulations like maintenance of your yard yes and we also have that you have to manage your own runoff and your rof so somebody's got somebody's got to somebody's got to go back to the drawing board and look at this differently from a code VI you know code enforcement for you know like whatever's nothing should be coming off from your property onto another person's property there's got to be a code violation somewhere in there that a violation that could issue but the point is even if we do that it's going to continue dirt's going to continue to flow while this is pending in Municipal that's why sometimes you know again this is something that you should take under advisement I'm not suggesting we take any action only have a few thoughts here but something that you had said was that the Lan board could just deny his application but how can they deny it without hearing well if he if he's never been so bad for two years the way the procedure is is you commit for an application we have 45 days to deem you complete if you come in and your application is not complete we deny you don't get to the board until you have a complete application now what we always do every town everywhere is we're kind to those people they're a little bit lost we're trying to give them the opportunity to put their game together so we kind of we hold them but we don't have to home in other words our only job is to look at what they give us and respond with them 45 days they're not complete then we should be asking our zoning official to take action words they're going to say well we have an action pending before the board in this case that would be kind of like that's what they're going to say but they don't have a real one because they're not meeting the demands in order to be complete to get to the board it's almost like it's a joke it's it's a prend situation inat inat they want to be the threat of action from the Bor they're not complete enough to by the land use this ambiguous Z right under normal circumstances we don't care but in this instance it's having negative impact on a neighbor so we have to uh handle we have to be more proactive I could discuss that with uh with the board attorney yes please I'm sure brianw call whoan oh R yes I I I just just a brief comment thank you for your input but he was denied in December of 21 on his on his application this is over two years now and he's he's reapplied and he's been denied several times so this is this is this is not recent this is not within the last year this is within the last two and a half years he's been deemed in violation of this steep slow coordinates by the engineering department do I know what to do my Council people yeah yeah to take a look at this necessary a notice with the court a motion to absolutely is everyone okay with that yes I mean we we don't normally and I'm teaching every town in state I don't normally encourage going taking every single matter to court because there's an expense to paying lawyer to enforce that but there's a point where if you're going to look the other way and let people not do what they're supposed to do then everyone starts doing it well dir blowing all over the place but I need but I need to find pictures I oh I need to see how bad think Andy has probably everything and if not we've got it yeah and they don't have it I have it that's what I'm I'm thinking we must have a code violation here not when the site when the property needs to be cleaned up like um it's probably well for Steve Main you know like people's grass is Too Tall right you know there were a couple just yeah there have been some code violations whe they still what I'm saying in this in this situation what I'm saying is everyone is doing the right thing just not doing enough to solve the problem and this might be one of one one of 100 shot that we might need to take a little extra action okay I I appreciate whatever whatever you would be great now I got to be patient well the last last meeting I said that when when this patience no longer is no longer a virtue I saider do it become a liability patience you're here ask for help I said I'm going to help you a rhetorical question all right thank okay Council we can that's good that's good thank you you're welcome okay and it's 14 Peak Street 14-32 okay I will close public por executive session executive session will be held following the regular council meeting prior to each each executive session the burrow Council will convene an open session at which time a resolution will be adopted in accordance with njsa 104-113 no formal action will be taken during executive session resolution to enter executive session be it resolved that the following portion of this meeting shall not be open to the public be it further resolved that private consideration is deemed required and is permitted because of the following noted exception set forth in the ACT PBA contract and potential litigation be it further resolved that it is anticipated that the matters to be considered in private may be disclosed to the public at a later date when the need for privacy no longer exists I'll make that offer council member santes yes counc machac yep counc melck yes mayor ban yes motion carries executive entered in at 7th 27 motion to uh adjourn this meeting yes all in favor I thank you meeting adjourned at 8:27