[Music] calling this Mee to order it's March 5th 2024 6 pm. this meeting is being held in accordance with public law 1975 chapter 231 open public meetings act adequate notice has been provided in the manner prescribed by law this agenda is complete to the extent known and formal action will be taken begin with a roll call councilwoman fiser here councilman gager here councilwoman odonnell here Deputy Mayor Nell here and mayor Burger is absent this evening is there a need to go to Executive session this evening yes there is we have topics to discuss including uh contractual obligations and um attorney client privilege relating to Redevelopment do I have a motion to go into exe I'll make a motion to go into executive session second councilwoman Fischer yes councilman gajer yes councilwoman odonnell yes Deputy Mayor Nell yes thank you we're in exective time is 707 we're going to reconvene our regular meeting for March 5th 2024 begin with a roll call councilwoman Fisher here councilman gaser here excuse me councilwoman here Deputy Mayor Nel here thank you all please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance followed by a Moment of Silence pledge algi to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you all right may I have a motion for acceptance of minutes of February 20th 2024 motion to accept minutes second councilwoman Fischer yes councilman ker yes councilwoman odonnell yes Deputy Mayor Nell yes now move on to reports of Township officials Mr Clark nothing other than what we discussed in exec I mentioned at last meeting just um the the residential resale Co which we're bringing back to Howell um as an inspection requirement before property Chang title uh an ownership residential uh draft ordinances will probably be in front of us within a month so uh stay tuned for that in the next couple of meetings nothing from legal thank you like to now open the floor for hearing of citizens and public comment each person shall first give their name and address to the clerk the council should be addressed as a collective body and not as individual members each person should have one turn to address the counc and comments are not exceed a total of 5 minutes speakers shall be notified when their time has run and no time extensions will be permitted may have a motion to open public comment motion to open for public comments second all in favor I I I you do we have anyone on the list please state your name and address is that on yeah can you push a button please okay yes so's my hearing GES I've been coming in here now for 8 years got a terrible problem with people speeding down the road truck traffic I don't know if you saw my videos uh I gave them to Diane I don't know if you people had a chance to take a look you see what's going on out there drag racing at night my neighbors was trying to pull in their driveway they tried to cut her off cut her off the road I don't know if you saw it Mrs O'Donnell but they're there but anyway what I want to talk about is I had a meeting with uh Mr Clark over here probably back in November I think it was at that time Mr Clark told me that talking about the trucks now it was more uh he said there was two trucks a day coming down the road which is ridiculous so what I did was I put a camera out in front of my house and I recorded 39 heavy tandom dump trucks coming down the road and I sent the video into you guys I don't know if you saw that okay just to verify what I was saying but anyway in the mean time I uh Oprah requested the most recent survey that the uh H Township Police Department did and that thing picked up 1,200 trucks in a six day period it was eight days but two days was the weekend so came out to 200 trucks a day so all of a sudden two trucks a day turns into 200 trucks a day so I I don't know what you know getting your information from I have I have a copy of that too I'm going to give to you just to verify it but uh then as far as the speed limit speeding on a road goes uh according to what the police department came up with average speed for this is uh 12,000 cars average speed 39 miles an hour which is ridiculous so I went out and bought a radar gun and I I'm I'm doing my own uh radar not one car is doing less than 40 miles an hour every vehicle is doing between 40 and 50 miles an hour at 39 M per hour per hour it is incorrect it's got to be a fabrication uh when kudri did it for me before he left it came out to 49 miles an hour so all of a sudden by some miracle now it's 10 m hour less which is ridiculous it's never been worse out there I showed you guys the take a look at those videos I gave you the cars are drag racing all night long trucks then the other thing I'm concerned about is and I got you some pictures here too this is the corner of Lakewood Allenwood Road and on a Boulevard and uh I don't know if your main camera could pick this up but I'll give you the pictures anyway I'm going to make you better I'm going to do a video for you get you a video but they got these tractor trailers now we're talking 200 trucks a day now they can't negotiate the turn the trucks have to come into the opposing Lane and the opposing Lane's shoulder which is used by no less than three schools I got a picture here of the school bus is loaded with little kids stacked up with these trucks going head on into him okay not once did anybody mention that Clark keeps telling me about all the money that they're spending doing this research not once not once they mention this and I'll be honest with you if my kid was on one of them buses I wouldn't let him on that bus I'd call that board of education up tomorrow morning and tell them I'm not putting my kid on that bus till something's done here all it's going to take is one misjudgment one of them trucks one of them 40 ton trucks is going to come whipping around that corner and open up one of them school buses like a can opener nobody said a word about it all these reports are full of rhetoric nothing makes any sense the uh here I give you an example he's got the cars doing 30 he's got the the uh tractor trailers going faster than the cars it tells you right there it's a fabrication I'm sorry your time has ended you could hand me the pictures okay Matt what's the speed limit on that road you know I believe it's 45 what is it 45 I believe 35 35 35 is is there any uh uh truck limitation on that road wait no there's no weight restriction right now okay that's what we're looking for uh do we have any uh documented from the police department records of incidents with their with accidents or stuff too all the studies have not suggest the police department is done we're relying on they've not suggested that um a truck Li weight limitation was um required okay don't you show that that pict to the police department they don't they just ignore all that stuff I'll tell you what though they did to they went on Kent Road before they reil the bridge Mr sorry sorry thank you thank you is there anyone else that would like to come up for public comment seeing none we have a motion to close public comment motion to close have a second second all in favor would anyone from the council like to respond to public comments before the professionals do I would have a question if I might um Mr Ray Berger has come here many many many times although this is the first time I've heard about um the tractor trailer the school bus situation is this a new situation I mean these three schools that never traveled this road I mean I don't want to say who's right who's wrong but we have some conflicting information I I don't know what schools there are so if he wants to give us the names or submit the names we can look into it I can't imagine it's new I can tell you that this is a situation that our Traffic Division has studied multiple times over the years and has found no supporting evidence for any of what's being said so I'm not sure where the 200 truck number comes from take a look back at the old OAS and see what report it is but I can guarantee every meeting that we've had with him and every study that traffic has done has not supported uh anything of the sort in terms of speed restriction or the like so so if there are recordings that differentiate that information could we share that with the PD at least and um I I just hate to hear the same uh issue over and over and at some point I think is there some Merit here and I don't know that there is Merit we can have our traffic people look at it again and we will have them look at the videos and we will let them use their professional expertise and judgment and their radar which I do trust to give us the speed that's being traveled on the road so um yeah I think that's a a better ass for me that would be a good assessment thank you okay I know he's been here before I remember but what what is that street Arnold Boulevard Arnold Arnold that's right thank you and the the traffic studies take into account accident history they'll take a look at the intersections on both end and see if there's an accident history if there's a speeding issue it's an Enforcement issue doesn't necessarily mean that if somebody's doing 45 and a 35 lowering the speed limit 25 just means they're going 20 over the speed limit not 25 it doesn't actually act in the sense that it it reduces um there's trucks and buses on every Road town every Road in the county there's the idea of the idea of limiting truck traffic here this is a connection between ramtown Greenville Road and Lakewood Allenwood Road which then takes you to Randol and that's everyone's favorite cut through to Route 9 um if there's restrictions done on these weight uh weight restriction done there has to be alternative plans in place if these trucks are coming from um the the south then they're coming up Brook Street and going east or they're coming ramtown Greenville and going west okay if you put a weight restriction on this road that takes the trucks up ramtown Greenville Road to uh ramtown green um sorry to Newton's Corner which is weight restricted um or you can take um on the other side right to Lakewood Allenwood um there's not necessarily always a solution that says weight restriction is the answer because those trucks you have to give that alternate route and if you're leading yourself to a dead end where there's another weight restricted Road you're not going to get it weight restricted and this has an impact not only on Town restrictions right Mammoth count no Mammoth county is involved Lakewood Township's involved ocean County's involved these weight restrictions are looked at a very global view um and it would have a big impact to the area okay just I just want to make sure that there aren't any restrictions of trucks can pretty much navigate where they want to go okay unless weight restricted correct Dian has the clerk's office been in receipt of any other videos cuz I know I was forwarded a couple but that was yes most recently and they will follow okay thank thank you yes uh move on to information and comments by elected officials Council engager I don't have anything thank you Council oon uh no but I did want to discuss you know we've gotten a letter from freeold about their Memorial Day Parade which we have in the past um you know always inviting us to participate I was wondering because of the anniversary date that the Commissioners have spoken about I mean is there uh can we talk about at some point not necessarily tonight but um is there an opportunity to participate in something that's based in the historical component of what the Commissioners brought us um or are we staying with the traditional farming Dale how parade for Memorial Day we can look into any alternative this year certainly um we'll take a look at the letter and okay we're going to address it sort of uh you know individually there's any specific ideas that any of you have we we yeah we'll certainly take them into account I just don't want to miss an opportunity that's all I age thank you Council fer uh I just wanted to say uh one thing just wanted to commend our DPW department and our Township officials on the special attention that are being focused on the parks and our open space in town uh was at the dog park the other day uh my family recently got a dog so I've never been there before and there were people there and nothing but good thing to say about how they fixed that up and cleaned it all up and they said they were surprised that they've seen other dogs there because it was a place that hasn't been used before and now the people are actually starting to use it because of because of our efforts so just want to commend everyone involved with that yeah and I I I'm going to jump off that comment too I agree 100% DPW has been hitting it out of the park this year um you know the dog park is their idea we give them the ability to kind of go and do what they think is best for it and they've really been they've been killing it frankly uh the Hazardous tree study that we did is finally complete so all of the trees in that inventory have been removed as well so um yeah they're doing great work I thank you let's to move on to the consent agenda items does anyone want to pull anything to vote separately we have none right no we have a motion to approve consent agenda from resolutions R 24104 through an including r24 113 i' like a m a mo make a motion to approve resolutions R 24-104 through R2 24-15 113 113 I'm sorry I'll second councilman fiser yes councilman gaser yes councilwoman odonnell yes Deputy Mayor Nell yes thank you uh next resolution R 24114 may have a motion to approve that resolution motion to approve r24 d114 second councilman fiser yes councilman gager yes councilman odonnell yes Deputy Mayor Nell yes thank you move on to r24 115 we have a motion to approve that resolution motion motion to approve r 24-15 second second councilwoman Fischer yes councilman gaser yes councilwoman odonnell yes depy mayor Nell yes thank you no one finished business at this time move on to introduction of ordinances ordinance 24-7 ordinance to exceed the municipal budget appropriation limits and to establish a cap bank I have a motion to introduce this ordinance I'll make a motion to introduce ordinance 24 -07 second councilwoman Fischer yes councilman gaser yes councilwoman odonnell yes Deputy Mayor nidel yes thank you it's properly introduced ordinance 04-08 an ordinance of the township Council of the township of Howell Monmouth County amending section 3.7 of chapter 7 traffic of the Township Code of the township of Howell I have a motion to introduce this ordinance move to introduce ordinance 24-8 second councilwoman fiser yes councilman gager yes councilwoman odonnell yes Deputy Mayor Nell abstain thank you ordinance 04-09 an ordinance setting forth an amending and supplementing the salary range scheduled for the salaries of certain officers and employees of the township of how I have a motion to introduce this ordinance motion to introduce ordinance 04-09 second councilwoman Fischer yes councilman gager yes councilwoman odonnell yes Deputy Mayor andell yes thank you uh our next regularly scheduled council meeting will take place on March 19th 2024 executive session at 6 regular session will begin at 7 are there any closing remarks before we adjourn seeing none may I have a motion to adjourn motion to adjourn second all in favor I I thank you how many minutes