you ready pep yes and we're good next all right cool pursuant to section 5 chapter 231 1975 this is the state for the record that adequate notice of this meeting has been provided to the public by posting and maintaining the annual notice of regular meetings on the bulletin board of the municipal building by mailing the annual notice of regular meetings for 2024 to the news record and the Star Ledger in December of 2023 and by filing said notice in the office of the Township Clerk M Cory here Mr daffis present Mr DeLuca here miss angle here mayor Adam here thank you where is chapter 231 public laws 1975 commonly known as the open public meeia sa all Mee public bodies be open to the public and whereas section 7A provides that the governing body has a discretion to permit prohibit or regulate the active participation of the public at any meeting and we desire the governing body to comply with the provision of this act same time to conduct its business in an orderly and ex expeditious manner now therefore be resolved by the township committee Township mwood does hereby prohibit except to set forth an a formal agenda active participation in deliberations of the governing body by the public and acceptance otherwise by law does limit the public to the observations of the actions and discussions of the governing body at all its regular and special meetings come moved Second Great yes Mr daff yes Luca Miss angle yes mayor Adams yes thank you whatever please stand for salute to the flag I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the stands indivisible andice for all thank you very much um just a quick overview we have um budget Workshop this is our second budget workshop for the 2024 Township budget uh we'll start off with Springfield Avenue partnership then go in order this way Maplewood Village Alliance Community Coalition on Race youthnet the open space trust fund the police department and OEM the health department library and then finance and then we'll have a public comment and then we'll adjourn so let's get this party started and bring up the Springfield Avenue partnership come on up evening my name is Jim ning good evening hi Jim is that working tilt it up to about that better yeah and you got to kind of speak we can hear you we just want to make sure they can hear you online yep should be better yet it's better when that is that's good all right thank you for the opportunity to make our presentation this uh this evening 2023 was a great year for us we saw return to near normal on the Springfield Avenue lots of uh lots of events a full year of events lots of businesses opening and lots of investment was really great we did uh let just give you some highlights we developed our strategic plan that'll take us through 2030 to guide our priorities and measure our impact um we updated our mission uh statement uh to which is to improve Springfield Avenue Maplewood while maintaining the district's diversity um we helped to support our current businesses and tried to attract new businesses by helping them navigate the steps to open the new new business in the in Maplewood so we successful with 14 new or rebranded businesses open last year which is better than one a month we awarded over $10,000 in signage and facade grants in collaboration with the township and neighborhood preservation program we hosted a well attended meeting with in conjunction with s of the ruter Small Business Development Center presented by tende madoro um events Mayfest featured uh a record number of local business and I think a record number of attendees were brought to the Avenue this year great weather and we had a great a great event two fundraisers brought in over $5,000 was the wine tasting and the beer tasting they're very successful and um improve the Avenue uh appearance we added new banners purchased new Garland and installed seasonal storefront art um as always we'd like to thank our Sam executive director on Nicole Wallace our board trustees Maplewood Township for their support business owners and all the volunteers and visitors who supported Springfield Avenue I'm GNA let Nicole take over with some more detailed information then go into the budget thank you thank you you good evening everybody um I'll just go through some of the highlights um of the past year uh we had several new businesses open and some were re uh rebranding the General Store did a Rebrand we opened Avenue Pub which is I think our first casual dining with a liquor licens restaurant on the Avenue as far as I know um an ice cream po um a few new wine and liquor stores um we also had a bunch of new Services open including a co-working space at your third base um a dance studio um barber shop and a new owner at cko kickboxing um as always we love to celebrate our ribbon cuttings we appreciate um the committee's attendance at all those events um it's one of the nicest things we can do to welcome the new businesses to the Avenue um we also went back to a robust schedule of events this year um we had a successful Mayfest and like I think the key the success in Mayfest is also how many of the local Regional businesses we've got there and once again our sponsors allowed us to provide free rides entertainment for kids at the event uh we had two wine uh two beer alcohol related fundraisers nobody beats a Fizz was a wine tasting fundraiser and our craft beer tasting both at the wine barrel which created uh earned US money for Springfield Avenue beautification projects in 2024 um windows for women return last year where we um spotlighted our women-owned businesses with art and that's something we did with the Village um a new event we started a year or two ago was a Sun Sunday Jazz series it's a really nice very low-key event each the crowd gets bigger and bigger each Sunday we have it and it's been a really nice success and that's just something we do for the community and finally our Winter Market um relocated to the Gazebo this year but um was very well attended um as Jim mentioned we did do a strategic plan up through 2020 2030 so I just wanted to highlight some of our 20 24 goals and objectives this year um we always want Springfield Avenue to remain a home to a diverse um community of business owners we think that's sort of who we are and what we represent and so we want to both um help our businesses with with programs and also celebrate our business owners um we want to make sure our anything that's underutilized or vacant spaces are being paid attention to and really um go back to the plan for Springfield Avenue and promote the two nodes that were identified in the original plan um we want we will continue our facade and signage Grant you'll see money for that in the budget plus additional funds are through the MPP Grant um which that budget will be coming to not as part of this MPP and then um hold an annual business meeting which I'm already in touch with mayor Adams about setting a date for that meeting um we want to keep uh in touch with our business owners including um Printing and handing out a copy of the annual report that you have in front of you we're going to hand that out in in print to each of our business owner so to really communicate what we're doing um and then a big thing we've heard is really expanding our marketing outside the Soma into Union and surrounding towns and trying to capture especially how Springfield Avenue is situated more of that market and then just finally we had couldn't have done this alone as you can see by the many many logos on here it's a team effort at Sam and we also appreciate everything the township does for us um I'm going to turn it over to our Treasurer Sheila and she'll go over the budget okay I like the way you put pictures of all of us in the presentation so smart hey everyone Hi good evening I sort of have left a voice in Singapore and and came he came back with a cold just got back today oh goodness okay ah as Jim mentioned we had a banner here and I think we're gonna have another banner year this year good as well so happy to announce that um just I'm just going to give you some of the highlights with the um assessment we were a little conservative uh so we added a 1% increase for the assessments and also because I'm going to say that uh Nicole is the grant Queen and she did a terrific job for us in securing grants and that's one of the reasons that we wanted to be a little a little bit more conservative with the 1% or conservative uh amount okay the second item that I wanted to highlight is you'll see on the accounts receivable the increase there is an increase there we are in process of we just put out an RFP for a graphic designer and the graphic designer is going to help us and assist with our marketing and advertising e efforts we also have put together a committee that's going to work on those projects Mayfest well you already heard Mayfest is is our signature event um we are hoping and we know that that's going to be uh continuing we have some additional um the increase for the Mayfest is with the sponsorships and um we have the amount that's listed here the $1,000 is the increase of the $1,000 is due to sponsorship additional sponsorship forgive me with this voice in the area of events this year we had two events we had the wine and we had the craft beer but after doing both of them we decided that for this year we would only do one we're only going to do the craft beer it's the wine did not produce the revenues and also the turnout that we have been getting for the craft beer so we decided that we would do just the one um due to our Main Street Grant we have uh received additional funds and we also have put on board um an event coordinator and she's going to assist Nicole with the various um events that we put on is be May Fest the holiday programs Etc course everyone knows that Nicole has done a terrific job and in the budget is a 3% increase for his salad you will also see that the $25,000 that we have which is included is also an expense of 22,000 that's listed below for the event coordinat to pay the salary to the event coordinator public another item which there has been a significant decrease and um because we only spent about $88,000 this year uh and we wanted to be a little bit more in line with the amount of money that we spent this year and the monies that were spent basically for the banners that are on finally the uh treway prodct it says $7,000 that is to be spent to paint the utility boxes on spri Avenue okay and I think with that you'll see one of the things that we were successful with is that we do not have a lot of money at the end that's du to County County everything that's sour spot with us each year we the call was able to secure invoices early and make sure that those expenses so unless anyone has any specific questions I have uh just a couple um with regard to the 1% increase for the assessment on the properties you you said you were concerned about something but I no we were conservative oh conservative right okay and only including a 1% the echo in here yeah it's bad I know um so and then the increase in the request from the township of uh $2500 so I guess um in my mind I would I would hope that the assessment would would go up it go ahead mcole come on up to the microphone that's something Patrick asked for specifically to do lither removal around the fridge to do I'm sorry l remal so the spring around the community fridge so it would be a big an increases area we usually seen and the so we we'll run it through our contract so because they're already there picking up litter on the street and along the curb Springfield Avenue so we've asked them to uh clean around the fridge itself on Springfield but also extend out some of the legs on the streets near uh the fridge where we've seen an increase in litter okay okay I ask a followup a question on that so is that money that's already in a different part of the budget that's just moving over to this budget cuz the Sam team is going to be doing it or an added 2500 will it's $2,500 increase to the township contribution to Spring right but I think but where is the money like was that already in like our D budget that's moving over it's a new or it's a new expense okay yeah so it's something we absorbed in the budget in 2023 but hadn't planned in the budget in 2023 and we'll plan for in 2024 are we talking which budget are we talking in the municipal budget Municipal budget so now I'm confused I wasn't so this this this came up when we had the community meeting that people said the area around there was dirty so then we we met after and we said okay how can we um clean it up and we said well we have a a bucket and broom company out there now that the partnership has a contract with so let's add money to their contract so that we don't have we had nobody was doing it before so this is all new money and it was added it was an initiative of the town to add it to the Partnerships contract to meet the requests of the residents okay and this way we don't have to do the Contracting the Contracting is already there and it's an additional hours to do a more intensive Cleanup in and around that parking lot and shooting down as Mr wey said into the um some of the streets okay I just want want to talk about the assessment because um typically as you know we were trying to make to bump up the assessments of both special Improvement districts um and I think you've as you say you were conservative with 1% and I think it makes actually makes sense to go with the 1% increase because we're this is a revaluation year and we really don't know how the assessments will work up there because as we know properties get rais in value differently up there so I think being conservative this year is probably a good idea but I think we should revisit it next year again and maybe bump it up a little bit more because that's what we're trying to do but I think just to settle it to for this year to go stick more conservative I think is a better idea I'm okay with that for this year but definitely I think we should make up for it um especially if commercial properties tend to be the ones that get appealed the most right so we just want to make sure we're not you know um not properly funding the organization by the properties that directly benefit the most from it so 100% yeah so um any other questions from my colleagues per well I'll just do one happy remark I'm happy that there's funding for the electrical boxes public art because I feel like we've been talking about that for a long time even before I was in this position so very excited for that one oh that's what I was going to ask when you mentioned the entry ways the um I was thinking you were going to repaint the signed like by the New Jersey Transit but okay and the one on the other side okay cool there yeah there's going to be some money great now you if my colleagues have no more questions I'd like you to go home and go to bed yeah because you're tired go better not at all thank you so much for taking the time that's not something you want to do with jet lag but I appreciate your time for that you better yes okay thank you very much Springfield Avenue F call by J uh Maplewood Village Alliance are they on Zoom Patrick I think they're on Zoom right and everyone's been informed to come 15 20 minutes before their time right okay great I see youth that am promoting Miss ranella Walker to panelist so she can present welcome Miss Walker you're currently on mute so if you don't off and it says you can't start your video because the host has stopped it you are with us now we can hear you yes okay for some reason though it I keep getting it says you can't start your video because the host has stopped it because the host is stopping the video I don't think the host that's not a thing is co-host I don't know yeah maybe that's what it is probably give me the co-hosts ACC it's also blurry on here yeah we just he just told Nick Nick came back and made us blurry how about now and there's something what's that say at the top there you go oh you see me you're there there I go hello everyone how are you this evening good hi Rella go ahead and take us through your budget okay um so first and foremost for those who haven't met me yet or anything of that nature my name is ranella Walker and I am the new in uh executive director for the MVA due to maximize time as well as the fact that I came in six weeks in the last quarter pretty much in November I'm just going to make a general verbal statement in regards to the 2023 highlights based off of the diligent work and efforts of my predecessor cat DEET in partnership with the board um there were several new businesses that came into town and revamping of businesses like Nar perch Spot diner we also had I'm going to show you oh um Patrick is that you doing that yes yes I have your 2024 goals and initiatives up okay also um there was hold on I'm missing something I'm trying to get back to something on my own note excuse me for this okay well with the events our traditional events of girls night out Dickinson's Village Art Walk windows for women we estimated that we brought in at least over 5,000 people to the village in 2023 we also um wanted to highlight the street Aries even though the program that all the designs and guidelines and things like that all of that kicked off even though we know we want to do better and you guys are working on that to get it done as well as the we received the $10,000 from the maple wood foundation and many other fun fundraising we fundraised over 30 something thousand for the Baker Square project which is the thing we're most excited about for 2023 that made a um public spew and we got about we have about 10% of that project left that we should have done by the spring and that Foundation Grant um the money we're utilizing that to get that done so I'm going to move over to what I can really talk about which is our 2024 MVA goals and initiatives thanks Pat for putting it already on the screen um I'm not sure if you can if I can move it up and everything no I can't okay well initially we're g to focus on three areas for this year um the organization is a great organization however the board feels that we want to move to the next level we want to grow we want to expand we want to elevate so we're focusing on elevating the internal operations systems and resources within the organization so that we can serve and provide a more comprehensive and quantifiable enrichment opportunities within and for the village we want to do more programming workshops seminars things like that to help the merchants actually make sales and other initiatives outside of just our events some of those things for those who can see it you guys have it in front of you and for those who are in Zoom if you notice in the green to elaborate at on the three points that I'm speaking of so in this area we're talking about updating equipment service providers digital assets streamlining our procedures and policies we're revisiting our strategic visioning plan which was done before covid happened and we're also seeking grants for increased funding as well as other opportunities to provide additional programming we want to go after some designations we want to create a stronger internal infrastructure so that we can serve great greater outwardly uh Pat if you don't mind can you pull it up a little bit our next thing we're focusing on concentration area is to continue to develop the beauty of the Maplewood Village by completing our current beautification projects as I mentioned earlier Baker Square has about 10 more 10% left to go we have about four benches as well as some brick and mortar some bricks that need to be laid down as soon as it get gets warm we're going to have our contractor go out there and start labeling that and then we're going to start we want to have a big celebration a big ribbon cutting um as well as some information to go out about how the village can actually use the space not just sitting there when they're walking but actual things you know like a farmers market you know outdoor activities and things of that nature um we also have an initiative that we want to restore the benches all of the Street benches we've already sat with a vendor we've already had conversations we have an estimate on the table after we go through this procedure and adoption with you guys then we want to move forward and start getting the all of the benches in the village to be cleaned repaired and restored we already made all of the assessments on what needs to be done and where we also have a few Rogue benches that we need to put back in place um our third initiative as well as you know know we're want to work with the uh Township you guys on the streetery initiative to make a more uniformed and safe experience so our third concentration will be to promote and Market outside of Maplewood Village in the township to show the resources and opportunities within Maplewood Village and the town to increase foot traffic CES and public awareness we really feel like the village is a a very kind of like best-kept secret type of thing outside of the town and we want to let other people know that it's there it's operating it has great stores it has great Services a diverse account of things and we want to get that information out and bring more people from the outside into the community so some of the ways we plan on doing this is sharing press releases and adding paid media as well as promotional marketing with targeted and aligned media outl Outlets that's servicing other townships and the overall State as well as we want to develop a business directory brochure to distribute during Village Wide events one of the things that was noticed is that you know people come into town they experience things and then they leave and they're not some know what's all there and many of many people don't so we want to make sure that they get to leave with something in hand that says okay we have these types of services we have shopping we have dining we have Services we have educational classes and we want to just make sure that they leave but they come back not just for event that they may or may not hear about but they say hey you know what I'm going out and I'm going to you know Luna I'm going to Kota tonight I'm doing something like that so we want to put a lot of information and efforts in those areas now moving forward um we're going to unless anybody has any conversation question or concern about anything I just mentioned you can go ahead and move forward with the line items okay so um as far as our budget we just want to highlight a couple of things that have changed concerning the township more so for our assessment what we decided to do was we move forward with a 3% increase which is only about $2,900 but we want to stay in tune with inflation as we know last year you know there was a big increase and we don't want to get in a situation where we're not moving forward with Society in general and then we have to hit the uh property owners with a big assessment increase again um also in our SLA we last year we were the town you guys adopted $2,800 but I guess it wasn't carried over into the official Town budget so we only received 1,500 so this year we're also talking about bringing back that 2,800 so essentially altogether it's about a $4,200 increase from the town um in our budget none of the line items have changed and it's essentially pretty much on par as it was last year it's just a few adjustments about where we're spending the money and how we're spending the money and um even though we've been very heavy on events in the past few years again as I said I came in um six weeks to the end of last quarter so this year we're still going to do events we're still going to partner with people but we're not going to be as aggressively involved as we were before because we want to find new opportunities to enhance what we're doing so if you notice in our budget Patrick I think you can go down a little bit we don't have yeah right there thank you um events and marketing you will notice that we have an amount there but we don't have it itemized out to say okay this is going to go to artw walk this is going to go to such and such because we're revisiting those conversations and and a lot of these events anyway we have Partners in them as well so we're taking those meetings to see where we want to spend our funding um and I think that's it unless there again questions or concerns or comments who any of my colleagues have any questions for ranella uh Mr Dua does he just there you go so I just want to uh alert us all to the in the revenue proposed they propos a carryover or using a draw down from their balance sheet of almost $35,000 which is 20% of the budget and um this is a lot of a lot of Reliance on you know your balance sheet and it's hard to sustain that going forward so it's you know I understand the 3% increase but it if if that was if that didn't materialize again that balance in next year's budget you'd have a pretty big gap well what we're hoping we do have the Reserves to fund it but what we're hoping is that we're going to acquire some grants and things of that nature that we don't need to utilize it one of the things that has you know I'm just I'm a very transparent person so I'm going to just keep it real um one of the things that has kind of handicapped the organization is that we're not getting we don't have enough manpower to facilitate some of the projects and things that we want to do and in addition to that without getting grants and other resources of funding we can't expand what we've already been doing and that's why we're going to make this a priority really what we're looking to do and what I said is essentially we're trying to take a couple of steps back couple of steps back so that we can take a Quantum Leap Forward um we have some things we're going to go after that Main Street designation we're working on the application for that so that we can get some of these resources we're also considering reaching out for some outside service providers who specialize in Grants and things of that nature so that we can start looking because there's money out there there's money out there for stigma-free communities there's Transportation money out there based on what the streets are looking like there's a lot of things now also because I am new and I'm only a few months into the position I'm still learning how things have been previously operated before I can make my full recommendations of what we need to shift and what we need to change but we do understand and we are all in agreement that in order for us to grow and to go to the next level which that is our goal then we have to do some things that we weren't previously doing we have to be more proactive in these particular areas and that's why um our focuses are what they are and when we're saying hey hey well we're not going to do windows for women this this year we're not going to do this we're not going to be doing that because we're trying to allocate our resources in our time to doing things that can allow us to really grow and expand and it might take the 12 months you know it might be when I come back to you next year we'll have a much more robust situation than we do now but we are trying to grow and that is our greatest and most important initiative to grow and to actually provide resources that not only bring traffic for a day you know that but have people coming in have people knowing about the village wanting to participate in the village wanting to shop here dine here play here and work here because it is a best kept secret and it's small town Vibe and things of that nature um I'm just neighboring in a neighboring City and things like that but it's such a refreshing space and I think that if more people knew about it um we could help help the businesses increase as well as make the uh Village attractive to other businesses and other entrepreneurs and things of that nature I have a question for Patrick um the the planting Landscaping we gave them we gave the MVA a reduction last year is that correct that's right they had requested additional but was actually approved in the budget was less than they requested which is why you see their 20 23 actual lower than what they requested in 2023 okay so they're just requesting again what they requested in 2023 that's right which would be an increase from the actual that's right yes essentially in dollars it's $4,200 between the assessment and the SLA angle I just had a comment um thank you so much for that presentation I hear both Maplewood Village Alliance and Springfield Avenue partnership talking about marketing our downtowns outside of this area and I know it's also come up in the economic development meeting so I just want to make sure again I mean this is to promote my public information officer that I want but I mean it should all be coordinated because it's one story about Maplewood in our different districts and I don't want our two business districts to be competing against each other so I feel like we need to be working together because you both you both highlighted that as important um priorities for for this year and you're both putting money toward it so I just feel like there needs to be some kind of coordination and we should all be working together to be telling the story well I can definitely agree with that and I could say that there are some things happening already um Annette dama she has already instituted uh you know we're all in agreement to have monthly Sid meetings or whatever so that we can discuss what you guys are talking about in the town as well as what Nicole and Sam is thinking about as well as myself and uh so far Nicole has been um you know gracious with her time and her insight and different things of that nature in addition so we are also looking at it from a one Maplewood initiative however I must be very Frank um in order to um make sure that we ensure that we do what we want to what we need to do internally on our end we have to get some of those things done first and foremost before we begin to expand collaboration on um let's just say other people's ental agenda any other questions from my colleagues Mr daff any questions from you Patrick okay all right thank you very much thank you for your time everyone and thank you Patrick for your assistance you're wel okay moving right along we have the community Coalition on Race I see the board chair and the director you want to come on up I know you do I know you want to come up and join that's all right that's okay that's right want to put it on a jump drive let me see so I do have let me see what I have from you oh no you send me the budget and the scope of work yeah evening I know right never forget about the don't worry they don't let us forget correct that's a good point yeah of course so I'm gonna just let you just hold it up here it is zoom in yes as soon as you get that already or you can start talking while he gets that up if you'd like introduce yourselves while Patrick's doing that I think you have to hold it down and then the red light goes on no hold it and then round the well is that the same kind as this yeah just yeah press that in for a while like there you go it is a little it is a little sensitive or insensitive probably not to do over there okay welcome and go ahead while Patrick's doing that well I'll kick things off I I just um I'm Robert Robert a Marchman and I'm uh currently the chair of the Community Coalition on Race I just wanted to um say to each and one each and every one of you just thank you for the support that the township has given the Community Coalition over the years uh I've been a proud resident of Maplewood now for 33 years a founding member of the Coalition and one of the things that makes the Community Coalition on race unique not only New Jersey but Across the Nation is the fact that we do have government support and uh to me um that is significant because that evidences the values of our community and as one who was involved when we did uh our when we were the organization was founded I am well aware that uh it was not an easy task for the government officials at the time uh while we may have support now I remember there were a lot of deep conversations I will say as one has been involved with the organization uh for for 25 years and professionally involved in the financial services industry I I see this support as uh an investment in the community and if you look at uh what we call return or investment or Roi I really believe that the com Co Coalition has in fact delivered um above and beyond uh the expectations that uh we had as a community when we were founded and things that we are we are doing now so just want to again uh say thank you and particularly at this time when we're seeing this push back on anything that has to deal with Equity um our communities both in Maplewood and South power orange frankly stand as a beacon a light to show that the persons who are speaking that are are frankly talking without Merit and we evidence that embracing truly embracing Dei um does have value added not just for some but for all so with that I'll turn it over to Nancy and I thank you all again for your time tonight well spoken get it closer a little bit closer country country m no okay and not Banning books what a nice contrast to other places no okay for J pleas what for thank you thanks very much for all that it was really informative do any of my colleagues have any questions no you win the prize hurry up hurry up before you never know somebody might think of something just as you're getting up thank you thank you for all the great work thank you for the good work that you keep doing for our community yeah than thanks so much have a good night you guys youth that that's right right yep yep cool moving right along it's the youth net I'm have the hot seats and uh you saw they they're not too hot kept them warm we're pretty nice uh but you might need to turn on that mic this mic looks like it's already on I think there you go first try see okay welcome so go ahead introduce yourselves to the committee and I think that one's off I think it has to be green it's my special okay it's the one with it at the bottom no no that's oh wait okay well good evening I'm diany the executive director of youthnet and I'm Camila tielman the board chair so um thank you for the opportunity tonight uh to discuss youth net and what we've accomplished in 2023 and where where we plan to be in 2024 so for 15 years yes 15 years that's amazing man can you bring that mic little closer yes um youthnet has provided a place where the young people of South Orange and Maplewood can explore parts of themselves that they might not otherwise have done while making new friendships through shared interests all in a safe judgment free environment youth Net's goal is to make all Som teens productive members of the community and Global Citizens no matter what their financial circumstances next slide please so this is what youthnet does you can see that um we have Middle School clubs an extended enrichment program high school programs and our new mental health initiative and I'm going to describe all of these as in the presentation next slide please this is our wonderful board of directors and you can see our beautification club there and our murder mystery club and a few other of the kids having fun after school um next next slide please okay so in 2023 we were able to serve a thousand middle school students at MMS and SS through our club programming model and we consistently engage and serve this this number of students uh annually by participating in these clubs MMS and s SMS students can embrace the Spectrum Club the environment Asian culture and experience what Mak makes science cool they become songwriters dancers playw writers filmmakers our students are published authors entrepreneurs video Gamers creators history slle podcasters and even pickle ball players many of these clubs are essential in that they are not offered anywhere else in the manner that allows our teens to develop relationships with their school community and the community at large next slide please the Spectrum Club and real talk and the empowerment Club are just a few examples where teens needs are met in a unique Way by people teachers social workers and even principles where they can reach these young children after school in an informal safe and socially comfortable way our extended enrichment program did not run this year which is its first time since youthnet Inception it was a revenue uh source for us and we miss it uh but the demand at the middle school level has has changed since covid more parents are working from home or have hybrid schedules but we plan to revisit this program if the need exists in the community um and our licenses to run this program are still on hold at the state level scholarships are offered for all of our programs that no one has ever denied access next slide please and we had actually a lot of scholarships this fall yeah we did um our summer internship program ran in 2023 you collaborated with local businesses and organizations to Mentor CHS students and help them Gain real life experience through this summer internship Mentor program we also ran workshops with uh for our CHS students where resume writing and interview skills were taught before placements were made we plan we plan to expand the workshop component this year and invite some past interns to speak to our new ones the youthnet coordinators who are teachers in the district run the workshops and oversee the interns during the summer both townships took interns this summer which proved to be very valuable experience for them and one intern will seek employment with the township when he graduates for the first time we had a placement at the Maplewood Police Department it was a very successful one and we hoped to expand the number of interns at both police departments this year other examples of mentors are Kamaya kamani Brave floral kchen Alam mode pet pets swans just to name a few uh we were able to secure a grant grant funding uh from the CHS guidance Department to help pay for the uh workshops and we'll continue to do that in 20124 next slide please the open gym program was a fun and valuable program youthnet sponsored in coordination with the mwood police department this is where South Orange and Maplewood police officers one day a month on Fridays after school at the CHS gym from 4: to 7: get together play basketball E Pizza listen to various Community speakers on topics ranging from drug education to environmental issues in 2023 the South Orange first aid Squad uh presented CPR techniques to the student students it was a huge success and many students expressed interest in getting certified this program will be up and running again in March next slide in 2024 we plan to introduce a new initiative on Mental Health using the preventure program an evidence-based model we will train two individuals at each Middle School to implement the program so what is preventure preventure is a prevention program for youth that uses personality focused interventions to promote mental health and reduce the risk of substance abuse anxiety and mental stress the workshops are designed to help students learn useful coping skills set long-term goals and challenge their personality traits towards achieving them so that they can thrive in all areas of their lives the program aims to equip young people with selfe Effy and Co cognitive behavioral skills to help them cope with the numerous developmental challenges that many adolescen face such as academic stress peer pressure interpersonal conflict and identity development what we liked about preventure is that it recognizes the importance of individual differences and how people interpret and cope with different types of challenges in life in a time where we see our young people struggle with these issues and intervention through the unique Club structure that youth nepp has in place would be welcomed by both administrations at the schools and parents who often seek solution struggle to seek solutions to help their teens cope the training and implementation of this program is why we are asking for additional funding this year youthnet has not asked for an increase in over 10 years we managed to work on a budget that is tight while scholar shipping students and keeping a very low overhead using our volunteers where we can and cutting spending where we can and providing most of the money towards our program next slide please the pice chart shows where our sources of revenue come from 73 come from um Revenue comes from contributions revenues and grants and included in the contributions are our club revenues next slide please our expenses show that 77% of the expenses go to program pramming we are very close on budget with what programming and services we do provide and if we want to bring our new initiative on board we will need a bit more so now I'd like to introduce Camila tielman who you just met and she'll discuss our fundraising efforts um hi you can pull that mic hello everybody all right um thank you last spring we made a shift to a nonprofit fundraising platform give butter to help improve improve our online fundraising process our contact with the parents of our students is primarily online based and this platform gives us more specific access we launched our 20 uh 2023 fundraising with an Ask sent directly to parent our parent community in April followed by a more extensive campaign at the end of year fundraising we began in early November with a letter which was also sent to other members of the community via regular mail then five detailed email donation requests followed including one on giving Tuesday we design our end ofe fundraising push based on the protocols of larger organizations some with corporate backing because we are a small organization this undertaking which we've done for years now requires major effort so thanks to the new fundraising platform we achieved an imp impressive 60% open rate but at the end our donations were similar to those in the in 2022 um one possible answer for this we think is the increasingly competitive fundraising environment in which we find ourselves we are proud of the service um services that we give and our the demand for our services are are growing more than ever as Diane said the the move to work at home model has increased the need for after school engagement and thus caused us to shift the way we fill those needs um many of our clubs have been oversubscribed which Thrills us but also creates a larger demand for even more activities to engage Our Youth and as Diane also mentioned the enrichment program which was fabulous program where students not only participated in clubs but had access to homework tutors and care until six um has diminished because of demand um this particular program was a big Revenue Force for us source for us and so this loss has led to stress on our bottom line um which our fundraising efforts have have worked hard to correct finally as Diane mentioned we are very excited about this new mental health initiative we've talked about it here for years um and it's a very um timely um venture to do I think for a number of years we've been searching for an initiative where we could um support the mental health of our youth and our community and so this spring um we want to launch a substantial program that gives the students tools to cope you know we can't control their access to social media and all the other stuff but we can give them ways to handle um these very intense social and societal pressures they feel I teach up at Monclair State and I can tell you that it's totally carrying through to older children um students um students children but if we can put this program in place in the in the spring we can almost immediately have a positive impact on 500 kids in the fall um we already as San said have the support of both um s and MMS and hope that we can count on you guys for some extra financial support to make this initiative happen um and um so as Diana also said keeping um we've for 10 years we've kept our financial request to both towns the same um and so we are asking for an increase for specifically this programs um as in years past we fund raised and hope to continue to be able to to cover the cost to meet the growing needs of the students in the in the district but we're small and um um and as I said the um environment is becoming more competitive so this is the reason that we are asking for an increase year um I just also want to thank you so much for all the support you've shown shown us for all these 15 years I was here at the beginning um so and we appreciate this by mine and our board um so much and so to the students here thank you thank you very much next slide I have two more slides um yeah thank you so okay so so in some um youth youthnet is very excited about our new mental health initiative and looks forward to its implementation in September of 2024 youth neck continues to be an organization that enhances the opportunities available to the Youth of our towns while being responsive to changeing community needs and providing services and programs that are essential for young people to grow and meet the challenges in today's world you have the next that what the next that one there the run right before that I just want everyone to see that oh it doesn't okay oh oh there it was 15 years there it is oh okay you see it here is there a video on it um picture oh it was the picture that I wanted to show everyone this picture is when it comes up invisible anyway can you tell us what it was about the picture oh the picture that you can't see was of the first model un group um 15 years ago oh and they're all they were little now they're out of college with careers and they're all off in the world that's fantastic the very first anyway yeah that's nice on that thank you thank you very much for a very thorough and great presentation you can go to the list any of my colleagues have any questions I have a question I'm sorry um thank you for the presentation it was great more about youth that so as far as the mental health um initiative you know that's a topic of mine we've talked about it I think at the municipal Alliance meeting I'm just curious how it work is it is it going to be part of the youth n a club or is it going to be for all students or how is it implement the way I Envision it right now is the training is in April so we're I've already been to the principles we're identifying people that we're going to cender the training and then we're going to involve these teachers or whoever it ends up being social workers Community person whatever um to see how we're going to roll it out so there'll be a workshop but then I would like to identify which clubs we can actually send these trained people into so that they'll have some time with each set of Club students yes so that they can get a handle on what it is that this program is about but also a little glimpse of hey you comeing to this you know come to the workshop and this is what you're going to learn and it's going to help you so we have you're going to them you're not waiting for them to come to you that's fantastic really hope to to for every single Club to to to get in there right and to to work um the program it it basically if I have this right it basically sort of teaches the the kids what their um sort of psychological makeup is and then how they react to stress or how they react to seeing you know their friends doing something that they're not you know all if you're a risk taper taker it's going to show you that you're a risk taker and so if you go to a party someone saying oh let's do this well you might identify yourself and say oh I am a risk taker now stop myself or rethink what I'm doing or these are the tools I can use to just you know either leave the situation or step back a bit or whatever so um I can send you all links if you're interested thank you for elaborating because I think I do think that it's hard for kids who need it to opt in so I'm happy to hear that it's going to where they already are I think that's really important when you're implementing any of and because they're utilizing people in the community that are going to be spending time with them they're actually going to have that additional adult that's going to be someone they can come to later on they're feeling that stress so yeah so that's a really good point I mean we've we've we know that um the middle SCH I'm sorry we know at the middle school that students often identify one or two people that they can go to and these people will be trained so you know they can go to the workshop of course and they can see it in the club but they can also access them during the day or after school or you know it's another resource yeah or at like their peer connections or at their conferencing so it's good thank you you're welcome great any other questions no thank you for your presentation thank you so much very timely new initiative and I also have something for you master plan I'm just goingon to say that hi Patrick I haven't met you C nice to to like they almost make you want to stay yeah you night good night thank you again thank you what's Patrick doing Prov open open space trust fund hello hello hello hello welcome yeah Miss well thank you yeah thank you for see you in person I feel like it's been a while I know it has we were yeah um it's like the old days doing it live except used to be Donuts yeah except you're also on TV yeah well that's true okay okay you want to kick it off this is open space trust fund budget if these two yeah this is um this should be fairly straightforward uh for several reasons first of all there's nothing to look at on the screen uh this is purely a financial discussion and you guys I hope have the summary sheet right yeah plus the uh plus all the backup um um are you going to be able to put it up on there yes that'd be great okay go ahead okay um so this year uh we were uh given eight requests um from DPW from engineering from Recreation uh for a total dollar amount of 87,500 um we have I say this every year we seem to have the L the least amount of time every year to review these but but it was okay for two reasons here um these requests were almost entirely uh what I call Heritage or Legacy requests that we have either seen and approved before or have discussed in previous years so there was nothing Earth shatteringly new here that we had deep discussions about uh the other reason it was fairly easy is because for it rarely happen happens um the total dollar amount of 870,000 came in under the available funds of 1,20,000 um that 1 million roughly $1 million comes from a combination of the tax levy money that comes in every year there was uh 168,000 left over in unallocated from previous years and then um in my conversations with with Joe he uh uh allowed us to include the 477,000 from the spray ground project which is unspent and not moving forward at least at this point right it's being subbed out yeah okay so that was that gives us the million dollars so um I can tell you right away the committee without because there was not a lot of discussion and they were familiar to us the committee in summary is recommending for your consideration and approval all of the projects there were discussion points on three of them that I want to bring up tonight that I think are are worthy um the first one is the Memorial Park lighting project for 330,000 again we have seen this at least once or twice before um the last time we um reviewed it and didn't not recommend it B based on its merits but because there wasn't enough money to fund it um now the question we had last time though became a moot point because it didn't move forward uh we had the same question this time is whether or not the expenditure for this project um how that fits into um the bigger picture of anything else that might be done with the basketball courts and the tennis courts uh resurfacing fenes whatever um excuse me I think we were told last time that it probably would not affect that it can be done independently but I would just make sure that that is still the case so that you don't do all the work for the lighting and then have to do something later for resurfacing um the second one that had some discussion was the the one that we submitted from the open space uh trust fund committee which is the updating of the master plan now this had come up several or years earlier because we on our own had realized that that the um uh existing element for the master plan was out of date um and then uh so we had discussion about how we should move forward with that and then we were told that it didn't really matter because the township was going to undertake their Master Plan update and that somehow this would be addressed uh it turns out it it wasn't addressed the individual elements have not been right so now we're coming back and and requesting some funds for this um there was a question uh raised by um the member on our committee from the environmental committee who said Gee could this also be expanded to include uh something regarding the environmental report um so it's I think environmental resource it's a report right that he referred to it as a report um uh fair question to ask we didn't really come to a yes or no um and so I think this is something we would consider when we get into the actual um writing of the scope of what this would be okay my only note on that would be that I don't know if that falls outside somewhat the the description of what op space trust fund is specifically for meaning purchase of land maintaining uh existing facilities uh historic preservation there's not a specific mention for environment or environmental projects so that's such just something to consider as we move forward um and the last one is just a note on the finances the park tree which comes up every year uh in one dollar amount or another this year it was for 75,000 we're fully in support of this um but I think it's important to double check the existing balance on the um the existing open space because there may already be money there uh so this might be uh the 75 might not be necessary either in total or in part so it's just a question of looking Mr for trees I believe there is Mayor but I'm uh I'd have to go look at the exact amount okay so it's just a question most of these others if they have existed before there um if there's balances left on the books it's it's it's um insignificant so the these would move forward with the full in theory they would move forward with the full amount of the requests whoops so great thank you I have a question about the 477k that um you were told you could use as the total yeah I was under the impression that that was being um reserved and held for the all access playground me too that money was supposed to be funding the all access playgrounds in discussion was yeah so the 477 before in total all of it yeah all of it the money that was put towards the spray park at Maple crust Park was being reused for this new all access playgrounds we weren't squashing a whole project we're squashing that spray park project but we still wanted to do something in that space and I think we use some of the money for that demolition of the tennis cours because those had to be taken out now but that money was being earmarked for this new project okay well that changes the scenario um yeah it does a bit um Mr clo do you um know what you know what we should do about that like they were already told ordinarily we would do a resolution that would cancel what we had originally anticipated the money for and then a resolution it could be the same one that says we're now reallocating it to this so I know that there's been discussions uh amongst the TC about this is what we want to do but it hasn't been memorialized yet so the money hasn't been moved out of and it's basically Maple Crest so it's still there but therefore there was no application by Recreation or whatever for funding for the all access playground because I think all of us were under the impression it was just being held that's right that is yeah what's happening I guess the question becomes What's the total amount of unallocated OST money that that's available so it's a million something minus 477 yeah exactly what was the total you had Mr Nelson unallocated yes yeah once we get the new Revenue that comes in that'll all start out as unallocated and then we'll do a resolution to say this is where we want to allocate it so then where does that leave us yeah what's the number 477 yeah as of January one the audit showed what that we had was it 400,000 in the uh in my throw is a little bit my throw is somewhere around 600,000 and that's unallocated money no that includes the 477 so if the if the allinclusive is still going into Maple Crest then the money is is allocated for Maple Crest so so it's just a matter of changing the title once we have a resolution that says this is what we're going to spend it for then it'll be easier to track but it can't be included in this no that's it so are are we using the new assessment or the old assessment and what we're expecting to receive from open space trust fund we propose to use the new assessment and how much is that now a year it's GNA be roughly $620,000 620 so the 620 no you just found $230,000 because we were using the existing oh because it has into a plate hasn't been you're right and you did the right thing right so you just found 230 out of the five out of the four 77 um can I just say one thing about the uh Memorial Park bridge this is the one for the library this is the last one of the three yeah so the library work is going to be done in the fall and by the time we get everything out of there and get ready to do that we're going to pass the the construction process so we might be able to to cut this down to just put in some money for design right and the construction money put into 2025 if I recall correctly the design for these Bridges previously was somewhere between 50 and 75,000 we can get that we can get that but but since this is the third one um and there's been learnings all different but there have been learnings from the first and the second so correct um there there may be a economy of scale there yeah be a new architect that's true that's there's going to be some new stuff because they're not goingon to have the benefit of what was there before yeah but it's a smaller bridge too it is a smaller Bridge that's the good news you know um it's gonna open up to so there's Library so there so there's some opportunity there between the new assessment and the if we reduce the Memorial Park bridge by the library to say 75,000 can I can I suggest that we agree to these eight things plus the uh allinclusive park right and leave it to Administration to figure out how to fit it all in there y yeah that's a good plan so uh any other questions from anybody on anything no that my fear I was just worried about the yeah that money we all where did it go I know so um okay Mr Nelson do you have anything you'd like to no I just there's $50,000 in DPW for tree planting that's for Street trees says increase tree planting around Township and Parks yeah well usually we use the seven5 we we used to do 50,000 in OST for Parks because we can't use it for double check because was combination of the two that we went out with together in the DPW budget W and OST right so this year we we did get some over overage of trees if you will um from DPW Street planting to um the park so we had like 30 extra trees planted in Memorial Park right and some and a lot of trees planted in we had I think part of that is because I mean the additional is because there's been there was such a lack of tree planting and difficulty with flooding in Maple Crest Park and a lot of trees coming down so um there was a real effort this year to to try to replace the forestry that used to be in Maple Crest park so okay so I would have one more question how would we move forward with beginning the element update with the what the master plan element update um well if the township committee approves the all these requests and you guys the administration okay uh CFO figure out exactly how much we can we can give to OST all these would be then you can move forward after that is planning and RFP and things okay and we have with our engineer we have submitted a $20,000 Grant to sustainable jersey for the natural resources inventory okay which is part of this uh yeah or could be part of it yeah well the update would tell you whether that is or isn't and you know included okay great can I ask I'm sorry can I ask a newbie question just in case anyone else is asked watching that doesn't know for um lighting so I'm thinking open space trust fund is for like lands and green spaces so how does lighting play in is it because like pedestrian safety in our Parks or it's for pretty much anything associated with the open space that we have to make it usable to maintain it to like fixing the the bridges in Memorial Park um that's pretty much there's uh the key one the key um missions of the open space are you know purchase land if possible um maintain land improve land that are used for recreation passive or active so this obviously is an active Recreation unit um it also includes historic preservation so that's where things like the bridges come in yeah so so that but that's that then that's why my question about environment since that's not called out specifically we'd have to look at that and see yeah and what is that lighting project sorry I don't the lighting project is for the tennis and basketball courts at that's why you're talking about the yeah yeah yeah um anybody else no all good good okay great thank you you're on schedule that's what I'm going for thank you for arriving early enough to thank you do we have police here yet is that who that was laughing in the back I'll get him no he's here I'm allow people take two minutes I need I need more water I need more pizza I will wait like two minutes I is well you didn't eat when you came in we all had whole minutes getting rid of that getting rid of this not when I'm trying to get the meeting started okay we're back in all right let's go Chief Sally do we have to do what nothing y I said let's go oh did it did it Bend okay we're four minutes late let's go good evening M evening Chief how are you you look very Dapper this evening thank you for dressing up I didn't dress up for this though I had a another oh it's all right thanks gonna take a zero no not a nice thing to say okay dressing up for you people go ahead all right it do I uh hit record on this thing or I'm good no you're good okay you're good all right okay uh mayor Adams uh Council committee I thank you for having me tonight um I'm going to discuss a few goals from the Maple Police Department from last year um and and also what we're looking forward to this year um in 2024 uh we keeping with our mission statement and core values the police department we we must be in partnership with the community the Maplewood police department will continue to prevent identify and suppress criminal activity ensuring the rights of all citizens are recognized respected and preserved in 2023 ex the extraordinary officers dispatchers and civilian staff contributed to significant crimes training down from an uptick in 2022 as discussed each month in public safety meetings Maplewood has seen a 50% decrease in robberies a 37% decrease in Auto thefts and 11% decrease in property thefts the department will continue using proactive policing and investigations to reduce burglary and assault incidents the number one complaint received by police from the public is traffic the complaints come from all over town regarding speeding pedestrian safety and careless driving the police department will continue to address these problems with education and enforcement in 2023 the Maplewood Police Department completed 3,797 traffic details with 3,495 moving vehicle summonses issued and 1,247 warnings the Maplewood Police Department in 2023 conducted several community outreach initiatives fostering positive interaction with youth and older adults in numerous ways programs included the open gym at Columbia High School the junior Police Academy in our yearly National Night Out the Maplewood police Community engagement unit also meets regularly with members of our older adult community and various safety meetings the plan is to expand upon last year's offering with engagement with the public training has expanded in 2023 and will continue this year the department focuses on the following activities deescalate deescalation techniques Crisis Intervention current use of force and any current updates autism training dispatch training cultural religious awareness officer preparedness and all mandatory training set by the Attorney General's office officers will be well prepared to respond to public needs with professionalism and fairness the safety of the public and officers is Paramount the 2024 budget reflects residents concerns regarding safety and quality of life the budget will assist officers in being well trained following prescribed guidelines of best practices and having the proper equipment to complete our task that's our goals for 2024 great um I was at a meeting last night with Deputy Mayor and um one of the residents uh talked about a little bit of a desire for a little bit more community policing work um so I don't know if you uh I understand the stuff that you mentioned here that is you know obviously like but just I don't know and a lot of it's personality driven and we talked about it but it's also um can be a directive from top down in some way to the officers when they're out and about whether it's in the car going by somebody on the street to just wave engage that's literally all she was asking for it's like a you know a cop Drives By and they just look straight ahead even I'll wave and and they don't you know so something it um for for your department to think about for 2024 just based on last night's meeting I'm mentioning it because I'll forget otherwise I was G yeah got it y so and I know you know we got away from it a little bit I think you know the walking cop in the village or things like that because of covid when covid happened a lot of those kinds of things I think kind of naturally but um so just wanted to flag that for you yeah I I I do want to bring back the um walking post that used to be a mandatory post we used to have um we're trying to work on the schedule so we have um an officer that would be able to do that on a everyday basis yeah um we also do um during the holidays we call a scan detail where officers walk Springfield Avenue mostly in the Maplewood Village and walk in the stores but uh if I get the schedule um I'm looking forward then it will be an officer um that'll be their their U five day shift of a walk walking po yeah I think that would be great engage with the public that way right other than the formalized events so does anyone have any questions for the chief on the goals for 2024 effective do you want to go into the sure budget first or Capital first budget should be shorter have it pulled up okay all right so um a lot of things are consistent from last year um safety supplies and equipment uh it's it's pretty much uh on the same page of last year the uh detective Bureau um actually our detective Bureau has been uh great in 20123 the um 2022 um I I mentioned uptick and crime and we had um a lot of we had more robberies we're up you know 50% um a lot of the reason why it's down is because the detective Bureau was able to make identifications and making a lot of rests during that time period um so they this will allow them uh more more equipment for their it's uh more equipment for for their investigation as far as fingerprint lift kits and uh and and um boot castings and um different um and collecting uh DNA and everything else um cell block stays the same medical expenses are uh are the same uh du's meetings um du's um being part of a lot of associations um uh myself and the deputy chief uh part of the Chiefs associations also the National Organization of black law enforcement Executives we are a part of that so that's uh dues we pay um training expenses again I mentioned it in my uh goals um and we have been um uh very rigor rigorous in our training so it's been a lot of training going on um we have mandatory training but also we've been doing a lot more just a mandatory training uh bringing um specialists in to teach us about autism um to teach us about uh cultures and uh and um and the like and also um I mentioned officer preparedness um so we are still the police so we have to respond to actor shooters or um you know uh swatting and everything else so we want to make sure our officers are prepared uh in doing that Chief just just on that we should just let the public know because this was an issue in 20 in 2022 and 2021 we only budgeted 125 for training $12,500 and spent around 10,000 and um in 2023 we budgeted $46,000 500 465,000 and spent over 40 almost 45,000 so we've really ramped up the training budget as we said we would so I'm glad to see that you're spending it right and um and even with that um our our um officer stalk and uh deputy chief Malloy are our training in charge of our training they still find creative ways to even say money with that right so they spend it then they find um free trainings as well um equipment maintenance uh pretty much stays the same office equipment the same uh supplies um everything coming down here is pretty much the same other contractual Services okay so you see it from uh 44 um ask for 74 the reason for that is um we we want to we want to maintain our accreditation right so um we found a company that um will assist us with accreditation that we're not doing it ourselves they will keep us up to date with case law attorney general guidelines uh update our so our older Sops so they're up more modern and they are um up to dat um so this company will um assist us and also organize our property room so it's up to standard so then we will meet the the criteria of Kia which is the organization that accredit AES police departments so we um in in my budg in my my uh statement for goals my goal is for our for our department to be more professional and having accreditation makes us professional also the GIF our insurance company um sees the importance in it and once we make the purchase they will reimburse us $10,000 nice as that so um you know it's very important we do that and that our um Sops and our directives and our rules and regulations and everything's up to date because um you know the the attorney Attorney General um is moving pretty the last couple years he's moving pretty fast in updating like use of force and things like that and there's a new state law forcing accreditation to all departments so this is this is great right and um make sure we're doing it the right way we're not you know just making Sops up ourselves so yeah yep forced yeah yeah so that's that's that's that increase um and chief I have a question Mr wey on the line 30 it's 240 225 purchase of vehicles we have zero are we not purchasing Vehicles this year we are but they'll be done Capital lines even the regular Cruisers there's there's no um yes everything through Capital lines is Year yes I'm sorry what was the I thought I thought police I thought the regular police cars could not be capitalized because it was SUVs or capit SUVs but the regular police cars could not be they're only buying SUV that's right and all the all the capital money was from prior years so in 2023 you passed Bond ordinances for police vehicles for 23 and 24 there's no money there's no Capital Money in this year's budget for police vehicles but SUVs in regular police vehicle there's no money in this budget we're getting how many new vehicles from previous well I mean we still have on on order yeah Deon yeah okay so those seven vehicles that were due to receive that are already paid for right from previous budgets that's right they're they're either appropriated or yeah they're all appropriated in previous year Capital budgets so great because we've heard from our officers saying that they're riding around in yeah you know the seats are taped up and that's not for lack of effort on our part to purchase these vehicles we have continuing now we have orders from 2021 for vehicles that still have not been filled okay great so that's a frustration of all of us yeah then we had the uh go for bid for the right for the one that's right went out to bid for for three SUVs three four Interceptor SUVs okay y um see the uh the W uh DPW repairs are the same um Community oriented policing Remains the Same there's a uh we applied for a grant for um our uh junior Police Academy so um I think uh we should get approval for that Junior Police Academy Jun our junior Police Academy that we run every summer um we I think we ran um one since covid so this will be our second um uh we had about approximately 15 children we're trying to go to 30 and with the grant we're trying to feed them um breakfast and lunch the grants nice was that the $7,500 Grant application recently I no I believe Sergeant Reeves put in for $15,000 right right but that wasn't for this 7500 was for probably clicket or ticket or dist yeah I think so yeah okay yeah um also that Junior Police Academy um they do a lot of things that helicopter lands on uh a Park um K9 dog the helicopter right they um do uh droing ceremony you know teach them how to March and everything else and um crie scene and forensics and everything that's pretty cool yeah right um so that's get the community involved yeah yeah okay um Watch Commander salaries the salaries are salaries and uh weapons allowance is about the same amount so just go to the to the dispatch 911 dispatch 911 dispatch um we used to budget 40 and we spent 68 last year and we're budgeting 68 this year is that why are we going up that much yeah so so um The Dispatch over time includes our Watch Commander so that's the Watch Commander um and for a long for a period of time we did not have um that lieutenant position filled um so uh when the it's it's the Watch Commander and it's the senior sergeant that salary so we had U we had we had holes there for as far as the um U getting the Watch Commander that everything else is the same as last year so we I do have a question about the uh 24102 crossing guards um I didn't understand this list is 585 and then it says Outsource move to OE um so that's an increase of 200 almost 300,000 from last year could you explain I know it's more money if you could just explain that whole thing it's an evolving uh conversation that we will discuss later tonight about our options between um keeping our crossing guards in-house with no changes to the program keeping an inhouse with changes to the program and subbing it out to a third party if we sub it out to a third party the expense goes from salary and wage lines to other expense lines when the chief submitted the budget we had in mind to go to to you to recommend to you to use an outside party we don't don't want to change what was already submitted to you but as we'll discuss later the chief has a different recommendation on keeping it in house but making some changes so it won't be for this the full amount that was originally proposed that'll be we'll make some revisions after all the Departments that presented the salary increase that you're looking at won't change though will it say that again the salary increase that you're asking for the hourly increase for crossing guards it won't be above what is included here in the budget as being moved to OE so now that you teased us when are we going to talk about that we're gonna talk about it tonight later talk about later I mean what does later mean that's fine we can talk about it right now absolutely I wasn't I wasn't ready to talk you're you were going to talk about it when during cap during you said later tonight yeah I mean it should be in the packet it's in the back it is in the back can we pull it up on here too it's on there there some salary discussion in here that oh okay never mind put on here but I can give you broad brush if you're okay with that yeah so the the issue that we have with um and chief please jump in you'll pull out that the issue we have uh with crossing guards especially is that um when the crossing guards call out we end up relying on police officers as well as parking enforcement officers and that runs well in terms of substitution but it does not it takes those people away from their other typical duties and those Duties are important which is why we staff them right and so we don't want to keep you know on an ongoing basis and it's pretty regular uh pull officers off those posts every day on average we're pulling about two officers off their post uh to cover coin and so um that coupled with the fact that it's been difficult to higher new guards at the at our current rates and we when we find out people are out the extra guards that we have it's difficult to call them in immediately so uh we after looking at what it would cost to Outsource this which the chief is is too high to be absorbed into the municipal budget our recommendation will be our recommendation is um increasing pay to a point where we think we can attract more candidates to the position and also Staffing two other permanent crossing guards that aren't assigned to post right now we have 28 post we staff 28 permanent guards we'd like to staff three 30 guards with the understanding that on a daily basis we run two guards short and so we can keep pulling those two guards and moving them on the corners that we need to the days that that all our Corners are covered all those 28 uh posts are covered those two guards will move to our busiest post and cover those as well but we run pretty regular two guard short and so that'll you know both those things will come with an added cost two two additional guards and an increase for the crossing guard uh pay rate we have now I have a question about that so with the school district's integration plan we see traffic patterns changing increase in traffic like you mentioned and pedestrian safety our crossing guard schedules and posts and hours and everything got changed cuz we found out information last minute there's been a lot of figuring things out and adjusting are we budgeting for any of that like what happens if all of a sudden we have 30 crossing guards but now we all a sudden need 32 we're kind of in the same situation we were last time so I'm just curious if we're I know in Municipal Partnerships we're asking the school district please as you're figuring it out can you work with our Police Department so that we can figure it out you know now while we're in budget season and South Orange is doing the same I don't know if they've reached out to you at all so I just want to just bring this up here since I'm bringing it up there yeah our proposal is based off the the crossing guard Corners that we have so the school has aware of any no they have not there there at the beginning of the 23 24 school year we did make adjustments to the number of Corners we had and the hours on those corners and those adjustments are reflected in this 2024 budget but we don't have any any any additional Corners that may be currently being considered by the school district we're not aware of this and you are also proposing a part-time evening coverage of about four hours to 6:30 which will help some of the new times like Seth poon is a little bit later than it was before and we found that we didn't have coverage but now we would have coverage under this proposal right and that's for the peo is the Evening Edition right she right yes we don't currently have a PE in the evening hours and so we and often like we said before we we're pulling those POs to cover Corners so we're proposing to add a in the afternoon that can be used to cover Corners need be when they're not covering Corners we know full they will cover their cost and right and um so and that also frees up uh some of our officers so we can actually do the enforcement around the schools um driving around Clinton school or tuskin uh um you know and it's you know I there but we really have no officers to assist because they're all on Corners you know so the extra um off the extra crossing guards and the extra uh peo should free some of these guys up so we can help with the community policing that mayor Adams was talking about too and we when we say that these two officers are generally being pulled to cover Corners each day the that's what is being considered in in what we're proposing but in addition to that we have another is it seven officers who either cover Corners permanently or are on road closur so by the schools we have police officers Crossing in front of the police department we have a police officer Crossing and and we have a couple of road closures that are staffed with police officers so that that doesn't change but it's just you know as the chief talks about the you know the the demand on his officers and where they can be placed and the kind of community policing me we may want for all the times that we have corners those police officers are pulled pulled off their regular um assignments and and assigned to either those post the the corners or to the road clutches yeah like like uh biger and denell in the afternoon our peos are leaving for the day so that has to be covered by an officer because they're gone they they work earlier so we can fill that with um extra crossing guard or uh evening peo are you talking about the road closures that are like unexpected not District where all of this oh those what it requires like Harvard of uh school age children yeah so uh Bernett and Baker works out because we kind of close that to one lane traffic but then the offic can leave the car there and cross the kids at the same time so it's kind of like a a dual thing so can you point to where the recommendation is is it is on it's on page Chief malloy's page two oh page two yeah recommended proposed changes yeah yes okay so in the front of that it says we have 28 or I guess this is the uh marketing and contract manager from the crossing guard company that he says that we have 28 full-time crossing guards two part-time and one alternate guard is that not correct that's correct 28 guards yeah 28 full-time two part-time and one alternate guard that's right but they're not being they're not being paid if they're not working okay he's included that into what he may end up right so so tell me how that is different than the recommended proposed changes which is 28 guards two additional guards don't we have that now it's a money thing I think we so more certain we do not have the two additional guards I think Chief I'm sorry Chief Malloy had gone back to All City and ask them to change it recently right this is not correct it's correct but it's not reflective of what we have now when we we presented it to you we wanted you to kind of be looking at Apples to Apples when you consider what all city is going to be would be charging us so if we are proposing to increase by two crossing guards above 28 we wanted all City to ref that as well that way you don't got it it doesn't seem like all City's more competitive so their increase is 157 or more $157,000 uh 112 that was 112 at the bottom it says 157 no up in the top it says if you look oh the billing rate 32 guards yeah be [Music] $18,000 at the holidays and so do you see any benefit in Outsourcing this that yes I do see benefits in it um besides don't jump on that too quickly Chief yeah so so um now we have we have 28 guards we have 28 Corners um a sergeant would check to see if the guards are there right but not the quality of what they're doing it's just to see if they're they're where they're supposed to be this company has a supervisor who will check to make sure they're doing it properly and um they're there on time and um and and deal with the coverage and everything else usually the police department when we we we find out when somebody is not there is if somebody in the public calls us the sergeant might do a driveth through um and you know he he might he might detect it but sometimes by the time he gets to that location that person hasn't been there for 1015 minutes so you know we get there kind of later um also when we uh in the beginning of the school year we were adjusting times because we didn't really know the times and when kids were getting out um and usually we came from a parent that says my my kid is coming from Tuscan and he's walking up the hill so our guards are gone because we're thinking we're just focusing on the middle school not knowing that there's a group of 10 kids coming later on across um this company would identify that and be able to fill it um as an eBay also they're in Milburn so they can pull guards from their uh other locations they're also uh Westfield's a little further but they're in westfi also um but they have a pool of guards that they uh manage and they can you know uh bring in um you know is is self- advantaged and Milburn started using them this school year right the school year last school year I don't know if we think they used how it's going I think it's been more years than that they used it so and um the the Chiefs I speak to murn Westfield they said they Haven they haven't had any complaints so it sounds like you want Outsourcing yes that's I'm confused I'm confused the thing is logistically outsourcing makes the most sense financially it does not that's the differ $100,000 over got get the sergeant out there more finally it's well over $100,000 more yeah a lot well but there's not a zero cost to what the proposal is the increased cost of The Proposal is 91,000 right now that also includes 22,000 for a new position right that's the evening person that's the evening if you subtract that that's $70,000 so we're saying it's a 30,000 difference well maybe no maybe about 80,000 different but 80,000 but again what we had asked all city was for to give us pricing based on well they gave us a couple versions but based on the two additional guards because we wanted it to be Apples to Apples comparison if we're proposing that we had two additional guards let me ask you a qu if the if if we were to hire all City we wouldn't need additional guards because they have to provide Subs correct right provide Subs right exact go to 28 right at 28 yeah whatever I don't know about stay go wherever it' be 28 yeah 28 it's very confusing I have to say yeah basing this on 32 guards okay we we'll we'll clar we'll we'll create a new document it would be nice if you could give us a spreadsheet that agree shows yeah Apples to Apples here okay we'll prepare that at the end of the day we're still talking about going to All City would be over $100,000 more expensive and we lose you know some control over we do right we but we gain more control over our police officers Y and and the crossing guard quality is better well most of them are going to be the same crossing guards right they're gonna yes they they'll take our same right but they're supervised yes yeah so we're not getting 20 emails about people that are not there when they should be right you're getting those calls we're getting those calls yeah getting and uh Westville said they stopped not yet you aren't but you will be said they stop they said they stopped getting those calls since they went they moved to this company right right no we we I remember this conversation early last year around the same budget time as well and this is why we started exploring this all right so can we then have uh a new document to look at but again Chief what is your recommendation for the public and for us well if it's not if money's not an issue money is not an issue I would say every corner I would say outsourced that's my recommendation my last question on that so I'm looking so Milburn as of July 2021 milburn's Police Department was still hiring their cting guard so I'm pretty sure the switch just happens this either second school school year or the first school year so I would be curious to know how it's going in Milbourne just I talked administrator about it month ago and yeah they're happy with the change but he he said it cost more money and Milbourne was okay with it so there's also the um if we address some of the issues that have been ongoing by increasing having those two extra guards we'd still save a lot of money like I would be interested in seeing the new document but also I feel like we should give that a shot before you know increasing a 100,000 well I also think that we should really let's just get a new document so we can review along with the costs uh but you know we're talking about the safe Crossing of our students so it's important it's Public Safety yes right and it's your recommendation yes recommendation as the chief yes okay I recommend that we use the group right use that tool y all right okay that's not everything I'm sure Capital yeah okay um I'm moving to our uh Police radios a radio system the radios the radios on the radio knowing is paying attention to my jokes don't understand humor they don't get it J they just don't get it and they come in that's all Rick of the 70s and 80s I have like 10 Parish but I've never worn them with I know you are you could tell so where we at we're waiting for Patrick to P up the document uh was more spend for that I know she she I brought mine from from last you need this Patrick this is the capital spreadsheet you gave us from last time do that okay the uh the Maple Police uh radio system um is is uh in definite need of a a rehaul okay the current system is a VHF 150 Meg radio I don't know what that is but that's what it is installed approximately in 1997 in 2008 the police department moved to a new building at 168 spring fold Avenue with the old radio system the vendor Northeast communication installed a 911 system upgraded to touchscreens four years ago that's the only upgrade we have uh the radio system still involves a copper wiring connection uh when it rains it impacts the quality of the radio there are four radio sites in town towers that we have that U our radios receive off of uh map police station has one the top has one DPW and Ivy Hill uh the towers are constantly down due to the outdated copper wiring connection which is negatively impacting when the weather involves rain in 2023 the the PD reached out to Northeast Communications over 50 times for radio and Tower repairs uh Northeast Communications the state vendor uh reports that the radio system is at the end of his life the manufacturer no longer supports the Motorola portable vehicle and vehicle mobile radios we have now yes well he looks for that you know we're talking about two separate things one is the the portable so handheld and the mobile radios what's in the car that physical equipment and the other part that he's talking about is how those pieces of equipment transmit to each other so those are the cell towers and repeaters and antennas right um and we we currently have four but they're constantly uh going down or the radios or or um Cliff sessions is our rep from Northeast Communications he wrote us a letter um and it it says the Maplewood Police Department's radio is at the end of of of its life what that means is that all the motor roler portable and mobile radios are no longer supported by the manufacturer all the fixed radio equipment is between 15 and 20 years old most of that is no longer supported as well that means the parts necessary to keep the equipment in service has become difficult to obtain or is non-existent the newest piece of equipment uh was a comp compter install in 2015 in the event of failure we may not be able to recover currently the shipping times have become extensive a base station order today may take or receive to get it uh 16 weeks while Northeast communication tries to keep a stock of Parts the failure may be so severe we will not be able to recover if the failure is due to a power surge or lighning strike we may not be able to repair so that's from Northeast Communications um so uh Chief um Alvarez from our fire department was uh nice enough to let us um try out his their onate system they have the new Motorola uh radio so historically we we've had had areas in Maplewood where we can not transmit um so what we did was we took our radio and chief Alvarez's radio and went to those locations to see if it'll work or not um 1511 Springfield Avenue inside the Wawa um with our radio no response from dispatch just static on playback two attempts the fire radio um chief chief do we want to say these things out loud these areas where we can I don't think so yeah yeah okay you're making you're making the point though that using the they don't work right there there's areas where it doesn't work I think it got worse ever since Wawa started serving pizza I don't even know what that means the satellite shap I don't having a problem in WWA WWA started serving pizza since they started serving pizza it's not working piz the burgers but there there's are is where um we we've historically had problems with the radio uh used the uh the fire radio and it work perfectly fine he gave us a demonstration inside Police Headquarters where he was um communicating with somebody from moristown yeah so and this is kind of a higher level or low what the is explaining is both the portable radios and our communication system is at the end of it we need to replace it what he's describing now is replacing with a state system so the New Jersey State Police runs a communication system where they have antennas throughout the state and you subscribe to that service we don't own any infrastructure at that point we're not maintaining it if something goes down we're not trying to call in you know cliff on the weekend from Northeast communication to go up to you know the top of an apartment building and look at antennas we're calling the state and they're already on it and they're already fixing it subscription fees generally are pretty low so what we would have to do is buy new radios which need anyway and subscribe to the state system with the state system comes better communication so when he talks about the dead spots in town we've tested the fire department radios that are already on the state system in those areas of town where we have trouble and they were able to communicate without any TR any problem at the same time we were testing our own system which comes through with variable levels of quality right so we get improved quality the other thing we get is improved interoperability and that means talking with other police departments right now when we respond for Mutual Aid or we have other people responding on Mutual Aid to us when they communicate with us they communicate on another Channel typically spend right or they're communicating through our dispatch they're not communicating on our channels and with us which can create difficulties when you're trying to coordinate with other agencies more and more agencies are moving to the state system so that improves the interoperability and already around us there are uh and the people that the police department works with the they're already on that state system so scfd is on the state system South Orange our own maple DPW Milburn Union New Jersey Transit many other can we stipulate that we need new radios yeah I think we need to get on the system we shouldn't be we shouldn't be exposing any kind of weakness but we talk about interoperability these are the real benefits we can start we we know we need more to ask that and is that the cost of the million here yes and what is the annual subscription for the state couple thousand a year yes what's the life 6,000 lifetime of the radios yeah over 20 years so the radios we have we bought 20 years ago well she said 19 yeah about 15 years ago yeah is right here nice that was a good comeback like it okay is is there any other uh Capital requests from the police department yes okay can you move it along we're running late can we ask Will quick question regarding the scanner this doesn't affect the scanner the police scanner you may make it better or make it worse no in any way no it will actually uh benefit the scanner because our radios is there anything in your Capital about improved Communications equipment that will uh make the police scanner more reliable you did get that email recently that it was down again again I I I knew it was down but I did not get the email okay I I spoke with him when I got the email okay and it was back up that was a temp yeah we knew it was down we we put it back up but it okay great okay all right next capital okay next Capital uh traffic getting Punchy around here the number one complaint the police department receives Deli is concerns and pedestrian safety the main problem is speeding and not yielding to pedestrians uh we're looking to uh search another mph sign radar trailer this one's unique because it allows us to program it to uh say things like an event is coming up or needed to reroute traffic and it's like a display board where we be able to um put messaging on it but also will will it's a cloud-based it will it's cloudbased based so we can get data from it as far as how many cars are coming through the average speed the times uh and everything else so that's that and how much is that uh $6,599 that's separate and apart from engineering yes yes can I just ask you have the line item 40,000 for the lexip Poole system that's in the operating budget are we talking about that being in the capital budget instead not a capital okay this is just the description yeah okay okay go ahead uh the next is a surveillance camera uh this is a portable camera would assist with investigations high quality camera 7 hours battery life this is a portable camera we can take it and move it to uh different locations where we um believe there's uh criminal activity or um you know uh being of course in a public place um and we can monitor it and um hopefully it'll help us make an identification of somebody that might be uh uh doing something that's okay not proper and then you have Public Safety camera uh Public Safety camera okay so um we so the public safety cameras we have now are um out of date they're uh analog we want to bring up a digital high definition um and these cameras come with uh lprs uh license plate readers we put them in intersections where is high traffic high volume um and it allows us to uh that helps with investigations as well um the software is called Vigilant uh as County prosecutor's office uses it so when we send information it'll be a lot faster and smoother and other municipalities around us use the same um the same software okay any questions for the chief on any besides the radio fun talk okay anything else camera that's all okay great all right thank you thank you for getting dressed up for someone else and sharing coming here with it anyway we appreciate thank you Chief thank you wah W okay we're gonna move right along Health Department miss davp about to get dazzled by Davenport I know we're gonna be dazzled yes sorry for the delay for we know you have like a Roman Gourmet yeah for less money than that 250 for extra cheese yes wewi I'm actually surprised that their burgers aren't shabby oh I've never heard 16 inch pizza 15 bucks now why would you with all the pizzeria around you [Laughter] want right okay everybody yeah by the time we get to uh yeah let's keep this moving Miss Davenport hello catch up time here all right see how fast you can go through yours just approve everything yes approve everything well luckily we don't vote do you have a dazzling presentation for us no what we don't need a presentation never P always delivers though yeah well that's usually okay here we go health or to Health on the fifth you want to go through a a quick overview or you want to just go right to the what would you like to do I believe that we have our organizational chart which will review just so you can see the the breath and extent of all of the people who are making all the great stuff happen that I report on every month and then I believe that we're going to go into the accomplishments and goals okay mic sucks okay so as we can see here to you please yeah that's a really yucky mic oh sorry as as you can see here uh we have um four various U um areas so we have nursing environmental health uh Crisis Intervention and Social Services which includes our uh crisis social workers and our local Health Outreach coordinators and animal control um and then we have office administration which includes myself so as you can see we're we're growing or expansive but we really only have like one person per um area really like there's Anna for nursing environmental health we have two part-time people Social Services we have Martha and Dena one is full-time one is parttime uh Sarah is our only local Health Outreach coordinator who helps them uh with Social Services connection and then we have um a contract with Township of Bloomfield for animal control okay and then moving on to goals and accomplishments while Mr we's pulling them up I'll just review so we can move forward um our three accomplishments that we wanted to highlight were um that we achieved gold star in health through sustainable Jersey and Incorporated the community's health considerations into the township master plan uh secondly we've established an interlocal agreement uh a multi-year one now for health services with the township of South orang and an interlocal agreement for animal control services with the township of Bloomfield and then uh finally we've extended the CW program which is the crisis social worker program uh by adding Dina Pressel who's our part-timer um and increased our service providership volume uh we had serviced um 175 uh cases last year um through our crisis social worker program um and our goals as we scroll down oh do we have the three goals okay sure I can highlight them uh our three goals that we want to continue for uh 2024 are to apply for um additional grant funding um or the supplemental funding of or continuation of current ones that we have to sustain and enhance the public health Workforce this includes um the multi-year internation interlocal agreement that we have with our neighboring South Orange secondly um our second goal would be to implement M the first Municipal heal homeless Outreach and engagement program we recently had a meeting with the uh recipients of the pro project which is a cspnj and we are looking forward to uh them starting around mid April at if if not earlier finally um implementing our Outreach efforts around the three identified Community Health needs after doing a health needs assessment um which are injury prevention substance use prevention and connection to treatment support and increasing inclusivity of disabled um as we are part of all access committee for the township which is one example um when I say connection to treatment support and increasing that uh the opioid settlement funding that the township has received is being used to pay for the salaries for the crisis social workers and um they have been going to um Crisis Intervention training that was provided by the county and they go to our opioid um settlement meetings with the with the state uh to find out about you know what's going on and the state's really pleased with how we're using the funding um they're they're like oh okay you're really using it to to to uh change the system and impact families so and that's it we could go through a line by line item of the Excel spreadsheet can can I ask a question on the U the health inspections M um so so recently on on uh I guess it was s eats or something one of these Facebook pages somebody had a negative experience in one of our restaurants and posted something on there um I think we would like to urge people if they have a NE negative experience to contact the health department absolutely and that should be what they should do and not post stuff online it doesn't first of all it doesn't help move the needle just to be clear if we got a response if we got a complaint I mean we're not there to be punitive we're there to help resolve the thing right oh yeah absolutely I think if if I don't know who's watching maybe one person but we can get the message out that um you know you don't have to go online and trash somebody but it would be helpful if they called the board of health absolutely extremely helpful yes so people have called us to report um that they've had a bad experience and they're just not sure if it was was this restaurant but could we inspect likewise we get lab results when people go to the hospital or go to the doctor's office and they are obligated to report to the health department so then we do an investigation which includes sometimes going to a restaurant or visiting a caterer uh we do a full inspection uh check their temperature check um their sanitary uh needs handwashing how they're preparing the food and then we we let them know like look there was somebody who ate here on Thursday they said they had something could we check you know like let's say if his oysters like where did you get this and we look through records and we check you know who was The Temper you know what temperature they they cook stuff in so we definitely validate those things and if something's wrong we help them to correct it so that no further illnesses occur but yes we do need people to report to us otherwise we don't have that count B's committee opportunity right just to get the information out about who to contact and we have our public information officer what is what isn't it comm's yeah everything is comms yeah well I think that can go out in the Weekly News newsletter that goes out or mention it at the next Board of Health meeting in your packet that is then posted and okay did you want to go through the line can I ask one follow-up question but it has to do with inspections of nail salons and um businesses of that nature am I correct that we don't directly inspect them but should we receive a complaint or a concern from a consumer we uh relay that to the appropriate State Authority is that correct absolutely so here's how it works um these are places that are uh licensed by the New Jersey Department of Consumer Affairs they have an enforcement agency but sometimes they're covering the entire state so if someone gets a complaint to they usually report to us we will go out there on behalf of DCA to just do an inspection right like you know do they have sanitary utensils and and Facilities we generate a report and then we send it to DCA enforcement and they take over um sometimes people call DCA and leave an anonymous complaint and if they don't if they're not capable to get to it they'll send it to us like hey could you do this on our behalf and then just report back to us thanks I have a few that I can send your way that sure I've become aware of okay from consumers locally yeah because we could prevent you know skin infections and and other diseases that way BL blind okay doie so we have oh that's okay um for the salaries and wages uh we have what seems like a low number but um fin was able to put down that total Department salaries is 552 th000 but you'll see that the township would cover um x amount under that total that's because a lot of that is covered by the grants that we have applied and received uh which are covered below um there is no uh let me just see if there's any big increases that we are requesting not at this time but I do want to highlight that there's a homeless Outreach uh line item which is a new line item for 2024 which is one of the goals and that's the homeless Outreach and engagement pilot program so there's one question just above that the Professional Services which we budgeted nine spent 15 last year and now we're budgeting at 4,500 does that have anything to do with the homeless Outreach uh the the Professional Services was initially uh used last year to pay for the crisis intervention social worker um oversight so um The Crisis Intervention social worker um is overseen by a clinical licensed social worker um and then once Martha who's our full-time um person receives her license to be a licensed clinical social worker we no longer need that so we anticipate that she will get all of her hours that are required by the state um and so that's decreased by half we should be there by June and that's because the Mental Health Association is no longer providing that service to us for free like they were in the very beginning that's correct right and the homeless Outreach I think you started talking about that but I was I was distracted myself with something else so the homeless yeah the homeless outreach program um is going we budgeted for $100,000 and that is uh going to be used by um our contractor cspnj to provide that service it's a anticipated amount and because it's already February um we'll see how much we used but that was the anticipated amount for 2024 have we started implementation of that meeting them start we've met with them um just last week and then um we'll have another preliminary meeting two weeks before they uh finalize the person that they're going to use and so we anticipate like mid April if not sooner we could talk more at B we could talk more at B moving on to um our animal control services oh and I also want to mention that a lot of our du's meetings and seminars and our Printing and office supplies and equipment are covered through our grants as well so um these are minimal costs um animal control services we anticipate $72,000 for Animal Control shelter uh for animal control services uh that was based on the amount that was charged by the township of Bloomfield um our contract with them ends June 2024 unfortunately we received a letter saying that they do not um they no longer want to renew for June after June uh so we will go out with an RFP for animal control services but I don't anticipate that the numbers are going to be any different um they might be like a couple of thousand dollars lower but um based on quotes from that we got from last year this is about the amount range it's about the amount we paid St huberts also two years ago why are they stopping unknown they they didn't give an answer asked but they didn't tell it yeah okay um next up is uh just the grants that we have uh so Municipal Alliance program we still um are receiving 12,000 um roughly $122,000 this is similar to last year as you know this is pass through money to go to um programs such as youthnet and uh the parenting Center for their elementors program so we support those um it also can go to the mac program through the Parenting Center as well and then uh we also are using some of that funding to go in with South Orange to uh pay for some money for mun Midnight Madness and their drug prevention efforts um the ninjo enhancing local Health infrastructure Grant uh Al also offsets our salaries uh for this year we anticipate $104,000 uh with the hope that there will be a second uh followup to this uh the cost or the amount that they will assign to local Health departments is unclear but we will be pursuing that Grant as well the strengthening local public health capacity Grant which we've had for the last four years we have about $23,000 left both of these U well the strengthening one ends in June uh so we have to expend all that um and then they said the state said that there would be another additional funding for that but it'll be um less than the 406,000 we received for this year the damus youth leadership Grant is also connected to the municipal Alliance Grant it's the uh division of mental health and Addiction Services uh that funding will be going to um uh reveal to heal for their uh 8-week program for social support services um and and support groups the this is the national opioid settlement money that we've received um that offsets the crisis intervention social worker salaries uh 45,000 is from the uh uh Community benefit fund through the uh apothecarium uh contract and uh most of that will be used to offset CW salaries as well um it really is a benefit to everyone of for this money to do the uh to put this toward salaries for uh community outreach so we're appreciative of that and then um our interlocal health agreement for South Orange um was agreed upon to 12,540 for this first year and um it will increase uh and they're in agreement with that based on um the colas for the next uh subsequent two years and that's our budget thank you is the um anticipation for the grants that you know you so nicely get for us the um uh that they will continue or are these like one-offs or they you know what I'm saying like is we can count on or is this just yes we can definitely count on the strengthening Grant now what we we were told is that uh we're definitely going to get about $50,000 which is a sharp incre decrease from what we've gotten however the ninjo grant uh they're looking at a second CDC funding source for epidemiology and lab services which can be used to supplement uh local Health departments like ourselves it all depends on how many local Health departments apply so if only 20 apply all of that money gets dispersed to 20 so it could increase if 72 apply that will decrease significantly but we will keep you informed of um where our funding is midpoint Point that's really what we're looking at right now any questions I was just going to say that several of the grants um certainly those that are funding uh positions in your or chart have been renewed more than once yes which is terrific absolutely for the last four years we've had the strengthening Grant so right so that's a good thing thank you for being so incredibly resourceful thank you officer uh Health officer Davenport very very resourceful in what you do thank you thank you you we're we're very happy to serve and we thank you for your support anyone else have questions comments I'll also just say someone else was called the Grand Queen earlier so I will just say that I think Health officer Davenport also gu the grants Queen 100% all right you're off the hot seat hey move Miss Lester have a good even everyone thank you here comes the library comes the library Library I was gonna say that in Philly we used to say library library I'm like it's not a library there's an r in there it's a library scrimps direct it's like take a picture good evening good evening is it still raining out when you well not that I've been out of the building that much uh so welcome thank you to our budget feels like this is when we see everybody okay well thank you um uh Township committee members I'm happy to be here uh we had a big year last year we started construction on our new library in August of 22 and I think you saw it uh all sort of going up last year so that um is we're we're now at the halfway point and uh looking forward to a new library being complete in August of 2024 um and then we'll have to move the books the technology all of that um but we're very excited and I just to remind you as far as grants we did receive an $8.3 million yes baby just a little oh that seem year you know I love it I love it last year we did also um receed more than $130,000 grants and the big the big one of that is for our ESL funding which I believe is seventh year funding for that um and that has been a very successful program that we've received funding from the Department of Labor for that and we also added on um a conversation class at Hilton um and so that has been very successful uh the other things I wanted to point out is that you know we've been in you know very constricted spaces our public has been very accommodating and um is very excited for the new library but it has been challenging and we are we have been challenged by our space especially at Hilton with an age roof with which is leaking you know um it's it's really problematic for us so um we are expecting the um a new uh the restoration of the flat roofs and the parit walls and that should start in about two weeks uh but that really can't start soon enough I mean it's we have active leaks in the in the building so that has been yeah uh Mr Dua and I experienced the ACT yeah it's it's sort of Beyond um uh and staff have to work in you know so that that has been extremely challenging um and so as part of the um the request for this year would be is all the repairs that's needed inside Hilton Branch after you know just from the plaster repair Etc after um roof is replaced um the other thing that does need to happen is so that we're not just being reactive to problems is uh this past year um the Slate uh was there about a 100 pieces of that slate were replaced um that were cracked and at that time we were told that that would last at most five years so I would please urge uh the township committee to think you know some you know to look for budgeting that within that fiveyear span so we don't find oursel in the same position in five years um looking forward to this year and um some of our goals um I mean the main goal is to get this new library open to the public um but uh we also will need to add to staff members so that's included in this budget and that's for a full-time library assistant and a full-time custodian um and also what we've we had taken out of the budget for the past you know since pre-co was a security guard at the main library and this budget also reflects having the security bar guard back at the main library after we open um and and this will impact the police too because there will be more activity just listening to the crossing guard conversation um the you know the the middle school kids going back and forth on Baker Street um we know what what that looks like um and so we will need a presence there um you know I'm jumping around a little bit but trying to move quickly just in an interest of time uh but the other the other addition that's that's new on this budget is um an increase of 45,000 to the library direct expenses line and that is for um software costs associated with technology to for the new library um but I'm happy to answer questions um thank you well first of all I just wan to um it always amazes me how much you guys have done in and continuing the services the library from all different locations squeezing it in no it's been it's not gone unnoticed it's been really really helpful and it almost feels like the library has been more present um well we did I did learn from our health officer at um at the I think at a department heads meeting last week that where we're located now is one of the areas in town that actually needs the most services so um and we see it we see it every day and and actually um Candace will be coming to our staff meeting tomorrow to talk about the social services that are provided in town because we're helping people fill out job applications helping people do all sorts of things um that they need they absolutely have to do using a computer they do not have a computer they do not have a cell phone for that uh Second point of authentification so everything is a challenge y um and so our Librarians are spending you know I mean you know hours with with patrons and some getting very good results but they are being especially having to have a cell phone is is holding is is just an impossible hurdle for so many people um so it will be you know really helpful to hear from her and we work closely with the health department um you know we you know we're working with the police department but really trying to to help the people um in this community who who really need to need to help wow yeah that two-step authentication yeah like it's a pain when you have a cell phone right let alone I don't I it never occurred to me like these are the things that you know yeah and this is with people with very low level of Technology skills and it's it's such a barrier for um for our residents okay does anyone have any questions I just I know the request is more than the minimum tax but Mr K the minimum Library will go up this year right cuz are correct it's 1767 597 what is it now it well for 2023 it's 1767 597 you know what it goes up to in 20 we don't we don't know until November what it I mean this is this is published in October so I guess this is for do you know how that works no we have it we have it in the budget sheet if um where we can bring it up we can take a look under Revenue because I typically try to split it out so that we can see where it's moving oh it's in the revenue yes so we're going to see the first line would be the municipal tax levy and then right underneath that would be um the yep got it 767 597 right that's last year's that's and last year was 1662 179 okay right so this is what's posted in October okay so it's about $100,000 more okay okay anyone any questions for I mean the other the other thing that I think really sets Maplewood apart is just the leadership that we've taken across the board and I want to thank you all for um becoming one of the first communities in m in New Jersey to be a sanctuary for um for a book Sanctuary town uh the the library board then did became a sanctuary for reading um and um our assembly woman has is one of the co-sponsors for the freedom to read act which is going going through um both the assembly and the Senate right now so that is a you know a huge thing and and additionally we are going for lead gold certification in Maplewood for our building and that is um and you know a very big deal um as far as leadership in throughout New Jersey um and we're very close to lead Platinum so um we'll see if we can get there so the the different just um the uh lead lead gold um you you have to have 60 points it's on a point system and Lead uh Platinum is 80 and we're showing that we're very close to 78 that's where we are um but it's it's those extra two are very wow but it's exciting two points huh I don't see anything in your budget for um Grand Opening celebration no so we we have received um s County grant funding for um the ideas Festival again this year which we will do after the grand opening so it'll be what we're going to use that funding for to get some big names to come in um after we open we we would we would welcome more funding for I think you can check the also the clerk's budget line for parties uh oh yeah it's only fair that's great we're really excited too yes for this opening it's G to be it's gonna be great and the target date once you have don't have a Target date for opening but we have a Target date for I mean the the construction is is on schedule to be complete in August okay um we have heard it's going to be about a six- week period for moving in our books and our technology so that's that's where we're we're looking so it's looking like October okay great terrific will the will the H Library remain open during that move so that's that's our goal library open during the move there may be I me we're discussing this right now because we really do you know want our open services but we know how much work it's going to be to open this new building and so there may need to be a two-e period where we have to close Hilton in order for everybody to help uh get us open yeah um you know the the you know 10 years ago the township committee invest in uh joining the buckles Consortium of libraries and so we are part of a Consortium of 77 libraries and our patrons can use mbour and South Orange and other libraries have done that when they've been closed including South Orange and maybe maybe it'll fall into late August those couple weeks people are away yeah yeah thank you very much thank you for your leadership really exciting we're all tremendous yeah well it's gonna be great thank you all okay you're gonna have a nice new office too probably never going to be in it probably never going to be in it exactly in it oh no but it's a nice place to close the door you good evening all right one last one Finance Finance Best For Last Joe I hope everyone had a cup of coffee before we get started with Finance but um we'll do our best to everyone awake uh Mr wor is working on a PowerPoint presentation he shows us stuff on the screen we'll stay awake might make it a little bit easier to follow and then we'll switch over to the uh spreadsheets that we've been using to discuss operating budget okay no actually the PowerPoint presentation would be better wait what did I do with that page [Music] we're on time though great we are Sarah again Candace and Sarah Candace and Sarah we not even supposed to listen to Joe until 11 minutes from now no we're going to listen now you want to tell us something else before you there we go yes sir thank you all right so starting out with a brief overview of the finance department uh it is mandatory by State Statute that there are four functions of every municipality they must need to be filled by licensed Personnel the clerk's office is one of them and the finance department is the other three uh to give a brief overview of what the finance Department actually does we have a tax assessment Department we have over 7,500 properties and just under 10,000 sewer units that he is essentially an asset manager for uh under tax collection we collect taxes for the municipality both from uh the open space and the regular operating budget and the library tax the school district and the county and the County's open tax we collect uh money for the two special Improvement District dists we Bill and collect for the sewer department and then we are also responsible for bringing in all the money from the various departments and uh making sure that it's accounted for on the finance side uh we manage payroll which has over 400 employees uh 200 of them uh are in our pension system uh we handle all accounts payable we handle The Debt Service which currently is about $59 million and we handle interlocal agreement and other invoice in that we get from the administrator's office next slide please so uh in terms of highlights for 2023 this would be uh one of the two biggies uh we went through a reval uh and as you can see our previous um valuation for the entire Township of Maplewood was roughly $3.9 billion and it is now currently $6.2 billion all things held equal if it goes the way we anti ipate we will see a reduction in the rate which was roughly $361 down to $240 that is of course dependent upon what the school district does and what the county does and and ultimately what we decide to do with our operating budget as well next slide please our other achievement was that we uh financed last year a $33 million Bond we had $16 Million worth of previous projects in place uh we spent an extraord ordinary amount of time uh in the spring working on uh producing our um official statement and also discussing our Financial Health at Great length with the bond rating agency I just want to highlight for a minute uh that all that work uh and all that time paid off in the yellow is actually our bond uh it's a $15 million Bond ultimately it came in at 30 31.1 million because we got a premium we applied it directly to reduce the amount that we were borrowing and we brought it in at an interest rate of of 3.12% if you look directly above that you will see a town that is rated better than us financially they have a AAA rating uh and they had a three and a half% interest rate so as much as we had a lot of frustration last year with bank recks and afss and everything else that goes along with it this represents roughly six weeks worth of work and if we can go to the next slide we can see that we were working in conjunction with two projects on the left was our own uh which ultimately because of what we did we're going to save the taxpayers $1.7 million in interest over the course of the 15-year Bond and that comes down to roughly $125,000 a year annually uh in our operating budget and on the other side uh because we are a member of The Joint meeting uh they were going out for 215 million ion dollar Bond uh our share to that was roughly $10 million but because uh it is being financed through the ibank and that uh FEMA is going to help subsidize the project ultimately at the end of the project because of the work we did will be on the hook for only a million dollar again a substantial savings for our taxpayers next slide please so our goals for 2024 relatively simple not very ambitious uh we're looking to transition to electronic purchasing Administration was the one that suggested we do that um once we get through the paper purchase orders we have because I just don't have it in me to throw it out we will we will flip that switch uh basically on the pace that we produce purchase orders my guess is sometime by may we will switch over to electronic purchasing we are also uh looking to transition uh from our edmin server to Edmonds Cloud uh our server is reaching the end of its useful life rather than purchase a new server um going to the cloud would uh increase our efficiency any of our locations that are remote typically take about 10 minutes to log into our server so DPW the police station well not the fire department anymore but uh this will give more instantaneous ability it also increases our capacity to store documents electronically and it also gives us the ability to have a greater amount of uh historical data stored uh um so it is a recommendation of the finance committee we are looking to implement direct withdrawal payments right now um people go online and they can pay for their sewer bill or they can pay for their taxes through our online portal uh with this with the cloud we would have the uh increased ability to uh have people register with us and then we would send out an email letting them know three days ahead of time we will be pulling this much amount out of your bank account um and and then we would be able to then process it uh prior to this uh this is the first year that we're not doing it anymore but prior to this we were waving the $195 fee that came with it uh so people are now paying $1.95 if they're paying online if they sign up for this program we can offer that free to them again because the file would only cost $1.95 for 200 uh processed um payments and then we're also looking at expanding our online payment portal right now just have the ability ility to pay your taxes and Sewer we're exploring the idea of being able to do uh more some Recreation stuff perhaps I know that a lot of it's through wesk and a lot of it's through sdl uh but with this module we we should be able to expand it uh and then bring it in which would make the accounting for us a lot simpler because it's now not two systems trying to talk to each other uh next slide please so so most of this we can see in the spreadsheets this just may be a little more digestible I want to talk about uh the statutory tab the utilities Tab and we'll start out with our pension obligations so this shows us a history of the last five years and on the right I extended it out a couple years with the following explanation we can see that pension has been rising every year we got a bill that comes out in January due date of uh April 1st and uh there's a two-year lag that goes with the pension payments so in 2024 we are still paying for the firefighters uh pension but in 2025 because we uh now switched over midy year and sefd started paying their firefighters we anticipate about a million dollar reduction in 2025 and then come 2026 the firefighters will be fully off and so that's the trend that we anticipate in terms of a savings to our taxpayers uh where you can see right now in 2024 we're looking at $5.8 million and by the time we get to 2026 that should go down to 3.7 that is also projecting the typical increases that we see from from the pension uh next slide please this shows our Debt Service uh the bottom line is for bonds the uh lighter purple is for the interest on bonds and then the brown and yellow are for the notes so you can see from this a particular uh slide and in 2019 we converted over all of our notes and so predominately we were looking at Debt Service that was strictly uh Bond related permanent financing related in 2020 uh we had capital projects we sold notes we could see that at the top same with 21 same with 22 and then in 23 with the $1.7 Million worth of savings that we got we can see that our our debt service significantly dropped we're now picking up those Bond payments in 2024 25 through 28 is an estimate based on the idea that we're going to do6 million dollar a year in in projects um we can see all the way back in 2019 money was cheap you can barely see that little yellow line that says here's the interest we were paying on our on our bonds that we were floating it's not uh it's not cheap anymore to borrow money but we are anticipating that we will move forward uh with a $6 million a year year worth of capital projects and then uh at some point we will analyze when it would be the best idea to convert the temporary notes into permanent financing again next slide please this is Insurance costs that we've had to deal with uh we can see that in 2021 when the pandemic hit uh costs decreased uh both for health benefits and for liability and workers compensation um most of that is related to the fact that people weren't really going to the doctor in the middle of a pandemic uh that would have been the time and I know we had had discussions with prior Administration about leaving uh the uh Health state health benefits plan because at the time we had a very positive loss ratio and we would have been able to to get in um would have been able to get in at at a much uh more favorable rate that being said we have finally moved Mr worry got us across the Finish Line he understood it wasn't a thre Monon project like if previous administration thought and uh so we see this year that we're looking at roughly $3.1 million that is still a savings over what the state health benefits plan would have been for us this year state health benefits plan would have landed us somewhere around $3.3 million so we are again saving the taxpayers roughly $150,000 by making that move uh as for the liability uh this is essentially a function of climate change and it's a Countrywide uh Nationwide problem uh liability rates are going up uh some towns are seeing a deductible on top of their deductible where they call it and I can't remember the word they Ed but as an example let's say that we have a $50,000 deductible they set aside an additional $750,000 so that if we wound up having a claim for $200,000 we would pick up the whole $200,000 and our $750,000 Corridor would now go down to $600,000 and each claim once we finally reached both the $50,000 initial deductible and uh the the uh Corridor that they created that's when they would start paying uh full boat I don't think we've experienced that yet and I'll leave that to the administrator to to discuss it Greater detail but I know that other towns are experiencing that issue and if we're not uh we need to be prepared in in the future for having to deal with that next slide please these are our utility costs uh as you can see from this particular Slide the biggest portion of our utility costs is uh paying to to get rid of our sewage the next biggest cost uh in in the pink would be keeping street lights lit and uh fire uh and uh traffic signals working uh the blue represents uh Gas and Electric for all of our facilities and buildings we then have a small layer for uh water and then uh telephone would be our next highest next slide will break this down into a little greater detail for us so we can see that we've been relatively stable with sewer and this year uh we're going up by $200,000 that's a function of some of the work that's being done at uh the joint meeting in terms of that $ 215 million do uh bond that and the projects that they're experiencing uh we can anticipate that they're just beginning with this and that we will continue to see uh increases in the in the sewer in in up upcoming years uh the other side shows basically that we've seen the steepest uh increase in keeping street lights lit and keeping traffic lights working and that gas and Electric's been relatively uh stable for our facilities uh and a little shout out to to Mr Meli on the telephone he began that project in 2020 back when we were paying about $152,000 for the phone and he implemented a uh a new program where we moved over to the voiceover Internet Protocol or the vo and and he basically saved the the Maplewood taxpayers $50,000 a year so if anyone feels compelled to call him up in Maine say thank you you know I certainly will on my ride home uh next slide please so this is deferred charges and the slide on the right is pretty busy we'll just take a look at the slide or on the left is pretty busy we'll take a look at the slide on the right deferred charges uh happen one of two ways either we wound up with an expense that we did not anticipate um or that we in somehow have overspent uh what we budgeted so if we go back to somewhat of the busier slide we'll see two numbers in red for 79,000 and 82,000 those represent uh capital projects that uh we did not uh go out and bond a sufficient amount of money for and so we were forced to raise that in a subsequent year in the full amount uh Ida uh which is part of the reason why you see a spike on the right uh was uh $1 million that the governing body approved um it was considered an emergency that we were able to then stretch out over a five-year uh payout uh our only problem is is after our first year paying out $200,000 the state when they reviewed our budget last year said between the amount of money you got in from FEMA and the amount of money you got in from insurance we're not going to let you continue to pay this off pay the whole lump sum off in one shot and that's why we see $800,000 in the following year uh 400,00 is in Revenue loss from covid we did a note to ourselves for uh $2 million this is paying ourselves back over the course of five years for what we were allowed to do uh $200,000 towards the bottom uh represents the the final step of us moving over to the scfd that's stretching out what we had to pay for accumulated leave instead of having to hit the taxpayers over the head in one year we were able to stretch sat out over five years and then all the way at the bottom in in the in the black numbers uh is the uh revalve and we can see that the last time we did a reval it cost us 82,2 every year for five years uh obviously went up in price and we're now paying 11 14,800 uh we got a break though and in 20 22 and 23 we actually didn't have to pay for a reval so I know that when we hired Mr Dort I said the one thing that you need to do is is let let us at least pay off this first reval before we get stuck with another reval uh next slide please years the reserve for uncollected taxes and I put this in and backed it up all the way to 2016 to kind of show uh when we the last time we had a reval we significantly increased the amount of Reserve that we had for uncollected taxes in anticipation of uh having tax appeals uh you see two smaller lines that see that show a dip of roughly $1.2 million that was Prior administrators looking to balance the budget the easy way out uh typically we should be running about $1.5 million which we see roughly uh from last year to 1.6 and roughly 1.6 this year we have budgeted currently $1.8 million but I think it would be to our benefit to have a conversation about either increasing it the same way we did back in 2017 or creating a new line in the budget that would be for ly for tax appeals which would then get charged off of our operating budget and put into a reserve so that in the event that we have any issues uh we would be able to uh financially withstand them you did that this year right because there is a00 yeah, line yes okay so when we get to that we can talk a little bit more about it okay uh I think that's the last slide in terms of getting us through tabs and and boring numbers so we can throw back up the uh spreadsheet for for the finance department department so I just want to just in case someone got excited about a lot of those lines that are going down because of scfd we have to remember that they're going up on scfd so they're still going to be charged to the taxpayers just a little differently and hopefully we'll get the economy of scale of scale over there that'll be different Mr K you want to go over real quickly your one Capital request before we move into the line items sure uh one Capital request one Personnel request the capital request uh was a phone call from uh uh vehicle maintenance uh who said that the vehicle that our tax assessor uses to go out on inspections is pretty much no longer repairable so Vios cios and eventually you're going to need a new vehicle he um he was kind on Mr Mal he was kind enough to actually go out and get the quote for us so in our Capital um request is a quote that was provided to us from uh vehicle maintenance uh to replace the vehicle that we're currently using to do inspections uh for uh tax assessment purposes and then I also have a Personnel request but I know that we're not really talking about those just yet correct this is our operating budget uh notes on the side kind of explain what we're trying to do as as we said one of our goals is to move from uh having admins on our server uh which is on its last legs to moving it to the cloud so that's the reason why you're seeing an increase in that particular line item we're also looking to increase the amount of uh storage space that we have currently um we are busting at the seams in the finance department and so typically a municipal budget runs two years last year and this year so it's actually a two-year budget and right now we store a lot of our last year's documents down in the basement which makes it a little more difficult to have to retrieve uh documents for so we're just looking to uh put in some additional cabinets some additional counter space to try and make ourselves a little more efficient and have everything uh in our office uh for the open two years of of an operating budget uh we see an increase for uh for the tax collection and revenue Administration we're going to start sending out um delinquent notices on a more frequent basis typically uh years we've been sending them out only twice a year uh usually uh the big one was right before we were preparing to go out to tax sale so that we can kind of get people to pay us and keep them off tax sale uh we're now looking to do that on a quarterly basis so that's that doesn't represent more delinquencies just that we're going to be contacting them more yes more frequently more frequently okay right because all you can see there is increased delinquent yeah but now you've explained what that means yes yeah and then from tax uh the tax assessor perspective he is statutorily the uh person who's supposed to be in charge of the tax maps for since I've been here it somehow got dumped onto engineering so engineering was very happy to give it back to the finance department uh so we're increasing that budget in order to include what they need to do in terms of their GIS stuff and what we need to do in terms of creating a uh and maintaining a new tax map after a rebound tax appeals and that is that is uh so let's go to that tax appeal 200,000 so talk about the rationale for doing that because we haven't done that in the past it looks like right so the the function on that is um towns can can if they get hit hard enough with a tax appeal can declare a special emergency and then they can then do similar to what we did on the one slide and make it a threee payout to cover it depending on the size of ta appeal and that gives us the the ability to Avid any kind of Spike uh a lot of towns and it's it's more fiscally prudent to start to budget for small amounts of money um we're starting off with a relatively large amount of money because we just came out of a reval and we don't have this this Reserve in place but ultimately uh in in future years if the the governing body is in favor of this you would budget $50,000 or so and then when the budget got adopted we would charge off the full $50,000 and move it into a reserve so that at any point in the future uh if we wound up uh losing a tax appeal down at the state court or we got hit over at the County board for multiple um multiple appeals uh that would be the the mechanism that we would use to fund it instead of taking it out of uh the the operating budget Andor declaring an emergency appropriation so uh a lot of towns do this it's actually I believe one of the questions on the best practices that we aren't able to answer yes to yet and so our recommendation is to start um while I recognize that we may not have an appetite for $200,000 in terms of doing that we are trying to kind of play catch up to something that doesn't exist right now so that's the only reason why we plugged in such a large number so isn't there a a counterargument that sort of like a capital expense if you get hit on a an appeal isn't it fair to spread that over time so that current and future taxpayers pay that off as opposed to just current pay so ultimately and that's ultimately where the reserve would land we this would not be a $200,000 line item every year so yes we would ultimately be spreading it out by the concept of putting in $50,000 every year over multiple years in order to build that up uh currently the way we pay for it right now is uh we uh will hit our Uh current year taxes receivable uh which then adversely affects our um uh adversely affects the amount of money that we're bringing in from the tax levy to support the budget and then ultimately we're looking to do either budget transfers in order to cover it or it's it's directly hitting and reducing our fund balance in addition we have one uh large taxpayer this year that had separate from the revaluation had gone up and so they already have outstanding appeals and may have an additional one so it seems like the right time to take part of that increase and set it aside how much does it normally cost us for these tax appeals every these are judgments yeah oh the Judgment yeah yeah well I I we discussed this in finance subcommittee because of this one entity in particular point I mean this could be a number we adjust I mean I think as the budget kind of gets more fine-tuned this will be a part of discussion but this is a a very good practice um because while this is a large number in the first year it does help you smooth out in future years what could be the payment for tax bills do we have any idea how many people are appealing right now or we don't know any of that yet we do so so la last year from an appeal process we probably paid out about 80 to $100,000 in in Su uccessful appeals against us as it stands right now most majority of them are commercial correct and we anticipate that based on the reval and Mr Dort was firm and aggressive and fair uh but we anticipate that there are going to be commercial properties that disagree with with that assessment so we we believe that we are going to see a significant number on the commercial side and the commercial side is typically the big numbers but last year we probably paid out like I said about 880 or $100,000 uh on appeals in total uh I think we had only one state judgment in the bulk of the rest of them came from the County Board and people just got their final card right and the appeal is uh deadline is what April 1 May 1 May 1 because it's a revalue May typically it's it's April 1 correct but but it's May 1 because it's a revaler for us uh to date we uh have one confirmed uh appeal that has been filed with us uh we've had 60 phone calls threatening us with we're going to appeal this um but it's the appeal process is is not going to be uh that simple because we just hired a company to create market value and so often like people are going to look at this and they say I can't believe you assessed my property at $650,000 it's absolutely ridiculous and you know if they wind up asking the question of if you put your house up for sale how much would it go for and they said what go for for $800,000 well and 650 doesn't really seem like an unreasonable number type of thing right uh and that's ultimately what would wind up happening at the at the County Board we don't anticipate um from a residential perspective that uh those appeals that are going to the county uh that we are particularly vulnerable on because the data is as fresh as it could possibly be through the reval company that we used and ultimately there you're getting a six-month freshen up of them doing comp sales to to what the reval company had done am I saying that there may be some adjustments in in certain directions there may be but they they'll be relatively minimal uh because the data is just so fresh and and the reval firm defends their numbers correct yes for two years for two years so that helps so we're not spending our legal cost for that correct not as much as yeah so I have a question about that you said about the you know the state said we got the FEMA and the insurance money so typically and then we had to pay back the note because we borrowed for that so typically like with FEMA we just fixed the roads up off of Ridgewood and we're due to get 600,000 from female we spent about $800 $900,000 so that money comes back where does that money go and how does that get calculated and all this so that money typically because there's a significant lag and so it's not going to be a reimbursable line item into an operating budget it typically gets realized as miscellaneous Revenue not anticipated and that helps to increase the fund balance and so part of the reason why the state gave us a hard time on that you know we were about to go $200,000 for five years and then year two they were like nope just pay the whole thing off because they knew that the money that came in essentially artificially inflated our our fund balance and so their conern that doesn't go into the capital fund balance it goes into operating correctly operating any other questions I recommend that um if we're going to put something on the website we should definitely include some of those slides that you shared with us about uh the things outside of our control our Financial Health how we're going in the right direction those are great slides by the way you very nice graphics I don't know if I like the the nuts oh I like that oh I like that I like the gray background the gears right there's one last announcement that I would like to to make uh and that is that the the state has uh is looking to enact a law that's going to change the way senior citizens pay taxes in New Jersey uh oh do whether they actually get there or not is going to be another story but they are proposing that in 2026 they are going to do away with the um uh the senior freeze program and that every uh every person that who's over the age of 62 uh will be entitled to a 50% reduction in their taxes Capp at $8,000 a year um it would appear that they are working towards that uh because the senior freeze Revenue um had a limit you can only earn so much money in order to be eligible for the program in 21 that was like $92,000 and in in or in 20 it was $92,000 and in in 21 it was $94,000 they have now increased that to $150,000 for 22 income and 23 income and uh actually 23 income has now gone up to $163,000 so to anyone who's watching from home and is struggling and wants to stay in their home a program that might have been Out Of Reach when it was you know a a income limit of $94,000 is now easily 50 70,000 more than what it used to be just a year ago so call down to the state we have the number on our website so that you can because it's a state program they will send you the form we will fill out the one page that we need to fill out for you uh take advantage of it because it really is a wonderful program to help our seniors who have been in our community for such a long time yeah to stay in their homes right can you do that any time of the year so no typically there's a deadline for filing um which is oober I yes the state used to play a game where the deadline was April and then they would make this big announcement that it was now June and then they make this big announcement that it was now August and then they would make this big announcement that it's the final is October before the election right right so they they've stopped they've stopped playing that game with this artificial deadline and they've just now flat out said you have until October to to apply for the program but today in his budget address the governor announced uh expanding the senior tax program yes as well as the anchor program so the expansion comes in the in the revenue that got increased the limit used to be 150 and now the limit's 163,000 so for people who may have been making 151 and didn't qualify they qualify now okay right I just don't I misunderstood and I hope maybe others who are watching misunderstood that this is going away and you got to rush to get your paperwork in that's not what you're saying no AB you don't need to rush but the program the way it's created now is the year that you establish your base year is the year that they wind up giving you your refund on so let's say I file for this and get my senior tax free and my taxes right now are $20,000 and then everyone gets done doing their budgets and taxes go up to $22,000 the state will send me back $2,000 but the following year when when it winds up going up to $24,000 not $20,000 base year still counts and now I get a $4,000 check and one of the things that I tell a lot of seniors who apply for this program is you need to be very careful with that income level because I've seen people who have pulled extra money out of their retirement help a grandkid go to college and that then just pushed them over the limit and kicked them out of the program and now they had to reapply and they did they successfully got back in but now they're not frozen at 2010 when they first got into the program now they're frozen at 2015 and it's based on the year or two years before the income the TA the tax difference is based on it when you initially appli the two years before so forms were filling out are showing the taxes that were paid in 22 and 23 and they'll get a refund based on that difference and then moving forward it would be whatever those taxes were going back to 22 I would love it if you could put something together to possibly bring over to the senior CER to explain to our residents because that's a serious concern for many of them or even just put it on the website website I know assembly woman Jesse that was that was her thing and she would she would have a uh just have a seminar here every year year we need to bring I think we can get our new assembly woman to do something I'm sure our new assembly woman will do the same but and also the anchor program is expanding as well so it's available to Middle income households as well and um and we might be getting full school funding which is incredible we'll see dare to dream yeah well that was the announcement that was the announcement uh so no more questions for finance um at our Township committee meeting next week we will cover Community Development Administration do we do you already no we have Community Development and court court those are the last two okay so when are we going to have uh after we get those when are we going to start discussing all this stuff because we got new hires we got new vehicles we got radios we got a lot of stuff to talk about I think on the Personnel side so let me ask you about that if it's a new position how do you justify it as a closed session I don't think you can I think it's in public we'll discuss positions in open CL whenever you'd like to that's what we that's what we normally did yeah so discuss those all together and I had one sheet for you on you Personnel request so do you want to do that next week as well we also need your recommendations that are once this is all done you'll get my recommendations on on everything on Personnel on operating and on so we could possibly do that in the second meeting in March personnel and closed and then the rest and open the capital and the requests and try well there's not that many personnel to be post no all of them are open most of them are like new there's a office assistant which is a new one buildings and ground worker a new one roads and recycling worker staff engineer public information officer accounting assistant and Recreation custodian all those are open discussions there's a court administrator office manager upstairs in Community Development those are that's what you have here on your list all right oh yes Che we will be two CL session discussions two items s in open we'll discuss we'll have Serv Community Development and Court discuss I well it's also the women's history on the proclamation right at this next meeting so I'm just worried about the flag raising oh it's also Board of Health I was just going to say I think that bigger discussion should go in the second meeting March is that right because it'll be too long move wait does that still keep us on the same timeline for our budget we talked about we need to introduce uh by uh the first regularly scheduled meeting in April we have always introduced our budget on time adopting it's been a different story but we've always introduced on time and we're we're put we're trying to adopt by June if I Rec our discussion that would be the more prudent thing to do yes yes right which is what we said in fin we've also had uh included a line in there for the administrator to recommend adjustments okay that'll be in the second meeting oh it is okay okay have to go look at that again motion to adjourn second right yes daff Yesa yes single yes mayor Adams thank you yes good night everyone