##VIDEO ID:A## good evening I call to order this regular meeting of the ver Count Council for Monday the 5th of August 2024 Madam clerk would you please read the open public meetings act and find state notice requirements of Bu from public meetings act have been satisfied with respect to this meeting of the township Council the meeting time and date were included in the public meeting notice along with the public internet link and telephone call in information set not and the meeting agenda was posted in the municipal building and sent the official newspapers of the township the Verona C gr times and the Star Ledger at least 48 Hours proceeding the start time of this meeting the agenda and handouts can be viewed online at Verona nj.org Council meetings a public comment period will be held in the ORD it's listed on the meeting agenda and instructions on how to comment will be provided at the appropriate time thank you madam cler would you call the rooll please Council Holland here Council McGrath here councilman Roman here Deputy Mayor makoy present mayor Toro present here also present tonight is Deputy Township manager Kevin o attorney briany myself mpal clerk M clerk please standedge alance to the flag of the United States of America and to the repblic for stand Nation indivisible and for all thank you uh for the mayor's report just a couple items we will have our first open space advisory committee meeting in several years as a matter of fact this Wednesday uh morning at 10 o'clock on Zoom so please join us if you are able uh councilman Roman and I serve on that Cate the office of emergency management is in the process of rewriting and streamlining Emergency Operations plan which is like 700 pages long we kind of get that down to less than 700 Pages um and we are working with a consultant that the uh State and County want in a grant um we've had some good sessions so far internally and uh starting to really streamline those processes so hopefully people will actually read the document after it's all said and done um a reminder that National Night Out which is something that we do with Cedar Grove the is this Wednesday at community park in CED Grove it was originally scheduled for tomorrow but has been uh preemptively postponed due to potential for hazardous weather uh so please join us it's an event spearheaded by our police departments in order to build those Community relationships it alternates between gr and C Gro and finally congratulations to the brona penu Barnstormers baseball team which won the USA summer championship against Cedar Grove which is phenomenal uh this completed their undefeated season or losses and that concludes my report Mr Deputy Township manager I'm sorry Mr CRA I am sorry I didn't make the agenda this evening apparently uh they don't like me anymore only joking uh I only have a couple of things um we still are having our last summer concert in Brookvale Park which is the Garden State Groove top 40 hits Friday August 9th um the other the arena is open there's other movie Nights uh you should check the Park's calendar there's still a lot of things going on uh there's a couple of the here's a caran festival in August 10th 12th .m. at mon Urban Park in Orange there's an International Food Festival Saturday August 10th from 2: to 900 p.m. at at Hill Park in the Latino festival Saturday August 24th and Sunday August 25th at Monty Urban Park we also are having a back to school afternoon I should say from 10: to 2 at 50 South Clinton where they are giving out things that school supplies that the children would meet uh excuse me September 11th is immediately coming upon us and we have our annual uh event up at the Eagle Rock reservation and it starts promptly at 8800 a.m. and it's a if you've never been there it's a wonderful wonderful event to attend and um one of the things that I heard the other day the county executive was speaking to the executive director of the 9 911 memorial they're also doing a school program and I think the superintend all the superintendents in the county are going to be addressed by this particular executive director uh had to remember 911 and I think that's a very very important event and teaching our children because I think most children nowadays don't even they were not even born so they don't really know about 9911 and the impact on the families in you know this region more than anything else I do I did hear and I know couple of people who have been out west and it's really it's not a big day for a lot of people you know beyond the Mississippi would say but the last thing we have is senior Wellness day on Tuesday September 24th from 10: to 2: a.m. at 2 p.m. at the Cody aren it's a great they do a lot of things for seniors regarding health issues they give out some food and uh you can get check checkups and things like that basically that's about it for me this evening uh I know the uh hopefully the park is there isn't any and the crossing uh on peas and Lakeside is being addressed by the engineer who doing some design on as several times so I really don't have a design for you yet I see Council I know a I actually happen to see Town manager on the street two days ago or just be last Friday and we discussed it and I said I'll be there Monday and give you a heads up I don't forget any questions train comment uh Jay I did see you at Dan salat's uh bus dedication in Cherry Blossom Festival Memorial The Welcome Center down Tor uh it was a great event it was very emotional but very funny too uh but I want to thank you because I brought up that crosswalk at Lakeside uh that was damaged and they were out there two days they fixed it the crew so it is fixed and I appreciate your your help with that well that's you know I try to go to various things and want Council people or just here I happen to see the count Town manager on the street and stop said low and you never know something thank you have a good night Mr Deputy manager thank you mayor I will quickly highlight a few of the items within my report uh so we can turn the meeting over to uh the the students that are here to present tonight uh but to highlight the items I have uh the the township continues on our smoke testing program for the sanitary collection system we've completed the Afterglow and sunset sections the contractor has moved into the Forest Avenue neighborhood and is continuing to work their way throughout Township uh the Wind Drive well construction continues the contractor is currently cleaning the well and effectively red drilling the well to remove deposits and buildup uh that project is continue is expected to be complete by the end of the year so the well will be returned to service um jumping ahead on a few items the parking meter the new parking meter kiosks are scheduled for installation this week uh our local government energy audit continues to move forward uh they advised earlier today that they expect to be complete by mid to late September we'll have them in for council meeting for their findings and recommendations when they complete uh at the next mayor and council meeting we will have a solar feasibility study presentation uh they the consultant is ready to come in and present to the Council on that on their findings and their recommendations uh with respect to the community center playground the contractor has uh actively been uh working on the playground over the last several weeks they have moved into the installation of the playground equipment uh they will be out there uh each each day through completion of the project uh there may be a small lag of time until they receive their their delivery of the adaa restroom but that project is well into construction and advancing uh satisfactory uh as far as the pickle ball courts uh those Pro uh those design plans are going into final bid preparation we expect bids to be advertised in either by the end of the month or by September so we'll be discussing a word contract uh later this fall um we are advertising for a number of uh professional service contracts that's for a number of improvements at the wastewater treatment plant and for bfield Avenue streetcape design and uh I will refer to my report for the rest of the items but there's any questions from the council I'm happy to answer Council M MRA uh thank you you know at our last meeting we um went pretty quickly during through our consent agenda and we did not talk in public about what the emergency work that is happening at the building the tower building uh the communications building can you just provide us with a quick quick summary sure so the contractor uh is has ordered specialty equipment that will be used to underpin one section of that tower building that is effectively settling over time uh the settlement on the building is resulting in some fractures on the uh the building facade and along the roof lines so these repairs the equipment once it is delivered it will be installed uh likely in the September time frame where waiting for final delivery but that contract will be to secure that structure and and all the equipment that uh is Reliant upon that structure which would be a number of uh equ uh pieces of equipment for cellular carriers and the Emergency Services Communications equipment for the township of as well so do we have a total cost of what the whole Project's going to be or what we approved at the last meeting was just that emergency contract to get the equipment on site that is that is the majority of the cost that the project will will require the only added cost would be some minor traffic control uh there may be a couple of trees that need to be removed for access to the side of the building um but other than that that is the the majority of the repair cost okay great thank youan a quick follow up on that there's one thing that I brought up when we were talking about the work on that building one of those rooms and there is leased out to a commercial carrier did we ever have a chance to review their lease to determine if there's any cost sharing requirement for uh building or structure maintenance we did review that with special Council there is not a requirement for them to uh call share in that repair okay c um with regard to the community center playground if the Ada restroom is not anticipated until the second week of September are we still going to be maintaining the fence line the way it currently is uh the the we will make a determination based upon the conditions of the site so if there is the ability to open up the site uh while the concrete pad for the uh that preat structure is fenced off we will do that otherwise if the entire site needs be to remain closed for a period of one or two weeks then we will do that we will make a decision based on the conditions of the site and progress over the next several weeks we're hoping there's not too much of a lead time between between the final delivery date and the completion of all the pending work that is ongoing this yeah because there have been some resident concerns about the fening and the interaction with the baseball field um and so if if we can address that that would be worthwhile and as as soon as we can get it done the better um with regard to the pool rate study your report indicates that it would be presented at the August 20th meeting if it's possible could we push that into September so that there's an opportunity for the rec committee to review the report as well they do not have an August meeting so even if you presented it to the council they on the 9th um they would have their meeting the following week and then if you needed action that could be moved later in the month but the pool season hasn't even closed yet give the rec committee perhaps an opportunity to open in on the report or offer their that would be my recommendation that is the intention the meeting on the 20th we just moved it the 19th it's just an internal meeting with uh with staff and Newen okay and we'll meet to discuss it internally then the final presentation will be after the okay I'm sorry then that was my misunderstanding I thought it was going to be presented to the council but I realized it's actually our meeting is the 19th not the 20th but um but okay thank you that's helpful def uh mran uh any update I saw the update on the clarish pump station time frame of when do you expect the ibank to get back to us something that's been lingering for um we have been trying to pull comments from the I bank as as quickly as we can get them from them we we reached out to them a few times uh we do have one project with the clar pump station and one project with the clarifier Pump Station at the Wastewater Plant that are in the same situation we're waiting for final comments from the ibank so we are following up with them um probably every other week we're reaching out to see if they have comments and I think the most recent followup was scheduled for this week so I will I will get an answer on where that stands thank moving on thank you mayor um the the next part sub report of of my report is the MSU Green Team and PS sustainability program Green Team presentation we have a few students that are here I'll turn the the meeting over thank everyone um we would like I would like to start off by saying thank you very much for having us here we're very grateful for the opportunity we are the Green Team serving the township of Verona uh from PG Institute for sustainability studies at Montclair State University in consultation with sustainable Verona as well is the red light on that microphone lit up yes okay to hear yeah you're good just want can the speakers go that way so we can gotch you um my name is Grant beer I'm a psychology and Environmental Studies major at overlin my name is Mustafa keali I'm a finance major at mclair State my name is Mutan I a public health and biology double major at St Ence University my name is R rier I'm studying environmental engineering at Poly Technic University of my name is elen Shaw I'm doing a dual degree in sustainability and political science at Stockton University so the field that you see on the screen right now is Centennial Field Centennial Field is a 13-year-old artificial turf field that is nearing the end of its useful life this field is used by students from kindergarten all the way through high school and like I mentioned just op for Renewal the question of what does one do with the field after it's ending its useful life is not just specific to Verona but the us as a whole in as of 20 24 there's 18,000 artificial turf fields in the US only with about 1,500 being installed each year now if you think about the plastic problem and think about the numbers of installations of turf fields each year this is a lot of plastic so now that we know some background of Centennial Field I would like to ask what exactly is artificial turf or natural grass so for artificial turf it begins with synthetic grass fibers at the top and this is made from either polypropylene or polyethylene so think a plastic bag or a shampoo bottle and then there is infill which are the beads this is most commonly made from recycled tires there is a backing and then a shock absorbing pad to help reduce injury and then at the bottom is the base for natural grass it begins with the natural grass at the top and then there is either a silica sand or other form of organic infill then there is a top soil subsoil weathered rock and then bed rock so not only did we study the different structures of the two playing Services we also got together with our advisers and came up with a few goals and objectives for the completion of this project that included a comprehensive report um with final proposals to the Town Council an environmental impact assessment uh we compared the chemical exposure and chemical pollution of the two Services we also looked at the injury rates and safety of the two fields uh we compared the playable hours that each type of field could achieve uh we conducted a cost benefit analysis over 25e period uh looking at the installation and maintenance um and finally we compared the heat disparities of the two Fields so the three methods we used to complete our objectives was we conducted a literature review and met with many experts um from back like backgrounds from Finance engineering tur backgrounds and we also did data collection from Centennial and the surrounding Fields now we're going to go into our results so for the environmental impact assessment upon research of artificial turf and natural grass natural grass was found to have more water usage with an average football soccer field using between half a million to a million gallons of water a year this is over 30,000 showers annually for runoff artificial turf was found to have higher runoff rates due to it being an impervious surface this means that when it rains the water will run off at higher rates which can cause issues such is flooding um artificial turf also had higher pollution power due to microplastics which can end up in waterways and impact all Aquatic Life artificial turf also has chemicals and metal leeching overall emissions artificial turf had higher emissions at around 55.6 total CO2 which is three times that of natural grass and this number is also doubled at the end of life if artificial turf is not properly disposed of it is often incinerated or dumped as you can see here this is a forever Field located in Pennsylvania where artificial turf will not degrade for years and years so in summary artificial turf has better water usage however natural grass is better in runoff emissions and pollutions including chemicals which brings us to chemical exposure so just what is a forever field in the picture below you saw the forever field having tons of artificial turf piled up upon each other a forever field is a field that is full of pasas pasas is commonly known as forever chemicals and this is a family of man-made chemicals that persist in the environment that simply just means they do not break down and while this is good it has multiple benefits as preventing food from sticking to pans making backpacks or raincoats water repellent it does have some of its downside so why is it dangerous pasas has been known and linked to multiple liver failure conditions thyroid disease it has been linked to genetic disorders if it does bind to um the proteins in the blood and it also has been linked to some cancers so how is Turf made how specifically are the turf blades made so the the plastic resin is heated and passed through a machine that produces the yarn this yarn to be able to be passed through the machine needs a lubricant and Studies have shown that the lubricant is full of pasas um and which is particularly dangerous because of the health conditions that I mentioned before and what about the risk of weathering weathering simply means wear and tear of the artificial field and through abrasions by the cleats which is the shoes that the athletes and the St are using on the field as well as rain and harsh weather conditions as and as well as radiation from the Sun these chemicals that are found on the field are at risk of being exposed in more and greater quantities into the environment now that we know that artificial turf contains keas we wanted to look into different chemicals that are found in artificial turf multiple studies showed that zinc and Lead are found not only in artificial Turf blades but also in the crumb infill which as mentioned before is the tiny beads found in the artificial turf and the studies showed that the highest route of exposure was through ingestion as these crumb infill and blades are dispersed throughout the air when the children and the athletes are playing on the field when you were looking at natural grass specifically organically organic Land Management we found that the international organic standards that contain um the USDA which is the United States Department of Agriculture regulations contain a section that permits certain synthetic substances to be used on organically managed Fields so some of the chemicals um or fertilizers are the ones displayed on the screen such as copper sulfate and ammonium nitrate and while these have multiple benefits like soil fertility and soil Health they do however have um its downsides is skin irritation through friction studies show that the highest route of exposure was dermally especially from friction during a fall and speaking about fall you're going to go into injury next right so falling and other other things that you could do to get injuries are some of the things that we looked into um for this part of the report I don't know about you all of my athlete friends I feel like are always getting injured especially the ones who are playing like the things outside like soccer and football and um field hockey so it's really important to think about um ways that we can mitigate injury and keep it as low as possible the research that we found showed that overall lower extremity injuries so lower extremities are anything below the waist so hips knees feet and ankles were about equal sort of overall between artificial turf in natural grass and that's true of some of the subcategories too so hip injuries were about the same knee injuries are about the same we did find a slightly higher um rate of injury on artificial turf for um Foot and Ankle injuries the reason for this is likely because dry artificial turf has a lot of traction doesn't have a lot of give so if you're pushing into this sort of um plastic um carpet of artificial turf really hard it's not going to divot or give aways like natural grass would so that pressure just goes like back up into the athlete and might increase the risk of of um injuring like feet and ankles down there like I said um in terms of concussions we found kind of inconclusive results in the research overall concussion diagnosis has really skyrocketed in the last couple of years which isn't necessarily because people are getting more concussions but more that there's a higher public awareness of concussions um the diagnostic criteria for concussions has changed recently um to sort of lead to more diagnosis of of concussions um and so research from now from a couple of years ago find very different incident rates of concussion so I didn't feel we didn't feel we could come to a conclusion on that category we did find a higher risk of abration on um artificial turp though and if you've ever sort of gone for a slide on artificial look at like a diving slide in soccer for instance this won't surprise you those plastic blades and little like from rubber infill are are very abrasive they're very hard on your skin so another factor to consider when looking at the safety of these playing surfaces is the heat um the the higher heat can actually increase the risk of exertional heat illnesses such as heat stroke and heat exhaustion for these adolescent uh adolescent athletes um so looking at the literature it's well documented that artificial turf is a lot hotter uh on average than natural grass fields uh there are some reasons for potential reasons for this such as the fact that natural grass is 70% moisture so there's a lot more evaporation going on another reason uh may be that the heat that reaches the surface of artificial turf fields does not reach down to the lower lower layers uh as it does in natural grass artificial turf companies are coming up with different Technologies and new materials to mitigate this heat disparities but a lot of these new systems are have not been sufficiently studied and they incur additional costs uh we decided to collect some some data of our own there you see on the left that's us in um Veterans Field the natural grass field using an infrared thermometer to get the surface temperature on the right where they're in Centennial uh taking another reading uh in the middle that's just the ambient temperature for the day uh 91 degrees and as you can see both fields are hotter than the ambient temperature but on the Centennial reading that's about 40 degrees hotter than the natural grass the veterans reading we also collected data using these uh data loggers called called hobo data loggers which stands for honest Observer by onset these allowed us to collect the temperature over a time period it allowed us to get a lot more data and get a a better sense a bigger picture of the heat disparity between the two types of fields as you can see on the top that Centennial Field and on the bottom is Veterans throughout this time period there's about a 15 to 20 degree uh uh temperature Fahrenheit difference between the two Fields uh for the next two charts I'm going to show you U we actually graphed instead the difference between the two Fields there was a smaller magnitude of difference compared to the first day so it's just U it's more it's more easy to and uh if when the the line graph actually goes above the zero value that is a time where the artificial tur field was hotter than the natural grass field and vice versa so even though at different points in the day some sometimes the natural grass field was hotter um the trend still shows that the artificial tur field uh was was hotter and here's the last day we collect the data uh as I said before that the though the in these last two days of data collection the magnitude was less it gets to about 5° a little bit more um the trend still does remain the same that artificial turf was hotter than the natural grass field one thing that extremely high heat on fields can affect is the number of safe playing hours that you can get out of that surface um which brings us to our next section which was number of playable hours you can get out of artificial turf and natural grass before I get to the results I just wanted to show you all a little bit of um what Cen how sentential field is currently being used um as you can see it's mixed use get some use from soccer some use from lacrosse and some use from the Verona recreation department at large um as we said earlier it's primarily used by youth so Verona sakur is under 19 lacrosse is um kindergarten to e8th grade and ver Recreation is open to all ages but a lot of the groups that use it are also youth groups altogether these groups use Centennial Field a little over um 1300 hours which as you can see on the second line is about half of what artificial turf claimes that it can be used for annually but um you see the next two lines similar to how um nearby Town ships of similar size um who graciously gave us uh their um playing our data um use their artificial turf field so Verona is unlikely to need a full like 3,000 hours that' be 60 hours a week every week of the year um annually because again uh it's primarily used by youth they're in school most of the day on weekdays not going to be the sports aren't played year round they're not played um in the hottest part of the summer or in the coldest part of the winter for instance so the real question is would natural a natural grass field be able to withstand the current level of use of cenal field um the answer is a little bit complicated natural grass experts don't make the same types of PLS that artificial turf companies do because they say that how many hours you can get an out of a natural grass field depends on a lot of variables a natural grass field with a good drainage system that is aerated frequently that is maintained so that it has healthy soil and healthy grass is going to Fair a lot better have higher quality hours have more hours you can use it for than a natural grass field that doesn't have any of these things um in at least one case study example so you can see Marblehead um down there did have um fields that were used um for the same or greater hours than Centennial Field is currently being used for that's the average there so one of their fields was used for 1600 hours and they said that they were happy with the quality of their field um but that's not not all natural grass fields were used like that so it is possible that um Centennial Field could be used for the same number of hours as if it was switch to natural grass but not necessarily guante so I know you guys are probably all wondering how much is this going to cost so we conducted a cost analysis on Centennial Field and we took into a account installation maintenance 2025 total cost 2050 kilm cost and we had two recommendations for natural grass one of the recommendations which is recommendation number one as a Land Management contractor and the second one does not so Verona would have to take responsibility for maintaining the field and as you can see in 2025 it is pretty close between artificial tur and not jurass peration number one but the really big difference is in 2050 cumulative cost and we're going to we're going to break that down the next slide so as you can see on the chart we have artificial turf in the Blue natur Grass recommendation number one in the orange that's grass recommendation number two in the gray and the two big spikes on artificial turf are the reinstallation cost which is about a million and we actually did take a 2.5 inflation um going back 10 years in averaging out and obviously after reinstallation it takes to big jumps every 10 years and for natur grass number one it's a steady incline because of the Land Management contractor and for natur recommendation number two every three years you do have the Resa for that recommendation so it would be $200,000 every three years and now we go into our recommendations so just a summarize um in our research we found that even a highly maintained natural grass field has a lower overall environmental impact um is safer on some uh subcategories including the uh chemical exposure risk um the uh heat risk um and similar but leaning a little bit better on the um injury risk um and it will also be cheaper in the long run uh the one downside is the potential loss of some playable hours so with all those considerations we recommend natural grass recommendation one for this construction we recommend a recycle recyclable cyclical Water System including drainage and irrigation for the type of grass we recommend Kentucky Blue Grass for its ability to be cut short perennial Ry grass due to its durability and both grasses are able to thrive in cool grass seasons for which New Jersey falls under for maintenance we recommend frequent aeration as well as a full-time organic land manager to ensure playability and a healthy field finally we would like to thank all the people on the screen for their guidance and support throughout the entirety of our project as well as our funders we now turn it over to the Town Council for any questions thank you thank you very much before we peppering you with questions I do want to mention a couple things I think you all were incredibly articulate and excellent presenter was very clear that you put a lot of time and energy not only into your extensive report that I think we all read because we are all nerds and like um but also the time that you clearly put into making an excellent informative presentation so uh you have clearly have good Futures ahead of you and I hope that one day you'll be sitting on this side U because clearly you have the critical thinking skills to do that so uh so thank you for that it was very impressive um I'm gonna let my colleagues ask questions first I'll Circle back at the end if there's anything that we need to touch on sure um so in talking to some of our Public Works team and ask asking them about the difference between the fields in terms of usage and maintenance and so on uh one of the things that we're told is that the artificial turf fields are immediately playable after a rainstorm um obviously they have a high runoff rate but you get a storm and the next day you can play on the field um obviously the other the challenge with with weather is when there's a snowstorm um if you want to clear an artificial turf field uh you run a risk of damaging the field uh very easily but I'm kind of curious as to your thoughts about that sort of turnaround and ability to use the fields you talked a little bit about you know well- drained uh natural turf fields or natural grass fields I'm kind of curious if that's something that would be able to be used the day after after a storm event or if that still has to have time to recover that's really the question if we have a big storm what kind of surface can we actually use the next day so don't let anyone in the group yeah that's a that's a great question so um like I said it does vary for each of the fields Verona as I've um been told does not currently maintain its natural grass fields um very highly so i' I've heard maybe like maybe Iration once a year um Mowing and sort of overseeding are the main things that are done for the natural grass fields um and because you will have sort very high clay content in the soil um that means that like as it get potato on it's very compacted and so that increases the time after a rainstorm when you can't use it um with fields that are um well drained um and that and well arated um which are you are you all familiar with narration process am I saying words okay um uh they do recover a lot faster after rainstorms so some of the um case studies that I included um I'll talk about Marblehead specifically the um this the study time that they had I think they closed their fields like five times over the entire um course of the year which I think is not not that many because there is Massachusetts they have I think sort of similar weather patterns um to around here um so when it's well maintained they definitely recover faster after rain um I can't give you an exact like 100% the natural grass field will be able to be played an hour after because it it does vary depending on on mment but you can recover much faster when they're well maintained on the cont on the on the thoughts of the the pasas within the natural grass or within the artificial turf fields um obviously pasas is a huge concern in uh in water water management Environmental Studies right now so current product is still being made is still leeching pasas and there's is there nothing else on the market that is being developed where you know that is environmentally stable and safer is is all of this product subject to this risk the short answer is because it is plastic and because of how it is manufactured it will have pasas and so one of the big things of like the research we were looking at was a lot of studies saying that they do not use P pass in the manufacturing process but a lot of things or a lot of like different stages towards the end of the product do contain pasas and so there's a high risk of contamination even though they take different routes to not include pasas from like packaging and like coloring and painting so there is always a high risk of beas with artificial thank you yeah all counc um thank you hi I'm councilwoman Hong um and I just want to say thank you so much for the work that you've put into this you clearly spent a lot of time on it I think it's to your credit it's um you know definitely something worthwhile um that that you have your names on and I'm just grateful that you were able to provide these services to the municipality I think all of your research has sound the areas where I have concerns about this informing next steps are really more about Verona um and so I I do have some additional questions about some of the data which I believe we probably provided to you about Centennial Fields usage um and so I I would like to get more granular on that but that's a takeaway that Verona can have and I I do just have some concerns for example I'm not sure if the scheduled hours on Centennial Field is necessarily inclusive of everything that's used on that field I see that some of your research of similar uh similarly situated Fields including you know summer programs and others I'm not sure if that's all captured on on the usage that you included which is probably on us because I believe we provided you that data um and you know I'm not sure if it's including um some of the aspects of field hockey that may be on there they may be captured in the recreation department numbers um but I believe that the high school team also plays on Centennial Field so I'm not sure if that's necessarily captured in these usage numbers I did have questions though and maybe I misheard it but it looks like the only field with natural grass that's similar on your annual usage chart um which was in your slide deck but also on page 28 of your report is this Marble Head field okay um and that's the Massachusetts based field so I do think it would be important for us as a Township before we made further decisions to really get more comfortable with our data and see how that then squares with these other similarly situated um projects but I uh excuse me Fields but I do really want to thank you for this project and I do want to recognize that this was clearly a lot of work that you put in over the summer um and it was a good read and I'm super nerdy I even annotated it um so you know that it was read and appreciated so thank you cra thank you um thank you again for this wonderful analysis um you know this is uh these these what to do with Fields is like really top of mine we're talking about a second one later tonight um and these are really hard decisions to make as a parent you know I've my children have brought home the little infill from Centennial Field um it's a big topic of conversation of parents and it is kind of a a mixed topic because uh we are concerned about cancer rates the health of our children the fact that this rubber seems to be everywhere the peas in the water but the flip side is parents have want very Sports heavy um schedules for their children and their teenagers that are in high school this field is used by the high school and and that is definitely something that we need to explore more with them and what the standards are for high school play um and so we have some more work to do in RM but this is a tremendous this first step I do have a question or maybe a comment on your cost analysis so obviously natural grass fields need to be watered um and so my question is did you actually factor in the cost of water into the analysis so we factored for both recommendations the water for not we didn't couldn't get like a specific I guess number so I think the recommendation number two would include the water we I don't think we recommended it for the first recommendation okay well to us like water is not free unfortunately um and we we're spending a lot of money actually removing pasas from our water so the irony on this bounds but to um to water the grass field is going to have a cost to the township um we refer to as lost water and we just had to raise our water rate significantly so that's just one feedback in terms of thinking you know in the future about doing these cost analyses we have to you know make sure that we account for all of it um but the other comment I had and I'm not sure if you can answer others is if you looked at changing climate when looking at playable hours because we are in a section of the country that is expected to be wet so when we're looking at a 10 or 15 years in the future about playing time did you did it did did that thought come that the fact that we may actually be experiencing more rain events and so that would be more of a consideration for us as we're making this decision between you know what we need to do in terms of playing hours did that come up at all um so we did think about that it was difficult to think about it in terms of the the data collected for the playing hour section because there was so limited um data available but we thought about it in terms of like the the types of grass that we were recommending and and things like that that were more um climate resistant yes great well again thank you so much this is really a great Foundation first step and what will probably be a long project as we head towards this decision in the near future so thank you all thank you mayor thank you uh first I I'm thank you all of you for your hard work real quick so the public knows how long did you spend in on this project when did you start round about just so month and a half end of May end of May so we're about two months a so so it wasn't just like a one or two week project in Verona so everybody knows uh I'm gonna go a little off here uh to thank someone else uh but you five unbelievable job this is as said very informative and we will be using this moving forward uh for for just reference looking back at things but uh I'm actually a on to Verona's Green Team uh and they've been working very hard something different but to get silver status for sustainable Jersey and they've been for the last six seven eight months putting a lot of time into it so at a meeting when Carrie came to the the the meeting and said she wanted to jump onto this project too uh hats off for for for taking on all these projects and going out because I know for for Carrie bass who's in the audience she's chair of the uh understandable Verona team uh thank you very much for getting this forward and and and really going after psng and putting it in how to they how to accept us and and and get this going so thank you for that but you guys did a tremendous job uh a couple questions uh because this was so informative but one little the one line in this whole report you guys gave us was chemical exposure and that's the buzz and like that's what everybody's talking about is it dangerous turf fields or not but natural gas grass is the safer option when considering chemical exposure risks and that's to me is the bottom line we're up here there's the population of Verona I think 20% are children so they're the ones using this particular field the most so that's what we worryed about uh and now looking at we're the council we have to look at costs uh in the cost uh analysis did I'm sure it is but I'm just want to a confirmation uh maintenance of the drain systems uh whether it's turf or natural grass there's uh drainage systems that have to be cleaned maintained were those costs factored into all of this also yeah and I just want to add I think um Mustafa misspoke a little bit we did factor in an irrigation value for um the all the recommendations um dur in the maintenance section of the report and and just answering your question uh Deputy Mayor um we did uh fact uh sorry the the maintenance of the drainage system as well as the installation of the drainage systems uh was factored into our report including uh particularly an additional allowance over uh over the 10year period of of the drainage system needing additional repair additional upkeep um you know after that time frame when when it it uh becomes a higher cost so so we did look at that there I'm follow on that because we are we have on our wells we're spending millions of dollars on filtration for posos were there did you find in your research any systems uh for natural grass that actually have runoff excuse me for Turf that actually filter posos right there or nothing in that so within our research we did not um find anything that that was able to filter PS directly yeah directly out of it yeah thank you no problem thank you all again I mean this is a great reference for us moving forward and we will be thank you all a couple questions for you all um in the report you cite a 25y year lifespan for the artificial tur field um the artificial turp vendors will give us different lifespans depending on whether they want to resell US Turf or if they want to survive their Turf so we have a number of different years that exist our current field was installed in U in 2007 right the Centennial of Verona that's why Centennial Field so at this point it's uh it's 2024 the field is actually kind of passed its useful life so we're on a this current field is on kind of 15 to 17 to 18 to we're stretching out as as far as we can uh lifespan what informed your assumption of 25 years as a technology changed or is this an industry standard if you could help us with that so I think um either we misspoke or or I believe our the the 25y year was looking at the long-term costs but uh we were actually assuming a 10year of reinstallation for for artificial tur a 10-year lifp stand um as as you mentioned the field a Centennial Field has lasted about 13 years already but on the other hand the conditions on the field are a little bit worse if you compare it to say a liberty field the other another artificial Turk uh in Verona um and and so yeah once you get to these older Fields um that you have increased the risk of injury and the play is not as as good um so so we we went with that 10year number that is often advertised by many artificial turf companies okay all right that makes a little more sense on where we came to the 4.5 million number yeah that's um okay thank you for that uh you talk about a cyclical drainage system uh which is something that when we talk about water this is an interesting thing what do these look like as far as actual conservation of water um based on their cost Effectiveness do you have are there any SU stories with these cyclical drainage systems for the natural tur field so uh we actually sat down with um some vendors um from abroad they have done installations in Germany in um in Netherlands um the companies called uh drain Talent uh they they actually have created systems like this that um actually uh store the water that is is landed on a natural grass field and uh recycle it back into the back into the grass when say it's a drier period so you know going back to an earlier question about a heavy rainfall in in on these and uh playable time as a result if we if Rona were to invest in a product such as drain Talent OR there are other products uh as well um the that would allow for more playable hours um maybe not as much as artificial turf but still considerably more playable hours even after heavy rainfall and and you know the added benefits of of potentially um recycling the water back into the aquafer system as well so there's like a few different products a drain talent and then like a you know but but that was one that we sat down and and spoke with the vendors on and I have one final question is there anything actually I'm sorry I'll just I'll give you one final question is there anything in here for which you felt constrained that you felt like you didn't have data and you had more questions that given more time you would have liked to explore so the the subtext of that is there anything you should think we should be looking at more that maybe you didn't get every answer to that you want and if it was comprehensive and you're good that's fine too I just you always ask what's not in the report I just circle back to one of the other questions and concerns about like chemical exposure because it is something pasas a bunch of the compounds and families of the pasas are yet to still be discovered and so there's so much more to peas than we already know or that the scientists already know right now and so that's one thing to always keep at the front of your mind is that a lot of information Also may not be upfront and so just doing that research and looking into that because it's never going to be on the blueprint as well yeah um your photographers here so we're GNA take a picture with everybody and you all so Council come on had oh you have one more point I'm sorry yes I I just wanted to say um so we talked recommending natural grass we didn't have as much time in this report to um get into like the specifics of all the types of natural grass management that might be best for Verona specifically um so it could be useful to look in look into that as the township to ensure the the best quality service you could have than yeah oh yeah nice all right one shot everybody's eyes open should be squishy let gon to ready thank hi everyone Harry bass s ver um thank you for all your attention to this report uh I just want to let you all know that I did take notes on all your comments and as much as I would love to have the team continue we are going to continue with this work and like Emma mentioned my next step is to see how we can get as many playable hours as possible with the safest field for this so we're not going to end here we're going to continue our work and I did want to let you know that and let everyone know that it is kind of a becoming a national issue so in New Jersey Kate May has banned installation of artificial turf South Plains and Scotch Plains and Westfield the V voters just rejected plans for artificial turf fields in Massachusetts Martha's Vineyard banned the installation of artificial turf the towns of Arlington conquered Wayland Sharon bans artificial turb city of Boston has banned artificial turb installations California the city of Milbury banned art installation of artificial turf California has set the law allowing local government to Institute banss uh currently La is looking to do to ban AR official tur New York State has starting in 2026 band of artificial Turk with pasas Vermont uh law bans artificial turf at pepas Colorado bands artificial turf starting 2026 Massachusetts has a pending Bill interesting in Ohio theyve just introduced a bill that all sports stadiums are n should have to be 90% or greater natural grass Washington DC has a ban on Tire crumb since 2017 and then globally the European Union has a ban on crumb rubber artificial turf infill and FIFA only allows their players to plan on natural grass so it is something that you know it's a national issue and a global issue um so thank you for you know considering it and considering all our options and our work is not done and we do want to get more Verona Centric and Verona specific to see if we can make this work better for also like to point out that this follows a very informative presentation that Miss bass made at the planning board regarding heat Islands in town which are another significant concern for us super um Mr we back to you yeah be display for Contin discussion on field I'll give her I set that up um give the second you on every field continues uh on the screen now is the current version of the ever field concept uh I will walk through the general highlights of the concept and go through some of the changes that have been made over the course of the past several months in an attempt to address some of the comments that have been received just generally speaking the project itself is a rehabilitation of the Everett field site the uh the improvements include uh complete reconstruction of the athletic field including new grass Turf new clay infield new fencing new um Dugout areas batting cage areas uh an entire ADA Compliant walk Walking path around the perimeter of the field there is a uh parking lot a pave parking lot uh across the front of blomfield Avenue there are number of landscaping items that are addressed at the concept level uh and there is a playground that is uh placed between the center field fence and the backside of the par Pond uh the general revisions that have been made to the site compared to Prior versions that have been uh discussed at uh town Council meetings uh for one we'll start with the parking lot the parking lot is no longer a oneway through with an Ingress on one street and egress on the the opposite street that secondary egress has been eliminated uh again it it was to preserve some of the landscaping and some of the existing mature trees on that uh that upward slope and to eliminate some of the impacts to the seed slopes On The Backs side of of the that part lot area the uh field initially was presented to the public as an artificial turf field it is now presented as a natural grass field that was after a number of discussions with all the a all the interest groups uh including bbsl who was um was had no objections to the conversion from n artificial grass to natural grass uh one of the key changes to the design was a shortened left field uh Outfield fence uh there was an intention to try to extend the Outfield fence to to expand the playability of the field as best as possible that left field fence has been shortened to reduce the impact again to the uh to the slopes across that uh beyond that that fense area and generally speaking the field has slowly has minimally been shifted forward towards Bloomfield Avenue to uh reduce the impact of the slopes on the back side of of the field uh that allowed us to pull away from some of the steep slope areas on the backside behind the field it also allowed us to reduce some of the wall Heights just at the plinary concept level and in doing all of that it allowed us to provide some some value engineering on this project in general um the the project itself as it was uh presented as it is shown now is um it's subject of a number of Grant applications that uh the township has applied for uh the township has been fortunate to receive $810,000 in Grant applications offset construction costs uh with ongoing discussions with cbsl the uh there is an understanding that the uh initial discussions of an ADA Compliant restroom and uh and and pa uh pa uh structure behind home plate would be entirely donated through uh bbsl organization uh that would be donation of Design Services Construction and material services so um what we've been able to do from uh from a planning perspective is modify the field make some minor changes to try to address some of the concerns related to whether it be artificial ter or impacts to steep slopes um some of the uh concerns about cost we've been able to uh address some of those questions through our grant our successful Grant applications and the Endeavors with bbsl to eliminate or reduce some of those costs um across the the general project so um at at this point in the project we have gone through a number of versions of this concept plan we've received uh a handful of of Grants uh we are going to continue to pursing one more uh there's one more Avenue of a Grant application we will look to pursue uh with cdbg as soon as they make available another round of reprogramming money we will submit one more application for this project uh I think we are close enough to be able to demonstrate that was is very close to shuffle ready um but at this point the next phase of the project would be uh authorizing uh the the scope of the project so we can advance a lot of the rest of the discussions into final design we still need to work through final design decisions for storm water design we still need to finalize the grading plan which will uh in coordination with this final site layout and the grading decisions uh we will be able to Value engineer and reduce wall Heights where we can and decide if um if there is a a benefit to potentially being able to elevate the playing field to reduce wall Heights we're going to go we need to get into the final design to make those final design decisions um there's final Landscaping decisions that we will need to coordinate uh the idea would be to work with environmental commission and shade tree Commission on those final design decisions to determine what what trees are impacted through this which trees on the site are potentially uh declining or invad species trees that maybe there is an opportunity to improve the Aesthetics of the site and the viability and the the health of the uh the the Landscaping on the site with purposeful uh replacement of appropriate trees uh a lot of those decisions will come through the final design and at this point uh we will we would need to authorize the final scope and then we can present a bond ordinance for introduction for the council at an upcoming meet based upon the discussions tonight thank you Mr svin questions for Mr svin Council um just a reminder one of the things that we had asked about whenever we're considering sort of major projects is we do want a statement of taxpayer impact uh some kind of forecasting is ultimately what is the average home owner going to going to see uh from this project true um so I just want to reiterate something you mentioned that the bbsl organization has come to uh um they're going to donate the Ada restroom and snack bar and Press Box so how would that work specifically sure so uh just the the the direct taxpayer impa back to point the general impact taxpayer um we can provide a calculation for them circulate that to the council generally speaking um the just to go through some of the specific on the numbers the initial cost estimate for the construction from negli engineering back in September October of last year was approximately uh $4.2 million construction project uh through some of the value engineering and some of the um the donations such as the the structure uh that Council mentioned uh there is an ability to offset a number of those costs and reduce that impact direct impact to uh the the taxpayer so if if you back out the grants that have been received and the uh the cost of the um the cost of that structure the general cost of the project it it goes from approximately four and a half to five million down to approximately 2.7 2.8 million so it there is a great opportunity to accomplish a project had a much lesser impact to taxpayers but we can certainly provide that calculation of what that translates to on average C value right that's just something that we asked just basically for all major projects I'm not singling this one out in general but just when we speak in terms of just these large capital projects it would be nice to also know what that you know for home numbers sure on on that point Mr s $630,000 is a significant amount of money for the VPS to raise I I have a I hope certainly that they can do it the question I think we need to look at is if they can't right so we have a we have a pledge from bbsl to do it but it is a significant amount of money I've been on nonprofit boards for for years and finding that much money is GI unless they already have people who said they would donate it um but if we if the bbsl we're not able to do that we still need a bathroom for sure at the facility what is the backup plan would there then be no announcement box would there be no concession stand what what would happen if we could or would we be footing the bill because this kind of goes to our Public Communication the the cost estimate that has been prepared it includes utility runs to that area includes a concrete P to that area so that the structure itself can be constructed uh I I think the largest of the donation and the the um the offer and I don't want to speak on behalf of bbsl but the the the largest impact of Their donation is the labor associated with it they're not um they there are individuals that are uh situated with bbsl that um are contractors are contractors and and do this kind of work and can Source these kinds of materials so that is the the general impact it's not necessarily through fundraising of specific dollars but donations of of materials and and labor hours that's certainly that certainly helps I just I do worry that I'm sure the vbsl will will get this done but I also worry that if it doesn't happen changes that we've now if we put out a taxpayer estimate we've Now set up this is how much this was going to cost and now we had an unforeseen circumstance where this funding wasn't available or the construction was not available or construction cost went up so much Material supplies we saw in the last we've seen the last four years that we might have to pitch in on that so I think we need to find a way to communicate that this is the plan but there is a possibility you know having to have a a component there because we spoke at one point about if the organization didn't donate that building whether we would include features like a press or whether it would just be a bathroom concession stand and that was it so you know depends on working on that but I would just like some communication maybe on on that side sure you cra our Communications in such a way that that is we can um let me ask are you basically looking for a contingency plan like for example what is the minimum let's assume that for 100% are you know our responsibility what would be what would be the minimum facility we would we like replicate the you know modular Ada restroom that's up in the community center for example or you know what do we actually need to actually put the place online I think um in that particular instance we could um we could build in an additional 10% contingency that would cover the cost of the for restroom at the community center okay that's I just don't want to go to bond for that is the only yeah well something would be question that we right could deal with at DEC Bond if you had last thing on earth we want is a really pretty field with a port body yeah deputy mayor uh thank you Mr Mayor uh first I mean when we were when we neglia was here before and they went over the price of the turf fi they said the approximate cost of the turf to regular grass would be a million dollars Less almost positive that that was a statement but so we're going from 4.2 to 3.6 but that aside I can go back and check that uh there's several things here that uh we're talking and you you actually just mentioned it utility runs I did disagree with the idea of moving this snack bar behind home plate you have the bathrooms in the snacko it's going to be an active area we're dealing with younger kids they get distracted I I don't think having that part of this this utility on this field in that area is smart I think it should be moved back to where it is and even if I would even give away deeping digging into the steep slope along Elmwood right there to put a building into it taking it away from the back we can bring that back wall forward and reduce the cut into the steep slope back there uh this design I would love to talk to someone at and go through this design with them I don't like the bleachers uh why can't we incorporate the retaining wall along Elmwood with the bleachers again we could bring that wall forward a little bit more incorporate them why do we have to do the Ada walkway all the way around the outside and why can't we bring it in front of the bleachers if we bring it around the outside that raises the walls and that's why we have to go with 11 foot walls I think a little common sense into this plan could could reduce the amount of walls could actually like the bleachers that are there now are fine people love sitting on them they're concrete they're built in uh these other bleachers I I to be honest with you you're walking out bleachers there's open open areas in them they're dangerous uh the ones now I think are are just comfortable to get in and sit down on I was at since this has been going on I've been going down there walking the field with no one there going down during games and watching games uh I think getting that That Snack Bar that office space that Press Box which I don't think we need on this field and I I actually asked several parents while I was there over the last couple months and they totally agree they don't need it uh back to where it is in the same area you don't have to pay for utility runs you you reduce your wall size maybe we can back the field up a little bit more and make left field a little bit longer at that point uh to left field I think we should change the design of the bleachers in left field if we instead of doing a 90 degree turn there if we did a 45 degree turn we might be able to get a couple feet on the left field fence and and back it up a little put trees where the bleachers are and then bleachers over on the other side uh I will set up a meeting with you the end of week and go go go over all this uh but I don't to me this design is pretty much exactly the same as what we had before uh and then lastly my my point with uh and I did bring this up with our manager there is absolutely no reason for us to PVE this entire parking lot I actually sent him a couple uh products that we had that I didn't send them to him but I discuss them with them and I can send them but there are products that once you put dirt down they're basically stamped in and you plant natural grass in between them I think we can get away with doing half of this parking lot paved and half of it with grass if not more or less of it paved uh because even during games is the only time it's full but grass would grow on that whole area and it would be permeable uh that area in front of everfield onfield Avenue is an area of concerned by the county that floods uh and in any storm probably yesterday uh I didn't go down there but it was probably flooded yesterday so I think there are some PL you know areas of this plan I'd like to talk to the engineer about and and see if we can tweak this and that's all I have um believe that the plan calls for perious pavement right it does how perious is it and it gets expensive these other products are a lot less expensive there are there are a number of of design decisions that certainly should be discussed through in the final design stages um I know one of the discussion the idea of final location of the snack bar or size of a snack bar I think we can certainly probably defer to bbsl then you probably speak to some of their thoughts on what they may be fundrais as far as the bleachers I know there is um there is some discussion uh as far as whether the walkway should be behind the bleachers or in front of the bleachers uh I think at the end of the day again those can be final design decisions but you do need a certain width for the bleacher you need a certain width for that walkway uh and when you're looking through some of the design standards I think if you do shave off some some elements of the wall through your final design decisions that certainly comes in and provides some savings on the final uh the final design and that's that that would certainly be the point of your your final design what we did for the parking lot we would have to ensure that's ADA Compliant in order to be able to secure that funding to keep that funding right right think for the parking lot I think if there is some alternative um materials used it would it would have to be limited to the center portions of the parking lot as the adaa spots are currently slated for the two corners yeah we I mean that that whole area in both Corners can be well when I say paay half of it or less than half I mean the entrance coming in so that whole you know maybe the first I don't know how many parking spots are here the first 20 parking spots are paved and then the rest are are natural cuz on practice days they don't use the whole and that's most of what goes on down there I'm going to tell you there's 20 cars at the at tops in that parking lot most of the time big games there's more sure the the I know the the rear parking spaces are the Ada accessible spaces for that playround we certainly need to make sure that we already but I I I certainly think that's a b recomendation CLE McGrath uh yes I just want to point out that you know one of the advantages with this uh remodel is that we get to put in a playground which we've had as I've already mentioned which we've had with every single one of our Fields you know we always have a playground nearby because again there's younger siblings that need a safe place to kind of get some energy out while the game is going on so while today the parking lot may not be utilized a lot during the school hours that playground will be utilized um by Verona res residents it's going to be popular um yes it will be walkable for some residents in the landing neighborhood but some will likely drive there um and you know I just think we need to be really thoughtful as we just mentioned our climate is getting wetter and well I appreciate you know I I think it was great that we were thinking of using um you know permeable U black top Services uh on this to be environmentally friendly like we just need to really think through again again the long-term ramifications um I and I guess my question is councilman um the deputy mayor has raised some of this stuff before are these decisions were they incorporated or were they not addressed in these designs about moving the snack bar I really thought this is was sort of more settled um the discussion on Final location of the snack bar has not been discussed with design engineer it's it's the the concept plan um had the snack bar behind home that's has has not there has not been a discussion with design to relocate think helpful to see what it look up like you know to have another an alteration so we could actually see if what would happen with the walls what would happen with the leachers and that actually have a second turn for so we can look and pick the coun I to reinforce that one of my concerns with sometimes our design process is that we get so far along in these and we spend money and we get so close to okay well we need to get the project going when there's you know sort of significant questions about layout of a of a site we want to make sure that we don't I mean like he's got some very good points here about ways that could possibly reduce cost here and I don't want us to get too far ahead into this you know get to you know sort of go time and still have these sort of major design questions open so I really would like you know if he you know suggested a meeting or potentially with you know speaking with neglia but you know I think that would be a very good idea to get some additional options ccil M um can you speak a little bit about some of the stakeholder that you did to develop this second revision to the plan um my understanding is that you and the township manager conducted several meetings with the interest St uh we have uh we we've uh met on site with um members of both sh tree and environmental commission we did meet with them on site uh to go over some of the comments uh we've had ongoing discussions with bbsl uh to review the the the concepts as they've gone through each of these variations um we have been trying to Garner each of the comments from each of the interest groups make these recommendations with without completely sacrificing an entire element of a project or trying to meet in the middle of what might be potentially uh different opinions of how a site should be uh laid out but but we have been trying to present the project and plan a project that does try to address as many of the comments from stakeholder possible I think that's really helpful to know um I also sit on the recreation advisory committee and the recreation advisory committee also provided input on this field um and I do see that there are certain elements of their recommendations that are reflected in this um I will also just comment having sat on the recreation advisory committee for the last several years that Everett field like several of our other projects throughout the municipality so not limited to Recreation is one of those major assets that hasn't necessarily been adequately maintained such that in order to bring it back into I'll say compliance but really back to a level where it should be it is going to be an expensive Endeavor and this is part of why it's important for us to be continually investing and reinvesting and maintaining our facilities so that we don't have these large sticker prices so that's just a comment that I just wanted to make all the record I also just wanted to acknowledge that we do have representatives of vbsl in the Audi this evening and if Mr may you would recognize them I think they may be able to speak to some of your points and provide some meaningful feedback on some of their desired um positions but obviously as the chair that is your choice U I'll just again respond to some of the general comments a lot of these decisions the final the idea of running utilities to the site in the final location I think it it well from a site layout uh it may have an impact on how the site actually looks and there may be some savings to be had on potentially reducing a wall height by maybe two feet or pulling it in and reducing thect slope I think generally speaking the the scope of the project and the general cost of the project remains relatively in that uh estimate of 2.8 million based upon the the backing off of the grants and the uh the donation so again I think those are certainly very very good conversations to have as we continue into final design and it's certainly having a final design presented again at a public meeting when we are further along in both the design of of that site as we work through all the ongoing comments but also as we uh hear where pbsl is on their element of the project I think those are continuing discussions uh that that we can continue to S have um I'll just commit to than do you have anything else for your nothing just I'll be available whenever we can do this as soon as possible so we can get a final design and really move forward on this because this has been dragging on for for a good bit um the anybody from bbsl who does want to speak we'll have a public comment session about soon as the council member reports are done so hopefully those will be nice and brief and we can um get anybody up here uh who would like to comment on um their personal opinions or speak the organization we can do that at that timey mayor you're thank you Mr Mayor once again I'd like to congratulate Dan salvante I went down to the uh the bus dedication he has been the Essex County Parks director for 28 years uh he was a resident of Verona for many many years grew up in Verona and went to Verona High School so uh congratulations to Danny it was very very emotional it was a surprise and he was speechless for the first 10 minutes so that was that was nice to see but he was uh very very honored by it uh also the uh congratul the Lions Club did another uh equipment medical equipment uh van load that went to Ukrainian people uh and they did a pickup of the housing you know Goods uh for the last month month and a half and they filled the truck on Saturday uh I went up there and helped them load all the equipment up but uh thank you to the Lions Club for all they do and uh and all they do for others you know outside of R too and lastly Wednesday there is the uh summer concert in the center of Verona John mcder band is playing uh please come out at 7 o'clock till 8:30 and joins that's it thank you Council R I'll be very brief councilman mvoy already mentioned the Sumer concert series I've been to I think every one of them so far uh there is one uh coming up there's a rescheduled show at the end of August uh August 28 but uh those have been great so you know in terms of the process of picking the bands this year and putting the shows on big thanks to everyone involved in that and happy birthday to councilman M this past week so I missed Jack I'm sorry and that's my report quite all right uh councilman McGrath thank you um briefly uh the Multicultural inclusion accessibility advisory committee um mat they discussed fall planning uh for events including Hispanic Heritage Month I just wanted to let the know I wanted to let the public know that unfortunately I'm going to miss the next meeting um I am going to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago I was selected as a a member of the platform committee um I um am excited to be able to um meet and uh network with count State and National officials um as with my practice with all of the meetings that I can attend um I will uh summarize watch the meeting and summarize it and put a summary on my uh website Christine gra.com um and that's my award thank you thank you councilman Holland councilwoman and respectful of all of the residents in the audience this evening I'll see my time thank you thank you okay mam clar at this time we open to public comment the public participation St anyone from the public wishing to speak on any matter anybody from the public question to speak on any matter please raise your hand by pressing the raise hand button on your monitor if you are attending in person please raise your hand once you're recognize clearly state only your name and count of residence for the record you're not required to provide your street address however if you do please note that these meetings will be posted on the Township's YouTube channel and addresses will not be redacted for any purpose you'll have four minutes to address the council there'll be no cross dialogue during the public portion after everyone wishing to speak has been heard the council May address your comments and or questions it's open thank you madam Clark sir you anybody anybody wants to speak just come up Podium you can turn raise your hand for people on so a lot of hands good evening good evening neighbors my name is Anna fusaro by way of introduction I have a degree in accounting and finance from forom University and I've worked in financial planning and Analysis for the better part of 40 years I've worked for KPMG and multinational corporations such as Bristol Meers squib and Jette suffice it to say I know my way around an Excel spreadsheet and a financial plan with proper due diligence I've done many now to the matter at hand I am indebted to our Town's emergency workers for deeply personal reasons the police fire and EMT are extraordinary people and I have great respect for each and every one of them they deserve to have the resources they need to be effective in their jobs we deserve for them to do their jobs effectively for us at the first public meeting about the Emergency Services project many of us expressed many significant and valid concerns about the proposal that is being marketed as a win-win for everyone it's a very clever PR slogan to oboc the truth it was implied that I was not being for the Emergency Personnel if I was against this proposed solution let's put that to rest because it is a gross misinterpretation of my objection currently the buildings that house our police fire and DMT are just about 5,000 square feet each the lot size an average Verona home is built on for a combined 15,000 square ft they are each centrally located individually in our business district the proposed structure is 55,000 square feet the size of Verona's Verona High's football field that is more than three times the combined current footprint of 15,000 square feet this is a proposed $51 million project Township residents have been told by the Verona Town manager that the increase to our property taxes will be about $5 per home that is just not true some have called it a lie I prefer to think it was a weak attempt at selling this project by excluding some facts here are the facts if we dig deeper into the details the truth is that the $5 is the tax increase after the first year increase of at the low end $500 for tax president the numbers are still very questionable it assumes he hopes to attain potential funding from federal or state funding fundraising millions of dollars and other avenues such as room naming rights hope sir is not a strategy do we have firm agreement for this ancillary funding no project of this financial magnitude can be prudently approved without funding in place is there a backup plan for this funding additionally cost estimates do not include ongoing maintenance of a structure of this size or all too common overages possible cost overruns of as much as 20% could drive this project to over $60 million Verona needs to use its dollars judiciously spending this exorbitant amount affects the ability to support other important projects Youth Sports houses of worship community events Road repairs the town well improvements water treatment plan upgrades and helping our neighbors in need as a comparison your time is up but there's another public comment at the end of meam that you can finish your statement thank you thank appreciate your time and efforts I don't know how you do it all the time here just for this short time it's killing me um I'm a person that needs to move all the time so U my name is Tom Manan thank you I am a resident uh tenuk Lane Verona I spent 18 years with Starbucks as a facility manager a construction manager a senior project manager for the country and the last five years of work before I retired I worked as the Northeast facility manager for D that had us 78 restaurants that I maintained all of the budgets and everything that had to do with facility maintenance um my concern is that I looked at this current building's design and one of the things I did while I was at Starbucks as uh the regional manager for the whole you know construction projects was to look at things and see were they cost effective did they make sense and we would you know look at each project individually and try to make the best design decisions um currently this design shows 17 bathrooms and that's not toilets that's 17 individual bathrooms some of them with multiple toilets and showers it has seven conference rooms so in the case of you know I would look at that i' say well why do we need seven why wouldn't we have one or two and everyone just work to utilize those that's where you build your cost Effectiveness you don't need that many bathrooms you have one Central bathroom or two or three but you don't be 17 three kitchens so I don't understand that why three kitchens why not one kitchen where everybody utilizes it um another thing was just the looking at the design you have all the emergency vehicles at the back of the building that means you have to plow all the way to the back of the building every time there's a snowstorm to get access so that they can leave you also have to maintain the parking lot because all those heavy trucks coming across it they're going to cause it to fail you also have people walking past the front doors to get to the building once you have overflow and you have to park in the back you have people driving past the area where car the trucks are going to be pulling out so if there's an alarm you're G have basically people possibly having accidents into each other I looked at just you know six emergency vehicles I don't think we need six right now I think we have three uh so that's doubling the size uh four fire trucks I think there are three right now there's nine spaces for police cars as well as one utility vehicle so in that I understand that we're building for the future but I would think that you'd want to make Provisions for when there's taxable income coming in through extra housing that you then need those Services you build them in you don't build them now and everyone pay for them for years when you're not actually going to be using utilizing them so you know in effect my one of my big concerns when I was at the meeting the last time was I didn't see anything related to what the facility costs were going to be for this building and you know just doing General numbers you're talking it could be ringing about $200,000 a year in maintaining this building because it's not just the building cost you have that parking lot now that's got to be maintained and that is a lot of money and it's constant so you have all of the facilities of to maintaining the parking lot the Landscaping the HVAC the elevator the it the plumbing the electrical the repairs it's it's going to be very costly and that's not even showing in any of the budget numbers we're seeing because you're only talking about the construction costs so these are my concerns I think the police the fire emergency all need these Services as fast as we can get them we can't delay it any longer the fact that they're working in the conditions they're in now is beyond it so my concern is that having them all at one you know all your eggs in one basket if anything happens to that building you lose all three services so you should really look at options to maybe get these things moved through quicker and put them in different areas so I have to cut you off because your time is up but there is another public comment than you for comment good evening I'm being still off I'm at 102 Fairway I am going to read what I want to say so I can get it in under three minutes that four you can take oh four okay uh first I'd like to say thank you to uh members of this Council and others for hiring the engineering firm to evaluate the proposed development of the woods adjacent to how and the other neighboring roads in Verona um the it it was it was great and um pleasing to see that the folks in the room that night when that gentleman spoke up and handed the Boswell report to uh the West Orange um planning board it was a good surprise to them so thank you for um hiring them thank you for keeping them engaged uh West Orange is being very crafty in how fast they're allowing the developer to modify their plans so uh the the response back was uh thank you for this report it's good that you came in person because all actions have to be done in person but it actually should be modified to reflect the current plan so my understanding is that uh folks will spend some time looking at the revised plan modify that engineering Port resubmit it and be physically ready to engage with the planning board under this guise of everything has to be done in this Open Access Forum um I wanted to also just say that um the the next meeting is August 14th at 6:30 they've been running from 6:30 to 11:00 p.m. chalk full of people online sitting on the floor um so hopefully we have um persons lined up to attend on the 14th and I'll work through council members first to make sure that people are aware of you know these next set of meetings I did want to give a little bit of status on the um on this development so so far the developers engineer and architect have spoken um we were allowed to give public comment on the engineer um we didn't get to architecture uh public comment on the architecture that's for the 14th I will say this plan has many flaws to it um let me just it highlight a few fire and EMT access is not well thought out they haven't gone through their plan with the fire chief water safety and quality is also not addressed waste management is likely going to be a huge issue because they're trying to connect to existing pipes that they don't know what the capacity is and so people already have issues in West Orange related to Waste Management um water sources so today folks on the top of how get their water from Verona and so is there an assumption being made that Verona is just going to supply water to this new community of over a thousand residents not sure they didn't go through they weren't very explicit in going through where the water input and Disposal are going to um become uh next there's going to be extensive blasting required of the bedro this is going to stun the the whole ecosystem on the top of there and residents are very concerned with the air quality the effect of the blasting how are they going to deter distinguish lasting Rock for the buildings retentions a pet facility roads versus The Fragile ecosystem of the Wetlands thank you you L but we do have another I'm not going to stay but thank you for listening and again thank you for um advocating for most residents thank you J good evening uh my name is Kathleen NY I live in Verona uh similar to the request for taxpayer impact on Everett field uh several residents have been requesting or attempting to understand the tax implications of the affordable housing under development Verona uh and initial was request was sent in June um I attended a July planning board meeting where the mayor kindly gave me the township managers uh contact information follow me emails to him and several people have never been resp responded to um I would like to submit um the tax the the record of us requesting information that we haven't received the minutes um we would like the council to uh provide an estimate of what this could possibly be the high the low estimate I know it's difficult but when you have a developer only paying 8,500 the first year going to 14,000 in your 30 somebody is going to have to pick up the tax burden to the town especially uh with what's going to happen with the schools thank youon St good evening my name is Joseph bolo I live in sxfs in the 200 foot notice are of the development that Jan stolaf was just talking about and I work with an organization called We Care New Jersey that is opposed in that development and working toward Common Sense u a few things so the other night uh at the planning board hearing there have been four hearings scheduled July 16 17 3031 the first two were canceled because the developer failed to file the town failed to file the ordinance with the county PL board so it wasn't effective they proceeded with the 30th and 31st there's one more on the 14th Peter 10 Kate did appear on the last night last Wednesday um and submitted a report from Boswell which needs to be reiterated I did speak with Paul Ferrero the following day provided documents that he didn't have to for the most current set of information available engineering storm water management Etc a few things so Gan is correct there's a lot of information that is not known there are multiple interconnections that need to be known on the other side of the site there are circles Drawn Lines drawn on the preliminary site plan presented it is not clear where the interconnection to the Joint meeting is going to go for sanitary sewer there is a 1983 sanitary sewer easement that feeds that serves the 300 condos at the bottom of the hill that comes through Verona now and believe that is that capacity go through hell drive it stinks there's health department West Orange comes and visits that line will not have capacity where water storm water public water Jersey American water doesn't have an interc connection request yet the um sanitary sement unclear gas electric unclear blasting trees unclear trees will come down before the mountain comes down we don't know where they're all going to go where they're going to go on site is designed there's no calculations most important thing at least for Verona tonight that I can ask for if you could so it only became clear to so grea is been was presenting in behalf of Barona in 2005 and six there were 11 planning board meetings for 136 single family homes that was shot down 52 on Public Safety grounds this is a little bit more than public safety and environmental irreparable harm but how Drive overal road and over uh on over on Eagle Rock Avenue is the only way in there is a closed private road overal to Essex FS that road was closed in 1984 prior to the development of the condos there was a development in the Town of Verona called High Tour Estates which is owned by the same developer and somewhere in this town resides a document that closed howl drive at the top of the mountain the only alternative means of Ingress and egress for emergency purposes now is how one of the reasons why the plan failed last time conru EMS could not get up and down that Hill winding roads or St School Etc I can't find the document I did not know what High Tour States was until two weeks ago we're looking to find that document that keeps that road closed and so you know the developer has already submitted at the minimist exception to rsis to open a road that was under settlement closed for emergency access only they've already submitted an exception to that the only other way out besides that road which is interior circulation is how overal roads closed sxfs and West Orange and Allied signal xxs Country Club which owns half the road make sure that happen before the cargos were built Grant High Tour States was built here PR to all that we can find the document if you can help us find that and keep that road Clos we greatly appreciate it thank you thank you public comments good evening my name is Marty Gore I've lived in Verona since 2000 um there are only two given as it relates to the uh proposed emergency service building one is that everybody in this town I believe fully understands that we need to have the finest facilities that we can possibly have for our First Responders I've been taken to the hospital um I I've had some unfortunate situations with my car being stolen Etc and the people in this town who work for this town the First Responders are amazing and they deserve the best that we can afford to give them keyword being afford um I live on Cambridge Road and I am currently paying $29,000 into property taxes uh when I looked into selling my house a couple years ago the first comment was uh s Monclair taxes you know whether they are they not the point I'm making is that you know Verona is a wonderful town and I am been so happy that I've lived here for the last 24 years but the reality is is I'm getting older my kids are out of the house and it's time to move on to be able to hopefully you know sell my house and make a couple of bucks um the pro problem I keep hearing from all of these Realtors is our tax situation now I understood I I've been to a couple of the meetings that this building is planned to cost approximately 51 million and that $51 million is supposed to be uh offset by a whole bunch of hypothetical hypothetical subsidies you know I don't know about you guys I own a business I don't buy trucks I don't build buildings I don't do anything with hypotheticals I need to know that I have the money in hand I can't buy a new truck hoping the bank is going to loan me money I can't go out and build a new Warehouse hoping that I can get a mortgage so I kind of think that maybe we're going about this the wrong way now I am fully I fully understand uh the predicament with with the police department uh unfortunately I spent a little time there this past year with my house being brok into my car being stolen and uh the conditions there are deplorable archaic and truthfully as a resident paying 30 grand a year in taxes or whatever I'm paying when I walked in I was abored by what I saw I mean these people they must be Saints I come to find out that there's not even a place for women to change their clothes separately that's uncashable so we have a problem we need a police department building okay now I've also heard about this whole situation with this parking lot this proposed parking lot uh on Lakeside so I guess I have a couple of questions the parking lot is over 150 yards from the center of town now I don't know about you guys but in the middle of winter when it's four degrees below zero or it's snowing or it's pouring down rain like it was last night I don't want to be parking a football field and a half from the center of town and I want to know how we're going to keep the people from growing apart and the rest of esex County out of this parking lot that we're talking about building for our residents to you know support the downtown area we need a police station we need a d we need it quickly um we're in potential situation we're not in compliance why not put it on Lakeside Avenue it keeps it close to the center of town where people want a lot of people want it to be and I don't know about site pre uh preparation but I can't imagine that the site preparations needed to build a police department on on this parking lot is going to be the same as what's going to have to go on uh on ponon Avenue to get that site ready so um I guess another thing that concerns me is and and I learned a lot listening to these meetings uh I do see you off like everybody else but there's another public comment session at the end of the meeting thank you thank you else L good to see you good to see you as well so um Lisa L 18 oid Road I'm here on behalf of the vbsl I think a number you have some questions so I believe you guys came to the vbsl a couple years ago about over two years ago with the idea of ever field being done and uh since that time although I was not a part of that inal discussion since that time I've been a part of a multitude of discussions with all of you including you man uh several times and during that time I think that we as an organization have been flexible discussed what we think was be best we we worked with all of you uh we understand uh obviously with the green team here earlier you know the the the concerns were Turf so we we've discussed that we discussed the one thing that we really did want was the left field extension but we understand that interferes with a lot of slope things so we've sort of stepped back on that one thing that we really are very passionate about is having this uh snack bar and um you know good bathrooms for our more quality than anything good bathrooms for these kids to use because we have a number of issues with that at eff right now so one of your concerns I believe is what happens if we can't raise all the money for that first of all we've had our own architect do a plan for us the number 600,000 is highly inflated I think that this could be done half that price we we have a a plan less than that right now um it it's not you know maybe as grand scheme as the initial but we are not looking for grand scheme we're looking for something that our kids can use so that being said that that helps us a great deal secondly we can uh you ask the question what happens if we don't can we pay for the bathrooms I can get you a second plan that would just include those bathrooms for my architect we already have enough um labor and materials donated to us that we could probably cover that right now without our additional fundraising that we've that we've planned for which uh we have a number of things planned for including I think I've spoken to you Deputy manager Ulan about the fact that we have some things that we plan for the field itself including um brick Pavements uh sponsorships by uh local businesses that would cover a great deal of that we have a lot of sponsorships each year and we believe that we can you know probably triple that amount with something like this so I am 100% confident that we could cover that that your concerns about even if we couldn't put this whole structure up that we could we could give you documentation currently that would show that we could cover a nice bathroom that would not put that burden on the public we're willing to take that on ourselves because we are very passionate about having this field done we started this conversation two years ago we don't want to delay it anymore thank you thank you Mrs LLY good evening Jessica Pearson Verona um couple things concerning ever field I think it's amazing that residents are pitching in and looking to improve a public field for the good of the entire Township um but I do think that we need to address a couple of the design features that are yet to be determined including but not limited to whether or not we can even utilize impervious pavement on this site because they haven't done investigatory boring holes or decidedly figured out where the uh seasonal high water table is so that this could potentially not be an appropriate use and we have to also recognize the fact that there are 5,000 square feet if not more of new impervious surface being planned for this site it is a major development and so if you're not not going to be able to use the impervious surface as a method of storm waterer management somewhere else on that field it has to go it has to be put somewhere you have a 3200 plus or minus new playground surface going down amongst all of the other parking surface the walkways everything else it's definitely a major development um the other design feature that I have I take issue with is cutting into the steep slopes which is bad enough but what that does is it destroys the roots of the trees that are slated to remain and obviously I know that some of the discussion has been that some of the trees are not healthy they're not at their best we're going to replace some but even digging within that steep slope you're going to destroy the root balls and the root systems of the other trees that are slated to remain and it's just going to be a problem last but not least I totally am with the vbsl and the residents I think at large that want to see a new bathroom and a new uh concession stand what I'm not entirely sold on is a 17 foot high PA system um which is basically going to act like an ecological megaphone um the 17 foot high second floor of that building is going to actually be at certain points over the crust that it backs up to uh which is at 465 elevation versus the 473 elevation according to the plans that I saw so it's a 17 foot high uh starting at 456 feet elevation it's going to exceed it's going to 473 and it's going to exceed some of the health so it's just going to basically send sound and light emissions into the neighborhood that it's peacefully coexistent with for all these years um so I hope that this Council will take some of these questions into consideration especially but not limited to the storm water management that has to go on the site somewhere thank you thank you Chris anybody else M far hi hi Sarah farell Verona New Jersey um I just want to make sure that a sound system will not be installed at ever field the way our homes are elevated the sound travels and it's really Amplified for example we can hear the Montclair Golf Club leaf blowers and their bands on Saturday nights Build Me Up Buttercup so imagine this noise we've never had a sound system at Everett we bought our home nearby 28 years ago with a very quiet field for the younger players including my own children not a fullblown sports complex and I believe it isn't fair to place that burden on our neighborhood um if you um I I have a family member who works quite late sometimes past 3: in the morning and I'm certain that a sound system blasting who's up at bat and all that at 8 :00 or 8:30 in the morning isn't going to be helpful for that person so I hope they would consider the residents in the neighborhood who aren't playing baseball anymore that person did and if you go on ecod 360 I don't have it with me I left my phone back there but it says about disturbing the residence and the our quality of life in the noise ordinance and that to me is very significant um I agree for sure that the field needs improvements as it's been stated and I've learned and I'm aware that this field continues to be important to all the players um and I'm very open I'm more open to the space looking like a field for younger players with proper D drainage and the much needed ADA Bathroom and my intention is to look out for my family our neighbors and our taxes of course too and one other thing that I didn't see in the plan was um I didn't see the massive Sycamore that's at the end of Westview it has an 11 foot circumference and I'm sure it helps with the flooding that was mentioned um I didn't see that in the plan so I'm just curious about what will happen to that beautiful tree thank you Mr good good evening Fred good Veron I'll finish up with the say some CL at then so everybody can get home early um one of the things she wanted to talk about was the comparison Cedar gr managed to tear down and appropriate rebuild your Southend Firehouse about 6,000 square ft for $2 million the North End Firehouse is currently undergoing the same renovation for $3.5 million Asbury Park is building combined firehouse and rescue facility of 32,000 ft for $18 million and and a 55,000 squarefoot building in Veron for probably $51 million just simply does not make sense so let's do this and that actually follows up on something Marty had said we currently are at risk of violations for the police station Lakeside Avenue is available put start the police station there make it a multi-year project with the other buildings so you're not taking on a large expense in one year find a way to work with the ambulance and the fire to to address their needs over a period of time but take care of what what from what I have heard people explain is a critical need of possible violations as a police station she also wanted to conven a committee with Township leadership along with residents who can have input to help come up with solutions that are address Finance engineering environmental standards legal real estate and safety um one of the other things that she add on her there was Walgreens uh two months ago I believe on June 28th in the Wall Street Journal announced that they were closing 2,000 of their stores has someone approached Walgreens because large corporations will make a donation with a tax WR off at the end and that property could then also address some of the needs to Marty's point the parking lot on Lakeside uh you could do a second lot on the parking lot but second floor in the parking lot behind hbw there's conver ation about um some uh Vehicles being uh stored in the Lots you could basically give him permit parking on Commerce Court and get them out of the center of town There's Solutions and they just need to be looked at thank you hi good evening everyone my name is Eddie kest Verona resident um and I have a son who plays um for the uh vbsl uh I just want to say thank you for your time and everything you do for our town uh we have a wonderful town here the reason my wife and I moved here uh for the schools the town atmosphere um in the way everyone kind of bonds together uh in the first place um I just wanted to say that I'm uh totally um in agreement and hear what everyone has to say about the uh Everett field uh being revamped reutilized and and uh you know uh pretty much overhauled um you know we have a lot of games uh at home there and when other people from other towns come and uh they say are we using the Porta or we using that bathroom and we say well the Porta is the better option you know the bathroom isn't you know it's kind of embarrassing last season to flush the toilet and have the bathroom completely flood out on you while you're standing there before you can even wash your hands so that's completely understandable um and Ada as a teacher I understand that's the most important thing to handle first so that ADA Bathroom is necessary um so the fact of been using the porta potty half the spring season into the summer it was a little embarrassing uh not to mention when other towns came there they were kind of surprised to see that that's what Dron is putting out there as our you know uh uh Pride so that was a little upsetting uh but we did say that we're hopefully that uh you know hopefully things are in the works to uh switch that up so um we do understand what you're saying uh the safety concern too uh I'm very happy that people spoke um with the uh athletic fields uh because I'm a big opponent of the grass dirt field um but right now the the dirt that we do have uh also has a lot of rocks big rocks in it too so you know a lot of the parents and coaching staff go through and they kind of just pick out the rocks that come from the hill on the way down you know each time it rains so it is a a big safety issue as well um I know the parking lot you spoke um about you know the safety of that surface uh even if we could just temporarily fill up those huge huge huge holes with some kind of rocks there's a lot of grandparents that come around uh in Walkers and if they're going to a game and they get heard out there just coming through you know for them they don't care if it's asphal or if it's grass as long as it's a flat surface um so I think we're all on the same page here um you know with with getting this done and trying to do it as quick as possible uh and that would be great um I live in the FN Brown section and uh we have the high school speakers that we deal with so I understand why the idea of a huge PA system isn't ideal uh I don't love it at all you know um but we deal with it uh I don't think the the sound speakers would be a big make or break for vbsl I think it's more of a and I'm just speaking for myself now more of a baseball safety and kind of just putting out uh the best for Verona but uh thank you for your time and hopefully we can get this moving as quick as possible thank you very much thank you okay hear none I'm going to close public comment I'm gonna respond to a couple of these items as my notes have it and I'll follow other council members um going to miss maso's point I agree that that I think m masaro is here back um I agreed that the manner in which the tax impact uh was presented to the public was not okay in fact I brought it up at a town council meeting immediately after that meeting um and requested the township manager reformulate an an estimate not only uh with the assumption that we couldn't get X you know all the funding that was promis but also assuming that we're taking other debt with other capital projects that we have think one of the underlying assumptions that was put forth in that meeting we were not of course permitted to attend but we did watch the well least I watch the phone um was that it wasn't really brought up that we would have in the the time span of this Bond maybe another 1520 Million worth of cap right maybe even more uh when something breaks everything's always breaking we have to pay roads we we do spend money in that way um so I did request that and I am I am waiting for that I also request that we use an outside contractor uh to assist in the preparation of that uh those financial reports and uh we have one that would do a good job that I did recommend to the township manager uh who's our former CFO and is aware of our finances but is also a brilliant um individual that could do all that analysis uh so I agree with you on that 100% um and I had other tax impact estimates that I had calculated myself um but I'm not going to suggest those now I think the one thing that's important to note that Mr jaro here I think his response would be a couple things first of all what is before the public of the concept plan for this buing um the council has not pined on the design cut items or anything at this point so when the the building was uh the content plan was created the architect the manager our team took what was requested by the um uh by the different organizations together so the one thing that I I've constantly said I'm not going to allow in is like the police sheep having his own bathroom right like you don't need own bathroom okay that's 25,000 out right you know we actually the manager has the cost of the building broken down by room okay so we are able to see that uh but it's something that I requested to see but I joked with our police chief multiple times that he can go to the bathroom like everybody else but the point is is that the uh there are some there is some room for the council to make some strategic decisions before a final plan is is put forward um the other underlying Assumption of the presentation was that the manager posed to the public the higher end of the cost um so as to set expectations the reality is there is a potential that this building will cost less so Mr good brought up other buildings that were constructed we were able to look at the final cost of those buildings not the projected cost of those buildings so and well I agree it's a significant amount of money and this is going to be one of the toughest decisions this Council makes you know um presumably this Council or it could be the next one uh but I did want to put that out there that I am agreement with you um and I'm hoping that the any overrun would fall into what you were quoted as far as an estimate for what that building was going to be um once again we haven't looked at um we haven't really had a discussion on what we can pull out because as Council we can go back and say okay we need to cut 10,000 square feet out of this building we need to do X Y and Z and send it back to the team and and let them make those tough decisions um um Mr I'm sorry uh Mr core you had brought up the I think Mr Gore brought up the multiple conference rooms and bathrooms and things like that that goes to the same point and that's something that continues to be looked at I can tell you that one of the reasons that there are multiple like conference rooms is for security and confidentiality purposes certain functions that the police do cannot be shared with the other agencies okay so a lot of the the crossover is is different on that um so that that is one piece of it another item where there were like two conferen upstairs in the Fire EMS side one of the goals that the team articulated us was that they wanted people to conduct State licensed training there so to train your emergency medical technicians in house the state actually requires a certain number of facilities I don't know exactly what they are that was part of the reason of having a meeting room and a conference me and so on but once again that's something that we can look at further that's why there's more storage space and things like that um to Mr Monahan I um I appreciate I'm sorry Mr manahan brought up the 17 bathrooms in the conference rooms um and I agree with your point um I've also asked for a facility cost estimate to actually operate the building um right now I believe the mran correct if I'm wrong one of the things that we were looking at is the solar um implication of that so I think we're waiting on that in order to get an actual operating estimate up one cost to run that building because the utilities will be significant on that P um to Mr Good's point I agree with you about uh the need to redo the police station um I did talk to the manager about um public questions about using the the lot um at what's we will own versus AR Lake when the closing happens um and he actually did have the architect look at it um and put a a uh a silhouette of what the building would be on that property and the architect is not recommending that property for that building um but we'll have more I'm sure that will be presented to the public um the there's also a grading issue and there a couple things there that that need to be addressed the other problem going into Goods point is we have an issue with the size of the building and location of of the building right we also have an issue separately and together with the financing aspect of whenever we build piece in a peace meale fashion our costs just go up so we have to for the members of the public um it's something that we have to consider as the council is in order to reduce the footprint of of that building with the cost actually increase but we have to duplicate some of what we've been able to actually combine by having the joint building so the position that has been articulated by the manager and by the architect is that we save millions of dollars by having a combined building um and uh and so on uh regarding the parking lot um and its distance to to the uh bloomf Avenue um I've walked that several times um I found it to be with a convenient distance but a lot of what the purpose of that lot is to provide um EV charging stations other permit parking for overnight resident permits and for Chargers and things like that so that we can free up space and they just lot so if you go into the municipal lot one which is what's behind uh Avenue beastro there are you'll notice construction bands there and um ice cream trucks and things like that we have ordinances in town that do not allow these trucks in driveways so people have to park it either in a rented Spot somewhere or they can get a permit from the town for that so what would potentially happen is is that those Vehicles would be moved to the farther away lot so that we can open up more parking in the actual Center of um so that is a piece there and it would be a metered spot we would have no way of telling um the county that the um they could use that parking Vis in the count is actually providing us crossing a safe Crossing light for that uh parking lot to access the park uh just going back on my um my notse here just want to make sure to uh Miss stoloff is not here anymore but um and the other Mr pulo who spoke um I I appreciate your gratitude for sending the engineers I think they did a good job on on that report um the ATT Clerk I'm sure we'll help find that document if we have it that they were looking for yes I think you ran after him right actually no you know we've worked together for long enough um but if anybody can find that it's uh Jennifer Kieran um we talked about the road interconnecting to Howell uh I have to look at the most revised plans because they keep revising them but in my conversations with mayor mcartney of West Orange the road between ver um that complex and how will drive is slated to be an unimproved Road it's basically would be like gravel stones for the sole purpose of having emergency vehicle access if needed so it would not uh at this time it's not going to be a traversed road by regular cars on that um on going back to miss ID's comment on the the cost estimate um I I'm sorry that you haven't gotten exact what you're looking for from the administration yet um I will summarize what I think you're looking for is we had ratables we had rateable property there uh with being change because it's foral housing complex because the town subsidized the purchase of it purchased land and so on there's a difference in the in the tax spas and that's what we're looking to find out what's the impact on it I'm going to ask Mr Aya to jump in on that one and uh and help get that information back to you um Mr is a uh is a brilliant guy when it comes to the items and many others so I'm to ask our Township attorney to to Loop in on that to assist you if he's willing to do that as well um and sorry I just want to be able to he everybody this is louden's point so I'm glad that you came up glad that your cost estimate is lower than ours um and the I mean basically when I I'll tell you my my point and the reason I brought this up before is that in um in my thought process we need the concession stand the bathrooms and storage no matter what right and so we look at this as what potentially would be Our obligation so I'm glad that you guys are doing that I also think it's phenomenal that if you have members of the league and others willing to donate their time and their expertise that really says a lot about fona which is a point of Pride for everybody um to miss Pur and Miss ofarrell uh you're comments are well taken there as well um and I look forward to seeing an alternate concept plan that potentially addresses some of these concerns um and uh and those items as well um and what's funny is I live across the street from the golf course I don't hear their music so it's very interesting how it travels through town and think because you're at a nice higher Point than I am um and uh and through Goods point on the Walgreens site that building is not owned by Walgreens uh is owned by a property management firm a property investment firm uh so I uh they have not indicated usually they will tell us when they are falling out because if they do we would be a pharmacy um uh desert in Verona um and I believe they actually have an obligation to notify the township if they are leaving um but anyway I don't think they um they do not own that property I actually just looked it up and walk own the proper um that was actually the place that I've always wanted that building you know if it could get built but you know it's worth a shot if that happens and back to that it was found that that is a central location however I think a lot of the the concerns are wherever we build any building is the size of it the impact on neighborhoods and things like that and no matter where these buildings were built there will be those impacts and those concerns uh and that's something the council does consider and take into uh least I do uh and take into our thought process that there may not be the the perfect solution I'm to be honest in that in that way uh on that side but however I know that the administration is dedicated to uh reducing any impact on on the neighborhood um and the Emergency Services have expressed their thoughts and it's an ongoing conversation and I do look forward to the time where the council has a rich discussion on what our expectations for that building are uh so there's a lot of comment I appreciate everybody bearing with me as I responded to those items I think I hit everything if I didn't please feel free to stay in chat at the end um any other responses from the council councilman Holland I'm sorry councilman um I'm going to kind of clumpy by topic rather than uh responding to each individual person's concerns I did want to make at least a couple of statements um the majority of the comment was related to the emergency services building this is a situation where the council is going to have to make decisions that whichever decision we make they're going to be unpopular one way or the other um I am of the mindset that I'm not seeing the level of um bearing and efficient use of space that that I really want to see if we're selling this building as as the best solution by combining all three squads in one building I think there's probably a little bit more efficiency that we can ring out of it that's just my opinion from looking at the plan itself so we are going to have to kind of go room by room by room and talk about what really ends up in the final plan and what doesn't um but yeah I I I really do feel like we need to bring the clock down on this building it's a very large dollar figure it's escalated throughout the course of this project and you know we can't say yes to everything we're going to have to fix some things that we you know that are that are absolute needs and some things that are wants and we can always design a building so that it's something that can be expanded in the future if we have a you know substantial population increase if we find that we really need to expand our re our Emergency Services you know we can make sure that we don't paint ourselves into a corner it'll obviously be more costly in total by doing something like that but we may have to see what we can actually build here we do need to build something I mean everybody knows that we need to deal with these Emergency Services buildings but you know the dollar figure is a lot of money and I really do want to see exactly how efficient we can possibly get so we do need to have those discussions and you know we're going to meet somewhere in the middle you know someone's going to be happy one way or the other with our decisions whether it be you know the services that want a certain room in in the building or public that wants to see the smallest building cost so that is going to be a process we're going to have to go through and we're going to have to work our way through it but I am similarly concerned about the cost um our biggest challenge right now I feel is capital uh for a while I felt our biggest our biggest challenge with operating expense you know now we look at this we look you know over the last couple of years I've been sitting up here as we get to these major major projects you know our ability to to finance all of them is you know is interesting particularly the uh the interest rate environment that we're in um so we're going to have to have a hard look at this and see what you know scale of facility is appropriate to build um we have to build Emergency Services facilities it's just a question of what so I really do appreciate the detailed look that the public is giving about it um the cost the concept of operating costs it's also a very interesting discussion you know is this something where a building of this size is going to require us to add a building maintenance first you know is this going to require a full-time employ to do building me I mean very very well may be possible given the you know the size and the scope of it what's the cost of that um so we still have a lot of questions we have a lot of discussions um I just want to make sure that this is as I brought up the same points with regarding Everett field I don't want us to get so far into a planning process that we expend a lot of money and we get you know past the point of well we have to do it because we're this far along I don't want us to reach that point before we've had these discussion so there does need to come a point in time where we talk about this in detail um m points about affordable housing uh I've kind of given sort of this discussion about affordable housing uh it requires a historical perspective about where we came from uh which is we had developers looking to build three separate very large developments on several L that were all 8020 uh developments which were going to be 80% market rate 20% affordable and the township strategy in terms in terms of how we handled affordable housing was to try and shrink the total number of housing units affordable and market rate that were going to be built in the town that's how we ended up where we are with this building it did involve the township expending money to acquire properties um but I will submit that in the long run our overall operating costs and tax impact given the strategy that we selected are going to be better for the taxpayer by essentially taking hundreds of units of development off the table that was really what we did the way that we did this so yes there is going to be taxpayer impact from the construction of this building simply because we had to buy property um and yes because it is going to pay a relatively low dollar figure into the Township in terms of property taxation but if you go back to sort of the beginning of this Saga uh we avoided hundreds of units of housing development in the town that would have vastly changed what Verona looks like it would have been a substantial growth in population um we can start going through specifics on numbers which is I I assume what you probably really want to have from us but that's the only thing that I ask for is that when you consider this in context consider what the Alternatives were and the decisions that we made because we were very concerned about the impacts on the school system from building up as many units as were proposed in first place one of the challenges with affordable housing development in New Jersey is it recognizes that there's going to be impacts to your community it recognizes that you're going to have to build and maintain additional infrastructure and provide additional Municipal services but the state m is basically you simply have as a community your obligation is to fund it um there are a lot of things that can be discussed about affordable housing policy in New Jersey uh and what the best way to go about all this is but we're working within the Regulatory and judicial framework that exists and it is not it is never going to be a zero impact proposition so the only the question is how do we manage those impacts um I I can't get into a back and forth uh here but I I know I know what you're looking for and we don't have the numbers up here right now but that's my only ask is basically consider the decisions we've made based on the Alternatives that we had which were proposals for very very large developments in the community and we did avoid those successfully so we'll try and get you more information uh Mr oloya has been here through every step of this he knows the history of it but uh I want to make sure that you're fully informed on this um aett field again I made my comments earlier uh we are going to have to get some Council input into this uh I likewise am you know very appreciative of all the community involvement in getting a project done there and the willingness of bbsl to contribute materials and labor to uh build part of the facilities there uh that again I agree just shows the dedication of our volunteers here so I do look forward to you know us being able to do a project there but we will consider community and Neighborhood Impact at the same time uh I'm looking at the breakdown of the costs and a lot of the costs are in sight improvs and there's hundreds of thousands of dollars for a line item for retaining walls so things like where we position walking path and dimensions of of of certain support facilities there can have a substantial impact on the cost and the extent of the construction so I look forward to hearing councilman maoy or Deputy Mayor mako's um analysis of this and seeing what our alternatives are and hopefully we can have a couple of things that we can look at and again meet in the middle that's really what our job is is to make Intelligent Decisions to build the appropriate size facilities for the need um while managing impacts on neighborhoods environments and compatibility with the rest of the community so all of these are ongoing processes I really appreciate all the public input and look forward to continuing all these discussions so thank you thank you councilman councilman McGrath thank you um I want to leave off where kelman Roman was about the vbsl project and I want to acknowledge and thank um Miss Lowden and the bbsl organization for already making uh substantial concessions they really um are are trying to meet in the middle so that they can move this project forward and I really want us the council members that have concerns I'm I'm comfortable and ready to move forward but the council members that have concern I please ask for Speed and efficiency so that we can get to the next phase and in regards to the Press Box I think we need to recognize two things one is of course we're going to have a policy for use of the Press Box to make sure that the neighborhood needs are considered and that we're not blaring announcements at 8 in the morning however our children do deserve a basic standard when it comes to these fields they are playing with other towns nearby uh against competitors that have these things and so let's build let if we're going to spend uh $2.7 million on this or somewhere around that let's make sure that we don't lose the forest uh through the trees um this is we want to build a a field that projects kind of the standard of the community that we are and now I want to transition to the emergency services complex where we did propose or what was presented to the public was a $50 million project and the jux ofos between these two conversations we're proposing a conference center and a virtual firing squad and all these things where again we are um not even proposing basically Paving this parking lot for ever field and that J the position is troublesome to me I want to make sure we're investing in our children now with the Emergency Services complex I frankly am frustrated on the process I thank all of the residents who came tonight to give robust feedback and one of the things I love about Verona is all of the talent that we have from people's careers and what they did for a living and then bringing that to that public comment and night I think that was great some of the questions that you raised I was in you know Township manager office with the deputy Township manager two days after we first saw this presentation the week of Christmas in December which again I objected to having that presentation that week because I really wanted to launch this project personally with the most robust feedback possible but I was overruled but some of the concerns that cedar the cost of what Cedar Grove spent to to replace or firehouses I asked that immediately the ideas of consolidation there are a lot of opportunities and it's been frustrating this was actually the most substantial conversation we've had on some of the design elements and it's really not technically even on our agenda but I really thank you for coming forward and bringing all of those concerns I also was frustrated on the financials and spoke to it at the same meeting that the mayor did it was a breach a rare breach a rare breach in protocol on how we do things we were supposed to see those financials first we needed to kick the tires and understand the assumptions and we would have those slides would not have been presented in that form at that presentation so that's one point of frustration that I have as well um going back to the West Orange project while they're not here I absolutely thank them for um Coming and giving us that update but I also thank the council members who are advocating very strongly behind the scenes to make sure that our Administration is on top of that project and then finally in in terms of affordable housing when I was elected and first started serving five years ago I walked into the middle of this very complex and confusing project um and while I agree with some of the sentiment on councilman Roman's points had we built all of those hundreds of units though we would have gotten the rateable so we chose a solution where we kept the number of units down but we didn't get tax rable which does help to lower taxes what the point I really want to make though is we have to start this process again so in October we will have very we will start very important Council meetings by law we will get a number from the state New Jersey uh that we of how many units we need to build and by the end of June we have to commit to a new plan so I encourage your continued involvement and participation in these meetings as long as they may be because we really need resident input in six months we are going to have to make major decisions on where we're going to put the next round of affordable housing now that we're in we haven't even finished building what was due on the last round and now by law we have to commit by June 30th of next year so this is going to be a very active fall and spring and I do encourage all of you here and those that may be listening to the replay or online to continue your involvement we need your input thank you I do just want to clarify for the record that the plan includes a virtual firing range uh not a virtual firing squad sorry that to get in the paper that would definitely not be a needed item thank you uh thank you councilwoman McGrath for supporting what I said about everfield that we do need to move it forward very quickly and that's why I said I would be willing to schedule a meeting as soon as possible uh at the engineers uh convenience uh I just I'm not going to go on and on about all these things uh I think this Council pretty much feels the same way about all of them uh I do think we need to really look into I'm going to reach out to Mr pulo tomorrow because one thing he said was he kind of implied that the development uh in West Orange up there I know uh the West Orange the howl area we take on all that sewer treatment uh into Verona uh and he kind of implied that the development on the other side of this 120 Acres also comes this way so I'm going to reach out to him to see if that is true because if it does the only way it's getting to Verona is across that property so that developer assumption may be that they're hooking into that line so I think that's something that we need to look at into to make sure that they're not making that assumption so H hook sewer hookups and water supply is a big uh and as far as that road goes uh I mean we can sit up here and talk about till we're blue in the face but it's West Orange that part of how is West Orange and if they want to open up they open up there's other ways that Verona can tackle that making oneway streets in Verona uh in some areas to divert traffic further down to not have them go across fars but that will totally change the traffic pattern in that whole area uh but as far as that access to that property up there goes it's not a council decision in Verona it's a council decision in West Orange so that's something we got to be careful with so and that's I'm not going to go into all the other ones I think people know how I feel uh and what we got to do thank you Council one I'll just make a remark because everybody else talked but um I do want to thank bbsl for coming forward I do recognize your concerns about affordable housing um and I think that councilwoman McGrath summarized it perfectly and I do uh encourage you to engage because this process is about to begin um your concerns predate my time on the council those decisions were made before I was elected but we are about to go through this process again it is a cyclical event um and so resident engagement is really really necessary and encouraged with regard to the emergency services complex I do just want to stress as several of my colleagues had this evening that some of the materials that you were presented were never presented to this Council so I never had a com an opportunity to comment or offer any feedback on those financials some of which are stunning some of the representations were stunning and it was terribly concerning to hear about it secondhand having not received that information myself and having now sitting here in August not had it on our agenda since you know Christmas week um so I do think that the attempt is at stakeholder but I do encourage the administration to work in small groups as we've heard that's been done with the highlands project it's been done with bbsl that you have engaged residents There's an opportunity for small group stakeholder and to hear some of that feedback firsthand and to work on this project with them but certainly I do agree with you about some of your concerns I don't have the ability to speak to it as directly as the mayor does who's been a lifetime member of the rescue squad and a member of the emergency um our Deputy Emergency Management coordinator but I can say that I looking looking at the building myself I think that some of those rooms are redundant and are unnecessary as well and I certainly do feel that the maintenance is a major issue and I raised it at the time that a big issue that we have here in grona and I said it earlier tonight with regard to Everett field is that we've made large investments in infrastructure in this town over the years and then they're just not maintained and then what ends up happening is just like if you never change the oil in your car eventually you just need a new car because you didn't pay for those oil changes along the way and that's a really big problem that we have as a municipality in Verona I I was moved to run for office because I could see that with regard to our utilities and we've been working on that but as I've been here you could see it in various different areas whether it be these Emergency Services buildings which you know from the images that you saw and that I saw when I took tours of these buildings they are defin they were not adequately maintained and they've definitely been outgrown you can see it in Everett field and various um assets that we have for recreation as well so it it is a pervasive challenge that we have in this um municipality is maintaining these things and making sure that we are strategically planning for that maintenance and upkeep for these things so not having that cost baked into it is very very troubling that it would be a large capital investment but we have no plans for the upkeep for it like that that's just not strategic and thoughtful decision-making it's certainly not something that um I would be comfortable with so I agree that those that information needs to be done and certainly as much as I agree that Everett field should be moving forward sooner rather than later and certainly it should be recognized that there are needs and demands for when that field is available and when construction can occur so if we can coordinate that that would be ideal so I do hope meetings are held soon and the project can progress but with regard to the emergency services absolutely there's need for more discussion on this um and I think that having that stakeholder opportunity with the municipality um excuse me with the township Administration is really really important thank you thank you okay we're moving on to our hearing adoption of ordinances the next on the agenda is ordinance number 20 24-29 on second reading Adam Clark will be through the title of this ordinance ordinance to amend the Drone Green Team advisory committee thank you madam clerk somebody move the ordinance so move second is made by the deputy mayor second is made by councilman mcrad now it's the time for the public hearing on ordinance 20242 the same public comment statement applies however we only accept comments on this ordinance and we had a member of the public raise a hand and then we'll give him a second to come back in okay very none I will close public comments uh is there any Council discussion hearing none Madam call the ball councilwoman Holland yes councilwoman McGrath yes councilman Roman yes Deputy Mayor makoy yes mayor Hur yes mayor ordinance 2024 D 29 passes 5 that will be published according to law thank you the next item on the agenda is ordinance number 202 24-30 on second reading Madame cler would you please read a title of this ordinance amending chapter 18 article 7 entitled Multicultural inclusion and accessibility advisory committee of the code of the township of Verona thank you m clerk will somebody move the ordinance so mov motions made by Council grass is there a seconds I'll second it the mayor seconds the motion uh now it's time for public hearing on ordinance 20 24-30 say h a comment public participation statement applies none I close public hearing is there any Council discussion hearing none we will have the vote M please call all councilwoman Holland yes Council McGrath yes councilman Roman yes Deputy Mayor makoy yes mayor Tor yes may ordinance 22430 pass 5 to the next item on the agenda is ordinance number 2024 31 on second reading Madam Clark you please read the title of this ordinance an ordinance amending chapter 18 Article 4 of the code of the town of Bron entitled neighborhood traffic and safety advisory committee thank you madam clerk you please move the ordinance so Move Motion is made by counc rman the second is by the deputy mayor now is the time for public hearing on ordinance 202 24-30 the same public com hearing none I close the public hearing s Council discussion very none Madam clerk CH wol please councilwoman Holland yes councilwoman McGrath yes councilwoman Roman yes Deputy Mayor makoy yes mayor Tor yes may 2024 D 31 passes 5 will be published according to thank you next on the agenda is ordinance 202 24-32 on second reading Madam CL please read the title of this ordinance of record amending chapter 18 Article Five Parks and Recreation advisory committee of the code of the township over honor so me move the ordinance so moved motion is made by councilwoman McGrath is there a second second second by councilwoman Holland now is the time for the public hearing on ordinance 2024 32 the same public comment statement applies hearing none I close public comment is there any Council discussion uh hearing none clerk call the please counc councilwoman Holland yes councilwoman McGrath yes councilman Roman yes Deputy Mayor makoy yes mayor Toro yes mayor um ordinance 2020 4-32 will be published according to LA thank you we have no ordinances for introduction we move on to our consent agenda we have one set of minutes eight resolutions and no licenses of permits this evening our resolutions include authorizing contract with pendri of Cal authorizing contract with firefighter one or GE from a state Grant we have it a will be accepting a Bo of Public Utilities police Grant approving change order number one for our road repaving project um which actually decrease the cost um and cancellation of fund balance for various water sewer projects disposing of obsolete equipment um and a tax Lan Redemption as well as the standard resolution to go into executive session and going exec no executive so um we just strike that we can just strike the resolutions anybody has an objection right would somebody like to move move the can I pull uh K4 from the consent agenda for a separate vote please certainly would somebody like to move j one k one through three and K 5 through 7 the deputy mayor moves it as second second is SP Council M Holland now it's time for public comments on the consent agenda just saying public comments St appes on the consent agenda items to discuss very none any Council discussion yes Council just a clarification on K4 um oh we're not talking about it sorry and I think I see the thing than you do yes we get to that later think on the on the motion I I will just say that I think it's wonderful that we apply for and that we're accepting the BPU clean Fleet Grant um I think that's really worthwhile and I'm grateful that we're engaging in some of these State um funding opportunities because it's it relieves some of the burden on our our taxpayers and ultimately EV charging is really important infrastructure and it's an opportunity for not only an investment But ultimately reeven generation for the municipality that would offset the cost of purchasing um the parking property so I want to I want to congratulate the township Administration I think you've done a really great job pursuing these grant opportunities um and I'm I'm excited to vote for that this evening I will Echo those sentiments any other comments there none Madam clerk please followable councilwoman Holland yes councilwoman mcra yes councilman Roman yes Deputy Mayor maoy yes mayor Tambor yes mayor ordinances K1 through3 and k57 will be numbered 135 through 140 would somebody like to move K4 so moved motions made by Council MTH is there a second by Council Roman and say the same thing as buing her yeah now it's time the public hearing on ph four well I will just St for the record that I will be recusing myself from this matter as I live on right thank you we still have the public hearing any public comment want to say anything about how nice Street was wor I'll close public comment is there any is there a correction to before is there any plus minus plus the now resol the percentage change it justs plus minus I think yes that was F but everybody wants to talk about sonographical errors because they so fun govern erors are all right yes for Mr oin um so the trees have not been planted so just can you just explain the mechanics of this change order because the project is not 100% done the trees will be planted by outside contractor separate from the road pavment contractor okay so this change order effectively Mets out what the actual quanties were that were constructed we final punch list and the 2% retainage which will be uh paid to the contractor at final payment and close app the trees themselves will be a separate vend that working through the selection of that contract okay great thank you thank you um further discussion car none Council McGrath yes councilman Roman yes de maoy yes may Toro yes may K1 passes 4 Z with one oh and it will be numbered p uh 20241 141 thank you all right we do have one addendum uh would anybody like to move M1 second Deputy Mayor gets the motion Council mcra has the second now it's time for public comments on M1 which is our contract with J&J Pest Control hearing no public comments I will close that comment any Council discussion question uh if we change Health then then this contract is will remain correct thank you one ped graphical issue it just says and where this is now therefore be resolved it says PO box but doesn't actually have a PO Box number for the vendor's address for the vendor's address so if we could put that in the fin put it in it's it's not a policy affecting matter move for with that um mad clerk hold the RO please Council woman yes councilwoman McGrath yes councilman Roman yes Deputy Deputy Mayor May m yes yes okay M1 will be number 142 have one appointment for the municipal Alliance committee for Kathleen foras would somebody like to move this appointment I heard councilman Roman first would you care second hey any discussion I'm just do a hand vote to all those in favor I I anybody opposed motion carries um I do have one more item to add to new business when we were talking about restructuring our committees we did have a conversation about an attendance ordinance uh that would govern for um any advisory boards and committees uh ensuring that our members attend and if they miss so many meetings in a year or Miss so many consecutive meetings that position would become open um we can't do that for uh commissions and other boards because they have a due process provision there um but uh I would like to see the draft ordinance on uh the attendance policy for our next meeting please Char all right um if anybody has any comments you know to includes please send them to our professionals any other items from you or on business help I will just acknowledge um if you don't have a copy of the recreation advisory committee's recommendation on the attendance policy um I'm sure they'll we send it but I believe it was sent around to the administration so if if the ordinance that is being drafted can consider those comments that would be ideal thank you thank you all right any further distance now it's time for one final public comment session on any item that anybody would like to discuss see public comments I close call the comment does anybody have any motions motion close the motion to adjourn is made by Council MRA second made by councilman Roman this is a non discussable motion all those in favor I I the motion carries simple