this is Rel I'm going to call the regular meeting order it is now 602 requirements of the funds all have been met meeting was advertised in Bron County Times on January 7 2024 electronic notice was given to the nj5 39- 1.5 we will now start with the presid allegiance I pleased Alle to the flag of the United States of America to The Republic for stand nation under God indivisible liy and justice for all if we could now have a moment of silence roll call committee woman Berkeley committee man car here committee woman here committee woman Wright mayor Henley here also present Township solicitor Township administrator Deputy Administrator Fire EMS tenant we will now start with the workshop uh for the 2024 annual Municipal budget theed MP go over fund expenditures administra Department of Public Works police department and Fire Department rues 2024 Capital plan and our property tax 6:00 we were able to go to a specified website from our auditor that gives us some statistics about West Town and where the property tax shares go and you can see that the majority of the property taxes are the school share which is the 56.4 the larger part of that pie chart the county share is 15.3 and is 28.3% and it gives you a very brief breakdown of the amount for West so our budget timeline for 2024 T having our first budget workshop readying at 6m we're going to have a second workshop on March 19th where I anticipate answering some of the questions from the information that I'm going to share with you tonight um we plan to introduce the budget on April 2nd and then 28 Days Later in our May 7 meeting we will have a public hearing and finalized adoption of that bud some of our 2024 budget highlights um so our proposed budget for 2024 is to be 14.4 million our 2023 budget is 14 milon 5, 5 sorry our increase over 2023 was about 458,000 and we have unextended funds of $586 our unextended funds becomes our Surplus so obviously with 14.4 million budget uh unextended fund 500,000 is not a whole lot some of our major areas of 2024 increase are the increase in healthcare personel contracts in h police fire and just overall inflation froms and Public Works to equipment for public fire and it's just everywhere we look this year everything is I'm sure everybody that uh as we presented last year there's a New Jersey C law from 1977 that says that we are not able to um have 3.5% over the previous years expenditures um there is such thing as a c bank which we were able to utilize some of our banks C for this year outside C expenditures are capital expenditures Debt Service and reserve for uned uncollected taxes and shared services agreements so everything other than those um items are inside the C we also have her PFS PFS St health benefits over 4% any unused Bank cap Falls outside cap so our 2024 expenditures are actually 9126 under the we're going to able to B that for next year's budg which helps us tremendously T of personnel cost for 2024 66% of the 14.4 million budget is personel cost 43% is almost half of our budget is salar followed by benef and retirement cost this next slide I'm going to show you is the departmental expenses between fire police Administration Public Work support professionals and miscellaneous cost break it down by the percentage Bud for 2024 so I don't know if you can see but most of our costs for Police Department follow very clely by so this year of 2024 we were able to secure shared service agreement through the court with the That Was A Renewed shared service agreement we renewed our construction agreement with pport we have the tax collection with eam we also secured a shared service agreement with fire department with Mount Hol and also lton we have EMS agreement with East and we have the police with BCIT hopefully ring again this summer so I'm going to allow each department to present their andw has always worked hard always working behind the scenes in 2024 make Department successful personel plan in 2024 the county doesn't have any intention to a position comes available someing re uh inion is to that um with the vacancy in November 2023 an equipment operator position become available I'm requesting opposition to be fil by doing so this will keep the work workflow running smoothly it also gives the employees the opportunity to continue to grow within the department without this promotion the opportunity for grow isn't available to them in their current next up is Major expend in 2023 the department was able to spend with their means and keep I have made some minor adjustments to the 2024 budget to cover increases in increases in Services building contracts raed $1200 um we have some increases going on there streets and Road repairs are $2500 we have a road project coming out for striking to take place and inside V maintenance raised to $3,000 overall parts and supplies went up 5% so next up is purch these proposals being presented by facilities and upgrades that need to be looked at to maintain services and quality for my first proposal is the recreation center the building was constructed in 1998 and still Curr hasal we responded to five different workers there we actually contract iix next next in the prop isild no in my proposal I'm proposing that put an expansion on to allow better workflow re the next the third proposal I am presenting tonight is automated track the C is looking forward looking in 2025 forward TR collection we currently doing collection by moving in aut collection maximize the amount of money we're spending and costs associated trans and Fin under purchases um I am proposing the purchase of 2024 nworth o truck in Fall 2023 Department a AC and unfortunately that um my intention with this truck is to make a Four Season truck um with purchase of proper accessories purchase ofer um no CL and also self that which is operated the benefit this no having um one of the other benefits also is collection which we do every month to increase capacity of roal will provide us less trip to the landfill and our costess and lastly the department goals my goals for work are to ruce the over overall cost of collection by sing man a second goal is provide safe work environment the dep by expanding public works department time and lastly restoring collection services to the residents by purchas purchase thanks I wanted toy on the trash collection the item you're going see in the C get that so right now we are just starting to go to uh our bids with trash Pro to open up a new trash contract our contract will be up end this year so we're starting the process with beginning process with mol what we found during the last contract renewal was that our we only receed two bids from two companies this be because we have manual roadside col which means that everybody has to put their trash in a can that doesn't have the toor style that the arm can come and into the truck so it's one of the can that a driver you have to have a driver a safety person and a person on the Backle get off the truck man take the can and dump it into the truck and then other trash companies are starting to automatically go to automatic trash collection and they're only using Twitter Styles so by us purchasing Twitter bins for all the residents we can actually get more BS which would probably be more cost effective because they're able to cut back on their man when trash the town now understand we a joint contract with Hol so in the conversations that we're having with this trash contract we asked M Hol if they would do the same that we could get the same services and they were willing to entertain the idea of purchasing their trash um their TOS as well so what we're trying to do is increase the amount of companies that can on our contract for our town we do we ask questions have questions at the end now yeah cuz I'm old I'm to forget um a couple things one the what the the rec center how's that under Public Works budget wouldn't that be under the rec budget I so they don't support and I'm ask a question they don't support like the fields like when they have to repair the fields and all those things so then they wouldn't repair the roof all right fair enough yes fair enough and one other question for me I'm sorry if I'm Dominic snow how much do we pay for snow last year and did we like fulfill that what snow say snow was0 500 last year like how much do you do we know how much we spent on I mean we had one snowstorm and I know as soon as we change that budget we'll have eight snowstorm so we can move it right last question the so the leaf back that we had that was in an accident do we get insurance money from that for some we have to replace for half a million so we broke we have the truck we just broke the back thank you Chris anybody got any question well it's not the vehicle it's the VAC so the VAC is hooked up to the vehicle right yes so it's the VAC that we got the 11,000 for the vehicle is around so we're purchase something roughly close to plus, buy insurance to coverl of that W upoke up Dam that must be I mean we have the grant writer but you can put them to work right successful get yeah we're successful in getting the BFW money thanks Chris CH good y good evening committee there resents here by person um before I go over my budget and my expenditures with you uh just want to ADV you that Police Department is committed to save guarding our community and enhancing Public Safety through our corac police Str Community Eng The Continuous Improvement proposed budget for the fiscal year 2024 reflects our ongoing commitment to Excellence and Innovation and law enforcement so um I'm just going to go right even though might not that not it's up on the screen in order make it easier for you to follow law so the first thing requested for the 2024 budget is two Patrol Vehicles now it is uh all their flights but um after speaking with C administrator U we're to try to capitalize these two vehicles being upvs 5 shelf flight um I went in on the low end for the vehicles at this point um DOD Durangos seem to be fful right now may we got that confirmed was at Cherry Hill dealership today that they have them on the ground and they're ready um so that state contract uh price is very um competitive with the cramper just another agency that we appli for funding when we want to buy these vehicles the total cost upfit down $166,000 that's also lowend um so the total request for those two vehicles will be $110,000 total under Capital second thing under capital is the upgrade our department out test machine this is something that we're at the University of the state New Jersey right now we pl out the last few years in BR the county they have not um put us to the new machine um probably by years then we might see the new machine come in BR County so I want to be prepared this is a uh quote that went back to 2023 but we confirmed it the other day it's still approximately $223,000 for the uh new out test machine uh that would include any training from the officers the state police does provide that free of cost um or allers that are already trained we just go to a a four armor switch over class to operate with the new machine we have talked several surrounding this by share Services agreement but nothing in as of right now four P3 departments um purchasing one or two and then sharing it that might be something that we on the second page my um our basic budget line items um I asked for increases to certain items this year um equipment just the basic cost of doing business uh most of our increases this year we up 25% already I'm seeing um so this is just general equipment that we need to maintain our current Fleet for officers um and everything like that Firearms um we try to go every year with the same budget we had the same budget in 8 that dated back to like 2015 we had a slight increase one year then we had a decrease so I'm asking if we can go another 2,000 in that category um so that will cover our cost to Bama and um Ted are is very proactive for the future of our department so this is a year that we needed purchase our taser parages which also come out our fire budg so we try to do that every few years so we don't um stret our budget the biggest increase i' I've listed is for services um just being that uh we have all inhouse storage for our body cameras and our tasers um I was told that we're running low on storage so part of this large increase that I have asked for $5,000 server that will keep me going for quite a few more years um also power GMS I just got that new bill that's going up about $1,000 um and then um our licensing for B cers is also up this year so you know it looks like I've asked for more than probably other years past this is just going to cover us to conduct um business that we're already doing training keeping get the same uniforming get the same vehicle maintenance a little bit more money from that since the fact that our Fleet is all out warranty one we just got 24 that 23 um but usually this is something I can work with Chris at his the public works department to keep that within budget um closing maintenance um we're not going to have any increase in that you see the overtime budget um your proun say we bran to go a decrease of that $93,000 uh we were well under about $10,000 on that L last year so um even with the hiring and newer officers I believe I can still uh maintain that same um number for the this coming year the Shi supervisor have increase um just based on projected hiring two at least two offs this year um that's explain and our Personnel the last page we currently have 25 fulltime officers one parttime officer about 15 hours a week this primary job Administration still comprised of CH of two lieutenants we handle a variety of um uh un for Crime reporting intern Affairs Etc with the penny retirement of Hospital of one of my lieutenants in February 2025 I like back fill that position with a motion in October 24 and also fill that position with a offer in December of 24 um my goals going forward to maintain the patol division increasing by two offers by years then uh I proposed to do that I have not replaced the reti even that last year and we did receive the cops Grant to the federal government to help um all set salary wages we still still do um have the current contract with ecit um till 2025 so we're hoping that go forward with that Poli see what's that expires we did negotiate a fair deal with that last time so I look forward to when that expires next year to uh over that I just listed our call of service you can have an idea the call service C CES this isn't everything because sometimes Al don't generate numbers but this Comm in general about how many calls the AL um throughout the year so um pretty much my department goals at the end I would like to bring up the control division to a three man 1447 this is something we've talked about for years I was hired in 2001 U population that town was probably under 8,000 I work with two officers then is now 2024 population probably over 10,000 now that's what I said um and we still have two off so um the increase in calls increase in paperwork the increase in the training everything that comes down R from the attorney J's office I think it's proper the time given the fact that like 10 two years then probably Midway through this year once I get my PL Duty I could guarantee the time that 247 for3 offic and still maintain the current budget that other than that I do have some more goals for Community engagement I've already been pretty proactive with that I think the best relationship we've had in years with the school four and down the street of the H Hills also our day carees in our town so they get like left off make sure the AL go visit them BCIT we have a good relationship with that special services um the Benjamin Academy that we provide servic uh we're going to expand our youth and adult police cies so Our Youth Academy um we had a last year first year pretty successful we're going to kick off a second one this year and then there's my goal to offer something for the adult operation as well something that might be a few nights a week uh for like a month or two or people from the town to come inar Poli um hopefully host more Community fors listening to s got reput on policing priorities and stress relationships with our residents and partner with any other other community organizations so we can deliver crime pral workshops anything that's safy educated as well I got a question shockingly um I know that we've talked about this before SRO have you been approached by the SRO for this schools and if so is Ben Benjamin benj Benjamin Baner school have they asked us about the SRO as well Benjamin bager just met with them recently they had turned in their um u m security theyve anything down there they have a very minimal student population down there they have Security on location um actually some of their their security is for too so um I don't think there's an issue there uh talked to the jimm in the past at scor we gave him the options of class two class three time call and everything like that he's had it I know he was waiting for most of the schools done see what he have left over in the security budget I mean he's been very proactive can't be anywhere happier next door and how those all the enhancements in the security of the building I mean I think parents might take um not like not worried our Poli station right next door there but at the same time in the building all times you might see police Parts here we can be out the street or TI up on other PRI but I've not been I just I just bring it up because I obviously you know why I'm bringing it up there's a reson who asked about it fair question right um that of the three like the the local t we're one of the few that don't have and it's not on us right but don't have an SRO in the schools which then they they kind of pay why we Beed they pay most of police officers salary but we can use that police officer in the summertime etc etc so that might be a way they increasing 27 police officers to 29 without us paying the full load for one right and then when you have L run that just came in um and who knows what else is going to happen cuz it looks like there always full docket at Land Development that we we're kind of being proactive versus reactive not saying that you're being reactive at all I mean we're going to take the proactive step I also like Judy who is not my favorite to be let's see he's right there he's probably put in younger children right right he's a little officer so we're going to put him to rest schooling ready okay it will be done and train and ready to go if they call say they want position and they know that some of our and I think that you know this some of our retired officers have been Sr out of the school so this may be also a way that we can keep some of our officers when they when they retire to probably stay in town especially if they're been a little tough a lot of times to hire know reti come back do that yeah fair enough ta have license holders within the township some nomal amount to get them to basically kind of f the purchase of that your shake your head now now the liquor licenses are regulated by the alcohol ABC Beverage Control say separate we can't do a separate Levy we're preempted by state law I thank you sh right that uh no it's not a shelf uh lawyers uh have argued against machine a little bit so the new machine has moving part L human eror associated with this so that's why I got good evening I'll be uh presenting Chief couple days it's my pleasure C Service Bud request our fire up up a full EMP respond almost 3 400 calls for majority of our calls Serv related 73% and remainder the calls we reive service are important to our personel and the entire Community each call for help represents someone from our community experiencing unexpected and at those times unfortunate ours truly understand often associated with in that services with that our personel strive to provide the utmost compassion empathy and support necessary to all those emergency situation the24 budget request contain allary funding maintain um EMS maintenance basically the day-to-day operations of the department there's been no increase uh em supplies and equipment um any any materials we use all the ambulance uh H supplies R clubs things of that nature that um those calls are possibly rise we $8,000 that training there's no increase there what we've been doing is sing more of our employees to train the trainer PL classes so that they come back and present classes in house rather than S more people out as much uh du subscriptions zero increase that's just um agreements with with r County on some certain type of that we really don't have t fire equipment maintenance um there shelf light there's uh 10year law rules um for some of our equipment and also lural wear and Care uh We've decreased that $5,000 with some uh Grant uh Awards uh placing some equipment and doing some testing and house ourselves uh radium maintenance there's been no increase system there's County system the radio system still there educational assistance that is a contractual item thats $6,000 uh vehicle maintenance we've dropped down $20,000 um with the ladder going which was our biggest maintenance head we're saving money there when the new lad comes in then that that would be waranty two anes are being replaced this year when they come in we feel as though that you'll be less maintenance Vehicles up $365,000 Contra H personel um we did away with the fire position brought them on as a fulltime firefighter savings there 39,500 umm firefighters we cut that budget and put towards uh full fireing wages uh C $68,000 there part reason for that is U the C just isn't there Ferguson said you know it's hard harder to find candidates not on full for de so what we found full guarantee theing on availity um some of the contractual items with holiday pay over time um there's a difference of 1852 under the Fire official budget um salary wages there's zero difference uh his Supply zero difference there's a vehicle pay of 15857 uh enough no increase on fire prevention uh supplies and under Capital expenditures um we ask for $67,000 like I said a 10e sh uh but they recommend normal wear and things just need to be replaced um we just have to purchase the the B are proper you know things are just out of our hands that's uh PP that needs to repl at least every 10 years our year do the last 10 years pretty busy and uh prob last 3 years $50,000 that technology upgrades U and this is we working with J to our technology where like it um going to be need to purchasing servers and that and we're asking for 14,3 um some accomplishments in 2023 we received department grant under uh funding Pur we purch a new policy software um not only does it um record this cing issues but it also um out boys or good jobs or things that on uh any um any exposure to H materials or PL pens or things of that nature it's it's an easier way one place to track everything for employee uh you know if there's issue later on um we did the freebuild for the new ladder um that should be coming two years out still we did sell the ladder um that was a I think we did well on that we did the pre-build for the two ambulances um and during that we were able to sell the two only ambulances when those are delivered in conjunction with that company uh we work with the architectural firm for the feasibility study for the firehouse we did enter a shared service agreement with fire district for Bas on fire protection um previously that was being done for free um sort of through a mutual Aid agreement it was really used uh we did reduce job incre 45% we personel 24 and we did our second fulltime firefighter the new were high uh we did our own Academy it was a 8 course we received a slw of of certifications and it cut back when they come on D that we would have Duty whereas got out the way weeks some of the challenges we fac in 2023 we had multiple personel out forend period of time for various reasons and we also uh notic that we never have one call once whenever one call comes in there's two or three um so we rely heavly on some more mutually Partners um some things we're looking Toom in 2024 uh this continue to receive for Grants settled the contract with the uh firefighters U decrease unnecessary call to office um you know the businesses in hotels if we can working with them that and then you know it's not for the people stay there as well um we we're working on increase our cyber security with Gip uh that's actually the two new ambulances will be in this year and we working on a new 5 strategic thank you any questions were talking about the want techology question are concerned with the did to do that fluu that CA the insurance so may more cost to up we can mitigate the Insurance Fund right that's a problem so maybe at the topest personally can be done already without the budget already got one huh yes thank you our two biggest are are constru so with A4 million budget million only gave us about 2 million our Construction specifically when we had big development through town most of our construction Fe were collected in 2022 so we were able to recognize that revenue for 2023 as anticipa now because they haven't collected anything 2023 we were unable to anticipate the same kind Revenue that we anticipated for 2023 so that means that we're actually down about a half million in in the construction Department emvs we saw an uptick in Services as presented because we had such an uptick in Services we were allowed to anticipate more than what we had collected in revenues for 2023 but going into 2024 we don't have that ability so we're taking a little bit of an offet so really msps are still continuing to go higher and higher but what's happening is we have to take the offset because they're United Fe at this point so we can't as much as we did last year so that makes our Reven come down a little bit um we are still collecting cour Fe but as you know with all the changes the laws we not collecting as much as we had in previous years and some of our federal and state federal and state aid and funding um although still there of soes in general are but the good news ising so going on our Capital requests all the Departments had presented their requests in the budget packet which you have copies of for the public works police and fire department um so these are the items that they have listed in of what they're asking for in capital now capital is a separate fund is not covered under the municipal budget that we only have to pay a 5% payment so with all the items that we requesting 54,000 that is 5% of the down pay that will fall under theal budget everything else will be fin through anticip anticipation notes for Lo financing next up of the property tax levy so under the property tax levy law you can only tax residents up to 2% again there is a bank we have the ability to go a little bit higher than 2% because we never reach our bank year here in property taxes our operating expenditures overall increased by 7% so we are asking for increase of 6 and2 cents to cover those expenditures because of our Surplus being low and because of our revenues being low we also have to without Choice defer school taxes by $435,000 this is actually 75% of our allowable deferral rate for school taes now I will remind the committee as I did last year or the I'm sorry the previous year we are we are legally allowed to defer school taxes just because of the way the calendar years are for the municipality versus a school district some municipalities do this in general by practice some of them they do it when they have to we happen to be one of the municipalities that only does it when we have to so we have the ability to utilize this as an accounting measure to have our operating budget reflect that we have more in Surplus by deferring the school taxes to the next year so unfortunately because our revenues are are too low we have to do it this year we don't have a choice but we are asking for that 65 C increase to help build that Surplus so we won't have to do it next year so with that being said the average residential taxpayer increase will be $156 a year with a 6.5% incre so that actually concludes my budg my budget presentation committee and residents um what you have in front of you in addition departmental are a copy of the revenues by line item this is a copy of the EXP by lend that shows you the difference between 2023 expenditures and 2024 expenditures it will show you the difference on the side and percentage increase or decrease and then at the bottom giv you grant to for the budget additionally I provided um the documents provided by our auditor that show the breakdown of the property tax for ly the total bu Surplus that you can read through I am not asking you to make any decisions tonight on anything so what I'm going to do is I'm going to propose that when we come back for our second budget Workshop that we do a recap of the budget for you remind you of everything that we have the Surplus the revenues our senates Etc we'll open it up to further questions and at that point I'll ask you to make a decision on where You' like us to go for introduction of the budget in a so with that do you have any further questions for this presentation our debt service payment um for 2024 it will be 1,11 19688 it is on page 2 of the24 budg summ information P the a good point about de servicing I mean it's been talked about St Federal Reserve may interest rates I don't big game so I'm wondering I don't know can we gain out what it would be if we wanted to raise from and see if that would help all to mitigate the tax revenue raising up to you guys it's almost impossible for us to be able to do that because there are so many moving cards to municial budget that we actually did try to find out what we were looking at for 2025 but with every all tax R and new construction comible toate on what 2025 on what just the total budget what it would be like for next here um before we end this presentation I just want to give a special thanks to Chief because he actually did a lot of work in helping me prepare the budget as he does every year he actually built this entire slide de for you tonight um and unfortunately he was not able to minut thank you guys thank you thank you Wendy thank you p on second ch this isn't like that much they're talking about this popcorn and she's I'm like this isn't that much popcorn saying he just told him she said change church on Saturday this is all he gets know tast like real movie I said I want no can't mayor um yes it is not on your it is not on your agenda but we do have a presentation tonight from hardenberg so we're going to start now yep presentation on safety and the agenda Joe Henry harenberg Insurance I'll be quick okay all right all right I think you know why I'm here I'm here every year see familiar faces so I want to lab you with that but as part of safety a program with the you have to have something related to safety on the agenda so I have a topic every year your Safety Committee is doing great the chief is still working as your safety coordinator so things are good there in every successful Safety Committee uh the acci investigation is that's what this presentation is going to be so I'll jump right into it the objectives when you conduct an investigation understanding your steps involved with an investigation is determining the RO contributing fact really the most important thing primarily don't know why it happened how prev happening we want to get our reports in properly and changes in moving on we have we'll start with an investigation document facts that at the same determine the CES I just mentioned and put corrective action in place immediately to prevent any more accidents that's another key factor put cor action in place to what we want to do is find out one two things training employ get because they didn't know really what was to be done in that particular T that's the case training in place the off it charge and anybody else that needs that train and or they been from La engineering possibly you didn't have proper equipment you may had faulty equipment that c an AC ify you get it out out of practice and if you don't have it you want to put something in place one example would be there are engineer devices tools to lift man covers a lot most people looking there are devices that can pick it up without having your some important plan highlights preservation of life is key we do have employee first call 911 if need if not get to the nearest designated Ur care fail uh want to preserve evidence you have possible subreg subreg is a process in the urance industry that manufacturer defect any M up by the insurance carrier you go back to that manufacturer and recover those GA information identify those cor me mention and who reive the accident report it has to go to a person and