good evening everybody um welcome to the March 4th 2024 Bedminster Township committee meeting um Deputy Mayor Stevenson uh mayor Jacobs is on Route there's some traffic out on 287 so he'll join us momentarily um Mr hickey M meski and M Fernandez are with us today um so with that I guess let's call the meeting to order and Miss Ray we could have the open public meetings act statement please yes adequate notice of this meeting of the township committee was sent to the curry news Somerville Bernville news whiy and to all subscribers and posted the Township Municipal Building on January 5th 2024 thank you is Right could everybody please stand join me with the pledge of alleg alleges Amer the rep stands Nation God indivisible with and justice for all okay um next order of business is uh public comments we have uh every meeting an opportunity for the public to make a statement uh now is that point of our meeting here tonight if we have anyone in the public who would like to make a statement please come on up tell us your name and uh your street address and U we're ready hear you no okay anybody online I have no one online okay seeing none we'll proceed we've got approval of minutes oh and let's pause for one second mayor Jacobs is now in the house we got up to approval of meeting minutes how soon has he been here I I I was here a couple minutes you well he probably would have had to have a sports club he does Mayor we have meeting minutes to look at and to take motions to approve if you'd like to take over that would be wonderful okay okay get yourself situated so we've got a February 12th budget work session number two meeting minutes we've got the February 12th uh budget session number two executive session meeting minutes the February 20th Township committee meeting minutes the February 21st budget work session number three meeting minutes the budget work session number three executive session meeting minutes from February 21st uh February 26th budget work session number four meeting minutes and the February 26th uh budget work session executive session meeting minutes so we got minutes from the 12th 20 21st and the 26th can I have a motion to approve the minutes so moved second all in favor I'm abstaining from budget session number four minutes I was not in tendance thank you that turn it over to the mayor for per great thank you commit Stevenson and also thank you for giving me the heads up that the uh traffic alleviated at some point which it did right exactly where you said it would well thank you and my apologies for being late um Peron Raffles we have one two three four five six seven eight so the first one is seasonal Farmers Market permit for Sky Acres Winery at the bedm farmers market next is a seasonal Farmers Market permit for Dish and Suns doing business at sourland Mountain Spirits for the or Farmers Market and we've got social Affair permits benefit Union College Foundation April 29 900 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. at fitler's elbow then a social Affair permit to benefit seat Hall Preparatory High School on May 13 from 11:30 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. at fitler's elbow a social Fair permit to benefit the Willow School on May 18 2024 from 6:00 a.m. to 12: a.m. at the Willow School a social their permits benefit the will schol on May 20 2024 from 8:00 a.m. to 400 p.m. at Hilton Farm Golf Club an off premise 5050 raffle to benefit the center for Great Expectations on July 16 2024 from 11:00 a.m. to 900 pm. at F ELO and the last an on premise merchandise raffle to benefit the center for Great Expectations on April 19 from 11:00 a.m. to 2 pm at fidler's elbow any questions or comments seeing none take motion to approve so move second all in favor thank you so committee man stepen Stevenson right back at you with the subcommittee chair report thank you mayor uh DPW um Kevin got a second quote for roof um so it's going to take another week or two before I get a full reported and those it's F so hopefully we get some pric um with the recent storms we've had some down trees debris we've been spending a lot of time taking care of that and of course our roads as Mary you know River Road was in particular tough shape um but we're working get those roads back you know driveable and putting them back together again so with the harsh weather comes you know obviously accelerated erosion and such so folks if you're out there and you've got issues with your streets uh please you know let us know we are generally aware of what's going on but if there's an issue that we're just not getting to or that's come up please let us know um that's the best thing to do so we can have you know as many eyeballs out there as possible um and um that's that's the uh update for DPW nothing on HPC so I more subst update next time right I so on um Saturday as the um rain was lessening Saturday evening I guess went down just to see what the roads look like went down River Road um bounced up um to large cross and while the dirt roads were bad River Road was particular horrible perhaps maybe some of the worst I've seen other than U maybe after Ida um but Kevin um Kevin responded right away um so Kevin not sure if you have an update if you can take yourself off mute just let us know what's going on what the plan is for the uh dirt roads as Doug said after the freeze thaw freeze thaw rain Cycles we've been going through uh yes mayor we uh we allowed the roads to drive a little bit this morning and then Jason went out this afternoon was stayed late just to tackle the worst areas River Road lross North across South he was bouncing over just the high traffic areas to back left this morning we app some Stone Down the River Road in some areas it's just a rough time of the year you know the the massive change in temperature adding all the rain we have had and continue to have it's just a rough time of okay all right thank you commit in hickey thank mayor good evening all uh none of my subcommittees have met since we last met which seem was almost like it was last week but uh I'll it was yeah I'll have additional reports at our next meeting thank you committee women mesy same here none of my committees have met and I have a EC meeting on Wednesday so the next time we meet I'll let you know what they're talking about committee woman Fernandez thank you mayor I have no updates today and the only thing I want to talk about is uh fers Mark at which we had a meeting um and uh we heard just getting ready applications continue to come in still getting the vendors returning from last year and consideration of new vendors and here we are in March which means it's April and then may and it begins again Miz Ray we please have the administrative report yes mayor I've just been um focusing on the uh operating portions of the budget and uh capital budget as well as uh just making some adjustments to the shared Municipal Court budget and um we received official word last week I sat in on a call with the Highland uh commission that we received um word officially that we've been awarded $34,500 towards our storm water grant um towards our storm water management uh for the year which is fantastic and um I also attended several rate case uh meetings last week one was with pscg and the other with New Jersey American water which um committee man hickey will cover later in presentation great okay um Chief any update on community policing uh good evening no mayor I don't have any updates since our last meeting I do so perect I attended the Bedminster 8th grade basketball game over the weekend and officers Smith and Rivera maybe was it this weekend well my days are merging but whatever it was recently and uh they were there in you know In the Flesh checking it out um you know being present it was great to see them there interacting with the public um so very good Chief was great to see them built there and um I think they enjoyed the the time spent in the gym so it was really nice and I will also provide an update so um last week I participated um with the Bedminster Township school at read Across America and as I was leaving officer Pena and detective um Paul piano were also leaving at the same time and so certainly you know it's always great to see the police uh Department present and participating at R Across America but what's also interesting one of the um PTO offic was also reading at that same time and she was leaving as I was and she stopped to talk about how during the last snowstorm that the kids on the uh and her block were throwing a football around and two officers came by pulled up sorted throwing they weren't throwing snowballs they were throwing the football around and she just said it was a terrific terrific site and that she was you know really pleased to see the police interaction with the kids so um Chief you may not have updates but we got our own observations for you and um you know keep it up and and keep telling the um keep telling the force to get out there and interacts which I know you're doing but um the benefits um multiply as you guys get out there and engage so uh thank you for everything you guys are doing uh we have no public hearings tonight we do have one ordinance for introduction and this ordinance is ordinance number 2023 022 and ordinance amending chapter 3 police regulations and this would add new section 3-25 entitled resident protection public hearing for this ordinance if it is introduced tonight will be March 18 and just a little background I'm going to turn it over to attorney Bardo um as we've talked about before we' put together a Public Safety Committee with the mayors of the Sumer set Hills and um looking at ideas that we could do um to protect Public Safety uh certainly with um the escalation of car thefts thefts from vehicles um people coming trying doors and trying to get to the key fobs and car keys that might be inside um so we're looking around and and we have a number of different ideas that we're discussing but one of them was looking at what other towns are saw that Summit um had introduced an ordinance and so the committee decided that we were G to okay let's look at this and we flip the summit ordinance to uh John Bardo and we also sent it to our municipal prosecutor to coordinate on looking at adopting something similar to what Summit did and you know the instructions to John were you know if it's great then then you know give us the thumbs up if it needs some tweaking John thought it did and also coordinated with our Prosecutors office on those tweaks and you got the thumbs up from the prosecutors from our Municipal prosecutor's office and um I will also say that in the intervening weeks Berkeley Heights also um adopted an ordinance not not necessarily the same as Summits but it's just interesting to see that the towns are looking to see what Municipal ordinances can be put in um effect to protect the residents and with that I'll turn to John Bardo good evening all and as the mayor said um this particular ordinance is a a resident protection ordinance it has four sections the first is the purpose and scope section which is to protect the security of the residents in Bedminster Township from Criminal and intentional activities related to property personal and violent crimes um the second section is what we call the motor vehicle protection section and it makes it illegal and a violation of the ordinance for a person to knowingly and we added uh to this particular ordinance the mayor mentioned tweaks from the summit ordinance and I did discuss this as the mayor indicated with uh prosecutor Steven Davis we we added the word knowingly to prevent someone who happened to accidentally wander onto a property from being prosecuted so knowingly enter or remain on any Private Drive Way private parking lot or other location on private property in the presence of a stationary motor vehicle uh knowing that they are not licensed or privileged to enter or remain in the commit any of the following acts one as the mayor indicated a pull a door handle or take any action in an attempt to open or unlock a motor vehicle that the person does not own or have a license or privilege to possess um as you all are aware where one of the crimes that has been on the upt tick is uh folks coming down driveways and attempting to determine whether a car is open um they'll jiggle the door handle if the car is open they'll enter the car and attempt to uh find a key and and steal the car or take things within the car um in the same vein the ordinance also makes it illegal and unlawful to possess an electronic device uh that is capable of determining if an electron key is located inside a motor vehicle electronic keys are commonly referred to as as fobs criminals are now using these devices to determine whether the fob has been left inside uh the car um the a secondary section of this ordinance is essentially what what I would call in layman's terms the the getaway driver section it makes it a crime if a person is driving the perpetrator uh to the site and assisting in committing uh the crime by waiting in a car and then uh driving away that car while the other person either steals the resident's car or steals possessions in the car so um essentially that is the motor vehicle protection section of this ordinance if introduced um the third section is a residence protection section which essentially mirrors the motor vehicle protection section um except it relates to a person's home or residents and it makes it unlawful to pull a door handle a door knob or take any action to attempt to open unlock or gain entry into a house apartment garage or other structure that the person does not own or have a license or privilege to enter or remain um correspondingly it also makes it unlawful to enter if they are able to determine the house is open or get in to enter any house apartment garage or other structure that the person does not own or have a license or privilege to enter or remain uh again either to as we've seen lately to attempt to locate the the keys in a basket or a location within the house and then steal the car or correspondingly just to be in the house to attempt to burglarize the house um this section also has again what I call the getaway provision um that makes it unlawful to be an accomplish who is D driving a a car to the scene of the house and waiting outside for the uh perpetrator to um either Rob the house take the key or um take a key and then take the car so uh one perpetrator drives away with the stolen car the accomplish drives away with the car that was was there primarily um the last section is a penalty section for the municipal judge to determine if a finding of guilt is rendered after a trial or a plea bargain and it indicates that upon conviction um the judge has the discretion to uh punish the perpetrator by a fine of not more than 2,000 or imprisonment for a term of not more to exceed 90 days that would be in the county jail or by such fine and imprisonment or by a period of community service not to exceed 90 days again at the discretion of the judge uh the ordinance concludes by indicating that not withstanding the foregoing the minimum penalty shall be a fine of $1,000 for the first offense and $2,000 for each subsequent offense um each Act that constitutes a violation of this ordinance shall be considered a separate and and a distinct act that constitutes its own violation what does that mean in layman's terms it it means if you attempt to burglarize a house and do so or attempt to steal a car and then you go to a neighboring property and attempt the same crime that that constitutes a separate and distinct violation um so this in essence is a resident crime protection ordinance that is another um toolbox for our uh police um should it not be an indictable offense at the county level or the County prosecutor not wish uh to get involved it it gives another deterrent effect that that hopefully will uh send us signal and and keep criminals from uh entering Bedminster and perpetrating the crimes that unfortunately we have seen such a rising lately um in some in essence that's your ordinance great thank you John and um just you know I talked about the um Somerset Hills Public Safety Committee that we put together and um the concept was that after this ordinance went through review by John and with the municipal prosecutor who's also the municipal prosecutor for every municipality in our shared Court um so the only two municipalities um on our committee who are not in our shared Court are Far Hills which also has the same prosecutor so the same Law Firm Services prosecutor for um for Far Hills and Bridgewater and Bridgewater is the same judge as our shared court so uh we did think that it was probably um a good idea that all the municipalities introduce a very similar if not identical ordinance and um mayor AC over at Bernards has already introduced this ordinance last week is that correct John that is correct mayor the ordinance was was introduced in Bernard's Township and it's scheduled for a uh public hearing next week on Tuesday okay so if we approve the introduction the ordinance once again it'll be scheduled for public hearing on March 18th um we'll have no public discussion on the ordinance that'll be for the public hearing um I have a motion to introduce ordinance number 2023 022 second one and two um roll call vote Please Mr Stevenson hi Mr hickey I ask questions you introduce this 20232 two but it's on as 202 24.1 oh you're right I was reading the agenda agenda yeah yeah just a housekeeping thing but just keep everything clean I'm sorry can you please repeat that so the ordinance itself is 2024 d001 it's listed on the agenda as 20232 to yep thank you for that catch good job I don't know what 2020 232 we could dig it up and see if it was uh was appable if it was 2023 we probably would have gone the head start on a burn Township yeah that's right it is correct on the on the actual ordinance right yeah right correct on the ordinance on the U agenda it's off so just when we introduce it we have to introduce it we'll make sure okay so back to um I'll start the roll call over again um Mr Stevenson hi Mr hickey hi Miss moresi hi Miss Fernandez hi and mayor Jacobs hi thank you okay thank you for the explanation John we have no items on the consent agenda so we'll move to the one resolution we do have tonight which is a resolution that amends and supplements I'm sorry uh amends resolution 20231 185 which sets the PBA um number 36 six salaries for the year 2023 for the township of Bedminster and the PBA local 366 memorandum of understanding and um since this is a retroactive uh this pay this pay scale will also include Sergeant brog who retired in July 2023 but would be subject to the um salary adjustments once again since they are retro active any comments or questions see none take a motion to approve resolution 2024 044 so moved second roll call vote Please Mr Stevenson I Mr hickey i m moraski hi Miss Fernandez hi and mayor Jacobs hi thank you thank you take a motion to approve the bill L pending review of individual invoices so move second roll call vote again please Mr Stevenson hi Mr hickey hi Miss moraski hi Miss Fernandez hi and mayor Jacobs hi thank you do any members of Township committee have anything to add to new business see none we'll move to Old business do improvements Chief have you heard anything further back from uh do Meredith or anyone else on uh adjusting the timing on the lamington road crosswalk uh no I haven't gotten a response email with an ETA okay why don't you follow up and copy me and then maybe I can also ping Meredith um afterwards as well sure utilities um made hickey and Robin you attended something from New jerse American yes uh we did we attended a rate case overview last Thursday New Jersey American Water filed with a dpu on Jan January 19th to raise rates with an effective date expected to be in Q4 of 2024 are you ready for some numbers in summary they're asking for an approval of 161.5 million which translates to a 17.3% increase the news is even worse when you compare the proposed rates to the two previous rate filings done in 2020 and 2022 remember these rate filings are done every two years prior to the 20 20 filing customers on average were paying about a penny a gallon for water as a result of the filings made in 2020 in 2022 customers are currently paying about a penny and a quarter per gallon of water on average or 0.0125 per gallon this filing if approved will increase the average rate to almost a penny and a half per gallon at 0.0145 per per gallon when you do the math the average price per gallon has increased by over 40% in Just 4 years if you step back to where rates were at the beginning of 2018 the unit price for water is up a whopping 63% in just six years and just to make matters worse hydrant which prior to the 2020 rate filing cost $51.7 per hydrant per month are now proposed to be $66 per hydrant per month for a 27.5% increase since January of 2022 there are a total of 215 hydrants located in the Hills Bedminster Village and plugman which will now cost $4,190 per month that is up over $3,000 a month since January of 2022 and translates to an increase of about $37,000 perom we have another 22 hydrant in Potterville under a separate rate schedule that are up $2,000 per year versus just 2023 where do you know anything about the uh difference between the rate schedules um Robin can you address that I know everything most of is under what M1 State M1 um so pville is considered section two yeah I don't know what that actually translates to in the in the Tariff um schedule but I'm to totally different locations yeah yeah I'm sorry I don't know the that's okay no no yeah it's a it's a swirly kind of thing um the small Silver Lining is that flat rate Wastewater rates meaning the basically the sewer rates in the Hills appear to decrease slightly from $68.95 a month to $682 a month we're working to gain Robin and I to gain clarification bulk rates however are scheduled to increase according to the call we don't have those numbers yet we've asked for clarification on that has has rap PA Advocate chimed in at all it's they've just introduced it as of I believe about a month a little over a month ago so we have not heard anything as of yet so no schedule on BPU hearings or when they're anticipating or when they would like to see this take effect so typically you're going to start that schedule between now and April and it will take probably through the summer for the hearings and you're going to see if they get their ask or some subset their ask it will go into effect in the fourth quarter that's typically the schedule they follow every year after the budget process after our budget process yep I can give you a little bit better news on yes it just well I'm happy to report that we experien experienced only seven small power outages during Windstorm event last Wednesday which impacted just a handful of customers these were mostly due to down trees and branches in several neighborhoods on the flip side you may have noticed we didn't experience any major outages which I suspect is because jcpnl has been much more aggressive in their tree trimming efforts over the past several years so trim baby trim because we did avoid what was some major AES that occurred in other parts of the state did not occur here yeah I did um I did hear from some residents on um litong and um by the time I reached out to yant at jcpnl which was Friday morning literally they just come back online de Haven was also out we were out for over 24 hours really yeah okay um but only half the street is off only half the street yeah it's like the other half must come off on different line now I worked with Y on that one Old Farm Road was out until Friday morning we work that was more complicated problem they worked to get that prioritized and restored as well so they were working it like I said it was fortunate there were only handfuls of customers as opposed to hundreds or thousands of customers and update on Altis and bringing fiber to the hills no update they are still working on the build in N Crest and I am still trying to resolve that database issue and escalation it so that they can onboard existing Alti customers onto the new fiber Network so more update when I have more information and what about the uh we're still with two holdout associations we have four associations that have not signed one that has indicated they would like a clean copy to sign one that says they are ready to sign it's just a matter of procedure to get the this is in cresmont Renee because I guess you had a board turnover in November they're try they're trying to make all of them all of them that was all five positions apparently so they've said yes we're signing it we'll sign it within the week we haven't heard anything um we have one more which we owe some documentation to which is Crestmont Highlands and a fourth which is Stone run has gone Mia so in theory they would be the only one who would not have fiber in the Hills okay thank you for the update yep John Doug I assume nothing updating on pluckin Park correct no mayor nothing uh Su said Public Safety Committee so we did have a meeting or a phone call a couple um was it was last week maybe two weeks ago and so we talked about the ordinance that we uh we introduced and that par introduced last week we also talked about um reaching out for different funding sources to install license plate readers and coordinate if we can get them uh the installation um among the various towns and also perhaps with Somerset County uh mayor AC from Bernards took it upon upon her task to reach out to New Jersey League of municipalities and to the New Jersey Conference of Mayors and I took it upon uh my tasks uh to reach out to suers County I have reached out to Colleen Mah at the county to see if this is something that the county would be willing to participate perhaps either in coordination or funding for licens plate leaders and um Chief if you're there can you just quickly describe how these license plate readers what they do how specific they get and what's the purpose of them yeah sorry um well it depends on which model you get but in general they all any any vehicle that drives by it runs the plate and if the plane's if the plate is on a hot list meaning it's stallen it sends an alert and the alerts are sent to how you set it up so we you would probably set it up with officers that are at work so they'd instantly get an alert that there's a stolen car that just drove by and the idea would be to flood the area to try to uh inter intercept the vehicle that's the in general how they work but then there's different vendors that uh the pl readers have more capabilities to do investigative leads on um on the back end as well so and the issue is not that you're you know it could be that hey my car is stolen okay that's the unlikely scenario uh the more likely scenario is that a car is stolen from another jurisdiction and is brought to our area um as the drive up car yeah to take a nicer car yeah where the money's at um so it's it's really not as much right because if your car is stolen embedments or by the time you realize it it's already gone uh but it's really about um as the chief said stolen vehicles or other license plates um that are on a hot list that we know that car has been involved in other incidents see what it's up to right um and chief you also said that it can get more detail than Li than just licens plat so it can get a little yeah you yeah so um aside from being a PL reader it has a lot of uh tools to do investigative um leads so you could literally in one model you could you could put in the database I'm looking for a car with this bumper sticker and a roof rack I mean and get very detailed and you'd be able to search the database so that's a reactive investigative tool that you can use use um with the play readers as well all right so that's certainly something that um our Public Safety Committee is um looking into to seeing if we can find ways to uh get some funding from County resources State resources we also did have a update um with Congressman Kane uh and he was going to look at uh possible funding scenarios might be available through um the federal government as well in his office so we do expect some updates from conon K's office on that subject as well and our committee has a another meeting next week we'll go to Township committee comments now start with comman Stevenson thank you mayor no comments H thank mayor I just want to mention along with Miss Ray I had the opportunity to attend an extrication drill that the Far Hills Bedminster fire department hosted this past Saturday it was an opportunity to see the new whole matro rescue tools that were approved as part of the 2023 capital budget we all know what the Jo of Life are but this set of tools which includes a battery powered cutter a spreader and a Ram or game changers uh you know you put yourself on the scene of an accident be it on a local Road or on 27 or 78 and you suddenly realize that there are people in those cars and every second counts the sooner you can get the victims out of those Vehicles the more likely they are able to survive a serious accident and that's what these tools enable um as we mentioned before Saturday was a cold rainy miserable day despite that the volunteers were out there starting at 9:00 am and they drilled and practiced and learned for the next four hours in a constant downpour Robin and I were there we were getting wet they were get a lot wetter so just kudos to our tremendous volunteers and many thanks to Chief brianza for extending the invite letting us see our investment in action and that's all I have mayor great thank you committee woman moresi no comments tonight mayor thank you commit woman no comments May and my comment is again thank you to superintendent Jen G orano principal Corby Swan and all the teachers at the Bedminster schools and staff who helped me to boss and another success and with that I'll take a motion to adjourn so move second all in favor at 7:45 we are adjourned good night all night everybody thank you bye thank you I just stop