##VIDEO ID:YaIF9QvxJUM## I open the Bernards Township committee meeting for September 10th 2024 please stand for the flag salute adequate notice of this meeting was posted on the bulletin board in the municipal building one colar lane basing Ridge on the township website and email to the Burnville news whiy The Courier News Bridgewater tap into. net patch.com and fil filed with the Township Clerk on December 18 2023 any motion to go into Clos session will include that the matters discussed at such closed session will be disclosed to the public when such matters are finally determined and there is no further reason to prohibit the public from disclosure of information relating to such matters the meeting rules adopted by the township committee one no new business will be introduced after 10:30 p.m. public comment will be accepted at all meetings speakers will be limited to 5 minutes each all meetings will journ no later than 11:30 p.m. that brings us to roll call Christy roll call please Mr DTE McCarthy here Mr MCN here mayor AC here and Mr Balman and Miss fields are excused this evening thank you that brings assistant to Executive session none this evening mayor wonderful then two presentations resolution 2024 339 resolution recognizing Caleb Morris for his heroic actions so we are very excited tonight to recognize one of our amazing residents for his heroic action so let me read a little bit about the resolution whereas on July 19th 2024 an individual was confronted by an aggressive ground talk on the trail behind the Bernard's Township Police Department and whereas Caleb Morris A Brave Young Adult who happened to be nearby immediately recognized the danger and did not hesitate to offer his assistance and whereas Caleb Morris displayed remarkable courage and quick thinking in coming to the aid of the individual in distress and whereas his actions exemplify the highest standards of community spirit and bravery and Caleb Morris's intervention prevented further harm and provided much needed assistance during a critical moment so therefore be it resolved that the township Committee of the Bernards Township of Bernards hereby recognizes and extends its deepest gratitude to Caleb Morris for his heroic and selfless actions on July 19th 2024 so what I'd like to do is I'd like to ask my colleagues on the Das to make comments thank you mayor so I just had the pleasure of meeting Caleb and I want to congratul rulate you as well on your resolution we're making for you this evening and the presence of mind that you had and your desire to help um it was just something my husband and I were talking about what you did and he said something that really resonated for me is that many people these days would not step in they would step back and start to videotape something like this so that they could post it on social media and get lots of likes and what you did was to not think about that you had presence of mind you exhibited bravery and you just stepped in to help and that just demonstrates wonderful character um and your family here tonight I'm sure has instilled some of those values in you and that's something that everyone can be proud of you are an asset to our community you're a role model to your peers um it's wonderful that your teacher Mary is here this evening to share this with you and we are just so proud um and I'm I'm really honored to be part of our Township committee that's honoring your actions this evening thank you mayor Andrew yes thank you mayor and uh I apologize for not being able to be there in person tonight due to a work commitment but I did want to Echo a lot of what uh Anna had just mentioned and just say uh Caleb uh thank you so much for your courage and stepping forward you know it's remarkable that in an instance like this uh something you weren't expecting you step forward in the moment and that shows really something special so thank you so if I can just add um I had the additional privilege to get additional feedback um I spoke to the woman that you helped and she shared with me um How concerned she was and how afraid she was and that you just appeared and you came to her Aid it's really remarkable and I also got additional background from your mom because she also provided so trying to put a little investigation together about what happened and you truly were a hero many times when we're faced with danger we don't know what to do and you instinctively did the right thing which I believe you were also at practice so like I said you sort of made a little bit of a sacrifice your self um to help someone else so I think it's really important that we recognize you and your actions because we hope it's a role model for your peers to see what great looks like so thank you for helping that Resident thank you for taking quick action and the police were also very complimentary of you as well so with that I would like to ask my colleagues if I can have a motion please yes I make a motion for resolution 2024 resolution recognizing Caleb Morris for his heroic actions second chrisy roll call please mrte McCarthy yes Mr MCN yes mayor AC yes motion carried thank you so what we're going to do is um I have a resolution to present to you and Caleb if you'd like to come up and um we can take some photos and your family is welcome to come up as well this are we standing in front of it this thing okay's the best place to Takeo you front of so here K so there's this goodness sorry get get the Eagles thank you and I will text coach Phill congratulations and just like all of the presentations you all welcome to St but everyone schol night so we have to gu homework thank you con so much congratulations used to beat us in college that's why you go were at the time is Arcadia all right thank you so that takes us to Public Work session none this evening mayor excellent reports none this evening correspondence none that brings us to public comment comments are welcomed during the public comment period during the meeting on any agenda item or any other matter over which the township committee has jurisdiction however if an ordinance is listed for its own public hearing on the agenda please hold your comments for that particular public hearing the public portion excuse me the public comment portion of the agenda is not structured as a question answer session but offers an opportunity to share your thoughts with the township committee the committee may or may not address those comments during the meeting however all comments are considered to address the body the speaker must come forward to the microphone and state his or her name and address for the record each speaker is limited to 5 minutes the clerk will keep time please promptly Shield uh yield the floor when the time is called and return to your seat your cooperation adherence to these Rules of Order will ensure an orderly and respectful meeting I open public comment Title St Riverside Drive uh last week I'm sure a lot of people got a letter from our Assembly women concerning some bills that they um feel some initiatives that needed to make um New Jersey better and one of these um bills is to make New Jersey safer uh this bill would be assembly 3806 which would Elevate motor vehicle theft to a second degree offense to ensure that suspects remain detained prior to trial to deter repeat offenders and create a grant program to support Community Based organizations working to discourage young residents from engaging in criminal activities this is a bad bill it's a silly Bill to increase the degree of a crime just so you could put a bail on there it's a it's as bad as the bills they had back in the 80s for making U dealing drugs within a thousand feet of a school where they taged people with that and held people and now we find that the prisoners were overcrowded they couldn't um do what they had to do with um you know sending people to trial a lot of the charges were downgraded and it was just a bad law and this is going to be another bad one if anybody supports this what they really need to do is do away with that bail reform that the Attorney General keeps on rubbing the police department's nose in because that's the problem and um until the Attorney General decides to do what is supposed to be done instead you know making things up to make it better for the criminals will have these problems but elevating a crime from a probably a fourth or a third degree crime to a second degree crime is not going to solve this problem of keeping people locked up thank you thank you seeing no others I will close public comment that brings us to staff comments Township committee comments and board Le is on reports Pat would you like to start please yes thank you mayor uh just wanted to uh recognize Corporal Michael yo uh for the office of emergency management he would be is going to be appointed our new uh OEM director uh coordinator this evening so congratulations to uh Michael Yo thank you Christine yes thank you mayor um Verizon's public information channel number 35 will be permanently shutting down on October 11th of this year the public information channel will be mov move to Verizon Channel 2135 thank you thank you John no thank you mayor Anna thank you mayor um so a couple of things um thank you Mr trste for your comments and as you know Safety and Security of course is critical in our Township and we've done a number of things here U that the public is aware of to try and focus upon that um I didn't receive the assembly women's communication however uh you know certainly the topics you raise are complex and U need focus and continuation of I consideration around how we can continue to support um Safety and Security and as you said not resend into areas that potentially are going to create more challenges for us um and baill reform is among the very complex topics so but thank you as always for your comments uh so mayor along with Caleb I want to wish all the children and young adults returning to school uh and hopefully they will all have a great year among the boards I'm liaison to not surprisingly the municipal Alliance which does a lot of work with our schools um had a few things to share at our last meeting last week um Somerset County has again awarded grants in support of two municipal Alliance programs the cope and grab and go programs and cope provides emotional support toolkits to elementary school students and there's one cope kit in every elementary school classroom in Bernard's Township and just a note on cope the parents of exceptional children uh made a donation and provided noise cancelling headphones for every cop kit and that's over 160 so we're really pleased and uh that was wonderful that they were able to do that for our schools um the other program grab and go provides craft kits aimed at kids in the 7eventh to 12th grade quarterly throughout the year these are distributed at the library and the very popular with students and all of this is to provide young people with activities and confidence and other ways that they can consider not making choices around drug and alcohol abuse um differently you may have seen the Board of Health social media communicating that September 8th through 14th is suicide prevention week and this is led by the American Association of suicidology and the W the week is dedicated to raising Awareness on suicide prevention including an opportunity to highlight the 988 suicide and crisis Lifeline so related to this Municipal Alliance will be promoting two upcoming opportunities to learn Suicide Prevention techniques through QPR training uh QPR refers to question persuade and refer and the mission of the programs is to reduce suicide behaviors and save lives by practical impr proven suicide prevention training so those opportunities will be communicated to Residents they will occur on Thursday October 17th in person at the Bernard library and again virtually on Wednesday November 13 from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. and then finally mayor I anticipate you'll speak about our Township 911 memorial program tomorrow evening um we hope that our residents are able to join us as we pay respects to the families that we lost um on September 11th 2001 as a longtime New York City commuter one of the s memories I have were of all the cars that remained in the parking lot for days um from owners who would never return so I hope that you join us um if you visited the 911 memorial and Museum you've seen the wall with the inscription no day shall erase you from the memory of time from Virgil we will never forget and I hope that many of you who are perhaps here and listening can join us tomorrow evening thank you mayor thank you Andrew nothing this evening mayor thank you well thank you for calling in from your work trip um so I have some updates and so I'll just try to run through them quickly um this past weekend on the 7th we had the townwide yard sale and I had to do my you know due diligence much to my husband's sugan I had to go out and investigate I was looking for a softball bat which I was not successful with but I did collect a lot of feedback from residents and and so in general despite the weather um everyone was beyond pleased and uh one resident said that they had over a 100 people before 8:00 a.m. keep in mind that it didn't start till 9: and we did put out language about no early birds so you know we we tried to discourage um there are those professionals that had actually lemonade papers that would show up and say do you have this this and this on there so there are these professionals so um Christie your staff did a wonderful job letting people know because they came from far and wide um to come and at times especially when neighbors um had sales there if they were grouped there that was even more of a draw so like Spencer in particular um Northbrook there were at least three sales like clustered together and it was a lot of like a lot of cars all over the place so um in general everyone was very pleased I got some feedback again as to what could we do better the next time in general everyone loves it they said um especially most of the folks had done it the last time and they said that um the amount of effort it takes to do a yard sale is whatever to get out but just just you know opening their doors on this day when the town does this advertisement is just amazing so they were super happy and remember this is for the envir ironment the the green part besides it being all electronic is it's about donating the things that you don't need anymore so instead of trucking that stuff back in your house um there are two places that are still accepting um for their sales so St Marks is still accepting their donations until tomorrow at 4: um and Atlantic visiting nurses are also collecting for the next couple weeks Bishop Janes they are collecting beginning September 23rd and if you want more details about dates and times and locations please see the website that was for the yard sale information so like I said that's what we're calling why we call it a environmentally friendly yard sale it's about recycling because like as I was at St Marks this morning what they don't sell much of it goes to four other Charities including one of them is advant Atlantic visiting nurses so things are just going to cycle and cycle and cycle to keep them out of you know uh out of the dump so very excited about that so again Christy thank you for your and your team for all of the work on that also on Saturday um Andrew and I attended a ribbon cutting event for a new business so Embrace dance studios at Riverwalk and it's wonderful to you know meet our business owners and to hear that it's their dream and to see their dream come true is is so much fun so it's wonderful to have another opportunity for our youth for physical fitness um because that's what dance helps to bring so is great I just left um right before this meeting the Board of Ed D had a meeting um that was going on at the pack it was streamed and is going to be recorded and posted about Youth and technology and so this is sort of they were getting kind of to the Crux of some of the issues and such if you remember we are going to have an event on October the 10th where we are going to be talking about Solutions where our um legislators are coming to talk about legislation um we're trying to also get some additional speakers to talk about Solutions um and that is what we are going to do October 10th so Fabrica burnard's just a quick rundown um I am still going door Todo for small businesses to try and get them grants um and was excited this morning I was at the uh brba and um they are very excited about the business certification workshop on October the 8th so christe is helping me we're putting together some additional education on this this is not your typical program you have to do the pre-work before you get there because when you come to the meeting you leave certified provided that you have all the documentation so very excited about that more information to come um probably later this week early next week uh the BCAA uh burners Chinese American Association mid-autumn Festival is September 14th 2 to4 PVP October 5th some of you may have seen the wonderful blue and white um um uh signs that are out around the PEC run run with me 5K um on October 5th excited about that and I mentioned at the last meeting that we are going to have a sensory friendly event of a mayor Fall Festival um after the 5K and then we're also going to do the actual mayor's Fall Festival so Jen ganner is doing a wonderful job um and also working with um some of the elements from the unfortunately the washed out um event that we had that we did not have um in August so excited for that um I already mentioned October the 10th um so very excited about that program more to come on that because we really need um parents to read or watch on the the topics because we're not going to be talking about the the issues we're going to be discussing Solutions what we can do as a town um something I mentioned I believe before I don't know if I provided the date we are doing a townwide food drive that is a collaboration with the brba and it was is going to begin October 27th so more information to come on that um with locations and who we're partnering in on that so very excited um hopefully everybody has on their calendar from an understanding burnard's perspective the tax presentation September 26 7 p.m. Shan McCarthy um Anna already referenced the September 11th ceremony um my comments are really reflecting especially highlighting not only the 17 residents that we lost but ALS also um a focus on First Responders so it is um an important event and we will never forget um safety updates I always have to provide those so I'm meeting with the Somerset Hills Public Safety Committee on Thursday so additional updates after that particular meeting um the jcpnl so when I was going door to to the yard sales um that was actually the most commonly asked question besides after how's the yard sale going they're like What's going JCP um so the good news is is that we will be getting that report very soon so um once we get that report and we have a chance to review it then we'll be anxious to share with you all but Christy is helping me to put together some information of some resources that we as residents can use for free for instance on how to request tree inspections so regardless we need to do that anyway so happy about that and last but not least um this is something we've not shared before I am very pleased to announce that thanks to Jennifer Gander and the parks and recck department and thanks to the leadership of two residents Elizabeth sites and Desiree Nolan we are announcing that Bernard's Township is going to launch essentially a pilot of a middle school Ski and Board program for grades seventh and eth seventh and eth graders so information is going to be shared shortly by parks and wreck volunteers are needed for this to occur so we're going to start small this year and we'll see how it goes but um this is something that uh many of you may know that we had a very longstanding um ski club for middle schoolers for I don't know over 35 years it stopped with Co and um while this is not the same um it is still an opportunity for our youth to be out and um socialization learning how to ski and demonstrating responsibility so very much thank you to Pat and the town and Jen Gander for enabling us to try that so that'll be coming of course that's going to be in January but the information around signups and stuff that's going to be coming very soon so very excited about that okay that is all I have for reports if I move on to one more brief comment that some of the comments um p i I go to the 911 plaque at the basing Ridge train station um each year and I went there this morning and I noticed that it has in the last year or two faded considerably now I know it's 22 years old but just looking at a photo from two years ago compared to today and I'll show you after the meeting and I'm not a metal Smith or anything but I'm just wondering if there's that can be done to bring back the luster and the lettering just a little bit I I know the plaque's now believe it or not 22 years old but uh well we'll take a look and I'm sorry I'm going to have to miss the ceremony tomor I have a meeting in another town thank you moving on to Fire and Rescue appointments none this evening mayor thank you that brings us to unfinished business ordinance 2564 an ordinance amending the revised General ordinances of the township of Bernards chapter 7 traffic schedule 18 speed limits on Somerville road from Mountain Road to Bridgewater Township municipal boundary line and this is a public hearing I open the public hearing and welcome comments seeing nothing I'm going to close the public hearing may have a motion mayor I move that ordinance 2564 be adopted and advertised as required by law second Christy roll call please m McCarthy yes Mr MCN yes mayor Acy yes motion carried thank you Item B please ordinance 2565 an ordinance amending the revised General ordinances of the town of Bernards chapter 7 traffic schedule 3 no stopping or standing regarding Valley Road and this is a public hearing I open the public hearing and open and welcome comments seeing no movement I'm going to close the public hearing may have a motion mayor I move that ordinance number 2565 be adopted and advertised as required by law second Christy roll call please miss dorte McCarthy yes Mr MCN yes mayor AC yes motion carried thank you that brings us to new business and the consent agenda the items listed within the consent AG agenda portion of the meeting have been referred to the township committee for reading and study are posted on the agenda on the website are considered routine and will be enacted by one motion of the township committee with no separate discussion if separate discussion is required the item may be removed from the agenda by Township Committee Action and placed on the regular agenda under new business would anyone like an item removed from the consent agenda okay may I have a motion please so move mayor second Christy roll call please mte McCarthy yes Mr MCN yes mayor AC yes motion carried thank you then that brings us to Item B ordinance 2566 accepting a Wetlands conservation easement on property located at 50 Liberty Corner Road Block 7301 lot 51 from Stephanie P Adam and Michael dler to the town Bernards and this is introduction mayor I move that ordinance number 2566 be introduced on first reading advertised as required by law and scheduled for a public hearing on September 24th 2024 second chrisy roll call please miss DTE McCarthy yes Mr mcnell yes mayor AC yes motion carried thank you then that takes us to letter C approval of minutes August 27th 2024 Open Session minutes have a motion please mayor I move that we approve the minutes second all in favor I I I that brings us to Executive session none this evening mayor an adjournment may you have a motion to adjourn mayor a motion to adjourn second