##VIDEO ID:qGSxXQYQuNk## e e e e e e e e e e e e e e SC Public Law 1975 this is to State for the record that adequate notice of this meeting has been provided to the public by posting and maintaining the annual notice of regular meetings on the bulletin board of the municipal bill by mailing the annual notice of regular meetings for 2025 to the news record and the Star Ledger in December of 2024 and by filing said notice in the office of the Township Clerk Mr daffis presid Mr Duca bangle here Herman mayor Adam here whereas chapter 231 public laws 1975 only knows the open public meetings act requires at all meetings of public bodies be open the public and whereas section 7A provides that the governing body has a discretion to permit prohibit or regulate the active participation of the public at any meeting whereas desire the governing body to comply with the provision this act same time to conduct its business in an orderly and expeditious manner now therefore be resolved by the township committee Township mwood does hereby prohibit except to set forth in the formal agenda active participation in deliberations of the governing body by the public accept as otherwise described by law does limit the public to the observations of the actions and discussions of the governing body at all of its regular and special meetings so moved second Mr daffis yes Mr Luca yes Miss angle yes M Herman yes mayor Adams yes thank you um please rise for a salute to the flag I pled to the of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you good evening everyone and welcome to the Monday February 3D budget hearing for the township 2025 budget um tonight we will be hearing from a couple of our outside organizations if you will Maplewood Village Alliance Springfield Avenue partnership the Community Coalition on race youthnet and then the historic preservation commission will be here then we'll move on to police and OEM the health department or Maplewood Library municipal court and then finance and then we will have public comment and then we will meet tomorrow night for the township committee meeting so let's roll okay is the village Alliance here yes you're right there right up front please come on up Patrick where Mr wor where would you like them next to you or both at the podium okay you could take turns so thank you very much for coming tonight and please introduce yourself to the millions um who are viewing uh the executive director of the Maplewood Village Alliance district and this is Amy the president of our MBA Village Alliance board and both our budget for 2025 um and talking about some highlights from 2024 and some goals for 2025 and then here to there any questions along the way thank you um I'd like to start off by just providing a overview of some highlights for the year from this past year uh so as you probably are all I started in this role fulltime in September so um we had a bit of transition and flux over the spring period in summer while there was no full-time director so since I've zoomed the role of executive director I my mission to keep things growing full steam ahead and um during since I've been here in September um we had four new board members three of which are Merchants join the MV one is a Soma Chamber of Commerce liaison just who joined this year um which we haven't had in the last few years and a really crucial role for joining and linking all the merchants not just village with downtown but with the whole chamber of Commerce um I've also worked on revamping and restructuring the Committees so we have more frequent and regular meetings uh we have more procedures in place to follow so things are just more streamlined and more organized uh the the Committees that we have just by reference are the design Review Committee strategic planning and parking events beautification and nominations um I've also reinstituted a frequent contact and email updates with Merchants fostering and engaging Merchant environment so they have point of contact and reference and feel comfortable know who I am know my face and they reach out to me and we have an open dialogue um we've hosted a merchant mixer we've had regular resumed regular news updates also public facing to our mailing distribution list of over 5,000 people we're working on updating the website and um we've had a few facade grants since September and we've also had the success of thecal local map that we commissioned uh by a local that we've been able to distribute and share to help engage the community with shopping and spending money downtown and and revitalizing and continuing to Foster further growth for local businesses which proved to be really successful over the holidays where the merchants had a really successful season in sales um we've had also four ribbon cuting and the launch of the official Baker Square so those are some highlights of 2024 and some of our goals that we hope to focus on this year is with our newly enhanced board uh we want to further enhance and Revitalize Maplewood businesses um being even more Dynamic successful than they are are from current state we have some key goals in strategic development that will include further developing and improving public placem placemaking in public art which we'll get to in our budget um larger media outreach to neighboring towns is particularly with events that we've noticed we are getting uput traffic from surrounding towns which is great and we want to continue to Foster that growth of neighboring towns to continue to come to Maplewood on a more regular um we are offering our guidance and hopefully involvement in the proposed Redevelopment of the movie theater which is still underway and hasn't yet started but we hope to be actively involved in that so we can be a strategic partner in maintaining maplewood's historic charm Aesthetics and historic preservation while also offering business opportunities in the future those are our main highlights and goals from last year and this year um I think we can save questions to the end if that's all right that's probably the best way to do it and we'll dive right into the budget because that's the M reason we're here today yeah um we wanted to Prov that update you have some context for our budget there going to be a lot of changes in our budget because some of our what we're talking about are more longterm goals of the I tol for you are asking increase our budget so that we can take our compation for living wage um and it is much lower than what counterparts are making and other business district our neighbors onfield Avenue and orange I looking house is somewhat sexist that but I think it's vitally important that we raise the the pay for our director so that it is fair other directors are making so that we can retain someone Position St and actually make a difference we've lost so much time in the transition throughout and we really need we are in great shape we have greaters energy and inal knowledge eff director like Aaron Rose to stay the position a long time and we want to make sure we're paying that person fairly so we are uh to what we think is the market rate even maybe a little bit lower than Market but much better so that's one thing I want to for you and then I'll come back that when um Aron gets to the assessment part and she's just going to go over a couple things there really aren't many changes yeah thank you Amy um so if we move down you have copies of the budget hopefully we Doo so um we're moving down to design and beautification um a lot of this is maintaining the status quo of keeping Maple wig beautiful and and welcoming biggest change will be wanting to put some money into public art this year so it's something we've wanted to do over the last few years and we haven't had the budget to the last couple of years we really focused on Baker Square which was a huge placemaking Endeavor this year uh we want to focus on public art that will be the the main change in the beautification budget everything else is very similar to what it has been an ongoing maintenance new state and the condition it's in we do need to invest time and money into that as well which you had perh previously uh not had uh so then we move on to our marketing budget and again this is um similar to what it has been in last year with a marginal increase with the intention of hoping to cast a wider net with our marketing and Motions like I was addressing in my intro about how we hope to this year happen to surrounding towns not just our own town so a slightly bigger marketing and promotional budget for when we do have things like downtown events um Summer music series uh art walk and so forth Village and then we we're also the we promotions we will be removing that from a line item from the budget just because we're not actually investing money in that area we will will be having cross promotions with Arts culture aware anything related to those things we are actively involved in and help sharing promoting and raising awareness it's just we won't have to invest any money that thing and it's somewhat folded into marketing as well yeah so it so that probably you won't see it in the next budget just so you're aware that these things are happening they're just not line items we necessarily need to point out going forward uh Dickens Village budget is pretty much on par of what what has been the last few years changes we do have an expanded committee which is great because I know former Davenport mayor Davenport is looking to hopefully pass the Baton on the big Endeavor and we have a bigger committee now and more involved which is great um to help uh the bulk of the work off the plate um but in terms of budget it's more or less remain same the houses and and then in terms of our total miscellaneous budget um networking and relationship management that's something that I am a really key proponent on and that for example will be things like a merchant mixer and ongoing Merchant events that we do host um engagement with the the PW Police Department uh and so on that help us so we want to be able to host Engage The and that does cost moneyed them and continue to Foster develop relationship with the the merchants and the township so that's where that increased amount comes from um so that is the expensive side of the the budget and if we move now to the other side which is the revenue side which will so we're looking to in order to our um the budget is increasing slightly we're looking to increase our is outrageous I will also add this budget Ved on this um because again we can see that it's vital that the and are mission to move beyond the stat this year maintain some our executive director position and really be able to make positive impact to increase our and so I think this represents our ability yeah um thank you so in terms of ongoing beautification the um the service level agreement with the township will remain the same we're not requesting any in that category and then we hope to continue to get sponsorships and partnership with arts and culture for things like the September music series um and also just Township gener from merchants in the town as well for our our events effectively um for beautification the same the same thing sorry I so in terms of beautification as well the idea would be we're hoping to spend around $10,000 on public art but we do hope to raise most of that through through donation um in order to continue to enhance the downtown area um yes and the SLA will remain the same as as indicated and then yes events will be mostly through spons ship Merchant participation and through partnering with arson culture any questions first we're looking at other part of why we want to make sure position and writing application for TOs and can't ask out someone fair I think that's kind of the reasoning behind does anyone have any questions for yes go ahead I just want to make sure that you are capturing uh the assessment on the Claris because the Claris was tax exempt this is a f I think this is the first year it's fully not tax exempt okay uh the so the proposed assessment is about 10 ,000 more than the actual end budget for 2024 does that include the Claris and how much so how much is if you took the Claris out I guess is what I'm asking how much would that increase be for the assessment on the properties no I'm more asking like is the Claris like an extra 2,000 in that is the Claris the bulk of that are you planning on is there an increase to the basic assess is what I'm asking okay what was the 9% then you said was that not what oh the total assessment not towards Pro I'd also be just interested in seeing like I've seen grids done before where you can see what the increas is or what the actual amount increase is per property um but I just want to note that like I agree that the salary for the executive director of our Maplewood Village Sid has been very very low and I agree that the turnover and what is required of a sid manager um it's just I mean I'm for paying more for Quality um people in the positions and it is a hard job and it is a lot of hours and I feel like 880,000 is that lower end of market value but it is market value and i would support inreasing it it's fulltime now though right yeah I think part of the reason it there to feel that way as for years it was part-time which I always thought was not productive because part-time directors tend to work more hours than they're being paid for yeah yeah stop that right m yeah for real um did you find that Mr daus um well you know ironically I have the exact number for the uh forthcoming Baker Street property which will come online on 2028 oh uh but I do not have which will in case you want to know about that one add roughly 4.3 million in value increasing um uh our budget by six ,100 exactly uh but unfortunately this analysis that was prepared uh doesn't include doesn't it does include the Claris but it doesn't um tease out what the uh the Claris uh addition the board vote for an increase in their own in the assessment yes okay so that's what I'm trying to get at what that number is because for years they voted against it constantly and it was silly and I feel like and we should okay Mr where can you um ask CFO to give us that breakdown so I can yeah I'd be I it would be interesting to find out exactly what they voted on yeah at your board because if they voted to raise the assessments from 999,000 to 109,000 that's one vote but if if the majority of that or all of that might come from the Claris then there's no increase right and so we had talked we had talked in the past about yes Progressive The Village increasing um their assessment by a percentage every year because we recogniz the issue and quite honestly there's always been reluctant there's always been an effort to go on the cheap in the village Y and um the idea of putting properties like the Claris there is not to flatten the increase for everyone else it's to bring in new money so you can do more things that's so I would you know we may have to come back and talk to you some more about I speak in Greek right yeah right yeah I guess I wasn't being that's the point looking at like a three to 5% increase a year that's what I was thinking what I've seen is like a 3 to 5% increase of assessment per property and then the new stuff would be an added value definitely need to get a definitive number okay and then when you and when you break it down to you can see that like some Property Owners maybe it's only a $25 increase per year or whatever it is and when you break it it helps the story to tell Property Owners like it you know it sounds Big 3 to 5% but it might only be like $30 a year yeah I think um Mr R is going to talk to the CFO about that and get get a breakdown of what that is because it's hard to tell from this since the Claris is coming online and according to this memo just for the public record the Claris came on in 2023 oh they did according to this memo okay so then maybe it didn't okay yeah maybe it came on last year maybe that yeah any other questions questions for our village Alliance looks like there's no more for you to do tonight thank you enjoy your evening thanks so much okay with that we'll move on to um the Springfield Avenue partnership oh nice thank you nice evening good evening my name is Jim ner I'm president of Avenue partnership 28 par s can I get you to try um yeah that mic's terrible so yeah I was a shout better all right um thank you for your attention and inviting us to this meeting um we're here to present our budget and our plans for 2025 Springfield Avenue partnership at his heart represents a diverse mix of businesses uh make up the make up our district we recognize the importance of supporting and celebrating these small businesses the past year uh Sam as we're now known invested in its businesses with both grants and cost sharing programs we Ed $5,000 in signage grants we organized power washing for 10 businesses uh negotiated A A Cut Rate uh price for that we repeat the program for the spring for additional businesses 23 businesses took part in our annual Christmas garland holiday Garland s sorry um and which represented a cost of cost sharing of $2,500 we recently welcomed 13 new businesses to Springfield Avenue we celebrate two multigenerational businesses this year woolly fuel which celebrated 100y year anniversary been continuously operating in Maplewood since 1924 and Willie Norm willly Senor was a longtime member of the S board and an organization is now run by his son Norm Jr Acme rubber stamps was awarded one of 500 Nationwide small business enhancement grants from the American Express and Main Street America and Excellency and Manufacturing Award of the New Jersey business industry Association the business has been at the same location on Bernard Avenue in Maplewood since 1973 having pass from father to daughter Lori Beerman congratulations to both of these longtime businesses thank you to our Board of uh Trustees of Maplewood Township and our business owners Maplewood foundation and all the volunteers and visitors who support Spring for Avenue got I'd like to turn over to our executive director uh Nicole U Wallace and then our Treasurer will speak to the bud any questions for me no not yet hi good evening good evening um I'll just give you some highlights of our initiatives I had passed out our 24 2024 annual report this will ultimately go up online and be delivered to all our businesses so you are getting the first copies Wow Fresh Off The Press exciting thanks Nicole um so some of our initiatives in 2024 we're uh installing new benches um just a few benches were put by Indiana but going forward we are going to work um in tand in with DPW and their street reconstruction project this year and have all new benches replaced on Springfield Avenue um we worked with a graphic design firm to update our branding uh we just started using the new um put the new banners up starting to use the new newsletter it's new but old so we love our Sam logo so it's just really pushing that same logo and doing new things with it and we have a lot more banners to hang up that was just so they the ones that already had the hardware and we have ton more baners so it's really going to take over the street um and we work this year thinking about supporting our diverse businesses whether it's um celebrating them through advertising or um applying for a grant from from the Maplewood Foundation to translate documents into different languages CU that's something that comes up a lot is a language barrier and these are technical documents so not so easy just to put into a Google translate um in the report you'll see our business openings we had 13 new openings and celebrated them and hopefully we'll have some more ribbon cuttings to do um this quarter and then we had some avention promotions some are ones that we've done pre previous years like May Fest our summer Jazz series is really going nicely craft beer tasting and some are new ones that we're adding to our schedule like the S business Meetup which we're going to repeat this November and the holiday shopping passport which was a fun new thing we did this year and we' like to expand in 2025 so now I'll turn it over to Sheila to do the budget thank you any questions okay we'll wait till the end evening evening it seems like every time I come here I have some type of cold um I'm going to talk about the budget I'm just going to give you the highlights but one of the most important things is that we were finally successful in and we agreed to a 3% increase in the assessment so hopefully that will go through and it's it's acceptable um we did have a quite a bit of funds that we carried over from 2024 into 2025 but mostly it's committed funds in that the benches that are we completed as Nicole said we did half of the benches and so the funds are there sitting and they were waiting for us to continue in 2025 to continue with the benches so that's part of the the dedicated funds entryways we're going to improve the entryways coming into Maplewood so that's another part of a large chunk of money that's carried over into 20 2025 facade grants that's another one of the special programs that we have for the businesses and we carry over funds some of these funds that we're carrying over by the way are from grants and I will say that Nicole has been very successful in getting grants approved for the Springfield Avenue partnership so therefore that is a large percentage of of the monies that are being carried over utility boxes we had uh a program and we asked for artists to be able to to paint the boxes and we came up with some successful artists that were selected so that project is also going to continue into our 2025 uh Maplewood foundation and then there's a small amount of funds for that and that pretty much is so that uh if we need to interpret documents that are in Spanish or Haitian that we will will we will be able to get uh help from the Maplewood foundation in order to do that uh the other highlight is the events I think everyone already knows that the maple the Mayfest is one of our successful programs that will continue into 2025 we're very happy with that we're very proud of that um the craft beer was very successful this year um I think last year we decided to take out the wine portion just do craft beer and we're continuing with the craft beer also holiday programs um the programs that we had this year we're can continue with testing that to see how well they do and if they're successful then we will continue them if they're not then we have decided that we will discontinue some of those programs for holiday but of course we'll still continue with the Garland and um the programs that we have the Gazebo we still continue with those programs salary um as you know Nicole salary is a big b big portion of this budget and she uh it was approved that she would get a 2.5 increase so we're continuing with that uh I think I mentioned about the grants uh we have been very successful with grants with the Main Street NPP and we're continuing and hopefully we will continue to receive funds for Grants but we are cautious in that we really need to take a look and make sure that this is these are programs that we will continue with and we can continue bringing them over into into subsequent years because if the grant money Runs Out out then we still have a juggling act to perform uh okay marketing committee uh this year uh well at the end of last year the marketing committee uh came up with um a program to get together so that they could come up with some new strategies uh to make us more successful and some of the events and programs that we produce throughout the year so we are waiting for them to come up with the final product um but we're hopeful that they're going to come up with something new creative entertaining something that's different from what we have already done I think we're kind of uh in a in a rut to some degree because we keep doing the same programs um I think those are most of the um highlights uh I think Nicole mentioned that the banners started to go up and the feedback that I have received is awesome everyone loves them they're beautiful the artists did a great job and uh we're at Tas one as she mentioned and we're going to go into phase two um once we get the the first phase so with that does anyone have any questions all right so um you might want to all stand up there so you can answer because so we can answer you don't bounce around all stand together um just could I get some clarification on the advertising marketing line item in expenses yeah it was budgeted 20,000 then the actual was 21 agree huh onee gr a one-year Grant okay so the only Aver the advertising and marketing that you do is through um is basically event uh specific you should talk in the mic should talk in the microphone probably have people on Zoom we budget the event advertising within the event within the event right correct that's just you know so extra fee for General advertising okay and do you have someone doing social media or is that all fall on the director we're actually using funds this year and we have an RFP out to hire someone to do social media for this year and see how it goes okay I think that part of that is coming from the marketing as well anyone have any questions well I just want to note since Miss howlet is sitting in the room too that um I'm okay with the Winter Market going bye-by I think that the outdoor holiday markets were really needed during the time of covid but I think that both the producers having been one and the vendors having been one are tired of being outside and just want to be back inside but I just want to acknowledge that that's not on this budget and um Good Times you I agree and so the banners are amazing amazing amazing amazing so the account uh accounts payable part um it has District it has winter decorating as does marketing and events so is that double counted or is that separate okay understood but yeah understood I'm just asking because under marketing and events you have winter decorating okay got it five got it I have no idea why they don't need the money does anyone have any questions besides mine no thank you very much thank you mayor if I may I I dug a little deeper into some research here and I may be able to answer the question earlier about the MVA okay um so as we noted before many times uh that the Maplewood Village special improvement district total assessed value stayed pretty flat between 2017 and 2022 but then uh we saw a uh an increase in 2023 when the Claris came in and into 2024 an increase of 15,000 that's $15,000 $115,000 um I'm not sure if the entirety of that is due to the Claris the memo merely says that a great quote unquote chunk of that was due to the clarus so we still need the exact number but that gives us a little more information when do we start I remember us telling both all both SIDS to do a regular increase in the assessment do you remember what year that was I think it was the first year you were on 2018 2018 yeah but it stayed flat you just said it stayed pretty flat right because right at we were we agreed to it went a little bit up because we agreed to a 5-year Progressive plan at an increase of 3.5% as Committee Member Duca noted uh but then covid happened yeah right okay I forgot about that okay yeah blanked it out okay so we'll move on to the Community Coalition on Race we got everybody here for that hello Miss gag I think you're up there hello thank you so much we forgot our order already um good evening good evening I'm Nancy G uh executive director of the Community Coalition on race and I have with me Ana gandana board chair of the Community Coalition on race thank you for the the budget hearing tonight we want to take a moment um to acknowledge the sudden passing of our friend and colleague Carol Barry Austin uh I'm sure all of you know we're deeply grieving uh her loss and we invite the public to check out our tribute to her on our our website um and we just want to say a few words I I've known Carol since my days on the school board uh over 20 years ago I witnessed back then and regularly over these last two decades her special talent for building relationships bringing people from all perspectives together to learn why integration and racial equity in schools and classrooms are critical to the success of a diverse Community um and success means stable integration where all residents are valued have a voice and share in all Community opportunities Carol never stepped back from this goal and uh no matter who was in charge and what groups were uh were or might be working to uh preserve their privileges uh over people of color and we are sticking with that and so tonight we're here to um make our presentation uh about what we've been up to for the last year and what we have planned for 2025 we'll be doing a moment of silence tomorrow night thank you apprciate that and her yeah so thank you for uh allowing us to present today um and for all of your of Maplewood Town's Support over the um for many years before we get started I want to First reiterate our strong stand as an organization that stands against anti-Semitism our organization is Grassroots volunteer-driven and representative of both Maplewood and South Orange's diverse populations we are committed to our mission to help build and sustain a community that is racially culturally and socially integrated and truly inclusive where there is equity and equality for all a unique and special mission that holds such importance in our community especially in times like now this mission is not an easy one it calls us to engage in difficult and challenging dialogue there is no playbook for the integration and anti-racism work that we are doing and we are always learning but we aim to be transparent about what we are doing as an organization and with the broader community and we pledge to constantly improve our practices in creating constructive respectful spaces for dialogue and if harm is done we commit to engaging in restorative practice that centers our shared humanity and our shared struggles subsequent to our MLK servants and unfortunate incidences of anti-Semitism in our community we have once again reached out to town leaders and local rabbis to learn how we might work together in solidarity to challenge the root causes of hate and bias we have also been actively reaching out to community members who have reached out to us and shared their concerns as I said we are Learners and commit to doing the difficult work to challenge racism Prejudice and hate and welcome more discussions with you all as we engage in the work ahead it's my pleasure to turn it back to Nancy to speak about our plans for 2025 and a recap of 2024 and thank you again for your time and your support thanks so much Anita uh okay uh this is a a picture of some of our board members including Carol uh and our new board um and we are grateful for all the years that uh Maplewood Township Committee Member Vic deuca has been our liaison um the collaboration and oversight has been greatly appreciated and we welcome uh Miss Herman to our board as uh our new liaison and we're we're looking forward we already had our first meeting and we're looking forward uh to ongoing work with you uh we're introducing some new staff uh you see here Megan Clement in the first picture she joined us in April uh we knew at the time that we would be um seeing our dear dear Audrey row uh move on to bigger and better things although she considers this one of the biggest and and best things that she has done working for the Coalition um and uh we were grateful to have time for Megan to uh spend time with Audrey uh since Audrey has left we also hired um Amanda Gutierrez who's a Maplewood resident um as a second program coordinator and we're just so excited to be working with these two new people uh in 2024 you can see some pictures here of our uh Dr King observant our luminary project uh some of our um uh integration through the Arts projects and our s neighbors connect which is run by our residential committee uh that engaged um leaders from both Maplewood and southa orange and neighborhood association leaders all kinds of groups to get together and and share information about uh what it means to be neighborly to make connections and as we're always trying to do get people to make cross-racial connections um we did a a a lot of integrated art circles with our uh Essex County local Arts programming uh Grant last year uh you can see some of the work on this slide including on Springfield Avenue the uh covered Planters which we were really excited about uh and the screening of uh Gabriel's Daughter by Maplewood um which starred and was produced by Maplewood resident Lori Brown mirall uh we did that on juneth our collaboration some uh collage pictures there of uh our collaboration on juneth celebration with Durand henhouse in Maplewood uh we also had during Black History Month um coming to Jersey black family share their stories we're not repeating that this year but we hope to again in the future it was an amazing opportunity to hear from people what their Journeys are and how they come to this community why they choose this community it's all about the diversity and commitment to racial equity we also continued our our work as we always do on anti-racism advocacy and social justice uh racial Justice uh with school integration and advocacy e efforts meetings with Realtors to give them the best uh information about how they can support their clients but also be direct and um honest about what's happening in the school district and in the towns our Boe candidates Forum are deconstructing rism Workshop series that's a really great learning opportunity we're doing that again in collaboration with the s Adult School uh our wealth Gap equalizer loan this uh is a a program that came out of our demographic studies to help us increase the pipeline of black inm movers and to address ongoing racial inequities in uh homeownership opportunities uh in in our County in our state in our nation it's one small way that we are working on this and right as of now we've made about uh six loans I think the seventh is in progress we continue to uh do talking to Children about race at the schools committee program our um we received a grant from the Maplewood Foundation to support our anti-racism training and last year we did uh multiple sessions with the Maplewood police department and uh a session with the leaders at the s Adult School uh we continue again to work on developing understanding and we do that with conversations on Race um the integrated art circles we did a showcase be at the end of the sessions because we had so many and it was a great opportunity to bring people together uh it's not just working on art projects but this is uh these are kind of curated sessions where there is social interaction and uh learning about uh racial differences and commonalities um and and relationship building uh and more of that happened at the Showcase um we continued through the residential committee to promote integration at the Lo local level we're still uh putting the final touches on our latest demographics report which is focused on housing uh and income and some of the struggles that uh we Face here and I'll tell you a little bit more about that in a minute and are targeted and affirmative uh marketing we Mar at the towns we have a separate we website cha.com to help uh maintain and increase the pipeline of in movers of color and maintain and grow our diversity uh this is how we uh support the work that we do Municipal support from both Maplewood and South Orange are celebrating uh integration fundraiser we get private and corporate Foundation support the Maplewood Foundation E-Class as I mentioned before our luminary project is a community based project but also a fundraiser and our appeal letters to individual donors throughout the towns uh we do collaborations and are in the media Beyond Soma which gives a a good attention positive attention to the community we were highlighted in Authority magazine I am working with uh a a Statewide effort called great homes and neighborhoods for all in the state of New Jersey through that I'm working with some of the individual groups including New Jersey future and um some leaders at Ruckers where I will be helping to teach a class on why we do what we do to graduate students so we're always trying to get the word out and engage more people uh they are all I also working with a graduate student on um barriers to home ownership uh and what our towns are facing and sharing the very positive information um about these Town's commitments to affordable housing uh and lastly we are collaborating uh uh on a seed Grant with um Dr Diane Hughes at uh who's a professor at New York University and then in 2025 we have a lot I'm not going to read everything we have a lot of the same programs uh coming up we um reduced the amount of art circles uh this year um they'll be longer and hopefully some of them will be um have a broader appeal we really hope that people will come out for uh the line dancing learning about Opera uh and um the uh murals uh creating the murals for public installation and of course our junen celebration and collaboration with Durand henhouse and we will uh continue the Comm to engage the community in learning and building relationships with all of the things that you see here tonight our preschool openhouse Regional collaborations on integration and Equity issues our anti-bias and anti-racism trainings for local organizations and we encourage all groups to reach out to us so that we can design a uh a tailored training um for any of them and our affirmative uh Market and our loan we're really looking to increase the loan size and collaborate with uh Regional lenders to to grow the loan amount and that is our uh budget our projected expense projected income and our request for Maplewood uh which has been stable over the last probably 15 years at $35,000 and we want to thank you again for your support collaboration and this opportunity to be here tonight thank you does anyone else from the board want to say anything or are you good no it's okay you don't have to trust me does any of my colleagues have uh questions or comments on the CCR go ahead I have um perhaps a suggestion um and uh for for your consideration so we don't have to engage in a dialogue about it or put you on the spot about your decision regarding it but because the Coalition has now perfected the deconstructing racism series and perfected conversations on race and you have a brand and credibility in bringing the community out um I wonder if you would consider partnering with other local or Regional recognized relevant Partners in doing a deconstructing anti-Semitism and conversations on anti-Semitism I think that could be really really helpful in this particular moment in time and possibly even heal and bring us together just for your consideration we are in conversation with that about exactly that terrific word and with the local leaders wonderful thank you I'm glad to hear that CU I didn't you said that very eloquently Mr daus I because I've taken your deconstructing racism trainings through a different nonprofit organization and I found them really amazing and I've been wondering how come we're not doing more of those in other hate areas islamophobia anti-Semitism in general and so I'm happy to hear that it's being discussed and thank you Mr tafas for eloquently stating that you I was going to ask something around the same so thank you for bringing that up um I'm delighted to hear that you're thinking about it I think that would be very well received um I just I wanted to ask about the anti-bias and anti-racism training um if anti-Semitism is included in that yes we have uh it depends on what group we're in front of um sometimes they're very tailored to what the group needs but we have uh some of the things that we distribute um we have a a piece called language matters where we have samples of things that are some people don't recognize their own anti-semitic remarks they're anti-lgbtq remarks they think that they're okay to say or they just grew up that way and that's part of the language so we do have handouts like that and we do include those uh in the trainings that's wonderful oh that's great I think I'm any other questions or comments thank you very much thanks for coming out thank you very much and Well Done Anita your first one yay we're gonna move on to youthnet we're not funding you this year we just gave you that honor at the reorg meeting so kidding hi Diane you want to introduce yourself oh yes I'm Dian Malloy the executive director of forun my couldn't be here tonight he's not well that's okay we love having you Diane might want to pull the mic down a little toward you it's broken so I think everyone here knows what youthnet is about youthnet builds a community where young people in Maplewood and South Orange develop a strong sense of belonging find inspiration fulfill their potential and Achieve success so tall order but we're here tonight to tell you uh what we have been doing and what we plan to do in 2025 next slide so yes so um for 15 years we have run after school programming at both middle schools as well as at Columbia High School and in 2024 we supported 126 clubs that engaged over a th000 students next slide please so here's a list of our board members uh they're all wonderful and this year I'd like to welcome uh Deb angle to our board as a representative um we've had our first meeting and was great um and we have two other board members um Kimberly uh rainy and uh the Joshua who we are looking forward to working with and we're we're continually trying to build our board um slide four please so here's a smattering of some of our clubs um so youthnet students engage in engage in all different kinds of clubs the Spectrum Club the environment Asian culture what makes science cool our students are published authors entrepreneurs video game doers and creators history sleuths podcasters and pickleball players and maybe best of all this is a time when they are engaged with friends and not at home alone or glue to their devices often our clubs have been over subscribed in the last year and we've had to add additional sections next slide please a few of the things that make youthnet unique are that the kids have access to CL uh clubs like the Spectrum Club and real talk and Club entrepreneur and the empowerment club and this year we started a robotics Club in partnership with the Board of Education uh they came to us and said we really want to do a robotics Club but we can't implement it we don't know how to go about doing that so youthnet said well we can help you do that that but it's really expensive to buy all those robotics kits so they said we'll buy the kits you do the instruction and the implementation so this winter we have eight students at each Middle School involved in robotics so we're kicking it off we're hoping to grow um and we are very happy about our partnership with the Board of Ed next slide please next one okay here we go so um you younet has a summer internship program that we will be accepting applications for uh Maplewood was wonderful we had someone at the clerk's office someone in finance someone in health someone with the police department they all had an amazing experience and I can't tell you how thrilled I am that the kids have this opportunity and I think they were very very happy with the last placements now um we're continually trying to raise money for them to give them a little stien it's not been easy to do that most people don't want to pay the kids but we're hoping to figure out a way to do that before we place the the them with in these placements um we run workshops for them two workshops one for resume building and one where we do role playing to educate the kids uh to different situations they might encounter when working with the public and we also had some uh placements in town in retail and at Brave Floral and quite a few in South Orange as well next slide please okay so in addition to that we also uh work collaboratively with the South Orange and Maplewood Police Department in the open gym sessions and what youthnet does here is provide programming before the game begins so we had a very successful time with the South ore rescue sad where the kids got to learn CPR and actually practice it and the municipal liance uh came and talked about uh substance abuse which was also a very informative session and that's all before you know the games start and we're trying to build on that a little bit and also work on um creating some activity for the young women at the school too because they're not playing basketball next slide please okay so our mental health initiative so this is you know where we are beginning to train people at the schools right now we're in um discussions with both middle schools to find facilitators to run the mental health initiative which will actually begin in September so the training will take place in the spring and then we'll roll it out in September so a little bit about what uh preventure is um it's a program for youth age 11 to 18 um that uses personality Focus interventions to promote mental health and reduce risky Behavior our workshops will be in segments and they'll be designed to help students learn useful coping skills set long-term goals and channel their personality traits towards achieving them so they can thrive in all areas of their lives next slide please okay so here is our funding income and as you can see uh 50% comes from contributions to youth net and 27 from Grants and fundraising activities so 78% of our income comes from fundraising and contributions raised next slide please our expenses 78.5% of our expenses go directly toward programming in the form of teacher stiens coordination and supplies for programs our operational costs which are accounting Website Maintenance General communication is comparatively small at 18% next slide so we were able to receive some grants this year which go directly toward um as our budget reflects the rolling out of our mental health initiative so from the South Orange y from New Jersey water and from the Maplewood Foundation um our objectives met the granter objectives and we were lucky enough to be awarded funding so these funds as the budget does say will um be used for training the for training materials to train the facilitators pay them while they're being trained and then pay for the implementation throughout the club structure in the fall we anticipate that all these funds will be used and we will continue to raise money throughout the year to support this next slide please so our fun fundraising efforts this year include a general letter that uh was sent out followed up by five solicitations throughout the funding cycle where we had a 50% open rate the open rate was great but not everybody contributed so anyway we're going to work on at um next slide please this is a sampling of what the fundraising uh that just looks like okay here we go oh no one more before that okay that's good um so now in our 16th year we look forward to Growing the organization with new options for our teens and ways to keep them engaged as healthy and informed caring citizens in our community and the community at large now the last one that's okay that's that's all right so thank you um thank you for your continued support and um as you can see our request is the same as last year of and we're so thankful for your um so if there's any question thank you so much um is anyone have any question I love you snat I'm just going to say my kids have it's an impact and I love the preventure program and I love what I love most about it is that you're integrating it within the clubs that are already happening so it's not like you have to sign up for something new or opt in it's going to be mental health initiatives that are in programming that the kids are already going to and I think that's what's so amazing about it so I'm glad you were able to get funding because no I was sad last year when we couldn't increase your contribution so I'm happy that you were able to find funding to implement it we're doing it it's happening so I'm thrilled that it can happen yeah thank you anyone else I was just wondering if oh sorry if the um so you serve about a thousand students at um for each of the sessions at each school or no no it's it's that's total okay so about a thousand per year all total yes and is that like an increase in other years or a decrease or how does that consistent you know we have a very big enrollment in SE in the fall and the Winter's a little lighter and then another big enrollment in in the spring and it it you know we started out in the very beginning with four clubs so you know it's constantly rate you know gone up now we have 126 clubs a year so um it it's pretty consistent pretty consistent yeah yeah and because I see that the club like offerings change every year so you see like which ones are really popular which one's not so much we've had a few that are like uh stay lad and create has been with us from the very beginning from day one um you know um Mr pomber greens Club has been with us from day one but pretty much changes and some might come in the winter and then come back again The Following fall skip the spring session so kids have options they have choice they if they can't you know be there on that particular day in one you know in the fall maybe they can pick it up in the spring yeah thanks you're welcome thank you have a great night say okay historic preservation commission Mr R hello hi you want money this year I I'm Daniel Wright uh chair of the Maplewood historic preservation commission I'm here tonight to make the hbc's annual budget request and also to request a resolution to approve a grant prop proposal uh which is due at the end of this month uh so the commission uh's primary purpose is to identify historic sites in districts within the boundaries of the township recommend their designation uh the HBC is a zoning body like the planning and zoning boards that can be used as a development tool for the township uh we are unique from the planning and zoning boards is our purview relates to design and material review over the last 20 years the commission has proposed 12 local designations all approved by the township committee currently there are eight designated private homes and four designated Municipal properties in 2025 the commission wants to return Focus to this critical work of local designations we have been busy on other projects over the last few years I know people have been asking why haven't you been doing more local designations well uh we did get the village listed on the state and National Historic registers which opens the door for private property owners to get historic tax credits for work on commercial buildings uh which is very timely right now uh we also worked on the preservation plan for the Woodland which now puts the Township in a position to apply for historic trust grants for Capital Improvements uh we've been very busy this year implementing the demolition ordinance which was an offshoot of the new master plan and we are beginning work now on updating the preservation element of the master plan and many of these projects were funded by CLG grants which uh I'll cover in the second part of the presentation uh so here's our uh initial budget request um some of the new items we've traditionally had I think a small budget of $3,000 you'll see this is significantly higher uh one item is for a paid secretary to assemble our agendas minutes and board packets unlike planning and zoning boards the HPC has always uh done its own minutes which limits the participation of one of our members in every meeting um we have a small uh budget that we use for materials like our website uh historic maplewood.com which is an important tool for sharing our materials as well as to provide Home Maintenance and research tips for residents it was built inh house for free by a commission volunteer and just re Ires ongoing hosting costs um another section is for training so to maintain our certified local government status uh which has enabled uh the township to receive these CLG grants over the last several years uh Commissioners are expected to participate in ongoing trainings uh and we actually have organized an HBC 101 training we have a lot of new Commissioners this year thanks to our liaison uh and uh it's going to be conducted this Saturday morning by the state historic preservation office you are all invited to attend as well trying to get the the details uh we'd like to extend the invite to some uh Township employees as well um and it should be recorded if people can't join on Saturday from 9 to 12 so now our big ask is that second line item uh for a part-time consultant so there are two big factors driving this increase one is the uh the demolition ordinance and the demolition reviews which we've been doing this year past in 2024 we've so far we've done four demolition reviews all of the research was done inhouse by Commissioners we've been spending uh 40 Plus hours on each individual one um which is not sustainable for a volunteer commission it takes us away from other work working on designations uh so we need access to Professional Resources like like our colleagues on the planning and zoning boards and the hbc's and neighboring towns to assist us with this regulatory function um other hpc's who have implemented similar ordinances rely on uh historic preservation Consultants legal counsil or their uh own planning departments Town their own Township planning departments to assist them uh but we don't have any of these resources to draw upon currently uh the second uh big uh item related to the Consulting request um our big goal for this year is to get back to local designations we think that local historic districts are a zoning tool the township could could utilize to maintain the sense of cohesive neighbor neighborhoods which exist in Maplewood uh and which is under Threat by demolitions followed by outof context development which has been a concern to many residents uh the commission seeks a professional consultant to guide us through our first what would be our first local historic district designation we need someone who can help educate the public educate the township committee educate the HBC on the benefits uh of District designation as well as the processes that we'll need to have in place uh to be successful in implementation um so when we started putting this proposal together we were thinking mostly about what we needed to support the demolition reviews uh but it's become more clear to us that the districting is is perhaps the the better tool to help maintain the character of our neighborhoods this this map uh oh can you get Dan the next two one more one more one more uh so this map uh by the way is uh contains previously surveyed areas uh which uh paid professionals have recommended could be pursued as uh historic districts so we have good amount of coverage uh in in uh town and Nancy you may notice that College Hill is not on that map the reason that it wasn't in there is that the Consultants said that uh College Hill wouldn't make sense as its own historic district but would make sense as a larger historic district cont containing um other neighborhoods that were developed between that period of 1890 and 1935 so there is potential for College Hill but within uh including surrounding neighborhoods as well um so we'd like to work with the TC over the next month to refine the overall budget proposal um uh one thing that we learned is that some hpcs don't have professional consultants over uh as their own budget line item uh but share it share a pulled resource of a contract that an historic AR Architecture Firm would have with the township so if the township had say a contract with one of these firms that could also do designation work that would be another way to to build it into the overall Township budget uh but not specifically the hpc's budget so we' like to work with this work on this with you uh to refine it over the coming weeks and then the last slide is about the Grant application um so over the last few years uh HPS HPC has helped secure $85,000 in Grant funds from the national park services certified local government program which is administered by the state historic preservation office so the next Grant we'd like to seek is a is to do an architectur ual survey of the Roosevelt Park neighborhood an architectural survey with detail uh the architectural qualities of every home in that survey area uh and provide guidance on historic designation eligibility uh to further the hpc's mission uh so the Grant application is due February 28th and we would need a resolution passed by the township committee uh in order to submit that application as well as a letter of support from the mayor which we can draft and you know present to you and there are a few administrative steps that we need to help with from Township staff okay um do you have a a sample resolution or resolution already or do we have an old we probably have an old one um yeah M yeah I think I have a copy of the one from last year and yeah I was just going to say miss fritson you could probably dig that up our resolution for their CLG Grant last year and then we'll put one on uh probably too late for tomorrow or is it otherwise the second meeting in February we can I ask a question about it just cuz I mean I've heard a lot of I've heard from people who live in designated houses so I know that if your house is designated it could create a lot of obstacles and hurdles so I look at that and looking at us talking about designating certain neighborhoods as historic districts and I just get a little worried not worried but like have we talked to any of the homeowners who live in Roosevelt Park has there been community outreach I've never seen that map that you just showed about different areas of town so it's just I've seen how expensive the Woodland gets now that it's historic so I get a little nervous when we start talking about designating a big chunk of Maplewood as historic can you just explain the difference between designating a specific house and designating a district it's a little bit different when you designate a specific house there's a lot more research that goes into that one individual house and the the standards for evaluating application would be more strict um with one of the advantages of of districts is um doesn't it doesn't stop development it doesn't stop new construction um but it helps it provides a process to make sure that what gets built in that District conforms to the overall design patterns in the neighborhood to to prevent things that are just totally out of context from getting uh built um in terms of our designated homes uh I've been on the commission for 10 years and my understanding the the history of all of the applications that have come through with those designated homes none of them have been denied by the Commission in fact uh the owner of Vox Hall we we helped him save about $50,000 on his window project he was going to go route of replacing all of the windows on that house and we suggested that he look into you know refurbishing the windows that he had and the price that he got for that was $50,000 less he's been happy with the results so we we really work with the homeowners uh to try to help them be successful uh with their projects and I would I would say that we you in some ways add you know add value to you know the homeowner's investment by um you know by helping them get good work done so in Roosevelt Park if it was designated historic district you're talking about new development creating guidelines for the new stuff that goes up so what happens to existing homes and Improvement and is there yes more regulation and obstacles so as we get into historic districting a big part of it would be uh putting together design guidelines to help steer homeowners to uh ways to approach projects so um Glen Ridge for example almost the whole town is is designated as part of historic um so they they have a excellent website that gives uh homeowners kind of a first uh you know set of information you know you're repl placing your slate roof you know these are the options that typically get approved for that type of project you're replacing Windows uh you know look into you know these options which have been approved in the past so that would be part of it to to prepare guidelines to help homeowners be successful in their applications uh to the commission um there's been a lot of changes they sort all derived from the Secretary of the Interior standards for histor preservation and Rehabilitation and there's been a lot of um evolution of those standards just within the past couple years terms of allowing use of substitute materials um uh and and and things like that to to address you know the real limitations uh in availability you some of these historic materials just aren't available anymore because we've you know chopped down so many of the old growth trees you can't you know get the materials that were used to to build these houses back in the and 20s sorry go I was just going so like I mean Roosevelt I mean do the people in Roosevelt Park know so maybe can can I just let's let's go through what the application so this application is to do a survey yes so the survey is just to do an analysis of the the houses there the number of houses the years that they were built things like that uh yeah the years of they were built a description of the architecture and an evaluation for uh historic designation eligibility and then if if that survey comes back then the well when that survey comes back the HPC will then do uh have a discussion and decide if they want to offer it up for nomination as a district is that correct um yes that would be an option right Bas based on that report or not or not or not or or not or not so and then if if you do if the HBC does decide to go for a nomination there's a whole prescribed process they have to notify every homeowner they have to write they have to come up with a proposal why they have to have public hearings and then after that process there's actually a vote by the the HPC which is a recommendation to the township committee the township committee then has to have public hearings and have a final vote as to whether or not to accept the recommendation to declare uh a district or not so through the whole process um not for the study because the study is just to look at historical documents right it doesn't knock on anybody's doors or anything like that takes takes photos yeah but but okay so there's no interaction with the neighborhood at that point it's just a survey what it is then it becomes public then the HBC becomes has a very public process at public meetings as to whether or not it wants to consider the designation or not if it does then it kicks off all the notification all the meetings uh and a lot of back and forth between HPC and the homeowners correct yep it just sounds weird to me if we're going to be studying a neighborhood and not letting the neighborhood know we're studying it in advance I don't know maybe it's just yeah I I don't believe they have a neighborhood association when we did the College Hill survey we did do a presentation at at Prospect church for the neighborhood association and people were interested after we did the golf Island survey I walked door too and gave every resident a copy of their pages from the survey and people were so excited and thrilled um to receive them and so you get more information on their house yeah the the surveys I mean there's no there's no it's just information about the homes so actually moving into the historic districts is a is a whole separate process right yeah I mean I think that the surveys could be really informative to homeowners the architectural survey and historic survey uh but if we approve the budget which includes the uh request for a consultant to start looking into historic district designation I do think that uh we should do some press about it and go out and talk about our doing that because if if the HBC in all fairness is going to be engaging a consultant in this uh historic designation historic district designation possibility clearly they're leaning into that and it's not like oh yeah no we're going to spend this money and then decide not to do it right right so I do think that we should like with everything that we vote upon here from here we should inform the public well I think the biggest thing for the consultant is to take the burden off of the volunteer members of the commission on all these demolition reports that we instituted in our ordinance that's that's at least half the job for this consultant if not more yeah so yeah I'm in favor of it because we passed the ordinance a lot of the reason for the demolition ordinance is exactly what we're trying to keep from happening and that is what we're seeing with demolition house is subdividing Lots there's two lots potentially historic on Ridgewood Road alone one that's like three lots can be subdivided three and what gets put up in certain places and we see what's gotten put up we we all know the houses that everybody's upset about mayor mayor may just remind just remind us that the demolition ordinance use it is to give I'm talking more I'm talking more about the purpose behind the the districts and and researching everything and trying to retain the contextual design of homes in these areas so if you do a district as opposed to a house it gives anybody in that area and you have design guidelines you might not get something built that is completely out of scale and out of context with their neighbors so yes but again the community should know about that and be engaged in that decision making yeah because it's their house they put the money into it and they're paying the taxes on it so I just feel it's an overreach for the town to be like we want to look at your District now and designated as historic without I hear what you're saying that in the process there's going to be Community involvement I guess I'm just wondering like maybe I just feel Community involvement should start a little earlier like are people actually interested I know this is just a Grant to cover the expense whatnot but if people are going to be outside your house taking a photo not everybody's necessarily comfortable and if you see somebody with a camera I don't know I just feel like it just it just makes drive around like a go I've only spoken with a few residents of that neighborhood so it's not obviously not like you know scientific survey survey but but a lot of their reactions were like you haven't already done this like why haven't you you know done this work and are moving forward to you know designate this District again that's just a few people um but uh I think especially residents from Ridgewood Road we've heard a lot from them about the demolitions that have been occurring in their neighborhood so I think there's uh interest it from residents and as we begin working on our preservation element this year uh we're just about to kick that off in the next week or two there'll be a series of at least one kind of Workshop format meeting with residents hopefully hopefully we'll get some turnout um but we we would very much like to engage with the public and keep them informed about what you know so can Mr wary can our public information officer send this information out so that the community can know about these things that are open I don't know okay I think it's premature we're not even we haven't even gotten to the point of funding the consultant he's talking about a workshop that they're going to be doing hoping that there's attendance so I'm just trying to boost attendance at a workshop so that you can meet more right yeah it yeah that'd be great I didn't not miss just feel like educating people about the benefits of why historic designation is important because so that their whiskers don't pop up too because I just hear about the cumbersomeness it is for a homeowner when they're in historic area or an historic house or the Woodland how hard it is to make improvements and we know infrastructure is different now than it was and when you want to upgrade your home Sometimes some of these historic designations might create Financial or other barriers so I just want to make sure heard it I want to stop this right now unless there any other questions for M I just had one quick question I see that we have 12 houses that are designated but do we have any historic districts in the no just the village only hous this building the park but like the districts that you're describing no no don't have that that's what I thought thank you isn't the village the designated The Village as a designated not it's not a local designation so the HPC doesn't have any regulatory role in the village right just to be clear because we're talking a couple different things here you're looking for um The Proposal of the uh budget the 15 19,000 um HBC already has five districts that they've identified correct that have have had surveys done in the past yes and the HPC is going to be discussing whether or not to recommend any of those five for the historic designation process correct yes so if we give if we allocate some of this 19,000 some of that money will be to actually start the process of considering a nomination which would require kicking off all kinds of meetings and public relations and all that for the one or more districts that HPC is going to recommend correct yes okay so that's the 19,000 the other thing the 38,000 is just to do an additional survey to the six you've already done is that correct of Rosevelt Park that would be for Roosevelt right but that doesn't kick off any nomination that would be down the road if in fact HBC wanted to do that so there's two different request request got it yeah we got it okay thank you very much thank you I don't know I mean one of the things is I'm in favor of going for the grant so if we should just see if we're in favor of going for it otherwise we should let them know because there's no point in writing the grant if we're not in favor of going the architectural survey of Roosevelt Park yes yes yeah I'm in favor I'm in favor of that yeah that's just a architectural survey yeah okay so we just need to get that resolution on one of the next two agendas yep the second and February already has L to have it ready okay we're going to move on to police a big change from historic preservation to Public Safety welcome chief welcome Chief you ready all right thanks for coming out and I'm just going to hand it over to you to present us your budget you can go briefly over 2024 if you'd like you don't have to and you can go over what your goals are for 2025 and then we'll go through the lines is the mic on Pat all right in keeping with the mission statement and core values of the Maplewood Township Police Department we must be in partnership with the community the Maplewood police department will continue to prevent identify and suppress criminal activity ensuring the rights of all citizens are recognized respected and preserved in 2024 the extraordinary officers dispatchers and civilian staff contributed to significant crimes trending down from each year as discussed in public safety meeting ings each month Maywood has seen the following 40% decrease in robberies 33.3% decrease in aggravated assaults at 8.62% decrease in auto theft uh we have seen an increase in burglaries and theft crimes with um and with this budget we hope to uh reduce those uh with proactive policing and investigations the number one complaint we received by police from the public is traffic the complaints come from res res regarding speeding pedestrian safety and careless driving uh last year we we issued 2,442 moving violations and 1,122 warnings the goal the police department will continue to address these problems with education and enforcement um I can continue but so that's pretty much what our goal is uh for 2025 moving forward um and uh our budget is our operation operational costs um to to U reach these goals is there any goal of increasing traffic enforcement and speeding yes so um I I I don't know if we're discussing Capital um budg today but um some no I just mean in in overall goals because as you know oh definitely that's that's why I highlighted the uh need to go into it do I um the traffic um that's our number one uh complaint that we received and uh we uh hope that the reassignment of our Traffic Unit and our officers will assist us in um reaching that goal okay so the numbers that you have here for traffic um is that generally up um from four the same um so we we want we definitely want to increase that of those um issue those you know is there um I mean is it how do we know is what that we're doing the right amount of um uh vehicle summonses and warnings like is there a percentage per like population or for the amount of traffic we get on our roads it will know like okay we're you know I mean because we want to deter this Behavior but how do we how do we know if it's actually deterring it definitely um so what what we do is uh we most of our our uh we receive complaints from the public also we have um historically complaint areas where we highlight so like Parker Avenue is definitely a um street that we you know nobody has to call us that that's a complaint street so we do do our details on those streets and that we have uh um historically had problems at or four-way stop signs on Ruckers New work um so we we increased our details there and from from what we did before so um uh uh so that's that's that's where we gauge our our our traffic at so Chief based on your increased details um in traffic and moving violations um the the 2,442 summons is it you're saying it's still flat in comparison to previous years or it's gone up a little bit uh it has not gone up so we we want to increase that and and what is your aspiration well my my aspiration is that um so we we we we were successful in changing our schedule we have more officers on the road and hopefully we can we will do more details in those areas and increase our uh productivity so uh 10% 15 20 30 what what is your goal I'm I'm going for 10% % 10% and and what's that based on that what is it based on is based on um what we have done in the previous years but it's based on us having more officers on the road at on our different at different times so our old schedule we were um constantly at minimums and we had to uh respond to calls and not have enough for this type of enforcement um but with this new schedule I hope to have uh morg increase in these type of details thank you Chief could could could you talk in general terms about the change in Staffing um and how that is enhancing police coverage yes or um old schedule we were working a 4 and3 uh 10-hour schedule we have shifted to a 12- hour schedule which is four and four so we have two squads so when one Squad is working 4 days other Squad is off four days um this uh this has this makes the schedule or the weeks even so um the same amount of officers we have on a Monday or the same amount of officers we have on a Saturday our last schedule was not like that we will be stacked more on a Wednesday and thin on Saturday and Sundays on the weekends when we needed that additional support the schedule we have the even amount on uh every day of the schedule and you know uh Maplewood is very active over the weekend on the weekends with different activities and the extra covers assist us with uh covering those and and is there any budget impact to that I mean yes so so it it um it it will decrease overtime uh with the schedule because we have the coverage so um uh I'm not going to get into what our mandatory offices are right but we are above that every day with this schedule so um with that it will it will reduce uh overtime uh because we have equal coverage on every day of the week Chief later we're going to be talking um to the health department um do you want to give us any opinion as to how it's working with the crisis intervention yes it's uh it's working great so the so the um philosophy of the police department is that um we respond to a lot of these uh um emotionally disturbed person calls um we are equipped to deal with it however we rather call Professional order specialists in that and our officers call that uh they they call them out um immediately when we need them um it has assist assisted us our um use of force has has gone down um uh and our um and it goes to our training as well but also um with having the added social worker on the scene with us were able to um deescalate even further than we we in in the patience of uh getting that person a proper help so it has helped us a lot also we have um we have unhoused persons in in town uh when we have a cold blue we allow them to stay in our Police Headquarters because it's extremely cold outside and with that we're able to identify uh the unhoused persons and call the social worker over toist they get them the healthy need I have a couple more um and Mr this may be for you I see that um we don't have anything in the budget for purchase of vehicles is that we're going to be doing in the capital budget that's right okay and um Chief one other question here we are doing uh budgeting um $50,000 for training um part of the reason of the old schedule for the power Wednesday was to do training on those days so now that we're not having the power Wednesday and we're doing the the two blocks as you talk about will we still continue to have an emphasis on training which is a a a priority of the township committee definitely the um the amount we had um we spent uh more than our training that we had last year because we are um uh finding training for officers to um to assist in what goal is of the department um I have two traffic officers going to training for for um for traffic uh statistics and Gathering uh they're going next month so uh training that assist us in that goal of traffic also assisting us continue um uh training in deescalation uh even though we're doing great in it we want to stay U active with that also we have our mandatory training we have our domestic violence training our firearms training um and um and and we are we still are the police so we still have tactical training that we have to go to um as far as uh um uh School trainings and um you know we we code red and everything else so uh we have the Tactical training we have our regular um you know our um we have it's it's the escalation training but also we have um U diversity training and um you know um and and everything else that comes up so we get we also have a lot of protests in town and also are training also how to deal with that in the first amendment uh and other rights of people and and um you know in 2017 we passed a welcoming resolution which made it clear that on the municipal side we weren't going to ask people about their immigration status or citizenship status and I know you're following the Attorney General's directive could you just briefly say how how are you informing new officers that may not have been around during the last go round with this President um to so that they're sensitive to these issues right so the attorney general just resent um what he did in 2017 2018 uh and I think it was update in 2019 as well um and they they they sent the AG uh directive for that um also they broke it down almost in a flyer version of what uh New Jersey police officers um cannot will not do and uh that was uh sent out to all of our officers also we have a um uh we have a training it's called a power DMS where officers have to go in read and sign and read uh what we sent out um so it was sent out to all the squads lieutenants went over it with all the officers and they know that um we if uh we are not to assist if that takes place um and it's uh you know has a changed since the last order from the attorney general yeah we've talked about that internally um the overtime for 2024 actual was quite a bit more than um appropriated but now we're budgeting for that much overtime didn't did the 12-h hour things not shifts not help address this similar to the other departments the salary and wage lines the last ones that we fine-tune and so I would expect that would Trend down some okay and then the need to update on all the allowances same same thing yeah yeah and those are as a result of the um recently settled contracts so finances uh updating all those numbers okay anyone have any questions on any of the lines I have two items mayor the first if I can that's not who I was talking to um but go ahead the first one's small but under Community oriented policing we've increased the budget there previously National Night Out when they wanted to uh bring in um entertainers or DJs or you know getting money for inflatables U they were uh hitting up a lot of different areas in order to fund that one of those was wreck and PBA and some PD budget and so this year we have added more money just to that line for so that's on the first page it's uh 227 227 Community oriented policing which is now 9,5 up from 500 from $55,000 so some of that's money that we won't spend in other departments but some of it is additional funding we expect for National Night Out as that's proved to be a successful event so are the other departments coming down that amount they probably won't go up by as much I mean just saying and then the second thing under paramedic 911 dispatching previous years we had budgeted $55,000 for it that's now zero that is an expense now paid for by scfd and you'll see that in a few other areas of tonight's uh presentations especially Finance when we talk about uh pension payments where we are shifting money from some of these operating lines but you'll see it in an increase to the scfd budget and we pay half of that 55 right because South Orange pays half now it's in the scfd bu and so they pay that but when it comes to how scfd bills us we would pay our percentage amount yep it's an operating expense for them what is the police department chaplain program you said that it's a goal and I see that also in the community oriented policing line what is the police department chaplain program program yeah so the the chaplain program um I just met with them last week um so we have a lot of new members that want to join um we just got to do um a little background check and things like that um but with the chap program uh does is um we have um pretty much every uh denomination of or religion represented um with Maplewood and uh when we have a major incident um sometimes we we we we have on call they're going to go through an orientation that I'm setting up for them I have a chaplain in Bergen County that that will teach it to him um and what happens is that we um if we have a major incident um we will call him out to the incident if um a victim of a crime is is requesting um um some type some type of chapl there been times where we had a suicide and um or a suicide attempt and the person asked for a Catholic priest or um so we would uh call them out to the scene and um you know we be L on between that person and and that and religious person also um they meet with our officers after a major incident so after a major incident we come in um we we meet with officers um it's not like um when I was in Patrol we had a major incident was like all right good night see you tomorrow no we um we bring everybody in and we talk about it and then we bring in our chaplain to speak to them as well um the chaplain will put give them their phone number and everything else and um sometimes they seek certain ones out and they'll speak to them um but before the major incident what we Tred to do is we try to get the chaplain to meet the officers um most of them know from the past uh we bring them into our lineup um we we allow them in our building and they they can just come in um and and speak to officers when they want to and sometimes officers seek certain chaplain out and they they'll call them or just speak to them on the side once they're there um so we we try to get that type of relationship before um the major incident comes in but um yeah so uh the orientation program will um let the chapl know what they can do on a major incident we don't want them coming over to the caution tape or anything like that but um respect the scene and everything else and then um follow the lead of the supervisor who's uh requesting them so that's that's the chap forward thank you it's been very successful yes we've heard from officers through the years that it's helped them deal with emotional distress that they experienced in a particular incident um with grief and it's also helped identify potential uh behaviors for for for treatment in certain situations anyone else have a question yeah well I just wanted to say that I was really happy to see the trainings that you get and the emphasis that um I in answer to Mr DeLuca that you're going to continue with that um and you mentioned in their autism training um and I know there's um disability sensitivity training that that includes that um also known as disability awareness and clusivity training um and I just um you know wanted to emphasize the importance of that especially you know when dealing with residents in town and and there's training for every level of Officer to it's from patrolman I get training uh tenants sergeants all you know up and down the spectr yeah and I just want to plug that the Maplewood Community board on police uh has been very instrumental in connecting uh the department to a slew of trainings like that some of them were for free uh several of them were a lot cheaper uh and to do so on site and in person and and that's been really helpful and that is one of the missions of the community board on police they've been really successful in that that's wonderful yeah anyone else do you have anything Mr worry I don't mayor thank you okay then we're done unless you like to stay longer thanks Chief thank you Chief um does anyone need a break before we move on or can we plow let's go what go keep going all right good great seg way to health right yep thanks Chief good evening come on up next we're giving away cash tonight next got longer on the start I was running ahead well these are these are interesting did they say they wanted a break okay I think they must have wanted a break we thought we were plowing through but I didn't I didn't look that e e e e e e e e e him to be running there anything you're good yeah you're good that's all right I said when he was walking out that we were starting so we have a quorum I don't like wasting time especially in these things let's go good evening I tell us your name age and no I'm okay guess not for the health department portion of the show okay make sure you speak loudly please because that mic's not that great would you like me to go line by line or what happened your presentation did a presentation okay I want to go line by line oh no in a word no okay so for our health department uh budget presentation some of our successes um are the following we had a great Grant success in partnership with this uh South Orange through our interlocal um agreement we saved the township a total of $234,950 uh our next accomplishment was the launching of the homeless Outreach and engagement program with cspnj the initiative has connected 80 individuals since we started um in May and uh this um Grant or this contract ends in April on April 30th of this year and we hope to uh renew because they've been working out really great and linking people to resources and shelter and it's been a very good program for us as far as addressing mental health we know that mental health is a growing um Public Health concern um as you can see in our report we want to expand our Mental Health Resources with our crisis intervention social workers um this uh this year we had an increase of uh co-response calls it's risen from 15% in 2022 to 40% in 2024 and our cases have increased over time since since we started back in 2022 uh with 153 cases then it was 175 cases in 2023 and 181 cases in 2024 so uh kudos to uh Martha ustach and Dina prel for uh working so hard for our crisis Pro program um and lastly uh Women's Health Awareness so in 2024 we hosted two impactful film screenings one that focused on one stage of life which is U maternal mortality especially among women of color and the disparities um that occur and then the other was the Health social and economic challenges for women facing during the phase of menopause so we'd like to um increase um our support and awareness Community awareness for that uh with um partnering with not your mother's menopause and J uh and bringing it to other people who couldn't attend the Symposium that uh took place in January as for our goals for 2025 we have some big goals as I mentioned we want to increase the Outreach to vulnerable priority populations which is always our main focus as as public health so we want to increase um our communication means with it for the township that means um more translated materials and More Physical signage such as kiosks in specified areas we look forward to drawing more people to the health fair uh with a bike rodeo in collaboration with with the mwood police department and the Department of community services and we also plan to increase our health screenings and vaccination clinics coordinated with our staff and Community Partners we hope to provide another annual employee Wellness day that we coordinated this year and was very successful and well received we want to keep our employees healthy and we hope to expand our awareness about Maternal Child Health um in particular about the free Universal Nursing Services as I've mentioned before um there are free Universal nurs Services for Families two weeks postpartum they come to your home and they give you uh well baby and well parent visits um to educate you and help you during that time this is also an initiative of the governor's office so we hope to bring that and raise awareness especially in Maplewood and South Orange for M for mental health and substance use prevention we want to raise awareness about the 988 National Suicide and crisis hotline we also want to work uh work together with the police department to um increase our locations and availability of the mobile drug disposal program and um for number three uh one of our goals is to ensure Public Health capacity so one of the core functions of the health department as you know are disease surveillance monitoring inspections and investigations and disease prevention we want to expand some of the work that we've done for example our RS or registered en enironmental health specialist of one and a half we have um a full-time person and a part-time person and our Administrative Assistant have issued licenses for and inspected 130 businesses and addressed 344 Public Health complaints our great nursing staff um and kudos to Anna marova who's our Public Health nursing supervisor and our pum nurse Julia marova ensured that3 flu vaccines and 44 covid vaccines were provided 190 people received health screening for diabetes cholesterol and hypertension some of those were our employees and all schools and childcare centers were over 95% compliant with their immunizations as we look forward to 2025 we are monitoring the situation with h5n1 and Aven flu as it has the potential to become an infectious disease that can spread among humans and currently it's in our Wastewater and seen among um Wildlife lastly as I mentioned we want to strengthen the CW and homeless program homeless outreach program excuse me um and as I mentioned CSP andj has helped over 80 individuals but we know we can go further so we want to um we are expanding weekend coverage with the crisis social workers at the PD so we started this Sunday and um they were there from 12 to 430 and 4 to 8 overlapping and they actually saw three c-responses yesterday just alone so we think that that's a really good uh thing to do and evening hours for cspnj uh homeless outreach program so about last month was when we started we switched their hours on Tuesdays and Fridays to evening hours um from 4: to 8 instead of 12 to 4 so they would see more people um and that has been successful as well and that's the end of my report great thank you any questions from my colleagues I did I did have a question uh yesterday there was a homeless individual who went to the community center at deart and and I was contacted to ask about the procedure and I told him to go to the police station that's the correct answer correct and then the police station would be the ones to call espj okay and then they and as the chief said earlier they would allow the person to stay in the courtroom to warm up and get some water and go to the bathrooms and all that okay yes and um I think you you weren't here but I did ask the chief if he wanted to weigh in on should we fund the social workers and he thought they did a great job and that they it was really a a positive tool for the police because even though they're trained in how to deal with uh these you know emotionally disturbed or you know tense situations um they really would rely or or want to partner with the professional so you spoke highly of it that's great and and the crisis social workers they do what the police can't which is follow up with these individuals making sure that they are at the getting medical treatment or when they're discharged they talk with the families and make sure that that they don't experience those situations again right yeah can I follow up on that yes scenario that you just brought up Committee Member Duca so there was a a houseless individual identified at the community center and uh someone asked you how do we connect that individual to help and um the answer is to call the police department who will pick the houseless individual up or what just our normal um shelter procedure is you contact the police for a warming Center or Co the person was looking for a warming Center okay and um I didn't I mean I don't know how long the person was going to be at uh the staff person was going to be at the community center so um typically when someone's looking for warming we tell them to contact the police the police put them up in the court and then if they need further shelter then they contact UM Department of Community Services to open up the community center that's the procedure how do you get from theark Maplewood Community Center at theart to the police if they were there I'm just asking in that scenario they're at the maple Community Center at the har to warm up or saying they could stay there but if the let's assume that the person I don't know how long the staff personal is going going to stay there yeah I'm just thinking of Transportation cuz that's a long walk from from the community center to the police station on a cold night it could be it was daytime right but what if it was a cold night how would they get there they would be escorted by the police we pick up people I don't know if we' provide transportation PJ on call and um if if someone was there and they had difficulty the PD could call tsp andj and if they're available they could come and bring them and transport them they've offered that before right again I just think that as we look forward we're talking about forward goals when we have our OEM building back we need to rethink this a little bit it's just not the best practice for people experiencing crisis which includes housing in security to um for them to seek shelter in the police department no nothing against our awesome Police Department who's welcoming and and we use that as a warming Center when you when you look at what other municipalities offer uh in terms of warming centers their Police Department is not a typical one so so we don't get too whay from budget I think you can um maybe put the procedure in your presentation for the Board of Health meeting tomorrow night yeah thanks any more questions on the budget looks like have we ex uh Mr warry or Mr dport explain a little bit with regard to the salaries and Grant offsetting it's kind of hard to understand on the line items and I know we're not talking specific salaries but yeah our our CFO can explain better but we are fortunate to be funded by a lot of Grants uh and thankfully those grants will continue uh through the end of this year okay and we so they're they're charged to this line and usually we'll move money over to a grant focused line so what you see here because this department is so heavy on grants won't entirely be accurate but we do have an accounting of all the salaries and all the grant offsets that we can provide to you yes okay so I would say that's the long thing I wouldn't even look at these numbers here and I would I think the better thing to do is for us to provide to you all of the budgeted salaries right was talking about this morning at the health and human services yeah okay what our budget does highlight is not only do we have grants but through um our cannabis Community benefit funds and our opioid settlement funds we are using those two tools of money to um support the crisis intervention social worker program and um it's a great way to to do it a really unique program that hasn't been done um for op we had settlement funding before in the state so it's a good use of it okay no questions nope okay you're free to go thank you very much thank you so much see you tomorrow night yeah just make one quick slide I think you probably have't it doesn't have to be tomorrow you could do we have a whole it last time yeah he can we put it out there every time we and you had it on a slide in a previous um I yeah he meeting recently maybe the January one okay since our library has been here early I love it you want to come up no are you sure don't be shy come on up come on up Sarah wants you up here all right Sarah didn't tell you but you're going to be presenting the budget for the welcome thank you thank you for coming tonight so thank you for having us I'm Sarah Lester I'm the director of the library and this is Amanda Anan the assistant director um the Maplewood library's mission is to connect people to information ideas culture and each other we are open for all that's in our tagline we take it seriously we do it every day and it's a value that we hold dear to all of us in 2024 I think our biggest accomplishment was seeing our building go up on Baker Street um and um along with that our staff provided um really robust programming and services in very confined spaces so I want to give a lot of credit to our staff and a lot of credit to our public for putting up with us um during this time of transition and I think um I really do think everybody did a great job um in the situation that we had so um we our Hilton Branch library is about 7,500 Square F feet our our our site at um 129 boen is probably about a thousand square feet um so we are going from about 8,500 square feet to a building on Baker Street that is 32,000 square feet so I just want the public to get you know very excited about what is to come and I think that's the biggest opportunity this year is that we will be opening a beautiful state-of-the-art lead goal certified um building all electric um and hopefully this will open at the end of of June I think can't wait yeah and everything in 24 really has been leading up to this moment um and um just some stats you know we were able to check out to circulate um 181,182 programs 12,675 program attendees 154,155 libraries and this past year our Consortium purged our library records systemwide so anybody who had not used a library in five uh years has been purged from the system so our big push in I think the first two quarters of 2025 is to reenroll Maplewood into our library system and I think that's not going to be a hard push um because I think everybody's going to want to be in that building so um and then moving Town Hall into that building and I think our biggest resource and our most important resource is our staff and I shared you know in in the document just um how involved our staff are um locally um in the state and nationally and that really strengthens um strengthens the services and the programs that we can provide um and also is a huge asset to our community amazing it is did you want to go over anything else um for 202 did you so I mean in the coming year I mean it's we're gonna be opening a building and um and then we're also going to be um you know kind of reopening Hilton as a branch library again so as a full service Branch Library so those are two kind of monumental tasks and um we've been doing a lot of planning move management planning leading up to that um and then we are very excited to be planning our opening celebrations um along with um the community and um and then doing the things that we do well like summer reading program um our ideas Festival uh Etc and we know we have there's a lot of demand um and a lot of interest in in the building itself and Community interest in using the building so we're also working very hard on our policies and procedures leading up to um to opening so that you know everybody has access to this incredible resource are you doing any tours of the building once it opens have you thought we will be doing tours yes besides nonstop I mean you know that that is part of our lead certification that that is um that we do do that and show this you know show the building um and and yes we will be planning regularly scheduled tours great I know our youth are very excited for the library to open again they've been without it the middle schoolers and the high schoolers haven't had libraries in a while so they're very excited to reopen and it really is just beautiful yes and I think what you all have have had a chance to to see it and I yeah we can't wait for the public to to see it as well so fun I just can't get over all the walls because I did I went through it so many times with nothing yeah it was weird last time good that there are walls yeah it's good that there are walls I liked how your goal here is to move and shove 60,000 items from a storage facility that's not that's 60,000 items at the storage facility and then there is about 8,000 items at our Hilton Branch library and like 2,00 1500 at 129 boen wow not not not easy peasy open up in like a day it was somebody who likes to take out a lot of books from the library you return them absolutely um I have two but they just got extended on my return so they're not to for another couple weeks um what's the transition like when you're taking all of these books from storage and from the OEM building to get it in there we still going to be able to to um to get books is it going to be more like online that's usually what I that's a that's something that we are carefully planning right now that transition period um and our our plan and Amanda you can step in and if I misspeak here but we will be closing our uh 129 129 uh boen moving everything to the Hilton branch and serving and and you know working out of one facility while we're moving into um into 51 Baker so all you know your reserves and all the materials you will still be able to pick up at our Hilton branch Library there will probably be about a week to two we period where we will have to have all hands on deck and we will close the Hilton Branch library at which time um we are a member of a Consortium and you will uh Maplewood residents will be able to use our our neighboring libraries in Milburn and South Orange West Orange Livingston um to access services and we're trying to keep that time period to you know I mean to a limited time I don't know if you want to add anything so thank you um just to add that um you know we're so fortunate to be part of this Consortium because they have been through this before they have shephered many libraries through construction um and uh they're very supportive of this process because it's helpful to everyone when they beautiful libraries around the state right um so uh we will be working with them as well to plan so like for example example if you requested a book um and then you get the notification that it's ready to be picked up you would go pick it up at like Milburn maybe or for those two weeks that would just be like on you wouldn't do that for two weeks you do hopefully for whatever period of time it is you may pick it up at any one of 76 other libraries in as you can right now but we prefer to see you at Maplewood oh I see what you mean when you do the the drop down yeah yeah and this also would be a really great opportunity to remind um all of our residents about hoopla and Libby yes because they can continue getting ebooks and audiio books with no um no delay yes thank you so much for that yes so we we also have canopy which you can you know access uh uh movies you can stream uh movies um we have other resources of what am I forgetting um hoopla canopy Libby yeah so we should make sure we get our Pio to share this information to for residents because they'll want to know yeah that's good stuff we're also planning a townwide mailing um prior to opening just to EXC people of our resources ask you know get people to come in to do um to get their library cards hopefully in advance of the opening because we know that you know that people will be very anxious to use the library um and included in the library are 10 um meeting spaces so we you know we went if people remember at our at the old library there were two those were in very very high demand yes so now there are 10 that um Maplewood residents will be able to reserve amazing I'm gonna have to get a new library card because mine was probably thrown out for the reminder you haven't used it in five years I haven't I use it every my kids are gonna be like what happens to ours I think they're all using the same library card so you know one has one so does anybody have any questions about the budget for the oh yeah that thing that thing could you talk about I mean obviously it's a bigger building it's more responsibility you've staffed up a bit for it yeah I mean we've staffed up modestly for it so uh this in 20124 we added uh a custodian so we now have two two full-time custodians at the library um and in 2025 we have a full-time library assistant and a sub a substitute library system that we are ready to hire um and so that will help us uh the you know I think it's going to be you know we're it's going to be we're going to have to get into that building and really see what we need and um the the great thing about the design is that are there are really great sight lines the stacks in the middle of both of all the floors are no higher than 4 feet high so you can really see we'll have much better sight lines than we did in the old library there's no hiding in this Library well well I'm sure people will find a way but um it won't be as easy right um and so um but I think this is going to be this is going to be a trial year to see what what we need um because we have we don't know you know there's things that we really don't know like what the electrical costs are going to be what you know I mean we I could go on and on um but yeah we we think we will be prepared what is that I think the thing I will mention is that because I saw that you had broken down this that the library is 4% of the municipal budget um in the buckles Consortium the average is 5.3 it's 5.3% of a municipal Bud hopefully the electrical Go Value in Maplewood there you go nice and and I see overall that your budget is pretty tight it hasn't really changed significantly I think we we really make the best to you know to make it that way um and um so so that I think this will be a learning year for us to see if that's if that's continues to be doable right hopefully have enough months before you fix your budget for 2026 right what does that line Library direct expenses because that's the one that go went down like a 100,000 well last last year there was um uh a budget transfer at the end of the year okay that was put back into our budget and we definitely need that going into doing all these moves oh I see and then you're going back down where you were in 2022 so it is it's it's the same the the increase in the budget this year is really just Personnel the contractual raises of 3.25 uh percent um the increase in the health expenses which are about 11% and that's Township wide um and uh so that that's where the the increases are hey I don't have anything else anybody great okay fantastic thank you exced thank you so much I see Mr bankr has come in all ready to go early love it 8:27 good evening very evening glad I got over here early yeah me too good management yeah well well done well said and I would start that by saying that uh certainly from a department head perspective my compliments uh uh to you all uh governing body as well as Mr wey and getting the budget done so quickly and effective uh efficiency last year um I think what I want everybody to know is that it it certainly helps us in our operation having our budget in place earlier in the year yeah uh helps operations it's not a guessing game it's not a moving Target you know what you have in your budget um and to get that done quickly uh and efficiently is certainly uh helps us uh to operate so you should all be complimented for that well you're welcome thank you for Thanking us thank you you want to launch into the court yeah uh I mean um our biggest issue which really um in so many words can't be discussed here uh goes to turnover um I I've written a lengthy uh narrative on that so please take time to read that um but it affects everything I I mean we've been battling this over the last 3 to four years um there's some Personnel requests in there which I know we won't discuss here at this meeting um but it goes to the operations it goes to how you want your court to run um and I know the demands that's been placed on me on years prior I still think you want that uh the court to be run the way it's supposed to um when you have turn over this year alone was 50% with had another person we hired and left within a couple weeks in uh December um so you're getting up around 60% turnover in year and it's very tough to talk about accomplishments when that happens you're more talking about survival more than anything else um and our filings have come back so uh pre-co we were averaging around 35,000 filings and for the last year we uh right around 36,000 filings that's that's positive that's great um I I think that's uh where you want to be that means officers are back to writing as normal and that was one of the questions we were asking uh during the years of covid and the sliding scale will the numbers come back and the answer is yes they have um so that's certainly positive to follow from last year I made a uh a lengthy statement regarding our processing of parking tickets and the Court's ability to suspend drivers uh for failing to do that the courts have uh now enacted that that came back in uh September with proposed suspensions and starting in December now you have driver suspensions for parking tickets that's not my doing that Statewide uh throughout the state um but it's big news my preference would not be parking tickets um I think that's low hanging fruit I I think it's the term we're going to use is Draconian in a sense how do you want to treat people for a parking ticket do you really want to pull their license I'm not sure if that's not necess the take it's not my opinion um that you know that's the state edict for now uh but I think for more serious violations leaving C accidents D driving while suspended no insurance um the more aggressive driving uh that happens we cannot suspend those licenses we may have the ability to issue a warrant but that's some accountability coming back to the courts um which is I think what we need um we have uh there's been a lot of discussion um certainly in the state but certainly locally regarding um enforcement um and how the officers are enforcing it only works if on the back end the fort is able to hold that person accountable and that's some of the tools we use in order to do that and I think that's what you want so that's a change for us um some of the highlights uh one of the big things for budgets is centralized notices um so essentially what happens when we schedule a case in our court we would um uh essentially schedule it the next day we would print it out old Matrix printer printer in our office and we you would get in your mail one of those official legal notices we would call them nasty grams uh kind of nudging you telling you here please pay this ticket so on and so forth or here's your court date and and that's how it work what the state has now implemented is they've uh assumed uh temporarily at least um the processing of those notices which means when we hit the button out of threaten the notices will be generated out to the public yeah um this could be a a huge cost savings for operations M um one of our largest line item is our postage um for noticing people and that's a requirement of any Court to get people good notice to appear or respond to a summons and um so not only are you talking about the printing the physical notice um and then uh the processing and sending out and they send it out via bulk um I've asked this question numerous times since it was taken over and this was in June of 20 24 um whether this will be continued I'm I'm not sure of that whether we've actually had a a legitimate answer um the person who championed this was uh uh administrative director of the Courts Glen Grant who you should all be aware has uh put in for his retirement so he will be stepping down there's a new judge I believe it's judge blee that's right uh assignment judge out of Atlantic Kate May um and I'm not sure whether the program will be uh resumed so I'm sort of hedging my bet in our budget we had actually asked for more money because our our goal was to go after more notices uh on tickets um that have been delayed or failed to be processed since co uh I don't want to say it goes back that far but we've had a backlog of notices because they turned off our ability to send notices out during covid and that was the state's position to say um during a a pandemic do we necessarily want to be going after people sending late notices and things of that nature they said no and now they've turned back on the switch and said go after this well we have a repository of late notices and tickets that we need to send out and go after individuals to push them back to the court um you gave us more money thank you we went through it and two things happened and this is where you'll see um money's unspent in that line item which is uh sensy postage number one the state took over uh mailings that's savings right there and number two we lost staff so uh through June of last year we had issued uh about 9,000 uh failure T notices we were chugging along and and doing great and um uh even our collections by month you could see the returnables were coming back in people were paying they were appearing they were pleading not guilty that's what's um called redu reducing your backlog or reducing cases which is our our goal um and then uh we lost staff and unfortunately when you're down bodies if you continue those notices you're going to be overwhelmed and um we what I'm happy to say is Right report right now is we're back at 100% full staff but uh obviously since June that's losing three staff members that's difficult to overcome um so that's where you see uh some reductions in spending there we're now in a place where we can uh go back into that but the goal of the courts was to try and recover from covid within three years um that was about a year ago when they put that out a year and a half so we're about a year and a half away from where they're saying um we should be back to where we started I think we're behind uh where we want to be right now um that's where I'm uh making the requests and and I've had good conversations with Pat on this he knows where we stand uh remember we've had uh you know unfortunately we had four different Bas over about course of five years it's hard to have a uh a consistent conversations with someone who's management the court where they have other issues to go on other other problems within a Township that's going to happen um and sometimes it's tough to be the squeaky wheel as they say um and maybe that's credits us maybe that's because we're running well um and I'll compliment my staff it's not easy to operate when you're down bodies down staff do to turnover um and we have some ideas I think Pat's listened to it to his credit um I understand there's other issues in the township that need to be addressed as as well and I you have tough decisions make and I get that I'm not the only person who's presenting to you not only today but also um o over a number of days and we got responsibility as taxpayers but I think um as I've explained in here I think we need it I think we need consistency and Staffing I think it's going to help our operation I think it's what you want I think it's what you demand and I and um if you can't hear me I'm kind of screaming down in there saying please you know this is what we need I've seen too much of this and um remember I've I've uh moved buildings I've Consolidated courts we've been with South Orange now for 2011 till now our 14th year if you could believe that the last four years again I'll say as I did last year have been the most difficult uh times in the court uh or maybe I'm just getting older I'm not sure um definitely yes of course um so that's that's where we're at we we we've done some things to make the um the zoom um experience more palatable to the public and members of the public um we've staggered the session so uh individuals aren't sitting online for five hours we're trying to restrict that down to two two and a half and then starting up a second session um to try and make it a bit easier I think anybody being on Zoom after four or five hours uh is exhausted and maybe we're impacting their rights or M you know maybe they're just saying here get me out of here uh so to try and change that I'm very pleased with I think the response has been better from the public um we're still also allowing people who don't have the means or the knowledge or the knowhow to come into our building and access Zoom via a laptop that we provide uh in our office and the knowledge and the staff will assist them through the process as much as we've made advances um in technology and that's fantastic for the working public uh you know people with children and uh all the tasks in life that we need to deal with um there's some people who either are less fortunate or don't have the ability to get access to uh technology we still allow them to come into our building and access a zoom hearing so I'm proud of that um and I think we all should be because I think that's somebody so we're never going back to in person right um there are some in person yeah we we still run two in-person sessions a month one for Maplewood one for South Orange but based upon um it's just more convenient for everyone yes rather than spend a whole day uh I think for the public the general public who can still work and do what they need to do right the Court's going to make a decision here at some point to say um and I think that's really where that's that's to be seen what's what should be required to come in um certainly we have matters that come in that are DW wi that are domestic violence um complex matters with more uh complex uh exhibits it's just easier to do in person and I think um there's some concept and ideas there that they're they're going to need to explore going down the road uh who needs to be face Toof face with a judge and what impact can that have um because Zoom is not a courtroom um and I think we'll all feel that about in life in what we're doing and we need to balance that of what's what's the import or um this the sanctity of the court and coming in and being before a judge and what requirement that entail so uh that's to be seen and I there's some ideas for that but um for right now there still pushing the the zoom and I think the public right now is uh yeah I think they're reaping the benefits I think they're enjoying it as much as you can if you have to go to court i' say yeah any questions on the line items for the court he put a lot of passion into the pros though tell he does always he always does I felt your over the turnover yeah I'm sorry I don't mean I don't mean to do that I mean no don't be sry I'm I'm comp it's a compliment I think I am passionate I I uh always rewrite my narrative I don't try and dial it in again the court is a separate branch of government there's very few times where I'm able to uh officially interact with you um I like to uh be up front I like to be real I like to tell you when we're doing good we're doing good I like to tell you if we're doing bad we're doing bad I think that's what you pay us for yeah uh I don't think you got want us to um yeah sugarcoat anything of course we also have new governing body I think needs to be made aware of what we're doing what our operations are and that's ever changing um so uh to give sort of a background and history and update as to where the court stands what the status is of the Judiciary and again my compliments to my judges uh prosecutors um I think this is the first time in 20 years that I've been doing presenting that uh prosecuted Palama is not present she's watching we normally go hand in hand so um to our our uh esteemed prosecutor uh Anette Pama um she's an asset to us asset to the court she's always done well and has always been very supportive and I'd like to uh um you know certainly let that be known I normally uh like I said I'm used to her either following me or me following her so it feels strange not having right um she speaks highly of you as well uh we do I think it's a sympatic relationship yeah you do um that's kind of where at I mean you kind of know the about filings and just for collections just you're aware we're about 3% up uh compared to where we were um last year in Maplewood about 7% in South Orange we're still well below where we were preco um the in both courts we had massive years in 2019 um and 2020 was it was a major difference but this was a focus that we were talking about in discussions during budget and where you saw reductions in collections for the township during that time um we're seeing slow progress and coming back for that and that's just um following up on what we need to follow up I think with uh hopefully additional support towards the Staffing issue we can recoup some of that and move forward uh as we had been and we need to get clear out the backlog and that's that's the reality of of uh the hurdle that we're facing to get back to um doing unique things that we've always done in our court being leaders in the State uh as we have been and and that's where we're stand right now so um any other questions certainly uh welcome that you've all been very very supportive over years so uh I appreciate that and um and I appreciate you allowing me to speak openly which you always have and uh that means a lot to me so thank you I think deputy mayor has a question I do I wanted to ask about the backlog um I remember that I I watched this last year and I remember you talking about this with the licenses so or the um the parking tickets so the backlog is these are tickets that were assessed but you couldn't collect them for a period of time all backlog is essentially an opening closing of cases by certain means and certain case types so typically disposed either a ticket is dismissed or a ticket would be paid or resolved let's put it that way that's our goal in the courts and our my mission is a little separate so I don't want to go too much into collections here and quote unquote the nasty word of Revenue that's not the Edict of the Court our goal is not necessarily to collect money I'm just wondering if people are going to get like a notice that like hey you have a parking ticket from like 2020 yep so we'll go through that um two different things our our goal is to resolve disputes just to finish that part that sentence off um and what we do in order to do that is we s a lay notice out that's called a failure toe notice adds on $10 um and that's what's pending from there it goes to a proposed suspension and then it goes to driver suspended so for any ticket that we've sent out a failure to appear on in that backlog that Quee that we have we're working on to kind of uncover um for all those cases um the state has come in and said first off we're going to send you a proposed suspension then you have about 30 days to finish that if you don't do that then you go to the driver suspended and then it actually gives you another 30 days to actually rectify the matter with the court even after the driver suspended before DMV will actually input the suspension that's what the that's what the state wants you to do that's what the that's actually what happens oh as opposed to like just asking people to pay so that's the failure to appear That's that that's that reminder notice adding on $10 telling people here you failed to address this ticket in a timely fashion you can either pay or plead not guilty and come into court our goal for backlog is just to try and resolve disputes and what we're seeing is with the backlog of all the things we haven't issued our backlog whenever we're not issuing them and typically pre-co we would run these notices weekly um that's kind of how the process works you're constantly opening and closing cases which is what you want to do and that's what we're um is our uh is our goal but because the backlog is so large that's the goal was trying to keep it and when you say this is not resumed for moving violations you mean they've given you a road map for how to collect on parking but not for moving yet correct so um for certain enumerated moving violations such D we could issue a warrant and that typically will drive people in or somebody can actually get arrested but what we can't do is go and suspend a license and that's cuz the law sunsetted during covid it was actually December of 2020 and since that time it's um statutory so as a result it have to come from uh the legislature and it has to be a law redone not via the courts the courts can actually enact the suspension they had a Court rule dictating for the suspension of the parking ticket they actually um the court just followed the state when it sunset it went away so it would actually have to be a legislative action to reenact that so the court I don't think would do it on their own it would actually have to come from the state I'm not sure how many people know this out there but it was big news last year and I think I shocked everybody I wasn't trying to do that I was really trying to say is we need to get back to order and and I think uh that's what we're used to that's how how the courts worked and functioned previously and it helps open and close cases that's how we resolve it um and that's that's our mission that's our goal again we don't in the court we don't care necessarily about the finding uh guilty or not guilty our goal is to resolve it get the matter cleared and that's our mission that's one of our goals for the course your goal is to administer Justice right okay thank you for that explanation of course that's it unless you have anything else want us to know now after me you're probably back on time no we anticipate for you thank you Mr bran good seeing you all thanks you too good luck with your budget our budget is your budget yes yeah quiet it's good all right Mr Cog you're on Zoom I see oh there he is my apologies for that it's been uh it's been a rough night okay but if you're ready we can we can jump into um finance department's budget yep Pat I have the ability to share because I'll throw this uh slide presentation up let's see what we got here it's right here we got we got this it's going oh all right so Pat put up his uh the draft version but that's all right we can work with it that okay we get that yeah that's fine all right uh so so the finance department uh is uh basically uh 1.8% of our total budget uh this was rounding if if we go to the next slide we would see that um we are um a little over 3% in salaries and a little under 1% set and other expenses obviously uh we do a lot of transaction and interaction with uh both the public and our vendors the finance department as it's laid out in this slide uh consists of two uh functions one is revenue the other is expenditures and accounting of both expenditures and revenue so on the revenue side you have the tax assessor who's the basis for the entire um Revenue collection he is the one who assesses values on uh properties uh often reminding residents that that's all he does if you've got a beef about how much your taxes are you need to talk to the tax collector uh the tax collector obviously takes the numbers that come from the assessor and then applies the rate that was necessary in order to sustain our budget and uh that collection also extends out to uh sewer fees and then you have the um a municipal finance officer on the other side that is responsible for um B basically keeping an accounting of everything that's going in and coming out of the of the township along with uh other details such as uh local public uh purchasing law local Bond Law local budget law um I think what's noteworthy of this is that uh by Statute all municipalities need to have four um four positions that are that are statutory three of them are in the finance department you see them on on the right here with the assessor The Collector and the CFO all of them also need to be licensed and obviously the state recognizes uh the importance of uh Municipal Finance it's it's the reason why uh it's the governing body that has the final say on uh adopting a budget and also has the final say on uh making payments it's why you see a bill list every month we can go to the next slide Pat so in uh Maplewood here uh from assessment perspective uh Mr Dort uh oversees over 7,500 properties that uh that he keeps tabs on uh there are over 10,000 sewer units that are also assessed to those 7500 plus properties uh Mr Dort uh makes determinations as to uh what properties are Exempted uh we get a significant number of people who have been moving into Maplewood who are 100% disabled veterans and so they qualify uh to not have to pay taxes they they wind up being Exempted uh that is something that is administered by the tax assessor I will say this um Mr Dort has our ratio right now at right around 100 which is where you should have landed after a reval and and that's somewhat uh impressive considering that uh South Orange at this point has dipped down to 95% uh in terms of the ratio uh just one year out from from a reval so that that's pretty impressive work by by our assessor from a tax collection perspective uh we are the collection agency for ourselves obviously the school district the county we also collect for our two special Improvement districts uh we're also responsible for uh sending out the sewer uh fee billing and the collection and we're also responsible for the all the interdepartmental transactions some of the shared services we have that we wind up having to bill for that all all falls under uh tax collection and then from a finance perspective uh we administer a payroll for over 400 employees uh pension for over 200 employees we're responsible for all accounts payable and the money that's going out we are responsible for Debt Service uh that is almost $60 million in obligations um and with the with the next capital budget that we adopt this year in 2025 that number will move up uh and then we are also responsible for our interlocal agreement and any other invoicing such as police outside Duty go next one thanks P so these are the goals that we set and achieved in 2024 we migrated uh Edmund's uh accounting to uh the cloud uh the major Improvement to that was that uh departments that are not housed in uh Town Hall had a difficulty logging in it typically would take them five minutes to be able to get into to admins and so anytime they got kicked out they upset because they would have to log back in for 5 minutes um but now because we're on the cloud they get the same instantaneous access to uh admins that uh anyone in town hall uh is able to get the other uh benefit to that is that we have increase the amount of digital document storage that we can uh put into admits so our ability to attach quotes to uh requisitions which eventually turn into purchase orders uh wiring information for Debt Service all of that is now starting to become more robust thanks to being on the cloud uh We've also transitioned to electronic purchasing uh that was also uh somewhat cloud-based assisted and what that has done for us has given us the ability to get out vouchers quicker get them returned quicker and that has obviously improved our relationship um with with our various vendors if there's a limited number of resources and two towns are trying to get the same order and they've only got so many things on the Shelf we know that maple is going to be favored because we pay quicker than than most other towns are able to pay and then lastly uh we had the goal of implementing autopay for our residents uh this is the ability to sign up uh so that uh we would send out an email uh a week before we're about to pull your tax payment just to let you know so that you can make sure there's enough money in your account and then we would automatically uh have that payment uh pulled from your bank and into our bank uh and because we are doing the polling uh there is no fee associated with it so we anticipate that a lot of people who are are used to going on what we call the whip our online uh access to be able to pay their taxes or their sewer bill we anticipate that there will be a lot of people that are going to look to take advantage particularly for the sewer bills of of being able to have us uh automatically make the payment when it's due our goals for 2025 are uh the biggest challenge is obviously going to be to set up the the stor water utility and the billing that goes with it uh that is going to be a Monumental task as we are going to have a lot of moving parts and hopefully we'll be able to get that up and running and tested uh before we send out our sewer bills in uh May uh but if we do not because uh we have decided that we want both bills to go out on on one bill uh we will look to uh delay sending out the sewer bills uh to June if we are unable to to work out all the bugs but essentially your sewer bill is now going to wind up having uh three lines to it one line is going to be for sanitary maintenance sanitary sewer maintenance the other ones be for sanitary sewer service and then the other one's going to be for the storm water utility one of the other things that we're uh interested in doing this year is U accepting online payments for more than just taxes and sewers and um hats off to Amari Allah we're very impressed with what they set up in the clerk office uh they have a a desktop computer set up so that people can come in and they can wind up uh processing whatever uh permit they're looking to get or whatever uh license they're looking to get and they can do that online and pay for it online too so we are interested in looking to expand that so that we can have every Department with a desktop at their counters so that if uh our residents choose to uh pay uh via a credit card uh we would have the the ability to do that and then our last goal is uh to increase our permanent record storage capacity despite the fact that we can move digital stuff because of the cloud based uh admins there are still certain records such as tax sales certificates uh property cards uh things of that nature that we are required to print out and store and uh Through The Years we're we're starting to run out of room and so what we've got right now is a situation where uh typically a Municipal budget has uh two years open prior year and current year and unfortunately because of our limited storage capacity prior years going down into the basement current year is now upstairs and then when we need to search for a record it's not the most efficient way to be able to um retrieve something so uh that is another one of our goals is to increase some uh storage capacity in the finance office uh the rest of this I'm not sure is is not really departmental it's more overview so maybe we want to stop there and take a look at the finance department's budget and and see if we have any questions yeah if um I have a few just on um just some line items um under the 130 section um 209 212 and 222 it's new equipment um software maintenance and Payroll Services okay all budgeted for certain amount but historically is the actual is way less than each one of those lines um I just uh yes we never spend that uh well because in Municipal Finance uh we're only allowed to to uh spend what we uh budget for so the fact that uh we may not have spent the full amount just means we may have realized we needed to kind of dial back or or delay a purchase on something uh because we may need to make a transfer into another department that overspent on a particular line Joe I'm just talking about like for new equipment we're budgeting 18,000 historically we've spent last year was 5,000 prior years was 3,000 2,500 I'm just saying it seems like it's over budgeted for so uh the answer that specific yet to answer that specific question in 2024 we budgeted $18,000 because we were interested in purchasing a machine that would enable us to fold and stuff envelopes so that we wouldn't have to Outsource sending out our sewer bills or our tax bills we'd be able to do it in-house it turned out that between the time we quoted it and and the the time we were ready to to spend it uh that we had exceeded our ability uh it was going to cost more more than the uh $113,000 we originally quoted and so that's the reason why you're only seeing 5,000 spent there uh this year we're asking for $18,000 again because that is to fund our goal of being able to create more storage for a permanent records okay 212 software mainten 212 is software maintenance uh that has gone up uh because of the uh advin cloud is now costing us a greater amount of service so we have not uh fully uh expended uh the amount of money that we saw because we were able to convince Edmonds hey you should you should give us a freebie on the first year to to convert over to to uh to convert over to the cloud and so they did we we talked them into basically giving us a discount so we'll wind up spending uh that $16,000 this year okay and then the um payroll services and ACA reporting we budget like 5,000 every year and we spend zero every year so why are we budgeting for it at all so we budget to 5,000 uh in the event that we're going to wind up being told by the federal government that we have to produce a report that uh we uh it was particularly an issue with a reporting and the Cadillac plans and the whole bunch of whatever goes on with that uh we left it in this budget because we're not really sure where the federal government's going to come in in terms of um what they may require us to do or not do and so we put the 5,000 in essentially as a placeholder and auditing Services line 13500 yes because I thought we anticipated going way up from 51 to 64 so uh the reason that is higher is because it's including some of the additional reports that typically been uh placed into uh Professional Services in the past so we just centralized all of our uh um auditing service spending in to the auditing line so the Professional Services line is still here right correct so last year you can see that we spent almost $75,000 uh that is now being moved over towards the auditing Services we also anticipate that we're going to need uh uh additional help from them in terms of setting up our storm water utility so we put money in to anticipate that additional help okay tax collection printing expenses again I'm just looking at the you know historical and then that it just seems like we're probably about quite a bit of money here that's when you add all these lines plus the others I haven't mentioned and I get generally the question is about money unspent at the end of the year I my question is why are we budgeting I mean it adds up to about probably $880,000 or more that we're budgeting for that aren't being isn't being spent yeah year over-year so why are we budgeting for it we're fortunate that our department heads are very good at spending only what they need to and so there's two reasons why that if we hadn't spent last year we would keep the same amount this year um one if we move to a a system where if you don't spend it you lose it we'd be encouraging department heads to to spend money near the end of the year so they could guarantee that they would get it in the next year the second and maybe more important piece across all departments is any unspent money in a line will eventually be realized as a surplus and be contributed to our fund balance yeah I understand that it just seems like like most of the budgets of the Departments we've been looking at don't I look for that discrepancy and you know all these years I've been looking at this and this is this is this one just seems like it's more than normal than the others so I understand that if we don't spend it goes into fund balance I I get it I just was you know maybe we' budget a little more closely to what reality is for some when there's year after year after year we're spending a fraction of what we're budgeting for because it's still budgeting and spending money I see what the mayor says because for example that line that she just said tax collection printing requesting 15,000 there was 15,000 appropriate in 2024 we spent about 5,000 2023 there was 10,000 appropriated okay we spent 8,000 but I I see what you're saying like maybe we don't need to be spent allocating 15,000 maybe it's more like 10,000 or something like that right that's what you're saying right and it's been under if we've been under spending for so many years other departments seem to have gone down in those lines to account for it but this but Finance maybe hasn't and I get the placeholder like we don't know what's going to happen so let's just keep $5,000 there in case we have to so we don't have to scramble and get money I get that but I guess it's just the yeah magnitude of the differences between to be a little more yeah we take another look at this department y so I I will just say on the tax collection printing uh we basically budget to assume that we're going to send out an estimated tax bill and then a final tax bill and we've been fortunate for the past couple years where we've been able to send out a final tax bill so we've saved ourselves on having to print uh two tax bills and and that basically is the discrepancy between the two um we're going to also need to be uh concerned about that in terms of sending out our sewer bills as well so what we're doing is making sure that we have the ability to send out uh estimated and final bills if we need to in in both of those areas and we can certainly cut that we can certainly cut that line and then just treat it as an emergency appropriation if it turns out that you know we need to send out an estimate a bill and a final bill but ultimately emergency Appropriations are just guaranteeing that we're going to uh raise that in next year's taxes understood and I don't think I'm asking for emergency Appropriations or anything I'm just asking that the numbers reflect a little more accurately the history of spending so and since the last two year this year and last year budget is on time if not early then we you know we save that and I I expect we'll save it again this year we'll take another look at it thank you anybody have any questions got more for his presentation yeah oh yeah but I was just finishing the finance department no okay so go ahead uh Mr CL you can go back to uh the other pictures the the weighted thing the scale your presentation the other was just overview and I'm not sure if Mr worry wants us to do the overview today or if he wants us to do it at our uh next budget meeting yeah next budget meeeting following slides will be for the next budget meeting meeting but he does have uh Revenue Administration tax assessment other things that we can go through if the township committee has any questions I just asked for the next budget meeting can you make these a little bigger I can't I have perfect reading Vision I can't read this sure that's all thank you I didn't hear the end of what you just said Mr worry oh uh beyond the finance lines which you were just looking at Mr C also has the revenue lines tax assessment lines um statutory lines if you'd wanted to go through any of those Debt Service I don't see any of that in the spreadsheet statutory utilities and insurance are we doing those that's what you just that those will be for insurance that's mine I'll do that Wednesday Insurance do tonight on the spreadsheet if we go over to the tabs that are coming in uh after the library right we had police health library then stat there's a tab marked statutory got it I'm sorry I missed it got it you want to go into the statutory now sure so uh the statutory items that uh you know are required for the most part are required or they fall under the category of um a separate portion or part of the budget uh we can see that we are budgeting uh $200,000 for accumulated leave absence last year's 43 what is to accommodate a settlement uh that the township had and it's the reason why it was almost double from last year uh we're continuing to put money aside for the tax appeal uh we have one major tax appeal uh based on the reval that we anticipate uh may result in us having to to refund money and so we are starting to uh put away money in a trust fund so that that wouldn't cause a tax spike in the following year uh from a pensions perspective we see that uh the public employees retirement system has remained relatively flat and we see a significant decrease in the police and fire retirement system that is a function of the fire department is no longer paid uh we're no longer assessed in how to pay for the Fire Department salaries that is now all on scfd and so that has uh that has significantly dropped we budgeted $350,000 for Capital Improvement uh uh down payment so that gives us the ability to do about $7 million in projects and then our Debt Service uh has somewhat decreased over last year uh it would have been more significant if it wasn't for the interest on uh our bond anticipation notes uh to the tune of $296,000 uh this is pretty much the bottom as we continue to move forward with uh capital projects and uh we do another Bond anticipation note for funding this year's projects uh we will see Debt Service increase next year over uh this year and then in terms of deferred charges we have uh $379,000 right now uh set to uh help offset the the pool as we have established a goal of decreasing the um fees that we're charging for membership uh we are still uh paying our master plan which is $46,000 roughly $700 we've got a couple more years on that uh we also have um our reval this is the second year of paying our our portion of the reval the reval to remind everyone cost us a little over half a million dollars almost $600,000 uh the state allows us statutorily to take that and make it a five-year payment uh which we are doing and then we also have a remaining couple years on the covid note that we took out uh that was uh back when Co first struck the the um State allowed municipalities to take a year average of their revenues uh instead of only what they had brought in from the year before because obviously everyone's revenues plummeted when when there was a shutdown uh once we set that up we were able to then borrow money in order to uh make up for that uh lost Revenue uh this is the mechanism for paying back the money that we had borrowed um we also have a special emergency note for the scfd EM merger this was to clear out all their accumulated leaves so that sefd started with a clean slate for all their new uh uh firefighters and so we're in the second year of paying that note down as well uh the good news on this is because we have significantly improved our financial position from when I first started here in 2018 we were basically able to lend ourselves the money at 0% interest so we are now just paying back the various trust funds that we borrowed in order to to make those initial payments and we're restoring them to the levels that they were before we uh borrowed that but if we scroll down a a tad more and I don't know because I'm looking at a different spreadsheet you can see that the statutory expenditures for us represent 18% of our budget there is very little uh we can do to change uh those numbers I mean we could in theory decide that we're going to roll the dice on tax appeal uh we could decide that we're going to um you know roll the dice on the number of people that may be retiring this year uh we could decide that we don't want to do any capital projects but other than those three areas everything else is pretty much cast in stone where else did we want to go Mr worry utilities I think we're going to utilities but let me see if anybody has questions on statut T sure my apologies think I don't think so okay utilities so now from a utilities perspective Ive and it represents roughly 5% of our total budget uh we did exactly what uh was just suggested up at the deas and we synchronized the uh last year payments with this year's uh requests uh with a little extra anticipating that there's going to be some increases from either American water or psng and then the only other major spot is if we go down towards the the bottom for the um joint meeting um we we got a a letter from them saying that we have an increase in the amount they're charging us or our our pro-rated portion of it for services and so we're going up roughly $100,000 from what we were build last year will that go in the sewer bells or that go like divied up or is that a one uh yeah uh so yeah yes the the sewer bills are part of our anticipated Revenue uh and that is designed to offset uh the payments that we need to make to the Joint meeting okay children I know you're getting Punchy I know we're talking about the deart community it's just it says theart Community Center and not Maplewood Community Center yeah I don't I think it's theart Community Center check nobody CER I know but nobody knows it all right do you want to go into Insurance since no one's yes so the last piece is insurance we have liability insurance and Workers Compensation Insurance both of those are through the New Jersey intergovernmental Insurance Fund um we are seeing over those two lines a combined 10% increase from last year that's a direct result of cost of claims so each year they assess how much they take in from us and how much they pay out in claims and they use that and and they'll look at multiple years and use that to um evaluate our risk and soes that we pay out or jointly the the that they pay out they only look at claims that they pay out no I'm sorry claims that they pay out for us that's correct not claims it not in the No No No Yeah so each each municipality is uh is independently assessed right so um and that's everything from a trip and fall to somebody who didn't want to lose their job that's right all lawsuits yeah yeah and so and including like workers comp coverage as well falls under under this and so um yes yes there are some other things that may affect claims so while 10% is high I think that other municipalities that didn't have our claims experience we're still seeing anywhere from six to 8% increases and so 10% is high but I think generally this is an area where um you know we wouldn't have expected to see a two and a half three and a half percent increase seems like more than 10% though and then the next line is for group health insurance so we had uh at the beginning of 2024 moved from State health benefits plan to the the health insurance fund which is under the New Jersey Metro hiff the increase there this year is 11.76% which is a higher number than we expected we had H to um see somewhere in the 4 to 6% for these um the you know fortunately it's less than the State Health Benefit Plan increase which is 16.5% um so we're just under 12 a lot of the increase this year uh was driven by the glp1 drug so the um the weight loss and uh diabetes drugs that had were recently come online um those uh gave a dramatic increase and there were some federal legislation that um changed how and and in what amount claims are paid and that affected the overall rates as well did did we not see reductions in these because of scfd like our health Insurance didn't we move a lot of people off we did so these are actuals on health insurance um the question is did we had I guess decre they would have seen that in 2020 what year did they go off our how 24 they went off in halfway through 23 right and um so the 20 you would see the change from 2022 went down three 10% yeah yeah and in the liability I mean in the workers comp we didn't go down we went up yeah and on workers comp there wasn't a large adjustment that was there even when they had calculated it for half the year was less than $100,000 that um we had we would have saved we're still pursuing them for that money so it wasn't a a dramatic increase but you're right and that the so sefd on the health insurance side wasn't on for all of last year so that 10% is just our our claims uh but we could go back and look in the the change from 21 to 22 to 23 to see uh what reduction there was well it must have been something in workers comp because we're going from 514 in 20124 to 427 in 2025 y so that that might account for removing the firefighters can we go back to what you said about the insurance so weight loss and diabetes these drugs are making insurance premiums go up it's part of it I mean you would expect it I mean they're going to go up and they're going to go up higher than inflation I think national average is around 8% and so I wouldn't say that that's why we are at 11 and a half percent but the reason why we're seeing this now is a lot of those drugs weren't on the market a few years ago and they become very popular very quickly and that does have an impact to Total payouts yeah and if you look at that's on our prescription plan if you look at our prescription plan uh they're the top two of um prescriptions that in terms of cost the weight loss drugs are weighing on our budget so I there's a flip side of that in that long term there's an expectation that people will be healthier so well people people will be healthier including including our employees who benefit from these drugs and so I think that and if they feel better they maybe have higher morale better performance kinds of stuff yeah yeah so the hope is that these medications now will prevent higher claims in the future but right now we're realizing these the increase in Plan cost okay but that's the increase in the that's not meaning our employees are on the weight loss drug it do it does yeah I mean the employees in the plan so the the Metro hiff covers oh um many towns somewhere somewhere around 10 Towns and yeah the employees in the plan uh in terms of what they're using uh those are the top two prescription drugs the prescription plan when this is the the hip is a combination of medical and prescription prescription went up almost 30% okay any other questions on insurance shouldn't be so expensive do we have any um people on Zoom who would like to ask questions anyone joining us on Zoom would like to address the township committee please raise your hand now I see no hands mayor oh yes do we Frank on up Frank do we have do we have people online watching we do okay we do someone was texting me that they were watching exciting what that someone was texting me that they were watching it was exciting yeah we have a few on zoom and there are others likely watching on YouTube well basically unfortunately um okay this might seem a little stupid or crazy but the people upstairs um were kicked out and um the landlord basically um started revising his apartment okay and um and I call him Rolling Hills because he didn't know he doesn't really know what he was doing had ceilings falling down um and you had kitchen ceiling fell down the living room ceiling fell down you know um for for one particular thing um my house is in shambles and um also knocked over knocked out the electric and the electric basically didn't work for I had a couple rooms so I had the kitchen room working okay and bedroom there was one circuit that was working and everything else basically was knocked out and uh I mean I'm I'm not one to complain about anything on even though I was in the shadow of walking through Darkness just to get to the bathroom you know I lights and everything else for my wife to HP in but she never leave whever she put them and would always be walking through the darkness you know in this apartment and this was going on for a half a year you know um and um while being kicked out so that's one have to go but then this um landlord goes and starts writing um late charges back 30 years 20 years ago whatever it is you know um that he wants uh taking me to court and he wants $10,000 for L charges you know um um the only thing um I would like to do possibly is uh I never signed up for senior citizen housing or anything like that but is there any way to sneak in just to take a room or something there we we should connect you to help yeah yeah when do you go to court um go to the court um next Monday oh of course next Monday um do you have a phone number where I can reach you um my my problem is too with um cell phones it's okay my land phone got knocked out so then um so my wife wasn't paying that bill because the phone got knocked out and then it's okay you know what we'll we'll do after the meeting I'll come over and we'll talk and we'll figure out a way through but you should get some help you have rights you can't just be kicked out um but I'm just he made me sign some paper back in the middle of the Year middle of the summer um because he blocked his car and so and things like that but um I mean the I mean I don't mind being kicked out of the apartment and I've been there too long but it's kind of like um he kicked a lady out upstairs okay and her rent was 850 but then when he went to court he wrote down ,800 that she was paying per month and okay um mine I um you know over year I'm supposed to be a senior so I post that a rate of like 4% or something like that well he was jumping $100 hour here 00 hour there MH I mean my Brent's 16 but he's wrote down 17 now um for this R you know yeah okay well let's connect after the meeting and get more details I don't want you to tell too much of your personal details because you know this meeting is being recorded and everybody's watching so let's connect after the meeting I will come over and we will connect and we'll get you some help all right okay thank you Mr daffis sure nice that you're happen to have that position uh nobody else for public comment I'd take a motion to adjourn till tomorrow night second yes Luca yes single yes Thurman yes mayor Adams yes thank you every