##VIDEO ID:VDwfkpll2eg## good evening this is the Village Council public Workshop the date is September 4th 2024 the time is 7:35 p.m. adequate notice of this meeting has been provided by a posting on the bulletin board in Village Hall by mail to the Ridgewood news the record and by submission to all persons entitled the same as provided by law of a schedule including the date and time of this meeting roll call Deputy Mayor pin here council member Reynolds is not yet here council member whites here councilman windrad here and mayor V Janis here will you all please join us in a salute to our flag I pledge aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for it stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and welcome everyone back from summer vacation and summer break here we go again let's go right to public comments okay Dana Glazer um I know know that there's you're going to be discussing the ordinance Dana if you would give us your address please actually uh I I believe that that's no longer uh asked for if you could just state that you're a resident R res resident of Ridgewood New Jersey okay um so I'm going to let my neighbors speak uh in in more detail about our grave deter uh concerns over the repealing of this ordinance which is kept Clinton Avenue from a vehicular incident for over 60 years um but I'm here right now to talk about dirt yesterday is it is the light on on the microphone could you check yeah I think it is I can hear is it why am I not booming enough that's better is that better a little closer to it thank you a little closer okay I'm assuming I have a few extra seconds here problem all right uh so yesterday some dirt was placed on our proper property to cover up where the work had been done to straighten up this east side of of our street the workers did a good job with it and the grass will soon grow there U but then I woke up late last night with the worry that this dirt might indeed be poisonous I shouldn't have to worry about that but here we are so I'm asking you um where is this dirt from and has it been properly tested and I shouldn't have night terrors about dirt being placed on my property from the village but that's where we are after 600 truckloads of Tainted dirt filled with Mercury and other hazardous substances was dumped at the shedler property and now of course there's an njde investigation so 600 truckloads where does that much dirt even come from uh recently I learned that habernickel park has a similar issue and where else is this happening in Ridgewood I know that most of or all of you uh were not on the Village Council when a lot of this occurred but now the responsibility lies with you for what to do about it uh what to do about a village engineer who be okay to have toxic dirt dumped like that do you minimize the impact and continue to let an employee like that work here do you have an internal investigation to see where all this toxic dirt came from or do you just pretend it didn't happen so I ask how can I trust that the dirt just put onto my property isn't poisonous as well uh government no matter the size only functions properly when there is a trust that is working for the Ben benefit of the many and not the few The Village Council this one has again and again broken that trust in my opinion has acted with Brazen disregard to those residents who inconveniently call them out on plans that are half-baked dangerous or worse and so this November I hope the residents of rid will cons consider different Ste words for our village thank you thank you Dana Steve lebenson I grew up in Ridgewood sorry Steve your last name again lebenson l lenson l IB n s o n thank you sure uh I grew up in Ridgewood my 35th uh Ridgewood High School reunion is in a couple of weeks I'm here on behalf of my family and my son Daniel for whom my wife elae and I are legal Guardians Daniel's 21 with autism and a significant intellectual disability we urge the continued limited closure of Clinton Avenue to enable pedestrian access for Daniel during school times there's currently no other option for him to leave our home safely during these times we moved from the Upper West Side to when Daniel was 10 because he was at a high risk of Al lopment meaning he would try to escape from our apartment Ridge was was an easy choice to return to we chose Clinton Avenue because of the through traffic closure it was the safest option given Daniel's lack of safety awareness is in habit of wandering away we reached out to then to then chief of police to notify of his presence on our street and in town Daniel's educational programs have always had a safety component people with intellectual disabilities need very clear guidelines learn through years of reinforcement to stay safe without safety precautions like at a when we're in a parking lot he will reach out to hold our hand even at 21 he relies 100% on walking to go to Westside Bagels watch the train at the station and take public transportation travel training has been a part of his school curriculum for years to prepare him to take public transportation as an adult because he does not have the Judgment or reaction time to drive last month he received his New Jersey Transit disability pass which he proudly shows in order to use that pass he must be able to safely leave our house and get to Godwin and Mal earlier this year the citizen safety advisory Comm committee and police declared the Clinton Avenue was unsafe for pedestrians during school hours with the Street closed to through traffic but no sidewalk was installed on our side of the street there's no pedestrian access in response to our pleas The Villages suggested that Daniel Cross Clinton Avenue to the sidewalk this is not illegal Crossing for anyone because it is dangerous Daniel has been trained not to cross outside of a crosswalk he doesn't have the Judgment or response time to neav navigate moving traffic to recap the street was declared unsafe for pedestrians when it was closed no sidewalk was installed on our side no pedestrian safety measures have been put in place despite desite our repeated request the only suggestion from the village is a midblock crossing for him that is not legal for anyone because it's not safe and now you're considering whether to open the street to traffic after Daniel's been encouraged to jwalk and the street would not the street would be open not because the closure is illegal because but because of an administrative oversight by The Village which can easily be cured with a submission to the D which they have invited please do the right thing and make sure that that Clinton Avenue is closed to School traffic it's necessary to keep keep give Daniel the opportunity to access the street and exercise some hard-earned Independence thank you thank you Steve good evening an loving it really is heartbreaking to hear that story um I understand that you were able to get the 60 saplings that you were you know planning to get for the planting project they're smaller than was was hoped for but at least you were able to get them I do hope that you keep it on the front burner the idea of having our own tree farms as we once did and uh obviously we can't do it at shedler can't do it at Hackle can't do it as I had thought perhaps at the Village um garage property it' be nice to have a tree farm there but maybe there is an untainted piece of land where we can start start growing our own saplings and not have to buy them I really think that a lot of homeowners would be willing to have them at their own house I would my backyard is huge I would do 10 saplings growing in my yard and I have several friends that would do the same um I think this could save the village a lot of money you could have whatever species you wanted um and it would be a great idea within the parks as well thank you thank you in Christina Millian Ridgewood resident in matrix's recent August report which was close to 7,000 Pages it showed sample 16 is contaminated and this is near residential property lines at shedler if Matrix needs to go 5T Beyond these samples Residential Properties would most likely be impacted so I am here tonight to ask what the plan is and will the village cover the cost um if if Matrix has to go into residential property lines and by residents I mean elderly and children that live there did any additional soil from Ridgewood waterers two sites and Bergen Community College go to other sites or Parks inside Ridgewood and or any other places in Bergen County now that the town knows it accepted and dumped contaminated soil from these sites as per the NJ D's uh December 2023 letter what is the responsibility of our town to make sure other towns didn't accept this soil and what are the repercussions from these two sites remediation has been discussed a lot this summer without knowing the full health impact of the contaminated soil dumped near homes that sat for years some with pools and private water wells so residents would like Clarity on exposure risks and further there was no notice to Residents regarding dust control or safety measures during numerous soil dumping trips from what residents could find and I'm just asking that if you have those documents so please put them on the website to provide some level of comfort and data to the people living feet from the shedler property residents have also requested a public Q&A regarding the soil dumped at shedler that has so far been refused by this Council and it would be great if you could please consider that a 7,000 page report close to a 7 th000 page report um that posted has sparked quite a lot of questions from residents during our weekly shedler meetings and it would be great if residents could start asking Matrix direct questions in a public forum because it involves taxpayer money siloed oneoff emails with questions doesn't feel right for the entire town thank you thank you Christina hi good evening so my name is norell I live at 520 West s River Road so I thank you I appreciate the opportunity to speak to the uh to this committee today uh concerning about the uh contamination on the shedler property I live uh 520 is just adjacent to the Shel property so as a resident uh we all have a vested interest in the health and safety of our family and our environment the contamination of shelter property poses a significant uh risk not only to the land itself but also to the also to oppose to our neighbors uh the value of our house uh about our children and the uh the property value of my house especially so I urge the council to take immediately action to address this contamination this this is essential I I just we need just to do an essential to conduct a soil testing to disclose the results to all residents and just to have a transparent inter remediation plan where the community will have inputs so we deserve to know uh what is we deserve to know the cont what's the contamination is present we deserve to know the potential risk to our health we deserve to know what measures the village is taking for our safety so additionally I request updates to be provided to our community Through out throughout the remediation process clear communication will help alleviate the fears and Foster trust uh between the resident and also the local Administration we cannot afford to take this matter lightly okay the safety of our homes and also our safety our health is at stake the administration decision whatever whatever decision this Administration take will take a long effect in our community and in our health therefore we ask I ask in the name of my neighborhood I ask in the name of the community that this Village that this Administration take this matter very seriously and take action immediately our children are at hisk our health are at hisk our pet are at his is so just please do your job if there's anything we can do just to help to assist to expedite this process they'll be just count on us so now just it's not right it's not feir that we live in fear pay for actions of pre preious Administration and I ask this Council just to please just take action and let this get uh resolved as soon as possible thank you thank you Nora anyone else from the audience Cynthia o'keef resident of Ridgewood um you know listening to norca and to Christina um speak about the shedler community um you know really really it's very emotional we've been coming here for you know a very long time now to talk to all of you um we've implored you to take our safety into consideration we've implored you to um take our health into consideration um many residents asked for the soil to be tested obviously it has been we've listened to Matrix speak on on a number of occasions um and so you know I've even gone back and tried to listen and write down some of the things that they've said so that I understand it a 7,000 page document is not easy to digest and I'm not a scientist or a medical professional um but living right there and as norca said we have little children across the street they have a swimming pool the shedler is in their backyard um there's an elderly woman who lives across the street Street you know with breathing problems I don't know if you know the dust from this property has you know compromised her health I I you know I'm not in a position to evaluate it but if we say Ridgewood cares I want to un I want to make sure that we are able able to ask questions of Matrix I this is the first time I'm hearing that the council has denied this action and that's unacceptable if that's true it's unacceptable um we will not allow unfortunately allow you to stand in our way we deserve to get the answers to any question that we have that's our right um and we will make sure that we will do whatever it takes to you know go through the proper channels we also are capable of calling the njde and um other sources that can give us those answers if in fact you don't want us to to have that um Advantage which again I don't think is fair if that's the truth I don't know um you know we are under so much stress and pressure we have full-time jobs we're trying to care for our families the emotional toll this is taking on people is incredible and so when we also hear that there's going to be a rush to judgment we're going to start getting quotes we're going to start doing this and move fast we got ourselves into this problem because we were trying to move fast do does anybody understand that there was a rush to get this ball field there are 37 fields in Ridgewood 37 if you take the master Library you'll count them and you'll see and I've done it I have an Excel spreadsheet I'm happy to send it to all of you 37 Fields so do not ever talk about the lack of field it's the lack of Maintenance do not make the shedler neighbors casualties of this Pet Project thank you thank you Cynthia anyone else seeing no one we'll go to our hybrid access oh was there someone okay um I actually don't see her online just so you know um Susan you're up first you're on mute oh hi um Susan Ruan um I reside in Redwood um I want to begin by thanking the council for Paving West Susan Susan we can't hear you clearly Susan if you could hold the phone closer to your okay now thank you is this better better all right great um I want to thank the council as well as Keith The Village manager for having the road um West sadle River Road repay before began um it's such a much it's much Pleasant to drive on that road without the potholes um I just now want to um piggy back on piggyback on some of the resident comments about um one the independent investigation I believe it should be an independent investigation versus an internal investigation to The Dumping of um um contaminate roil at shedler and Hummer jle if I pronounce that correctly um because the person that um oversaw The Dumping should not be the one investigating The Dumping um I just believe that that's that's counterintuitive um I also believe that there should be a public Q&A for people residents um to ask question questions about the contamination and to hear people's concerns I believe experts should be there similar to what we had for the um Army Corps of Engineers I don't know if they'll have all the answers but residents should be heard and it is something that shouldn't be um dismissed and finally um I do want to know if the workers this is something that was asked to me and I thought it was a good point by one of my other neighbors if the workers who worked on The Dumping of the contamination of and shedler as well as worked on the burn um I don't believe they were had the protective gear to um you know they knew of the contamination or wore the protective gear has anyone reached out to them or their companies to let them know of the contamination and you know for them to start getting tested if they need to or any have any health related problems um I'm just thinking of 911 and people going down there and the after effects of that all right that was pretty much it thank you thank you Susan Ruck you're up you're still on mute Ruck yeah RoR hbe one Franklin Avenue excuse me roor Hal one Franklin Avenue in Ridgewood uh I took a couple of deep breaths listening to some of the comments I mean the idea of someone complaining about the village spreading poisonous soil on his property is ludicrous the guy is either an idiot or he's being totally disingenuous please this isons you're going I have to speak more respectfully yep we don't use the word idiot in here okay now it is but I feel insulted by someone talking such nonsense okay I'm being very respectful now some people in their fear mongering are beginning to turn rid into a Chernobyl or a super fun site it isn't we need to keep things in perspective we need to keep things in perspective I mean New Jersey there isn't a single square foot that hasn't been contaminated at some point or another by someone doing something that looking back they should not have done it isn't like the thing shutler is going to be glowing in the dark it's ridiculous and you guys have been doing all what you could to remediate the situation which you inherited and for the record it was I Ric halbe who more than anyone else fought against the BM and bringing in the the turning shedler into a dump and none of the people who are now the big heroes and trying to protect everyone's Health was there with me so let's put things in perspective and let's stop this gamesmanship and let's stop this absolutely ridiculous statements that have been made which I find terribly insulting thank you very much thank you rck Frank you're up hi Frank Mortimer 426 van buen Street Ridgewood New Jersey I apologize that I couldn't be there tonight uh just wanted to start off first by thanking the Ridgewood police for making their presence known for the first day of school um just awesome to start the first day with them around and second I was calling in because I know that there's a lot of talk about Paving roads around town and uh when psng installed um those pipes they really tore up a bunch of roads and I'm just requesting that the village kind of lean on them and put some pressure on them to pave those roads as well so that uh those roads can be as pretty and slick as the ones that the village has uh repaired themselves and that's it so thank you very much and have a good night thank you Frank Elaine you're up you're on mute Elaine good hello Elaine D Bliss 41 Clinton Avenue thank you um I'm stuck at work um but but they're in spirit last year the citizens safety advisory committee and the police determined that sidewalks were necessary for pedestrian safety on Clinton Avenue during school times even with the Street closed to through traffic and full pedestrian right of way but a decision was made not to provide a sidewalk or any pedestrian access on our side of the street where two people with disabilities reside including our son Daniel no action has been taken so far in response to our series concerns for his safety watching the construction over the summer was distressing because of the statement it sent to our family permanent recision of this ordinance would be worse this morning was Daniel's first day in a two-year program for intellectually disabled adults at Bergen Community College his schedule requires him to leave our house every morning at 8:30 to take the New Jersey Transit bus the goal of the program is to support him and being as independent as he can be I walked him outside to cross the street this morning to the sidewalk at 8:30 within seconds a car a dump truck and a landscaping truck flew by he would have stepped out to cross the set to the sidewalk that's the current plan that suggested I drove him to school instead and that's why I'm still at work the choice was made not to install a sidewalk on our side and no other pedestrian access or safety measures have been implemented despite our pleas as an aside we requested a midblock crosswalk which is permitted under Section crosswalks there are 11 of them instead the villag has suggested that Daniel Cross midblock to reach the sidewalk anyway jay walking isn't permitted in Ridgewood because it's not safe Daniel has a 59 IQ and extremely low processing speed a midblock crossing without safety measures and two-way School traffic will result in tragedy please don't preclude pedestrian asks us on our side tell him to jwalk and now unleash School traffic on him and on a street declared unsafe for pedestrians at School times when it was closed the decision would be cruel and unjustifiable we've been worried sick all summer waiting for a ruling on the legality of the closure we know now that the closure is not illegal and in July the to commissioner himself indicated that is permissible in response to request by Paul Aronson on Daniel's behalf you have the choice as the Village Council to help keep Daniel safe by taking steps to maintain the status quo that has existed for decades there's never been a safety incident on Clinton with this ordinance in place please don't use the administrative error by The Village to force Daniel across live traffic twice a day at school times on a street declared unsafe when it was closed no one wants to be responsible for the consequences I urge you my family urges you to take the necessary steps as quickly as humanly possible to maintain the two 1hour closures to school traffic at least until our family moves or until a sidewalk is installed on our side thank you thank you Christine excuse me Elaine did that before um fetra you're up FR there you go hello hi pret D Silva 521 West Saddle River Road Ridgewood New Jersey um I I'm not sure of all the comments that have been made uh so it may be repetitive uh I I was able to review um in part The Matrix report regarding the soil uh examination on the shettler property and um I just wanted to state that yeah I I am you know I can read reports like that and have in the past but it is a very complex report and discussed complex issues and there several statements regarding chemicals exceeding State requirements and you'd have to go back and see what those state requirements are it's a 7,000 page report and I would ask the council to consider seriously having a public hearing so that the average person or most people could understand this because it is quite a job to work through this and to try to understand it it would only be fair I think to the neighborhood and the village to to really have a clear understanding I know that someone from Matrix came and spoke but to be able to ask questions to understand in plain English what this really means uh and how we can deal with it um we we have and we continue to spill spend a great deal of money uh on that property and uh in order to really express our point of view and support or encouragement for Alternatives we really need to be educated or to have a clear understanding of of what we're dealing with and so I would truly urge you to uh schedule a public discussion hearing or whatever we want to call it so that people can really be engaged in the dialogue uh and and and and provide their input uh into this review thank you thank you fredra anyone else uh good evening boy a loving I am a resident of the state of New Jersey uh just a reminder to the council that Daniel's law prohibits The Village from posting the names I'm sorry the addresses of anybody who is entitled to protection by Daniel's law there were five people tonight who gave their addresses the clerk of course can scrub the addresses from the meeting minutes but those addresses cannot be scrubbed from the videos that are posted by The Village believe the township of Verona or the township of seed Grove one of those two I can't remember specifically requests people who speak at public meetings not to give their addresses so that there is no violation of Daniel's law last week there was only one person who gave their address the mayor was not present tonight there seem to be five for some reason just a reminder there is no obligation there is no code The Village has that indicates that your address must be provided to be a public speaker and Daniel's law prohibits the publication the posting of addresses of those who are protected by Daniel's law none of you know the backgrounds of any of the people who spoke tonight whether they are entitled to such protection the protection not only extends to people who are currently employed it extends to their immediate family members and those who are retired there's no way you can know the backgrounds of all these people who speak so it is my suggestion that the council announce publicly that there is no longer a requirement to provide your address there is no reason that the village needs to know where we live as individuals perhaps for a zoning Board hearing yes but not to make comments at a public council meeting thank you very much thank you Boyd Dana Glazer Ridgewood resident uh I just wanted to because I'm fortunately I'm going to need to leave shortly um but as as a as a resident on Clinton Avenue uh you know my wife and I we've taken we take uh the safety of our street extremely seriously and and you know since we've lived here when we in the morning if we have to move our car we we we keep it on on the side street on Highland Avenue we don't come back onto the street for the safety of the kids so we take this stuff very seriously um and you know to repeal this ordinance is a mistake and you know and and you're you're choosing to do this this is not like somebody's holding a gun to your head and saying this is illegal you can't do this you're choosing to do this uh the things that I'm most concerned about are at the top of the street where you have children Crossing there is no crossing guard there at this at present as far as I'm understanding this uh if you're going to repeal this thing you've got to have a crossing guard up there because otherwise that's dangerous uh you know what I have you know neighbors who are have have some uh have have some disability and there needs to be things to to address that you know without that it's disrespectful and it's dangerous so you're you know the thing about this ordinance that's been here for I don't know over 60 years is it's made the entire Street a sidewalk is it imperfect absolutely is il legal it is it is absolutely legal it has been it's never been challenged the Attorney General did not come over and say no you can't do this I know you guys asked so there's no reason to repeal this other than to say well we don't want to do it anymore because now we have a sidewalk but you're going to make the the street less safe so strongly I strongly can suggest that you really think about that before you repeal this thank you very much thank you Dana and with that I'm going to close public comment um I just have I know a lot of people have things to say on this dayas I want to start with you know there are a lot of things that we all disagree on and that's fine but one thing we all agree on is that the property at shedler and at Hamber nickel must be cleaned up to the highest D standards that are maintained this Council as Dana said did not bring in one grain of soil to shedler or to Hackle that was done before anybody here was sitting here that being said it's this council's responsibility to make sure it's clean and we are as committed as you are to that I'll say it again we are as committed as you are to that and in terms of the information the moment we get and read and process the information that we get from Matrix or from any other source regarding any soil testing it is put on our website we bring Matrix in here to testify so that you know what we know we want you to know everything that we know because if we don't then there's a tendency to fill in the blanks with inaccurate information we want you to have all the information so and as far as Clinton Avenue is concerned unfortunately Dana left he said that this is not illegal actually it is we have a letter Keith's got it I'm sure he's going to read it from the Department of Transportation please please don't do that um that says that we cannot do this and that we must repeal this and then we must review whether we are going to apply for a waiver which is why that side of the room is filled with police and Engineers so that we can we're going to have a hearing tonight and you'll have another opportunity to address this Council during the hearing so we are going to look at this as closely as we possibly can as far as Daniel is concerned we are all concerned about him however because there's litigation we cannot discuss it publicly so I open it up to the rest of the council mayor if I may oh I'm sorry well just I was going to basically repeat what you just said which was that as I have advised the council in every litigation matter that has come before the council throughout the years um for the sake of the preservation of the record I'd advise the council not to comment on the litigation specifically um and then the the second comment I was was going to make with regard was with regard to the issue with Daniel's law because that's something that we haven't discussed Daniel's law was enacted uh as everybody I believe knows because the son of a of a of a judge in New Jersey was killed and the uh protected parties or protected persons under Daniels or or Law Enforcement Officers judicial officers prosecutors immediate family members of those individuals um I think Cedar Grove is the only town that I'm aware of EXC me it's Verona Verona is the only town that I'm aware of that has taken any action on it um it would be in fact what I can do is provide the council for the next meeting with a list of the protected uh persons under that law and maybe advise people before the meeting as they come up for the public comment that I they believe that they are a protected party that they can just advise that they are a resident and not give an interest and that would be fine so and and with regard to that may I I'll respectfully disagree with Mr loving um the onus is not on the Village Council to determine whether folks are a protective class it's on the individuals coming forward to make public comment to determine whether or not they want to share their address based upon their protective class status so no one's asking the Village Council especially the mayor to be a mindreader in this situation if a protected class of somebody in law enforcement somebody who works for the Judiciary comes forward and chooses not to share that information they have every right not to on under the under the law I I'm wondering if maybe we can put this on the agenda for another meeting and perhaps um get some more background from you man I mean candidly um I I was going to ask you know ask you to Pine on it anyway boy I have the utmost respect for you but when it comes to legal advice I I want to you know hear the legal you know from our lawyer um candidly you know just because we don't you know we're allowed to ask I'm not sure we should um I do want to know who who's orig resident who's not that to me is material where you live in mid I'm not sure that matters so much to me but either way I think we should have a policy and we should enforce it and not just allow folks to kind of make it up as they go along um I'd like to know where we are legally um you know again if you want to give this I and I trust in your opinion and what you have said is consistent with my understanding of Daniel's long when I was a prosecutor what we were taught on it um but I'd like to just see some more written on it and then maybe we could table it and you know actually discuss it because I do think we should have a policy that should be enforced and if there's some folks that are objecting to it let's have that conversation um and what is permissible under the law what's not as permissible under the law it matters but then also what we want to do and what we don't want to do within the boundary of the laws I think also matters um the other point I just want to make um is I know we had somebody speak twice tonight um it doesn't really bother me tonight because we didn't have a full you know full room of folks um I don't want to set precedent on that I know in the past we've not allowed folks to speak twice at the beginning we've always said you need to speak once at the beginning and then you get your second ble at the end of the evening again tonight not a big deal but I don't want to set precedent so in the future when we do have a lot of folks that want to speak we we have people that are doubling up um and then just finally I do want to just Echo some of Paul's comments I I do um take some some offense at some of the comments around safety um you know this Council as soon as we were made aware of dumping that was done by under well no one was here and we're we're clear on that um immediately stopped construction immediately authorized a lot of money in order to do proper soil testing we've had Matrix come and speak here publicly we've had opportunity for all five of us to ask questions we've published everything that we've been provided on the topic um certainly I'm willing to consider doing some sort of public hearing after the next round of testing is done but I want to be super clear to everyone that this notion that we do not care about the safety of citizens and we've not moved quickly enough to address the safety issue I just take the utmost uh disagreement with that and that's just really not fair and it's not right and I think it's it's more motivated by you know other desires than it is around um trying to get you know the safest outcome um for the citizens of ridw which is what we all want um so I do disagree tremendously with those comments tonight I just don't think they're fair and just let me just respond when Daniel's law that's why I suggest next week just make the announcement and then maybe we can talk about at the work session at the end of the month and and through you mayor I've spoken to the m League of municipalities about this it was brought up at a prior council meeting I I spoke to the league um they are putting together some guidance on this uh some municipalities like Verona uh took some initiative to eliminate the disclosure of the address for everyone but that's set by policy in the township of Verona um that's something that the council can certainly consider moving forward um how they would like to proceed um but we can get some guidance from the league of municipalities and share it with the members of The Village Council as well so and I just want to add a couple things if you don't want to give us your address that's fine by me I mean I'm not I don't think anybody in this council is going to press it I think we're okay with that whatever everybody feels comfortable with I know public comment can be overwhelming when I was a member of the public so we want it to be a safe comfortable space and so if you don't want to disclose it but for me I think all of us would feel very badly if anybody was feeling intimidated by offering that information I too want to just address some things so with respect to shedler and the burm and all the things that have been said um already we're going to test the BM we're going to test the floor we're going to disclose the tests and we're going to do all that in public light which is what we've been doing I um at the last meeting we paid for expedition of the test and then more things happened in between these meetings but we're going to test we're going to report and then we're going to form a plan and we are going to remediate and we're going to do that and not only are the shedler neighbors going to know that but the community is going to know that and that is the plan um you know it's important for me because everyone always goes back to the field not only do we have a public safety issue but we have a $2.6 million asset that until any plan goes forward is inaccessible so we are going to work on this project we are going to since I've taken office we've posted more public information than before since we've owned shedler on the website and we're going to continue to do that so as the testing happens you'll know about the testing when it's happening you'll know the results of the testing and then you will know what the plan is um but we are going to remediate this and we are going to make sure that this problem that was created by others is cleaned up by us and if um you know we've heard from several people if anybody has any questions about that reach out to us and let us know I I'm trying to respond to all the emails that we get to the extent we can um on a lighter note with respect to the tree farm the tree farm we're planning a field trip with um shade tree uh pramis does have a tree farm and we're going to look at it to see what the acreages that they use how many trees they yield if they're open to a partnership because they may be a good source and although and let you know we are saplings secure we have found 60 saplings and we're at shade trees very happy about that the 60 smaller saplings and then we have the 30 larger um and I think that's all that I want to say but again Mar if you have any questions I haven't heard from you please reach out to us and just know that when we know something we'll let you know and thank you for coming tonight mayor just a few other I'm sorry oh I just had something on public comment and speaking twice um we not necessarily this Council but I've been going to meetings for 20 plus years and the The Village Council has always allowed as long as every person that has wanted to speak has spoken if there is time available you can speak a second time it has always been that way I don't know if there's anything in the books that say you can or you can't but that is the way the Village Council has always proceeded in the in the first beginning meeting you have an obligation right that's the that's what I said as as long as there's still that 40 minutes everybody that has wanted to speak has spoken somebody can speak a second time mayor through you just a few responses to the residents uh first of all to uh to Dana and I'm I'm sorry that he excused himself um but hopefully he'll hear this on the recording uh the dirt that was brought in the planting soil uh to restore and reced the front Frontage of the homes on Clinton Avenue that dirt was provided by the contractor um that's customary when we contract out a job for restoration purposes the inference that that dirt may have come from shedler or some other Municipal property is une unequivocally inaccurate uh we're going to talk about Clinton Avenue as part of the special public meeting tonight uh with regard to shedler um it is very difficult to have our environmental company come in and provide definitive answers to the public based upon the fact that the soil testing has not been completed in its entirety so to have Matrix come in and answer questions without all of the data and information that they need to evaluate our situation and create a remediation plan is premature um I did have a request from a resident of the shedler neighborhood uh who made a similar request to directly to the njd in discussing it with Matrix um and with the community outreach folks from the D we are all an agreement that it is premature to hold that type of meeting um with respect to the Village Council they were never involved in those discussions so in fact they did not deny any type of public meeting um the information that was provided back to the residents that we would wait till we have all the information was provided by me and it was in consult with the D and with Matrix um I can tell you that Matrix and I had a conference call early this morning uh they have spoken to the solid waste Bureau down at the D um who have changed the scope of work um I'll talk a little bit more about that under the manager's report um but I I bring that to light because this is a work in progress okay these answers are we don't have them yet so we can't give you answers that we don't yet have and we are working with DP and with Matrix as both the mayor um and council member winterr have indicated and we're going to continue to do that um to miss O'Keefe um I don't believe that we're rushing this process at all to be honest with you um to be honest with you I'm a little frustrated in some of the the delays that have taken place um especially with the DP having to review what Matrix scope of work is going to be um I'm not saying that we're pushing for it to move faster um it's just because we have folks asking the questions that you were up here asking tonight it's frustrating to me that we can't give you answers until that final testing is complete um with regard to uh Mr Mortimer uh we have been in touch with psng with regard to their restoration plan for the roadways this fall um I think Mr ruteshouser actually spoke to or communicated with psng today um about getting that plan underway so we are pressing them and we'll continue to try to do that before the winter sets in so that folks have um have their roads restored where the gas Mains were installed I think that's all I have mayor Keith I have a question um one of the public commenters was asking what happens if I think this is what the question meant if the delineation uh borings are go out in concentric circles what if that concentric Circle exceeds the boundary of the shed property onto private property um I would like to know if Matrix has a protocol how they proceed in that kind of I think the D is going to define the protocol as to any notification of other affected Property Owners um we can get that from through Matrix uh from the D so that we exactly understand what that notification process looks like but I'm confident that's intact yeah I thought there must be a protocol sure this is not the first time right okay and and let me just comment on that that that we don't determine what to test how to test test where to test Matrix does not determine that Matrix makes a proposal to the D not to us they answer to the D we just pay them and the D determines if that protocol is adequate or inadequate and they then will revise matrix's protocol if they deem it necessary so ultimately the answer lies with the D they make those decisions we just follow along and we do exactly what they tell us but at the same point I I just want to say because you know there's been a lot said there are four adjacent properties and clearly we're going to handle those four properties in a very sensitive nature because of the adjacency to this contamination and I just want to make sure that you know from Mary greens which is 510 I think it's 516 520 and 522 those are those are the properties that are adjacent and I think we can talk to D we can talk to Matrix but in my opinion I'm not just saying this but you know I've met with those neighbors there in the beginning parts of this that's a unique situation and we're going to I hope as a council recognize that the adjacency makes it much more sensitive and I I that's how I feel and I just wanted you to know that and and one other point of clarification you know the comparison between what's happening at shedler and what's happening at habernickel completely apples and oranges the issue at habernickel is confined to a 5x5 foot area it has it is not because anything was trucked in there okay actually the um arsenical compound that was found at habernickel is most often a result of weed killer believe it or not now we can I say with utter certainty that weed killer created that testing result no but when you talk to Matrix and you talk to Professionals in the field about this particular compound very often it's a result of weat killer so you know there's a very big difference between that type of situation and there were eight testing locations at heracle only one tested with this compound in comparison to what happened at shedler which in 2019 this soil was brought from multiple locations onto that site very different situation anybody else no let's get on with it Keith your manager's report thank you mayor so first I want to welcome everyone back uh to the new school year this week uh today was the second day of school here in Ridgewood and we've seen a very smooth transition to the new school year I especially want to thank uh the men and women of the Ridgewood Police Department for Staffing the schools at both drop off and pickup times this week and to all of our crossing guards who have been deployed throughout the village to make sure our students get to and from school safely on tonight's public meeting agend is resolution 24- 286 the shared services agreement with the Ridgewood Board of Education to staff Three Special three police officers at the high school and each of the middle schools each officer has been provided with a conditional letter of appointment and we are awaiting the results of their pre-employment medical evaluations to finalize their hiring the chief anticipates that their appointment will be made at a council meeting later this month and should be at in the schools no later than October 1st prior to the start of the school year the village contractor was able to resurface Union Street down Street West Saddle River Road and North Monroe Street North Monroe was a two-year project funded by a New Jersey Department of Transportation Grant we are pleased to have accomplished this and the East Glenn and Clinton Avenue sidewalk projects before Labor Day the follow uh this followed six streets in the commercial business district being paved this past spring and we anticip at that acrian Avenue will be paved later this fall by the by Bergen County bids for the Kingsbridge Lane pedestrian bridge are due on September 24th we look forward to having that on the council's agenda in early October since our last meeting we've met with the residents both above and below the view on Crest Road and Hill Crest Road to devise a plan to address parking litter and additional plantings in that area both the police department and the parks division are working to address these issues we also met with the Chamber of Commerce to discuss parking in the central business district we discussed 15-minute parking loading zones reviewing the signage downtown and how to better promote the use of the garage on tonight's agenda the council will be discussing the request for free parking in the garage for two upcoming Chamber of Commerce events downtown also on tonight's special public meeting is resolution 24287 the approval of the revised scope of work for soil testing at shedler the scope of work has been modified by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection as I mentioned earlier and Matrix has now submitted a revised proposal based on consultation with DP testing should be scheduled later this month also at shedler Richard grub Associates will begin the phase 2 archaeological study next week and that work effort will be ongoing through Thanksgiving with regard to the inquiry made by Mr halby at a prior meeting I was asked to provide information into turf field funding from both the njde Green Acres Program and the Bergen County open space trust fund in 2023 Green Acres awarded 5 million 299,792,458 9 to 2023 Bergen County awarded 5,734 62 to over 20 municipalities in Bergen County for Turf projects the 2024 berens Bergen County open space award recommendations as they've been provided to the municipalities preliminarily allows for $1 136,000 Grant to be awarded to Woodridge burrow for their Turf Athletic Field projects I'm glad to share these spreadsheets with any individuals who would like access to them please feel free to email me if you would like me to share finally with regard to Grant Awards the villag is in receipt of the September 1st report from Millennium strategies we are happy to report that we are being recommended for $13,300 for the Veterans Field lighting project we've also received $10,000 for a community energy planning funding grant $68,000 for Hab park playground as I've previously reported and $75,000 for fire department gear and Equipment this year totaling over $256,000 in addition we have nearly $5 million in pending Grant applications that one's for you councilman whites uh which are currently being reviewed and evaluated and we are hopeful to hear about those Grant Awards soon let me know when they're granted amen finally uh before a few announcements I just want to wish um algar Stone one of our Legion here in Bridgewood a very happy H 100th birthday I had the opportunity to attend his birthday celebration with the mayor and the deputy mayor God bless you alar and thank you for your service to our country few announcements tonight uh for the month of September residents are invited to view the portraits exhibit um which honor those we lost on 911 2001 at the Ridgewood Library this exhibit includes photos and narrative statements it's open each and every day that the library is open and provides a tranquil place to reflect and remember those we lost the summer concert series uh for at CASRO shell concludes tomorrow night with a concert by the Nerds begins at 800m behind veterans behind Village Hall at Veterans Field Chamber of Commerce annual car show in the central business district will be held this Friday at 6 p.m. coffee with the council for our new residents will take place this Saturday Saturday September 7th from 10: to 12: at the stable on Maple Avenue The Village shred day will take place on September 7th from 8il noon or until the truck is full the event will take place at the grading pool parking lot limit of five boxes or paper bags per vehicle the event is for confidential documents only please stay in your vehicle no walk ups allowed and place items for shredding in the trunk and a paper bag or cardboard box only no PL plastic bags please Burg County Utilities Authority hazardous waste collection will take place on Saturday September 7th from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. and that's Rainer shine at Bergen County campgr reservation in Mawa free for Bergen County residents please bring your ID no commercial vehicles are allowed Ridgewood Chamber of Commerce continues to hold their flea market which will run through October 29th from 8:30 to 2 at the train station on the west side on Sundays enjoy Fresh Farm to Table produce vegetables fruits baked goods local honey homemade mozzarella and more the recreation and parks department uh will be hosting their annual Ridgewood Fall Festival Street Fair on Saturday September 15th from noon to 5: rain or shine admission is free to along East Ridgewood Avenue between Maple and Oak uh please come by and bring the family the gold star family's American Legion Post 53 uh will honor all gold star families for their sacrifice at Memorial Park Vana Square on Sunday September 29th starting at 700 p.m. Village Council upcoming meetings September 11th is a public meeting September 25th is a council work session September 30th which is a a Monday due to a holiday the following Wednesday um is a work session October 9th is a public meeting and October 23rd is a work session all begin at 7:30 p.m. and mayor uh if you'll indulge me I'm just going to turn it over to Heather uh she just needs she just wants to report out on the adoption of the new opra form that's required uh as Oprah reforms went into effect yesterday uh September 3rd Heather uh there are new Oprah forms that are um going to be um adopted by the council by resolution next week and from now on um Oprah form these Oprah forms are the ones that need to be used so they will be put on our website after the adoption of the resolution up until that time we will accept um Oprah forms in other formats but um this is something that is in the statute that changed um uh Oprah in some ways um and so this is one of the requirements um the only other way you can submit this is if you can do it in an email but you have to have every element in this new oer form in that email so and then it will be accepted as an oper form if it's not on the form or has every element it's on the form in an email then we cannot accept it and this again will be after September 11th can the form be filled out in person if they come sure we we always have them available here in the village clerk's office thank you Heather thank you Keith and let's now go to our Council reports Javon you want to kick it off sure um so access met uh in August and I am thrilled to say that access has moved from access weekend to access week um I'm very lucky that uh we've had an injection of enthusiasm into this committee and since MJ's presentation more people have stepped in um and offered a series of ideas so we're going to be publishing the events we'll be doing a sensory friendly dinner we have a lot of our police officers here we're doing pullover properly which is to simulate um an actual pull over for the neurod Divergent program so they can see how they respond and it's going to keep going we're going to have have a sensory friendly dinner thanks Paul was very helpful so I'm hoping that the whole Community can pick one or all days and join the access community and I want to thank everybody who made this happen um particularly my committee so be on the lookout for that um you guys all heard the update about the saplings which is very exciting but we are short tree captains we have a couple tree captains over here and we're looking for more from here if you're interested in spearheading a planting group please reach out to me or uh Nancy Brenan Hill and say you'd like to be a tree Captain um the the general idea is that you need to get these saplings to the location make sure people plant them and that the tree planting protocol is done it's actually a really fun way you will feel emotionally attached to your saplings and I would encourage all of you to be a part of it and it's a pretty cool title like tree Sheriff tree tree sapling um I want to let everybody know that our Fields meeting did not meet this week due to the start of school and it's been changed to the second Tuesday we will be meeting Tuesday the 10th in hybrid um and we will also be pushing the fields meeting time back to 8 AM which is also super exciting um and then you guys are going to have to indulge me but um as some of you know uh my sister Kate is a recovered alcoholic and today is her actual 17th anniversary of Being Sober um I asked Don to put some things together and because we are a stigma free Village I wanted to read some some of these things I want to thank Don Cula and everybody who's so deeply committed to helping people who are in crisis with Wellness um alcoholism or mental disease I want to explain why I'm doing this a big part of being stigma-free is that people should talk about it and they should disarm the conversation it's extremely important for me my that this community knows my sister who was born here who's a rigid girl suffered for years and for 17 years ago on today she took her first step to becoming sober so um part of combating it is to talk about it and then educate yourself and others so here we go um stig's mission is dedicated to raising awareness of disease of mental illness and creating a culture wherein residents who have the disease feel supported by their community and their neighbors and feel free to seek treatment for the disease without fear of stigma mental illness includes a variety of disorders ranging from depression and anxiety to substance and alcohol use disorder and bipolar disorder order me mental illness can affect persons of any age race religion or income and just some interesting information uh during covid we saw a significant increase in alcoholism but alcohol is the most used drug in America and it plays a large role not only in American societies but many societies and culturals around the world and greatly impacts Public Health more people over the age of 12 more people over the age of 12 in the United States have used alcohol in the past year than any of other drug or tobacco product an alcohol use disorder is the most common type of substance use disorder in the United States approximately 13% of adult women engage in engage in binge drinking and among high school students in 2019 more females drank alcohol than men um I could go on um it's obviously a very personal issue for me and my family but I want to take this unique opportunity to dissemble the stigma congratulate my sister and say if any in this community is suffering this Council our police force our Board of Health we're here for you there is no Sigma and I suggest you reach out with any questions or inquiries for help because we're here to make it better sioban thank you for your work on access thank you for your work on trees and thank you for that very moving account that's incredibly personal to you that means so much to all of us it's greatly appreciated Evan thanks so much Paul um none of my committees have met in the last two weeks of August so I have nothing to report but do want to add to ke's uh Village uh to the managers report I am looking forward to the car show this weekend or this Friday uh so other than that I have nothing else great thank you thanks um I just had one one question first for Keith on Dana's comment about a crossing guard at the top of the street has that been discussed is is the crossing guard that's up there to cross over West Ridgewood Avenue going to help the kids yeah what we're going to do is when we get to the Clinton Avenue discussion I'm gonna have the chief and and his staff come up and we can go through all okay perfect all right um so cash o shell tomorrow night is the final night for the 2024 season the Nerds will be playing from 8 to 10: they always draw a huge crowd come on out bring your chairs your blankets going to be a great night weatherwise bring some food and enjoy the concert project Pride on Sunday October 6th we will be removing the summer plants and planting the fall plants mums grasses things like that we need lots of help if anybody is interested please email me at L Reynolds NJ Ridgewood nj.net um you don't even you don't have to have experience digging the plants out from the summer you need no experience just a little elbow grease um planting them maybe a little bit of experience but not much we can show you what to do so if you're interested in helping Sunday October 6th we usually start early in the morning so that there's not a lot of traffic usually about 7:30 um then our first meeting of the fall for seesac will be Thursday octo no September 17th it's always the third Thursday of the month it's in the Garden Room downstairs we start at 7:30 if you have any interest in you know just listening come on in we actually have an opening coming up on the seesack committee is we're still taking applications the deadline passed but if I get it by tomorrow because I'm I'm going to be sending everything to the council probably tomorrow okay we can so they just get the um volunteer form volunteer leadership form right on the website fill it out send it in if you have any interest that would be great and uh that's about it thank you thanks Lorraine Pam Mark are you in the room back there Mar can you stick your head out he is so I'm go in there he know I'm asking him come out too oh no Mark I believe congratulations are in order am I right about that you recently got married right that's why he was hiding in the closet wishing you all the best many years go that's great um on a more mundane note the planning board met and uh we considered two minor applications one was a minor subdivision of a very large lot to move the garage over to one side so that they can sell the other I'm sorry um plan board met um there was an application for a minor subdivision of a very large lot uh to move the garage over to one side so that they can divide off the other side build another house there were no variances requested uh and planning board pretty much approved it the question of what trees might be removed or um and storm water mitigation will come later um Beth Lutheran Church asked to put up a fence and um that would be for their uh their children's playground and that was approved they also reviewed the ordinance for 41 that was introduced in the Village Council on August 14th um which uh dealt with exempting certain properties from site plan approval and also um not requiring certificates of occupancy when they're very insignificant changes say when a new tenant moves in um and so they were uh in favor of that as well um the American Legion Post 53's 100th birthday for aler stone was indeed really inspiring they're a great group and uh I I was so privileged to be there um and uh let's see I also got to do story time at Gren pool and meet some of our youngest residents um if you would like to volunteer for the story time to read to the kids in on Thursday afternoons you can sign up at the at the um parks and wreck office but you'll have to wait till next summer um let's see The Pedestrian tunnel committee met uh and there are many moving Parts there it's a long-term project but it's pretty exciting um very creative people involved in that the steering committee that is studying the phib feasibility of a special improvement district for our business Community continue to meet over the summer and uh we're at the point of crunching numbers I can't say where that's going to go but there's a lot of work being done um green Ridgewood is very pleased that we got the $110,000 grant uh for um for uh planning environmental things um the open space committee is having another Park walk on September 14th that's a Saturday at 10:00 a. in vanest square lot of history there and our um open space member who's giving that is Matt lindenberg on September 28th I'll be giving a tour of 20 Pond also Saturday 10:00 a.m. um and green Ridgewood will not be meeting at its usual time which is the first Thursday of the month uh we will be meeting on September 12th at 7:30 in the senior Lounge in this building CBD uh the central business district advisory committee will not be meeting at its usual time the second Thursday in September instead we are going to be meeting on September 19th 8:30 a.m. via Zoom uh and let's see oh also wanted to say ridgwood High School alumni association is having its distinguished alumni breakfast and awards ceremony on September 21st 9:00 a.m. at the outside the little theater at Ridge at Ridgewood High 9:00 am is the breakfast and the award ceremony follows with uh at 10 o'clock and there will be four people who will be recognized ridard high school graduates for their contributions to the community and that's all I have thank you Pam and with that let's get to our regular agenda Mr calby good evening mayor councel uh with me tonight is yulanda McCullum uh Yolanda is our environmental engineer from rigid water she's going to assist me with a couple of the items tonight and with our subsequent presentation welcome thank you so we have two items of that are going to be discussed and they'll be part of your special public meeting uh so the first one is the award of an infrared asphalt surface repair contract on Wednesday August 7th uh 24 rigid water received three bids um this work is necessary to complete restoration of over 400 locations in the fourtown service area that require asphalt surface restoration from water distribution repair and replacement jobs a bid proposals were based on unit prices which were used to determine the lowest bidder the lowest responsible bidder is Atlantic infed Incorporated of Wall New Jersey uh we're recommending an award of a contract to them for the balance of this year through December 31st and the amount not to exceed $100,000 and the funding is available in the water utility operating budget questions what happened to the other contractor the other contractor at some point during the year um stopped performing the work um we made um significant attempts to communicate with them a village engineer as well um they had done the work for us for many years um and at that point we made the decision to go back out to bid and fortunately for us with the bid prices are actually lower than they have been in Prior years wow okay thank you anybody else good uh second item is Award of concrete pavement and sidewalk restoration um also on Wednesday August 7th rard water received bids uh for this project a total of four bids are received um this work is also necessary to complete restorations in the fordtown service area but this time this is concrete work for sidewalks aprons and curbs that were Disturbed as part of restoration jobs throughout the service area bid rep proposals again were based on unit prices to determine the lowest bidder who in this bid was AA burms LLC of Belleville New Jersey um they've done other work within the area we're Rec recommending an award to AA burms LLC and the amount of not exceed of $100,000 again for the balance of this year through December 31st of funding available in the water utility operating budget I have a question and I'm I have a feeling you don't know the answer to this but the both of these bids the disparity between the highest and lowest bid is well it's just in another Stratosphere I mean and one it's $62 for the total unit prices um whereas the the high bid the low bidder excuse me the high bidder was $ 46550 and something not quite as crazy but pretty pretty wild on the on the other one also I can explain is my my you yes so um the the bidders that are the high on the high end uh didn't uh complete the bid properly they they didn't use unit prices they didn't follow the instructions that's pretty much the simple answer good thank you just because it just kind of stood out you know I saw that footnote and had the same question but when we open the bids everyone kind of yeah understood and they know it's going to be rebid in January so they have another opportunity to get it to get it right next time so great thank you very much next are you guys done for now good for now for now for now great Keith um mayor next on the agenda is uh item two uh which is listed under budget this this is the revised scope of work from Matrix for this additional delineation soil testing that's required at shedler um this was done after consultation with Tom Farrell the chief of the NJ D's Bureau of solid waste compliance and enforcement um he's had multiple conversations with Matrix as I alluded to earlier tonight um and he's revising the sample analysis that was originally proposed uh to include an analysis of the full site of the full Suite of compounds um present so we're really jumping in layman's terms from 90 samples um which were originally going to be taken to more than 90 samples um and that number is still um being worked out between Matrix and Tom uh the number is accurate uh for whatever the scope is that they ultimately agree to uh but there is a jump cost relative to this because of the additional samples that are necessary questions I just have a question of where we're at monetarily wise with the money that we have so I want to say that at the last meeting we reported out that there was about $90,000 left in the um Bond ordinance that we introduced for the 350 right so um this is going to cost about $35,000 more uh than where we were at the last meeting it jumped from 50 to about 85 um for this round of testing um so that would leave roughly roughly $55,000 left in that $350,000 Bond ordinance okay thank you you're welcome anybody else good let's move on and we will entertain a motion to suspend the work session and convene the special meeting so moved second okay this is the village oh excuse me vote sorry yeah uh Reynold pin yes Reynold yes whites Yes W grad yes and vas yes this is the Village Council special public meeting the date is September 4th 2024 the time is 8:57 adequate notice of this meeting has been provided by a posting on the bulletin board in Village Hall by mail to the Ridgewood news the record and by submission to all persons entitled the same as provided by law of a schedule including the date and time of this meeting roll call Deputy Mayor perin here council member Reynolds here council member whites here council member winterr here and mayor V here mayor at this time before you you move on to the um public hearing I would recommend that we bring up Chief Lions and the his staff from The Ridgewood police department and our village engineer uh to bring brief the Council on what's transpired over the last number of weeks relative to this ordinance um and also be able to answer any of the questions that the Village Council might have relative to either one of these ordinances concerning Clinton Avenue so Chief you and your team will come up and Chris we need a few more chairs so mayor as as they come forward um I just want to bring the council and the public up to speed uh when we last discussed this back on August the 7th we talked about the ordinance being introduced but that during the time period between introduction and adoption that we were going to see guidance from the New Jersey attorney general's office relative to the legalities of the street closure um we did speak to the Attorney General's office I believe the chief even spoke to the attorney general's Chief of Staff relative to this issue um they assigned a deputy attorney general who is housed at the dot uh to work with the Department of Transportation on reviewing the legalities of this uh to review our previous ordinances I think there were three U Renditions of this ordinance from 96 to 2017 uh with Heather's help all of that information was sent down to the do and reviewed by the um executive director of the division of traffic engineering at the Department of Transportation along with the deputy attorney general assigned to this matter on August 27 7th a letter was written from the do uh to Heather um outlining the position of the do which is if this closure was to move forward it would need the approval of the commissioner of Transportation um I think the most important aspect of the letter is that as of today the do um believes that the ordinance does not have the current ordinance does not have any legal force or effect unless approved by the commissioner so that leaves the police department in a position where they're unable to enforce this ordinance based on this August 27th letter um where I think that leaves us in general is a decision needs to be made by The Village Council uh whether to resend this ordinance which quite frankly I think we would recommend at this point because it's not enforceable right it'll also allow you to establish the parking regulations which are the second ordinance under consideration tonight um but I think the more potent decision that needs to be made by The Village Council is are we going to pursue NJ do commissioner approval to close the street prospectively now that would require us to introduce and adopt a new ordinance I spoke to um Jamie oplinger yesterday about this uh her recommendation is if the council decides to move forward with closing the street that we resend all previous ordinances okay from 96 2013 2017 that a new ordinance even if it reiterates the 2017 um street closures during the periods of arrival and dismissal time we would reintroduce that ordinance advertise it adopt it on second reading advertise it again and send it to the commissioner for his approval after final adoption so I hope that explains the process of what we would need to do if the street closure um was going to remain prospectively but with that I'll turn it over to the Chief and Chris uh for their views on this and gentlemen first welcome everybody here I um if you would all just take a moment to introduce yourselves and I know some of you guys have specific areas of expertise just so that everyone in the audience knows Sergeant Ray Torino R police traffic Bureau uh I'm Lieutenant J Chuck I'm currently signed at the Patrol Division but I spent 14 years in traffic uh Sergeant John Ward I was previously assigned to seesac and currently I'm the administrative Sergeant Chief Lions Captain glander I'm in charge of the Patrol Division good evening mayor and Council Chris Raz a village engineer thank you very much so real quick I just want to explain why I brought the gentlemen that are here to my left you lean in bit I'll lean in a little bit better that better just to everybody you got to get really close to these mics for them to pick up okay so when we were looking at all these um when the ordinance and we were getting the complaints for the safety of the students that were walking to Ridge I immediately consulted my traffic Bureau currently we have Sergeant Ray Torino uh who's in charge of traffic but historically he has been on the fatal accident investigation team for I'm going to say eight years I might be wrong on that and Lieutenant J Chuck was on there for 10 years so they are by far the traffic expert experts that I would defer to and they've been in their positions far far before I was they've been in traffic for and I'll let them get into how long but um they definitely know what they're talking about uh Sergeant Ward is the person who went and actually took the counts and did all the statistical analysis which the traffic Bureau then looked processed and used to make some determinations however that being said there were a lot of statistical analysis done previous and previous years and I'm going to let the lieutenant who was in traffic as the sergeant has chared traffic during that time explain that but that's why they're here and this is Captain Glenn Ender who would actually be uh in charge of the patrol officers who are asked to go out and enforce ordinances asked to go out and do tickets on a day-to-day thing so he's the one who really has to make those decisions of what can be done and how it can be done most efficiently great thank you so we are tasked with making a decision regarding whether or not to um uh apply for a waiver to the Department of Transportation in order to to pass an ordinance to close the street to through traffic but that would allow local traffic to come through and I'm and we all need to hear from all of you as to what your opinion is and why uh whether or not we should apply for this waiver and I'm going to start at this end Ray what do you think so obviously this goes back way before my time here Clinton Avenue has been a a hot topic for a while um but since I have been here um I've known that Clinton Avenue has been a safe route to school which means that we were promoting Clinton Avenue for pedestrians to use um from my experience in traffic from honestly my experience in the fatal accident investigation unit unfortunately what we do on the fatal accident investigation unit is we um we go out when there's a crash that has serious B injury fatalities and a lot of those have to do with pedestrian fatalities so myself and luthan Chuck have probably seen more fatal pedestrian incidents than than we want to um with that being said over the years of just having observations there um my personal opinion from my experience was that the two hours that Clinton was closed closed it it wasn't closed the most dangerous time for pedestrians on Clinton Avenue was the hours that it was closed when we spoke to the residents this wasn't things that we just brought up we were getting these concerns from parents parents that were using that street every single day with their kids and they were going this is dangerous the street is not closed it's closed through traffic people are still using it res residents are using it their landscapers are using it um babysitters are using it so what we were seeing is and what we were promoting children and cars on the road at the same time I contacted uh safe routs to school and they have a picture on safe routes to school school because they did a case study on Clinton Avenue and the picture that they use is a child running out of the way of a car on their website to promote that for their case study and I brought that to their attention and I brought to their attention our concerns and they had concerns with it too they said so people are using it but it's closed yes people are using the road but it's closed because a lot of their streets that they promote a road closure the road is completely closed nobody goes in and out of it so we were kind of an exception to that and when I spoke to them because they were promoting it they didn't give me a clear answer on what their actual opinion was on it they said it's up to you guys how you proceed and how we proceeded was speaking with the parents of the students having observations going out there and seeing that we absolutely could not promote that as a safe route to school we could not have students and we could not have cars on the road during that that time period so Ry this road has been closed like this for 70 years yep and it's my understanding and please correct me if I'm wrong that there has never been a uh serious or any accident involving a pedestrian so from Sergeant Ward can can give you the actual data that he pulled from it as far back I believe as he could go so just to clarify you know I've heard the number 70 years years thrown out the ordinance was originally enacted in 1996 so that's we're talking about 28 years um you know actually today I spoke with uh Tom shortway who's in our records department who grew up in Ridgewood and uh remembers before that ordinance was in place walking to Rich school and he remembers it being an issue at the time and decision was made in 1996 to make a change to the situation for death and safety let me just so before 1996 this was a regular road with no barricades so the 70 year discussion is a misnomer so I uh I went to the clerk's office I had them pull every ordinance related to Clinton Avenue uh going back to 1920 um the first closure ordinance that I was provided with was 1996 thank you uh you want to continue no and we're going to talk about um the accidents oh yeah um so we did have six accidents over a six uh 15year period uh none were fatal none involved pedestrians the the residents of uh Clinton Avenue made that claim and when I started you know my job in this was research I'm not part of the tra Traffic Safety Division I was tasked to be a an objective researcher get the information for them than to analyze so one of their uh claims was that there was no pedestrian and struck on Clinton Avenue uh you know in the for in the the past I could only go back 15 years didn't find one the only thing I will say is that when and as they alluded to when a pedestrian is struck it is a catastrophic failure it's it's not your average motor vehicle accident and going into to uh just quickly um you the uh injury rate on pedestrian valve accidents vers our regular car vers car car accidents in the village um I pulled because one of the claims was that a a vehicle could leave a roadway onto a sidewalk and strike a uh pedestrian so I wanted to have dated the show one way or the other if that really did happen it took me looking back 78 uh pedestrian accidents back to 2012 to find one where it occurred it was not near School uh where a car left a roadway and struck a pedestrian so what we're looking at is uh just over uh 98% of uh pedestrians that were struck were within a roadway at the time uh the injury rate is almost 93% when it involves a pedestrian where it's only 14 to 15% when a pedestrian not involved so as the sergeant said anytime a pedestrian shares a roadway it increases the risk that if they happen to get struck by a vehicle they are more likely to be injured as a result of that Collision thanks for your really thorough research and for clearing up um a lot of misnomers John um and and Ray I'm going to return to you so so you're opposed to closing the street but we have a sidewalk now right so does that change things or so the reason of the the reasoning for the initial ordinance was because we didn't have sidewalks we closed the road because sidewalks were not going in at the time so sidewalks are in the reason for the the road being closed no longer exists okay but in terms of a in terms of the danger posed that you suggested before of of pedestrians on the street again we're talking kids on the street during those those school hours um now now that there's a sidewalk is there still a risk I mean I'm probably going to defer to my captain or my chief on that because no matter where you walk or drive there's there's always going to be a risk but I I I would say beyond that beyond that if we close this road to traffic we're going to set a precedent and every single resident is going to want their Street closed for some purpose is there any concern that if we close the street that schoolage children might not use the sidewalk our observations from two days is every student has used that sidewalk with the parents but this but the street was open but and the street was open I'm saying if we if we close it if we close the street there's that false sense of security that we're now teach we're now we're not promoting bad habits again that maybe those bad habits might return that I can walk in the road because it's safe when in reality it's not because it's not a hard closure got it so can I ask I know um you said that there were some observations done um sorry there were some observations done um one thing that interested me is the number of people that are on that cars are on the street that are local traffic so I know some I think one of you had mentioned you know uh uh you know people doing you know people who obviously leaving live on the street going to work um you know uh landscapers babysitters whatever I I mean how much traffic actually goes through that street and are we enforcing a block or are we just sort of on the honor System for folks who drive on that street you want to go with the numbers that you that you had when you were up there uh just this recent last two days when it was closed or when it's been open now no when it's Clos well I guess actually both would be of interest to me but my question really was around when it was closed how much traffic was there actually on the street that was local and then I guess in the last two days how much traffic have you seen overall is there in a significant uptick or or or you know so I'll start with the last two days uh because I was assigned up there um so yesterday morning uh I was assigned uh to observe traffic and pedestrian safety up at uh Rich School uh I stationed myself at the top of the uh roadway uh Clinton Avenue West rwood Avenue um I first round I wanted to have a general idea of what was going on in the area vehicular traffic now because it was our first day that the road was open I also wanted to see because um there was a um suggestion about looking into a crossing guard at the top of the road so I wanted to get uh some counts on how many pedestrians Were Us utilizing that crosswalk during the um Ingress to the school U so between 8:10 and 8:45 in the morning on Tuesday I counted 22 total Crossings now that's not 22 people that's you know both directions so for example if um a parent you know was dropping their kids off walking uh westbound uh and they returned they were counted twice so in a uh 35 minute period that was uh6 pedestrians per minute um with a again a total of 22 I returned in the afternoon um I uh counted uh this time I wanted to count how many vehicles on the open road were utilizing Avenue during the uh period that was of you know highest concern in those seesac meetings and the special meetings that we had with the residents um immediately before and after dismissal uh in a period of uh 20 minutes I counted 23 total vehicles that cross the intersection of Clinton and uh West ridard Avenue either turning onto the road or off of it which is 1.2 cars per minute um if you look at other streets that are comparable and Lieutenant Chuck and uh talk about numbers on uh volume um it's uh similar to a road like let's say a u a morning Side Road or a Hamilton rather than say a Bair road which has a much higher rate of traffic during those hours um as far as a pedestrians go um I uh counted uh nine children uh and uh four nine children with parents four without par parents in the afternoon so a total of 13 utilizing that crosswalk to uh walk home from school this morning I was there again uh I did have a higher vehicle count this time it was 46 and a half hour which is instead of 1.2 1.5 five cars per minute um it was a reasonable flow of traffic uh there were at no time on either days was there any congestion parents weren't stopping to drop their kids off uh there was no u-turns um double parking uh there was really uh to me it seemed like your average side street uh during uh morning hours um I counted 25 pedestrians utilizing the uh crosswalk both directions against that's 25 Crossings not persons so I have a question so the cars that you saw you observe today going up Clinton if they had a child that they were going to drop off what did they do did they turn right and then into the school to drop their child off so from what I observed not many were uh making that right and then the quick left um yeah I didn't look into every single car actually I would say majority of them didn't have a student in it it was just uh somebody coming from Godwin going up and then making a right or left turn on so you think the parents that are dropping their kids off are coming up Westridge would just one observation which is not really relevant to this but I just you know public comment I just like to commend the parents uh Rich School uh hearing them telling their kids you know make sure you use the sidewalk not one kid stepped off the sidewalk they were all using it up down back again it was very nice to see and much different than what I observed was anybody allowed to park on Clinton Avenue during so we R do you want to so we put up uh the village ordinance we have a village ordinance that says the village manager the chief of police can um initiate a emergency no parking order which we did for Clinton Avenue because we have nothing on record right now um for enforcement so we did what we have around the other schools and what we plan to do on Clinton is no parking during the pickup and drop off hours which is for an elementary school uh no stopping or standing from 8:00 a to 9:00 a.m. uh and 2:30 to 3:30 those were put up temporarily um we had uh 100% compliance yesterday we had one vehicle today that was given a warning from a visitor uh to somebody's residence um and I I'll just add to uh Sergeant Wards numbers is today I was I did a traffic detail on Clinton Avenue I conducted radar 23 vehicles in about 22 minutes um 100% compliance from every student and every parent who's walking on the sidewalk there was uh I believe two cars I had uh going over 27 miles hour I think I had 27 and 28 miles hour my fastest speeds today uh of the 22 cars I saw 23 cars I saw so during those two time periods if this you know goes through no one will be allowed to no standing no stopping and that includes landscapers babysitters contractors nobody will be allowed to stop or park on that street during those two time periods that is the ordinance that's being recog recommended that is what we have around numerous schools in the area that have some pickup and drop off issues um it's it can go in front of the residents we've had it Go in front of residents before and some of them liked it some of them didn't right and it didn't get passed um if they don't like it and they don't want it then could you speak into the mic I'm sorry if so that's the ordinance that we're recommending because we have found around multiple schools at works during pickup and drop off hours um we obviously put that in front of the residents as well we've had residents come and ask for this specific ordinance other residents were uh queried on it if they if they wanted it they'll say no and it doesn't and it won't pass um but that is what's being recommended right now because we have seen tremendous um compliance with it and mayor relative to the no parking the emergency no parking that has to be renewed every 48 Hours by myself and the chief so it's it's a little arduous until we we're we're doing it because we want the start of the school year to remain consistent if this is the decision to adopt this permanently the uh the parking restrictions by The Village Council tonight so we didn't want to impose it you know in 20 days right we wanted to do it from the get-go but it is it does need to be renewed every 48 hours because my e our emergency um jurisdiction only lasts that long but if we passed it tonight it would go into effect immedi in 20 days so we have to do it 10 we have to do it 10 more times but that's what we'll do okay and then the last question I have is that still say somebody on the block has a contractor that's going to be there for two weeks are they allowed to call for a special they could park in the street for the for that ordinance we we don't allow uh no okay because because of the importance correct during that hour and we do have residents that they can park there before uh 2:30 and that contractor will move to a side street pull in the driveway for an hour and then they can pull right back out okay so a neighbor can't say call my my landscaper comes every Thursday morning to do my lawn so I need him to park on the street that's going to say be a no correct and just to follow up on that or for say somebody is uh putting an addition on their house and a contractor is going to be there for weeks or months applies to them applies to them too we've had issues let's say down street we have that same ordinance and we'll have we had somebody doing work and the contractors knew either pulling into the driveway or pulling into a side street for those hours and they see the kids walking up and down or they see how busy it gets and they and they understand and more times than not the homeowners understand as well so can I I guess I have a two-part question um so just to be very clear and I'm going to pose this to the chief is it your recommendation in line with with Ray is that we repeal the ordinance tonight that closes the street and AD the ordinance that puts into effect those parking recommendations that we use at other other schools uh in Ridgewood yes in in very simple term that is my recommendation especially since it's unenforceable at this time I also just wanted to say that I've had officers up there both morning and night during the what would have been the closure times um just to Monitor and see what exactly is going on because this is a change and what we're trying to do is make it as seamless as possible and we're trying to make sure that there are no unintended consequen quences so i' I've said the traffic department has been fantastic and been up there also had Sergeant Ward going up there and doing um multiple different uh counts um the one thing I did want to bring up that was the road was closed in 1996 completely there were no resident exception so I just thought that was a key to put in there when people say this has been successful for so long in 1996 it was closed with no exceptions so if somebody wants to well I have the second half of my question oh sorry but we're going to get back to that we're going to get back to that because I I can't imagine that we'd be able to that the that the citizens would allow would be happy with us just closing the street completely so at 7:59 if you're not out of your driveway you're not going to work till 9:00 I I can't imagine that's realistic with that my second question though is to steal I think Lorraine's idea which is that if we do what you're proposing tonight um are there other safety measures we can put into place such as crossing guards um other things we can do to make sure that any lingering concerns are are addressed because at the end of the day we all want to do the right thing but obviously safety children most important thing so I'm with you 100% that's exactly why I have traffic up there both in those times to see what it looks like because we've never been able to get accurate readings we've tried to do speed studies but the roads were closed so now what I'm going to have traffic do is speed studies we've done them in the past way way back and and I'll let Jay lieuten Chuck talk about that but we're trying to see exactly what happens with this change that's why I have the St so you're talking about more studies and then yeah we're going to do continue to do more studies now that the road is opened with this with this um ruling from the do and chief I'm sorry to cut you off but are you also prepared to post a crossing guard or have police there more frequently for the next few weeks or is that not feasible I'm just trying to figure out what we can do to buttress the safety so in the interim time that is what we're doing we having we're having people up there we are actually evaluating the need there are actual criteria for where we place cart crossing guards and I will let one of the traffic officers go into the detail about that but we are prepared to be there for a while just to see how it is in the long term no we do not have the Staffing to have someone at Clinton in especially at 8: am. and again at 2m those are the busiest times of days unfortunately I don't know if you've uh watched the news today but we made sure we had a police officer at every school and we've been doing that from the beginning of school and we're going to continue it now especially in light of the events that just happened um but that is an unbelievably busy time for us and we do not have the resources to adequately staff that moving forward for the next couple of days maybe even weeks to make sure we find and address any situation that could arise from this absolutely we will moving forward we'll have to find permanent Solutions so real quick on the crossing guard so we follow the guidelines um set forth in the mutcd manual for uniform traffic control devices as well as the NJ do um they don't give you exact numbers it's basically on the chief of police the traffic Bureau engineering to determine if the factors are met for a crossing guard um some of those factors are pedestrian volume uh with of the roadway um speeding crashes um even distance to the school um one of the biggest things that a crossing guard is there for is to create a gap if there are gaps in the roadway that allow allows for crossing um there's less need for a crossing guard if you look at most of our schools that have across most of our posts that have a crossing guard it's across a main road that doesn't have a a traffic control device so Clinton at West Ridgewood has a stop sign so naturally there would be a gap because Clinton Avenue would be stopping so if you actually go and drive most of our areas when we do our studies for um crossing guards and when we did our studies for crossing guards most of them are across the Main Street the crossing guard is the traffic control device in terms of Clinton and West Ridgewood it has that stop sign so that's a factor that kind of lessens that Gap because the stop sign is the gap if that if that makes sense got it did you guys have any questions no I just um I want to say thank you I had the luxury of asking my questions before the meeting um I think this is very valuable information I will say when I was at Orchard for six years I was the safety chair so I really appreciate the information and I know how difficult pick up and drop off will be from the notes we've gotten from the residents to me it seems like the recommendations you're making make the most sense one the road closure seems kind of moot because it's not legal and two um all of the residents at least from the ones that reached out to us wanted to make sure that the restri upon them were as short as possible so I mean I fully support 4008 we have to fully resin 47 and I'm just grateful for you know because of the timing that you guys did that that you put out the the the interim parking today and I wish you the best of luck as more information unfolds but I think um Lorraine and Paul and all the meetings and all of this input sort of lead us to for me that would be what I would want to vote on tonight is to put the parking restrictions based upon recommendation and resend the part of the road closure because it's no doubt safer and more walkable with the sidewalks so I I just want to say you know I hope everybody sees there's a a lot of support here and from the council we've had the ability over the past couple weeks to ask a lot of questions and I'm very grateful to the police department who's answered all them and made me feel comfortable in making that decision if you wanted to go back into the 1996 Lieutenant Chuck is here and he was in traffic during that in charge of traffic during that time since he's here I figure somebody's got to ask my question man put me out on that one uh so I was I was asked to come here to give you history on the traffic Bureau and their commitment to to the safety and the effort that we've been putting in Clinton have again as I said before I was in traffic for 14 years both as a patrolman and a sergeant um during that time um just a little bit of a resume we take uh actually uh chief Luma as you guys all know cops are um trade Jack Jack of trade but master of none uh Chief Luma back in 2009 decided you know what that's not really true traffic traffic is um a priority in in in the village and we're going to address it so so back then uh under Sergeant Pullman and myself as a patrolman we started getting more involved um we've gone both Ray and I have a lot of Education certificates from r for engineering um we've had some great programs here uh for safety I'm sure you guys are aware that um we like to think outside the box we we did the no we did the stop signs on Kenworth at Spring we were having crash we were having crash issues there we decided to put the stop sign on the roadway and we went four straight years at an accident there um we actually also uh developed a program called operation bright idea which is where we wanted to light up intersections where we have a lot of pedestrians at night and we have a 100% success rate on that on that program since the Inception of that program we've gotten 12 intersections we've done some Yankee Stadium lighting there and we've had zero pedestrians hit at night there um this program was so effective we actually won the traffic safety hero award from Triple A this year um so with that said I personally have been working on this project since 2015 Sergeant pman was working on it before the most important thing here everything else is a moving part the most important thing here is the prohibition of the kids and the cars being next to each other we all agree that the citizens that live in live in that neighborhood are going to drive as slow as they can and they're going to pay attention but I'm concerned about the three-year-old that doesn't know his own safety yet and is going to Dart across the street and get hit by a car that is the thing that we''ve been lucky that we haven't had yet and it's only a matter of time because we can't control the three-year-old we can't control the 5-year-old with Mom and Dad as they're walking down the street and as we all know when this when we had this weird prohibition where residents and the landscapers and the and everyone else could drive down the street and the kids were walking down the street it's only a matter of time and if we were here two years later and some kid got hurt we would have said why didn't we do this earlier so you separate the cars with the kids the sidewalk is the right answer or closing the road is the right answer no cars at all and let the kids walk in the road and the kids on the road or you make sidewalks that's kind of it and you know former mayor nson hated when I said safety is never convenient and convenience never safe and that's what we're here for Pam excuse me I know Pam had a question okay um I would like to know what the results are of your further study how much time do you think you need Ray do you want to address that how long it'll take you so the first week the first two weeks of school it's tough to gauge because everything's new and honestly this is new to a lot of people it's going to be new to drivers that are going to drive by and go oh it's the roads open it's G to you know you're going to see bad weather you're going to see it get a little colder we we kind of want to see it from every angle um so it's not going to be immediate I don't want to give you a timeline but I'd like to see how you know it goes first couple weeks of the fall and kind of see where we're at um but like Sergeant ward has in his in his numbers numbers change by temperature numbers change by time of the month um so we kind of in my eyes we had a great start we have two days worth of data and we couldn't be happier and uh hopefully it's it's only up from there okay so I'm just curious you you said the road closed for the first time in 1996 and it was closed to everybody so when did it change to it's okay for the residents to go Sergeant W you have the exact dates if you want to so 2013 uh there were uh and Lieutenant Chuck I I believe can confirm this there was some enforcement done um around that time because of initial complaints about vehicles on the roadway in response there was an ordinance that would amended uh 26517 which uh you know didn't change 26564 but put the two in conjunction that gave an exemption to Residents or those that have a documented purpose for being on the roadway being Exempted from that ordinance that closed it since 2013 is when we have been having uptick and complaints and these are when these these original studies this wasn't just uh under this for the previous one this is uh 2013 2014 Lieutenant at the time sergeant pman and then Sergeant Chuck took this on previous studies were done uh but it was when we allowed Vehicles as they say to share a roadway for th000 Pb vehicles with a 50 PB child that that in itself was the issue at hand so that's only been going on for 11 years yes and how do you enforce that like if you see a car driving up the street how do you sort of decide who you're going to stop who you're not this person I think lives on the street this person may be a how do you how do you inforce a statute you know obviously some playing Hy I would ask you because we have no idea and I was going to let Captain Ender who's you're the bad tell me exactly and that's why we don't see this very often because what it would be tantamount to is we'd either have to stop every car which would be a checkpoint which we're not allowed to do as everybody knows there cirk guidelines and we we can't do that or we'd have to make a judgment call on who we don't believe belonged there and we can't do that either so I don't know how this would be enforcable which is a a major problem and if we could figure out how to enforce it which is another thing let's say we figured out how to enforce it we do not have the Staffing as I said to do this year round we would need to enforce it on both ends so that's two officers one on West and one on it's not possible for us to do so then we would just be responding to complaints and while we're responding to that complaint even if we're very fast and get there in 2 minutes the car is most likely gone but also the kids that were on the in the roadway have already been exposed to the car whether it was legally there or not so we have a lot of enforcement issues and Captain if you want to speak to it no I mean you just summed it up exactly a full closure is easy a car goes around the barricades we stop and give it a ticket the partial closure you know basically setting up a checkpoint is just not feasible and could be consr as bias I mean how do we say well you don't look like you belong on the street we want to check your driver's license see what you're doing here you can't just stop every car you need a reasonable AR suspicion that they broke a law we can't just or or in ordinance so it puts us in a tough situation puts my offer in a tough situation to picking and choosing who we're going to stop so it's either full closure or open there's really no in between and no way to enforce in between mayor can can I just go back to Lieutenant Chuck's uh comments so Jay what I took from from what you said is with the sidewalk now in place to close the road would almost then encourage people not only to use the sidewalk but also to revert to the behavior of using the road the way they did up until the end of last school year 100% And we do it all the time I never thought about it that way until you said it so it was intriguing to me that that might be the reaction of people who are using or who are try to get to Ridge school if the road was closed in addition to the sidewalks it's something that the village does on purpose we have um the car show we're going to close the roads so people can walk through the streets they're not walking on the sidewalks they they're going to enjoy walking in the street and when we do that we do that aggressively we use sand trucks we use vehicle defeating barriers we go out of our way to make sure that there's no negative interaction between cars and pedestrians so in your estim you think it's almost safer for those traveling to go to Ridge School to have the road open because it's going to encourage as close to 100% compliance with use of the sidewalks as you can get absolutely fair enough thank you so good point um Chris you've been surprisingly quiet for Chris just going in what what what's your view as the engineer on on the proposal tonight and mayor can I just add something that I failed to say at the beginning uh just to follow up on on councilman White's question to Mr rudish Houser if we do move towards a street closure and we need to seek the do's approval from the commissioner we will need a engineer certification to accompany that ordinance that'll need to be sent down to the commissioner which is why Chris is here tonight to speak to that um try to answer your question the gentlemen to my left have done an exemplary job explaining the circumstances the situation um one of the key things they mentioned is warrants um if the village were to ask me to give a certification for a type of closure those warrants would need to be developed right now with the two days of data we get a positive trend I don't think we have enough for a warrant um the question I believe was posed by somebody on the council how long would we need to feel it's a success or to substantiate a warrant I feel a full school year and the reason is this time of year we've got great weather it's warm there's plenty of Sun come December there's a lot less Sun it gets pretty darn dark by 4:30 it's cold people are bundled up Additionally the sun angle is very flat on the southernly horizon that's why I would like to see how well this works through the January February March months when there isn't that much daylight to see how The Pedestrian and vehicle interactions are hopefully there won't be any interactions because as the gentleman said those are not good for The Pedestrian so if if we can keep training the pedestrians children adults to use the sidewalk that has been constructed and the vehicles Drive within the speed limit I think we've had a successful outcome if the council wishes again to go for a partial closure um I think the closure would have to be a full closure as the gentleman said um a closure where certain people would be permitted in through the closure I believe would be very problematic uh the current attorney general has pretty much stated that in other situations in other municipalities and I would not be very comfortable endorsing that Paul can I suggest perhaps open opening up to public comment or on the ordinance I'd love to maybe there's some questions that the public has that we didn't anticipate and if we keep the six of them here they can maybe address them after the fact absolutely I have a couple we're not there yet we have to we have when we do that yes but we're not there yet we're still we're still ask sorry I was suggesting if Paul chairs the meeting absolutely absolutely just give us a few minutes Steve all right so um so Chris um your certification is critical to getting any waiver and I don't know where the council's going on this in terms of applying to the do for a waiver but um would your certification support closing support applying for that waiver at this time well question is I need clarification is that a full closure a hard full closure no the soft closure that would allow residents um and delivery trucks and all of that in I would not be very uncomfortable providing a waiver for a soft closure other than a hard closure got it um and and I want to I want to take a minute because we've got people in the room who know a lot more about this than I do and you'll forgive me but I'm going to poll you guys are you are you are you in favor of a waiver to allow the soft closure to continue as it has for the last 11 years or are you opposed to that for safety reasons Ray opposed Jay opposed opposed I think I've said this many times but I'm opposed it's too dangerous I'm opposed I'm opposed as well opposed well I think we have a very clear Direction and so with that does anybody have any other questions of these gentlemen before we open it up to the public we'll keep you guys here so that the public can ask us and you questions okay so I move the clerk read ordinance 407 by title on second reading and that the public hearing there on be opened second parin yes Reynolds yes whites yes wad yes and V Janos yes will the clerk please read the title of ordinance 407 and ordinance to amend chapter 265 of the code of the village of Bridgewood vehicles and traffic at section [Music] 265-6424 resident it's hard to listen to actually what is being said here tonight the number of things that have been said that have are either wrong or illogical is is hard to actually like sit here and listen to the idea that the street with more cars and open is more safe than the street with fewer cars makes absolutely no sense whatsoever as one of the officers said children are going to run are not going to the sidewalk is not a magic barrier that keeps three-year-old in old children from walking into the street the notion that having the street open is safer than having the Street closed it makes no sense whatsoever also this the Department of Transportation has not said that the current ordinance is illegal they have not said that I've heard that from multiple council members they have not said that what they have said is that it needs we need to file the appropriate paperwork they have said they've signaled to us that the ordinance would be accepted and is and they have said explicitly that is per ible under the current New Jersey state law the ordinance is unenforceable that's what the letter read un enforceable Without You submitting the proper paperwork if you submit the paperwork it is entirely enforcable that's and I don't want to take up your time but as I said at the top of the meeting the director of that division at the OT has indicated that this Council would need to introdu resend everything introduce reopt get an engineer certificate and then submit it to the commissioner for approv that is absolutely true but as of now that that ordinance as it stands is unenforceable because exactly because there was an administrative error by a previous administration but as you said before mayor when you were talking about shettler even though things were mistakes were made by a previous administration it's your responsibility to now take responsibility for the The Village absolutely a mistake was made by the previous administration not to submit the proper paperwork it's you can do the same you can submit it now it's up to you to do it there's nothing keeping you from doing that it's you're completely within in your uh ability and role to to submit the proper paperwork it is not an illegal it's not it's nothing illegal the Department of Transportation has said that it is permissible under New York state law I mean under New Jersey state law secondly do you want to address that it would be helpful take your time okay I think we would all agree I hope we would all agree that having children and cars together is less safe than having fewer having more cars is less safe than having fewer cars I think we would all agree with that that is something that I think would be is certainly be helpful for our son and for our family I think it would be helpful for many people the other thing I'll just add is the idea that this has not been that the Clinton Avenue has not been closed first of all 30 years is a long time 11 years is a long time but it's been closed for all of our lifetimes Mrs Terry who's a 90-year resident of the street has said said that it's been closed for the entire time she lived there my best friend who walked from Orchard uh Street to Ridge in 197s walk there up that street because it is because it was closed if you look at the three streets that adjoin Godwin and West Ridgewood Avenue there's South Murray there's Clinton and there's Mal Mali has sidewalks most of the way up the street but no one walks up there even though there's a sidewalk South Murray has no sidewalks but no one walks up South Murray they walk through our yard our neighbors walk through our backyard to get to our street because it is safer we when we had we had a dog we put up a fence around our backyard we put a a fence we put a a a a uh a gate so that our neighbors could walk through our yard from South Murray up Clinton Avenue it has been the safest Street in America for school children for all of our lifetimes and now we're going to open the street up to to draw to to to you're saying that a few cars is unsafe but we're gonna have dozens and dozens of cars going up the street every day it just is logical I'm sorry I I can't it's hard to listen to this thank you Cynthia o'keef Ridgewood New Jersey um so forgive me for some questions um and I don't know the answers I don't know what time school starts but um these new sidewalks have been imposed on these residents which um they're supposed to shovel in the winter time so if school starts at 8:30 I get on the bus at 7:15 in the morning like if I were living on Clinton Street what time would I get up to shovel the sidewalk so that the children won't walk in the street now we know the street would probably be plowed are we our residents supposed to be out there shoveling it's about 4:00 in the morning I don't understand it school is generally closed if there's shable condition let's say it's not hypothetical let's say it's not it would it would be like any other sidewalk in the village that needs to be cleared for for pedestrian traffic is there a time frame four hours the residents have the residents have 24 hours from the time that the snow stops to be in compliance in shov their snow so right there it's I mean if I'm unless I'm Mis understanding something if the street is sh but the sidewalks are not shoveled and then there's ice black ice other conditions that we know exist right that that doesn't sound that exists everywhere else that there's a sidewalk in the village and and there are FS if you don't maintain your sidewalk and it's not walkable particularly in the central business district and areas where we have older people you will be issued a fine if it's not cleared in 24 hours into Keith's point when it snows that heavily that foot traffic can't occur school is typically can't canell correct so you have that day so if you were going to work at 7:30 and it was a snow day and it stopped snowing at like 4:00 the expectation would be your property should be cleared by 4 o' the next day okay but I'm just thinking like what if I'm playing Devil's Advocate what if somebody's away on vacation so nobody's strling that it's still the homeowner's responsibility okay and if you live on a school block you take that seriously like people people take it very seriously it's the same way with if you have a fire hydron on your property people people in general there's this General understanding that you don't want to do that typically if you live like another example would be if you live next door to the share house because we have so many older people walking it's a serious social responsibility that the neighbors take you know seriously if you leave for vacation and you do not maintain your property you will be issued a ticket okay but these people never had sidewalks before so I guess you know welcome to Ridgewood and here you go here are some sidewalks and they don't agree with your this plan and my heart goes out to this family as I said before you know um it just maybe it's not the right solution and he's talking about this paperwork that should be filed doing the right thing I mean I guess my my question is the same as others which is that argument apply equally to every street in the village right I mean listen I I have a I live right in front of a bus stop that my kids take and Siobhan's right like I take that very seriously um and generally speaking I've never had a situation where I wasn't able to clear it where School wasn't canceled but I mean it's a good point Cynthia but again how is that how is Clinton any different from any other Street in the village you know from that argument right exactly like I live on a corner property I actually have two crosswalks one in the front of my house one on the side we shovel you know my husband takes really good care of those crosswalks so that the kids can walk you know sometimes it's four or five feet high when the plow comes in but that gets shoveled so that the kids walk tool I get it you bought into that but I also think that there are you know this may be a unique situation that where there's an adjustment period and not everybody you know your husband's doing it maybe like I don't have the money to hire some guy to come when I'm away or whatever the case is it sounds like in a perfect world it's all going to work out and be wonderful maybe not so but that's just my two sons thank you thank you Cynthia Mr Mar can I just uh quickly give some context um you were asking uh if this is a unique situation um there are 85 streets in the village of Ridgewood which are within a th000 feet of elementary school so it's not a unique you know Clinton's one of them there are this is an issue that there are 85 other many people in the village and across America face yes and and and through you mayor to Chris you've been here 20 plus years how many new sidewalk projects have you done during that time period where people on streets went from no sidewalks to then having sidewalks um this is one of the largest ones we've done uh we have done little infill sidewalk uh the other large one we've also done this year is over on East Glenn right so I think the village is moving very positively proactively for pedestrian safety and correct me if I'm wrong but there was a major infrastructure investment in West Glenn not the part that still needs sidewalks but the other that's going to be a major in the real Westland I I do just want to say one thing that with respect to the closure and I'm hoping Jay Chuck not to put you in my age demographic but Clinton for my lifetime was closed so I think the terminology is probably an ordinance establishing its closure so there's two like as a practical matter I mean I was born in 1973 I went to gymnastics at Ridge and it was always closed we walked up the road that was the way it is so I imagine the 1996 is just lawyers documenting that it was Clos but I I will say that in throughout my childhood the road was I I don't know if it was legally closed I don't know how but we always walked in the street and there were never any cars there so I I love the research and I think it's all fact finding but I agree with the resident the long has for I'm 51 it's never been open that way you know we used to walk in the street and that was just the way it was done and that was to get all because Orchard didn't exist until like 1966 or something that's what my mom said so um everybody from that area used used to cross over and it was always closed as I imagine in 1996 just so everyone's aware is when lawyers decided to document that it's actually closed I I looked back at the um documents that were sent to us by Jamie oplinger who was the director of traffic safety at the do and she's the one that we've been corresponding with the 1996 request that went uh from the then uh Municipal attorney Sid sto um was a regulation that was proposed and in the body they sent down the approved regulation for consideration by the do there isn't any reference in that that says it's amending or changing or um deleting something that was before it or in any way change what was on the books it was a new reg seems to be or appears to be a new regulation and and then the other side of this is that it's something that we actually tried to do I think uh the manager tried to see if do would accept the existing or with the additional information from the certification from the engineer and that was declined by the do after she spoke with the attorney general Deputy attorney general who's in charge of this project and um it's it's similar to an ordinance that is passed say without notice or without a second reading it is it is not a viable ordinance so you has to be resented and um and a new one established and I I specifically asked asked if the council was inclined to want to use this ordinance to seek commissioner approval if that would be acceptable and she indicated it would not that we would need to resend all prior there would be verbiage needed in the ordinance to resend all prior ordinances relative to this matter and we would need to introduce and adopt a new ordinance which would need to be accompanied by the engineer certification and the reason why we was asked was because we wanted to expedite it and see if we can do it as fast as possible to narrow that gap between now and when it might get approved are there any other comments or questions from the audience here I know that there's something on hybrid okay we're going to go to hybrid access and I'm going to ask that anyone on hybrid access um limit their questions to this subject matter so if you have other questions or comments there will be a time at the end of the meeting so that being said Susan you're up hi um Susan um I'm a ridard resident um my child attended rid school he was in the special if if you could speak closer to the phone so we can hear you clearly all um all right can you hear me now much better thank you all right my child attended R school he was in the special needs program I spoke numerous times to the grossing guard because I would have to could pick him up early so I could zoom down to house to pick up my daughter and one thing the crossing guard at Rich school told me is that unlike other crossing guards um she was a crossing guard so specifically the one that um was to to get traffic out of Ridge were across the kids as they leave as the you know R is in a circle she was there she was um the time had long blonde hair I can't remember her name anyway she said that she had to be pulled aside by the original police so they could train her on directing traffic down Ridge Street because she had two duties not only letting the kids cross the street but also to direct traffic and especially since Ridge Street or Ridge AB is always busy which what a is always busy so she had to take on two responsibilities I and so that was just a caveat I have volunteered for the Red Zone up at Ridge so I've seen people do horrendous things because always time is of the essence to them um meanwhile I had to go to HS anyway long story short I have a question for the police and this is not to be uh cynic or anything and that is um how many of these Studies have you done around Ridge school and undercover atire undercover Vehicles because people tend to behave better when they see a police vehicle I've seen it numerous times um you know at the schools you know just driving the highway as soon as you see a cop everyone's going 55 and I've seen it numerous times when people behave badly at HS picking up kids but as soon as the police officer is there everyone's minding their PS and q's and ridg is um unlike other streets I know tral is on a busy street there seems to be crossing guards there and stuff um plus there's one-way traffic down the street to try to curb it Bridge have is a busy street and that's why that crossing guard had to take extra precautions and unlike the one over at Trel so again I think Ridge a um and Ridge School Pose a little bit different than the other schools in town pause is down a desolate area um Orchard is off to the side before and you can go through each of the schools and I think Ridge is a little bit more delicate and that's you know again I'm just going by what the the um the crossing guard told me so I do believe you need an additional crossing guard at Clinton I do think that maybe making it one way during school hours similar to what happens at Travel also helps um and that's you know and again I think studies without uniform police officers there to see how parents actually behave when they're not being watched also will help and that's pretty much it thank you thank you Susan Elaine o excuse me wait hang on a second just I think Suzanne's question was have you how many traffic Studies have you done and are you always in uniform did any that's I was trying to listen I didn't I didn't catch it forgive me okay so I think I I think because it's a public hearing she it wasn't a comment she I just want to make sure because yeah know we heard that so that's the only two that I heard today line did you hear anything else she specifically asked did we use an onar car today we use it onar car uh Sergeant Terina Sergeant drives an on marar and that's what he was doing radar and traffic with so we do have an onar car there Glen could you speak into the I'm sorry thank you so we we did have an unmarked car there today and was your car marked up there John so we had one marked and one unmarked today and the unmarked was doing radar on Clinton but was the unmarked were you in uniform I I will tell you that all previous traffic studies are done in a non-traditional police car in an un uniformed officer okay so they may be in a Nissan Ultima or a Rog or something like that um we purposely do it so we do not affect the traffic habits of the area uh just one more thing because it popped up a few times and um the residents are concerned about Jay walking walking across the street is not jaywalking walking from point A to point B across the street is not illegal it's uh walking between cars so if the cars were parked there and you ran through the cars that's jwalk walking or if you do like a long diagonal thing or you're walking straight down the road that is the j walking walking from point A to point B so we're walking across the street and then using the sidewalk is not JW walking and knew that yeah and I and I gather that in the traffic studies that I know you said you're continuing they will be done in an unmarked police car by uh by un uniformed police and a lot of our traffic studies whether it's radar or volume it's done with equipment where there's no car officer that needs to be involved either got it okay um Elaine you're up next Elena you still there I see your hand is raised up there we go and you're still on mute I'm on friends I'm literally feeling physically ill we have been begging and pleading for months we're talking you all keep referring to sidewalks on Clinton Avenue there's one sidewalk it's not on our side you know that we have a person with a significant intellectual disability no one has bothered to ask to meet him to talk to us to hear about him and please don't say it's because of a lawsuit I begged begged eight different times I raised with you all an ADA accommodation request no response the reason in violation of the law you don't have an ADA coordinator or a process so please stop nitpicking at us it was suggested first that Daniel walk down the road while it's open that is jaywalking okay we'll go with that the suggestion that he Dash across the street in two lanes of traffic is malicious it is crazy to suggest it you've never met him you've never asked shame on you the street has been closed back to the 1970s whatever is documented so please stop nitpicking us on those facts if you want to talk about facts and errors let's talk about them Chief Lions was wrong about the legality of the closure I can't stand to hear that again it was wrong the commissioner of the do looked at the ordinance and looked at the school safy statute as they exist today both of them restrict through traffic not all traffic he confirmed in email we all saw it one month ago that it is permissible it is permissible if you want to do the right thing you can do it even if that means resending temporarily and then passing the ordinance as soon as humanly possible you can do it with respect to the engineering study are you kidding me the reason this all started in the first place is because the police police chief lions are you listening you and the citizens advisory committee said this is so dangerous we have no choice to but but to install sidewalks when the street was closed to through traffic how can you now tell us in good conscience that this requires an engineering study over one year is anybody listening I I'm I'm stunned so let me just tell you that all of these errors and all of them are entirely entirely intentional add up to what is called actual malice if Daniel is hit by a car you will all be personally liable you lose immunity ask your lawyer if he gets hit by a car and killed you will be criminally liable it's called Reckless manslaughter ask your lawyer to look it up although I'm not not sure how much I would rely on them like this is just completely I'm physically sick and by the way my question for each of you and anyone who wants to respond is what is your answer for Daniel when he needs to go to school tomorrow and every single day for two years to get to the sidewalk what is your suggestion Matt I'm going to assume based on the lawsuit we should not be responding I can't even I can't really oh my God what is the answer we need to get him out the door tomorrow you're all relying on Steve and I to be there every single day I know that's what you're thinking they're not going to let him get hurt and you're right we'll do everything we can we can't be here every day he's a 21-year-old adult who's been working his entire life to be as independent as he can you are taking away from him arbitrarily to tell us that you need to do a safety study now come on and to tell us that the ordinance has to have a full closure you know that's not true we all saw the email from the commissioner I know for a fact that Miss oplinger has said she is cautiously optimistic that this thing would be approved come on what is he gonna do tomorrow I'm just so disappointed and and and and how this is playing out I can't believe it mayor having nothing to do with the lawsuit I just want to read into the record the letter dated or part of the letter dated April 27th 2024 from August 27th August 27th sorry uh from Jamie oplinger it says to follow up if Ridgewood wants the commissioner to consider the ordinance approval pursuant to njsa 394a please provide a certified copy of the ordinance to the NJ Do's division of traffic engineering to my attention together with the following a copy of a certification from ridgewood's engineer a statement of reasons for the Ridgewood engineer's decision detailed information as to the location of streets intersections and signs affected by the ordinance traffic counts crash and speed sampling data if appropriate and any other information Ridgewood would like the NJ doot to consider additionally please submit to the division any documentation and information regarding appropriate notice that Ridgewood has provided to the adjoining municipality Andor the county which the ordinance may impact the NJ doot will then perform an investigation and the commissioner will determine whether or not to approve the ordinance in accordance with the statute it wasn't Chief Lions that's advocating for these things to be done it's a requirement of the NJ doot if this ordinance is going to be considered for approval by the commissioner so I don't want anyone to walk out of this council chambers tonight or listen to this here at home thinking that the chief is the one requiring this it's directly written in black and white in a letter from Jamie oplinger from the dot discussion then I asked again what is the answer for Daniel tomorrow morning at 8:30 and you can say the lawsuit but come on I ask for weeks and weeks I begged you all there are countless Ada accommodation requests what's the answer we don't we're not going to go into um the issues because these issues are raised in a lawsuit we're here to discuss the ordinance the um uh the ordinances that are in front of us tonight to be introduced and ones that we not excuse me not to be introduced to hear on second reading and and determine and vote on and we should ptain our discussions just to that um and and that should be the extent of it and also just to be clear if the ordinance was denied tonight and that you did not rescind this ordinance 47 nothing would change tomorrow morning because tomorrow morning the ordinance is still deemed unenforceable based on that letter so regardless of what the decision made is tonight it doesn't change anything as to the enforceability of this ordinance until a new ordinance is introduced adopted and approved by the do the ordinance hasn't been for a year this is I mean I'd like to ask the speaker if she's done so we can have our discussion Y without interruped Ela we we we do want to have the discussion so um uh I'm going to close I'm I'm going to move to close the public hearing so that we can proceed um is there a second second roll call parin yes Reynolds yes whites yes rrad yes and vaganis yes and just what I the other part I was going to bring up we're not we we still have to no well you still have to decide on the thing but before you did I just was going to tell the the council that if they wanted me to I could talk to them about the the liability issues that were raised by one of by the speaker on the and we can do that at a later time in close though okay thanks M sorry okay go ahead I move that ordinance for 407 be adopted on the second reading and the final publication as required by law second so is there any discussion because this is where discussion takes place before the vote so let's so let's have so let's have our discussion about we're sending this your thoughts so can we Paul just because this has gotten complicated in the Public's watching can you just I just want to make sure everybody understands that 407 pertains to the street being closed and 408 uh pertains to the parking because we've got two separate things here and it it's been long and I just want to make sure that everybody has that so this is the road closure so I mean if I can I guess maybe kick off um you know obviously I'm I'm listening to the family on Clinton and I think we all empathize with them and I know we can't talk about it because of the lawsuit but certainly um you know you're being heard and we feel for you and we feel for anyone who feels that they're being disadvantaged um by this with that said at least for me in my job as a council member um you know I have the police chief telling me that a statute or an ordinance is illegal and un enforceable I have a village attorney that's telling me that it's illegal and unenforceable I have a letter from the dot telling me that it's currently unenforcable and the only way to potentially ask them to review it is to get a waiver from the engineer and the police chief both of whom are testifying tonight that they're not willing to sign such a waiver in order for do to to re-examine it I then further have um in addition to to the legality of it um I have the police chief and and several officers all which who are were very well spoken tonight and and and really I have a ton of experience telling us that even if um we got around the legal issue it's just not a good idea and what I don't think we should be doing is is substituting our personal judgment for that of professionals especially ones who were as well spoken and and were able to speak to how they came up with their opinion um I have an engineer also telling me equally it's likely not a good idea even if something was um legal so with that while I I absolutely um agree and and feel awful for some of the folks who' have spoken tonight on balance I I can't vote in favor of of you know of the status quo I think I have to vote in favor of uh the motion tonight to um to withdraw the ordinance um based upon everything I've heard and then to you know put into place the parking ordinance um which is what do we do with every other School Street um in the village of Ridgewood um I want to you know in just you know in terms of transparency I know the mayor I know um Lorraine met several times with folks on Clinton Avenue I'm Clinton Street that's how the plan was come up with to put the sidewalk up on one side we had a broad consensus for a number of people on that street so folks working at home who've heard I think the impassion pleas of of a couple of folks on that street may not get the full measure of how much discussion we actually had with the residents at flinton hav um but certainly a lot of work was done and I think we've gotten to the right result and you're never going to make everyone happy but on balance I do think this is the the Right Way Forward um as the Council leaz on to the citizens safety advisory committee this was brought up not by the committee but actually by parents coming to meetings multiple times complaining saying that the street is dangerous for their child to walk to school um that then brought in disc discussion from police and engineering and it you know it went from that but there were so many complaints from parents about the dangers of their kids walking to school so that in my opinion is how it started the public hearing is closed we've had we we gave Steve we gave plenty ample time we we excuse me Steve thank thank you um we have so many years of experience here right at these two tables every single one of you a you know are in agreement that the road should be open that this ordinance should be rescinded I we have to abide by all of the years of experience combined I mean we would be in my opinion negligent if we did not listen to our experts so um I want to say thank you to everybody clearly I'm not going to Echo everything a couple takeaways there's hundreds of children at Ridge school that are factored into this decision The Rise program which focuses on neurod Divergent is also housed within Bridge um beyond the lawsuit I do want to say that I personally reached out and offered to me and I believe Chief l did as well and that's important that the public understand that um we're making the decision simply for me what you said is that a car against a pedestrian is a much higher rate of damage and like unlikely death and that would be what we want to avoid we want to keep the kids on the sidewalk um in addition the legal advice is that we really don't have an enforcable ordinance so um I support everybody I want to thank Paul and the rain for meeting with the residents and um to the family that's been advocating outside the lawsuit we do have an access committee I've invited you before I would love to for kids who are over 21 I'm extremely empathetic when school services in District dry up and if there's anything we can do to be helpful with that and any entitlements I know that everybody would be willing to do that so um I'm extremely sorry for the duress but I too want to support our police the other children at the school and make that street more w able and safe for the kids going the neighbors and everyone in the community thank you Evan for summarizing everything I was thinking based on what we've read and this presentation here tonight and hearing from the neighbors um I feel for the families on Clinton Street who don't live on the side with the sidewalk but um I can't ignore what our professionals are telling us and therefore I would vote in favor of 407 sending resending and um without the support of an engineer certification saying that this waiver is necessary it's clear to me that that waiver is unsustainable that we won't get it just right there we can't make our engineer say something he believes is not true we wouldn't ask him to beyond that um Lorraine and I and Keith met with and and several members of the police department met with the residents of Clinton Avenue and we discussed the possibility of a hard closure which would appear to be the only Avenue that this team of experts would consider safe it was unanimous or pretty unanimous that the residents of Clinton Avenue did not did not want under any circumstances a hard closure I don't see any alternative at this point other than to resin this ordinance continue the traffic studies revisit this matter in the not too District future based upon those traffic studies to determine if there's any reasonable support for the soft closure and I personally want to revisit this I don't know that the evidence will point in that direction I'm Gravely concerned as Lieutenant Chuck pointed out of the false sense of security of having a street partially closed that that would invite young students to walk in the street um it's we we all feel for um Daniel and his family um it is a very difficult situation for them we we want to discuss publicly and privately with them Alternatives but unfortunately our Council has advised us that that is absolutely not allowable at this point and so with that I'm going to ask that we take a roll call vote okay and move forward parin Reynolds yes whites yes Winograd yes and vaganos yes and moving on I move the clerk read ordinance 408 by title on second reading and that the public hearing thereon be opened second Haron yes Reynolds yes whites yes wad yes vaganos yes will the clerk please read the title of ordinance 408 an ordinance to amend chapter 265 of the code of the village of Ridgewood vehicles and traffic at section schedule 16 no stopping or standing the public hearing is now open seeing no no one I move the public hearing be closed second parin yes Reynolds yes whites yes winegrad yes vaganos yes I move that ordinance 4008 be adopted on second reading and final publication as required by law I second the motion perin yes Reynolds yes whites yes winegrad yes vagianos yes the following resolutions number 24- 282 through 24287 will be adopted by a consent agenda with one vote by The Village Council they will be read by title only Richard water title 59 approval infrared asphalt surface repair Richard water award contract infrared as asphalt surface repair ridard water title 59 approval concrete pavement and sidewalk restoration Rood water award contract concrete pavement and sidewalk restoration authorized shared services agreement class three special Law Enforcement Officers with the Ridgewood Board of Education weend resolution number 24263 and replace award Professional Services contract imported fil material delineation soil sampling at shedler property increased scope of project may I have a motion so moved second parin yes Reynolds yes whites yes winegrad yes vaganas yes and I'm going to um got go take a brief recess we have to adjourn the special public meeting and reconvene the work session first so may have a motion so moved second okay um parin yes Reynolds yes whites yes winegrad yes and Vos yes we're going to take a 10-minute recess and then five yeah it's five turns 10 can excuse hard 10 gentlemen thank you so much for your time your expertise it was a late night but um I don't think we could have gotten through this issue without you all we really appreciate it have a good evening 10 heart minutes okay so we'll resume the work session I just want to do a uh roll call Deputy Mayor parin here council member Reynolds here council member wh here council member wiad mayor vaganas here okay and let's proceed the um P treatment facilities buildout presentation thank you for sticking around and you're on now thank you for giving us the time and we have for you tonight um a very brief overview of the status of the construction um and scheduling of the P treatment facility uh master plan buildout um the intent on doing this was to set up uh for any questions or discussion you have around the three ordinances that are in your packet that will be up for introduction at the next public meeting which will fund the final three projects out of the 12 um so the end is um in sight so where we want to start is um we're going to talk a little bit about where we began um in 2019 with the first treatment facility being active where we are today um in 2024 where we have five active construction projects another one is on the agenda tonight for award we took bids uh last week for that project and the four four remaining ones um you including the three that are up for funding tonight so beginning where it all started um you as we mentioned um often in all corly notices the car treatment plant was the first plant built um and activated in September 2019 um you know that's the olvo on the left uh 20 um went active in August of 2022 both of those facilities are in the village of Ridgewood but more importantly the Ravine plant um which is also on Ridgewood but borders on wof um and close to Midland Park um continues on the construction and that is the right ovel um I'll have bigger photos of these on the next slide uh construction began on that project in April 23 um we are now expecting uh completion of that in February 2025 um and the reason for that there's been a small shift uh due to some delay in equipment that has to be delivered to the site uh but just blowing up um visuals of those sites um car top left uh for treatment vessels that have been active now uh since 2019 uh 20 on the top right uh since August of 2022 and you could see on the bottom uh progress that's occurring at Ravine uh the vessels have been delivered uh the block is going up um that represents both the electrical room the chemical room it might be a little bit hard to see but behind the vessels in the back is the pump room um what will occur next is the steel and the panels to frame the building um and then all the internal work to complete this project and and make it active moving beyond that uh we broke around on the prospect facility in Glenrock about a year ago August 2023 on that project is proceeding in accordance with its schedule and should be operational by August of 2025 uh the a treatment facility br ground in April of this year um we expect completion of that April 2026 um Prospect is represented in that top photo uh you can see the vessels have also been delivered there I'm starting to frame the buildings that go around that and steel has been started to be erected this week so there much uh bigger picture you could see if you looked at it today versus what we had in the slide uh what's up next is Wharton Dyke in Midland Park um the award of that project's on for tonight for discussion um if that moves forward and we get approval from the ibank um on the award we expect that that'll be completed by October 2026 what remains is the Cedar Hill project in wof um the cultural review on cultural resources is complete um New Jersey D is preparing the required memorandum of agreement um that has to go to usepa for review and signature um so we're pending um signatures on that and receiving that back to move forward our full process of getting uh review at the wof planning board and the remaining permits um all with the anticipation of still trying to get that out to bid before the end of this year and make that the final project built and completed by the end of 2026 just another kind of drill down into those projects prospect on the top left that will be the finished look of the plant that you saw in the prior slide with the vessels um Ames is the top right it's the one that looks like a home it's in a predominantly residential area in wof across from homes us that's why it's replicated to look like a home um the door is not operable the windows are not operable it's all a faux facade but inside will be the vessels and all the associated perces that make the treatment facility work uh bottom left is a Cedar Hill facility um it is one of the largest out of the 12 um you can see that based on the size and the rendering and bottom right is what the W Dyke facility in Midland Park will look like when it's completed two small facilities that have begone construction um with anticipation of completion by February 2026 and we call these the resin projects because they are not granulated activated carbon a resin was chosen as the treatment method for these sites because of the land and area constraints uh these are two vessels each proposed at the East rid and West End sites um also on the Villager Ridgewood um pipe work has begun for this project and the contractor has been going through the submittal with the anticipation of starting the building work very shortly and completing um by February 2026 you know again another little drill down into those designs uh without getting into the detail um the front of each sketch is the existing buildings at each side each site and the uh the rear detail is the expansion we're PR pretty much just doing a small expansion on each building these are the simplest of the uh designs that are and plants that will be built out out of the 12 um and these slides will be made available on our website as well um so you could get further detail so while we're really here tonight um we have in front of you the ordinances to fund the final three projects um those being our easts side Main and Mountain facilities um they will round up the 12 facilities and complete complete all of our requirements under the master plan and the administrative consent order that has been signed with New Jersey DP um yand is going to kind of take you through real quick overview of each project and then I'm going to come back and talk about the final two slides to wrap this up and then of course any questions you have for okay so um first of the final three is East Side um this is in Ridgewood and this one has um these all have two vessels they're the relatively small they're the granular activated carbon vessels um this one has a little bit bigger of a price tag because we also are connecting two other satellite Wells to it we have um East Salem and eastle and East settle River um so we'll be installing new raw water mains from those Wells to this facility um and this one's already you know it's going to be a a building that's in addition to the existing facility it's pretty much out of out of sight um relatively there's um uh was n too much um you know the the building's going to basically match and there there wasn't too much um constraint on what we did there because it's going to look like just an addition to the facility um we will be coming to the planning board in Ridgewood as soon as possible we're getting together the package and um going through um having our submittals in order so that we can get to in front of the planning board here um the next one is um in Glenrock it's at our Southside uh Reservoir and Main well uh this one's a standalone um It's also two vessels GAC uh this one we haven't gone to the Glenrock planning board yet either that's our next step um uh and this one's again it's it's it's even more kind of out of out of iite than than the others it's uh just a small addition uh next to an existing facility and we have a the uh PV we have the transfer station there we have a bunch of things going on there and room enough to fit our facility um in the existing area fenced area um and then the last one is in woff uh this one is in a res residential area so um more care was taken to U make it uh aesthetically you know pleasing from from the street side and from the neighbors points of view we we have already gotten approval from the woff planning board for this one uh so we've been able to move prob this one's probably the most advanced um as far as the design um all three were planning on having completed uh construction by September 2026 uh and final design you know in motion now uh like I said planning board for Ridgewood and Glenrock coming up for the other two any questions on those three before I move forward uh you mentioned Yolanda that the the mountain posos treatment facility was the most advanced in what way oh not just advanced in in in um on it in it's design schedule that's all oh yeah otherwise they're all very similar process yes exactly so one one of the questions you may may be asking is how much has all this been costing um so we broke down strictly capital investment Capital cost for these projects not considering all our other costs operation and maintenance that make up the over 100 million doll number1 140 $150 Million number that we've been throwing around but strictly the Capital to build these projects the 2020 master plan estimated the 12 plants at $89 million total if you adjust that for inflation to 2024 numbers it's $109 million where we are today based on the bids we have received for the eight projects to date and our projection on the four remaining we estimate will be at about 92 million doll wait a minute the whole package is 92 million for the construction and Engineering correct and how do we get why do we keep using the $150 Million number this does not include interest fees operation and maintenance other costs related to our Public Notices Communications Etc when you add all those costs in that's where you get to the4 $150 Million number got it thank you this strictly the capital outlay for the project when you award it today today we have received Grant forgiveness of $5.8 million um that includes a $2.8 million Grant from usepa to dat we've gotten $3 million in principal forgiveness from the ibank uh we expect and hope to receive another $2 million for this fiscal year for another project through the ibank to add to that number so that equates about 6% of the the total as we move forward and that does not include any possibility of um recovery from any litigation correct that is correct um there will be an update on the uh legal case um giv to Mayor councel um believe at the September 11th um meeting a Clos session and it's still additional Insurance Recovery that's continuing as well lastly um actually two more slides just wanted to highlight some of the challenges um that we've experienced going through these projects um because some of you may ask and the public always ask why is it taking so long um the ibank is a process um there's time to establish the funding as you're doing tonight you have to establish a bond ordinance you then have to approve a resolution for the short-term funding which you're also doing tonight for two other projects you have to go through Bond Council you have to create a project team including engineering you have to secure all the permits relative to each project and they could range from water systems engineering as you know to Green Acres cultural resources uh treatment works approvals soy Rosa control those permits all take time to to get submitted um and approved statutory review periods and the ibank will not release any project to advertise until all that is cleared and they do their public notification process stating that the en environmental decision is complete so that's why we're at the point where we're at today where some of these projects are not moving forward but we're close to the Finish Line you know Cedar Hill is the only one remaining due to the culture resource aspect we found the remains of an 18th century home um on the site uh so with there the mo MOA will lay out um what needs to be done prior to the construction of the uh posos plant you know recovery of those elements uh donating of them um to a local Museum uh documentation of the history of that site which will be shared on our website um and and locally through the public um and actually tours of the site um will be held as well and there's a whole history that um be shared on that lastly what else are we doing um while this is all happening um we continue to favor our treated sources car and 20 or on year round except when they're off for any necessary maintenance we're purchasing water uh from Viola and Pake Valley who have both levels below the DP regulations but they are above the EP new EPA regulations and newly this uh summer we began purchasing from the burough of hathorne again um we had shut them down for two years um because they had a p exceedence uh but their treatment was completed uh before the summer so we started repurchasing again up to 700 g gallons per minute of water and we are working towards winterizing that interconnect with horor so that we can continue uh that usage through the winter for at least the next two years uh to supplement our system while we build out the other plants and and Rich that'll get us to a a closer to a compliance number by doing that right could you just I know it's a late hour but could you just expand on that a little bit because this agreement that we're in with Hawthorne is going to move us closer uh to compliance rates than we would be if we weren't utilizing hor Thorn's uh built out system that's correct the horor water is filtered um they're using a resin treatment system so it's coming to us at non- detector levels below the the standard the EPA standard even that combined with car 20 um our other interconnect sources um in the winter months when people are not watering and our demand is very low we're looking at a percentage of water in our system that is compliant over 50% and even greater depending on what the usage is and this is why we stress so much in the summer to conserve water and not water your Lawns because when you do that you're requiring us to turn more treatment plants on and put water in the system that has posos in it so the more people can do to conserve at least the next two summers while we complete this process and we continue trying to bring more sources on online like hathorne Ravine will be next um we could get that number higher and higher until the final plan is complete in 2026 any other questions questions yes um when you're building these new houses to house the facilities um I know that there's no money in the master plan for posos to put solar panels on but at some point in the future would you consider putting solar panels on these new roofs it's it's something I believe the Village Council as a body needs to decide um we need to weigh it against all of the in other Investments the utility needs to make over the next 40 years um we have an aging infrastructure um that posos came and kind of put the rest of that aside for the moment um rigid water was built over 100 years ago um we have over 100 miles of pipe uh some of which are over 100 years old that need to be replaced um there are the possibility of other new contaminants that could be regulated in addition we're keeping up with our 52 Wells and maintenance of those buildings and other Associated perces so I think we have to weigh all that together um I I could tell you there will be one plant out of the 12 that we will be proposing solar panels on and that's the one at Prospect and Glenrock um because the solar field did exist there prior and we have made Provisions to put that on the roof but that will be coming to you as a separate project funded and to be built and that's one of the big four correct so it'll be large okay we're we're also opening up discussions with Millennium about the possibility for any grant opportunities to assist in that endeavor um we're not there yet because obviously Prospect is still being built out the vessels were delivered last month U but that's a conversation that rich and I will be having again with Millennium to see what opportunities may exist in the grant world uh I have a couple questions Rich um the New Jersey what is the New Jersey standard for posos we have pfoa at 14 parts per trillion and pfos at 13 and then there's pfna at 13 and what is the new EPA standard the EPA standard is going to lower those to four parts for trillion I know you've told me that we're going to be when we're done at n undetectable levels do you know or do you have any idea where the how many of the other water companies in New Jersey are currently in compliance with the EPA standard I do not know the number um but I could tell you from the um participation I have in the local groups um all of the large utilities like Viola P Valley New Jersey American and aqua um they are all going to have to build page treatment and you're talking to the levels of 100 times the size of what we're building so so then based upon that all these other water or so many of these other water companies are not going to be in compliance by the time we are in compliance that's correct and um you mentioned that Hawthorne has completed their posos um treatment facilities yes are there many water companies that have completed their treat their P treatment facilities I don't know the exact number but there probably are small utilities like hathorne that have completed or near incompletion um they have I think corthorn might have five Wells got it three treatment plants and we have how many Wells 52 Wells and 31 treatment plants and so and so that's why it's taking us longer and that's why it's going to take violia far longer and and part of what you need to you I know you understand is the option that we had to go forward with is a centralization it was a reimagination of the system it wasn't building treatment at the 31 existing locations because it just wasn't ACH to achievable due to many reasons so that in itself the engineering behind that development of that and moving forward with that build out with all the miles of raw water man that we're putting in the ground itself lent to an extra time factor and design and cost and because I know this is you know we're on the eve of completing this um my my greater concern going forward is those infrastructure projects of this hundredy old water company relative to the work and expense uh of of the posos treatment facilities how big how much how long do you think again those those replacing and repairing the old system is going to be is this a fiveyear 10 year 50-year project probably 40 year 30 to 40 years got it yeah you're talking miles of main per year right so we're gonna we're going to be doing this for a long time long time got it thank you very much really and thank you by the way as I've said many times for leading the way so that we are again on the cusp of having the best water in New Jersey maybe the country so thank you very much mayor I just want to add that this um presentation will be placed up on the uh Village website um we're also included in the the E notice this week so that any residents who are interested in following the um the build out of these projects uh can do it in a pretty easy format uh based on this PowerPoint presentation so we'll get get that up ASAP anybody else yeah I just want to say thank you you know I've said it before but I'll say it again with your leadership Rich we really have come so far and I truly believe without you at the helm we would not be where we are today so I thank you absolutely thank you for the support good anyone else good and now you are not excused I know um because we have have half a dozen or so items to go through so let's let's plow through them you've got to finish them by 11 o'clock okay all right so F first item is the award of the second year of the contract for water smart customer portal this also includes our invoice cloud service that allows our online payment um last year awarded a three-year contract so this is for the award of year two um it is to the water smart software Incorporated um in the amount not exceed of$ 46,5 78 um this is funded in the water operating budget questions let's go all right next item um as we mentioned in the presentation um this is the recommendation for Award of the Wharton Dy P Treatment Facility in Midland Park on August 23rd 2024 7 bids were received and publicly read for the reference project um copy of the bid report is attached from Mt McDonald along with their recommendation of award to the low responsible bidder Sovereign Consulting in the amount of 6,315 750 a funding for this project is accounting for in the capital budget and is a New Jersey ibank funded project uh contingent on their award um after the award is made by The Village Council but questions when do you think that might break ground um it will it's up for award at your meeting next week um if we get the award notice from the ibank there's usually about a 30-day process to get contracts in order and do all the work with the ibank so you probably say October November and then we have a two-year time frame that's been given to the contractor to complete um anybody else let's go uh next recommendations for St contract truck purchase this is for a 2023 Ford F3 super cab this will supplement our Fleet and become our new treatment chemical um truck used to transfer our treatment chemicals which is our sodium hypochloride or a poly orthal phosphate um to our remote sites uh for treatment the current truck is truck 172 is a 2015 vehicle that will remain in the fleet um as a result of all the work that's happening with posos the staff is expanding so we'll repurpose that vehicle for use bar new treatment division staff this is also funded under the water utility operating budget I'm going to ask a question yes so the other one was a 250 this is a 350 why did we upgrade we are looking to upgrade the capacity to hold more chemical safely thank you anybody else I'm waiting for Pam to ask her question got go ahead I know does it come in a hybrid or not a 350 I did my homework and I spoke to Mike J head of Fleet Ford trucks F-150 and Below come in hybrid and electric anything above that no yeah see I didn't think so F350 the answer is no yeah and have you looked at other brands besides Ford not for electric I'm just saying I haven't this is what Fleet recommends to us they like to work on wordss we don't we like Chevies better than for the truck seriously my my husband has no luck with for trucks and Chevies are good next item is also State contract purchase this is with brain Stone Industries um this is for our annual Cooperative uh purchasing of stone other back fill materials that are required for repairs and Replacements um when dirt is removed from an excavation we have to back fill it with materials such as decorated aggravated Stone aggregate stone or Crush Stone so we are asking for not to exceed of $100,000 for these purchases um and this is also funded within the water utility operating budget questions um in my version the proposed resolution is for AA burms LLC but your memo is talking about brain buying from brainster so I'm a little confused I don't know my my resolution copy says Stone Industries I I have the same thing I think there's probably a stapling error yeah it's a stapling error okay yeah I got AA BMS too yeah all right if it which was which was something that we dealt with earlier tonight right that was one of those things one of those that I asked your question about AA BMS okay yeah so long as it says Brain Stone fine okay uh the next item is the funding resolution for the short-term financing for the East Ridgewood and West End uh posos projects this is a requirement um from the ibank um although you approve the ordinance to fund the projects um now that they're awarded and under construction in order to close or short-term financing with the ibank they require this this resolution this has been prepared by Bond Council questions go okay thank you next one this is a recommendation to support Green Acres application um we were back here on July 17th we held the final public hearing um for the required um application process for the Lynwood well diverent our next step is to submit to the State House Commission for their approval they require a resolution um that endorses the application acknowledges all the comments that came in for the public comment and improves the payment that will be made for the verion of $6,800 to the Garden State preservation trust for the minor diversion and $110,000 to the Garden State preservation trust for the major diversion portion this includes a letter that was prepared by The Village attorney uh stating opinion relative to the application which will also be submitted to the state questions good the next item is a resolution um authorizing the execution of extension of a lease um rigid water has leased for over 50 years a property from the B of Glenrock for a Southside tank location where the main treatment facility is going to be constructed um on that site we have a 2 million gallon storage tank we have a pump station we have our Peg Valley Water Commission inter we have a one megawatt generator um there's a lot of infrastructure on the property this um resolution that'll be put up of for the next meeting um you have a copy of the lease agreement that has been reviewed and approved by Glenrock along with the resolution that was approved by them at their last what number what number because we don't we don't have it in our packets I do it's 14 number seven maybe it was no it's it's out of order it's out of order in mind 1487 yep there we go it's the next it's the next item here I got it got it there should be the resolution from B Glenrock and then we we have it it was just on in a separate section entitle Lisa land borrow Glenrock to villager Ridgewood um I want to publicly thank um uh mayor of Glenrock Christine Moro and the and the Glenrock Council um this was and I won't go into the detail but this was a very thorny issue and it has they tortured history and they worked very well with us to come up with a resolution to this and um and it is greatly appreciated by both the residents of Ridgewood and the residents of Glenrock it was very helpful to have both Mayors involved any questions questions anyone nope good final item then then I think you're six minutes over but we'll allow it this time thank you thank you so much thank you for being here all evening thank you for your thoughtful and well-informed presentation um and and all the good information you've given us thank you thank you thank you all and let's move on mayor under uh parking this evening uh we have a request letter from The Ridgewood Chamber of Commerce the executive director Joan groom requesting free parking in the garage only on two dates Halloween in the park October 26 2024 and downtown for the holidays December 6th 2024 um this as I referred to earlier tonight was a topic that we um discussed at our meeting with the chamber about parking and another initiative to try to promote parking in the garage trying to make it more accessible and more known to folks who visit Ridgewood um what are the times for the free parking on those days so I think Jan's request here indicates all day um Council certainly has the opportunity to limit the hours uh for the free parking if you're so inclined to do so and the uh the amounts uh are nominal based on uh past history and that's provided in a memo from uh from Bob Rooney that's where I'm shocked on a Saturday the total revenue $200 just in the garage I know that's why I I can't tell whether these figures are for just the hours of the event or whether it's all day that's what here that's where I'm confused and and and that would appear to make sense not that I know what it is but it I can't imagine that that we're paying our note with $200 on a Saturday um but beyond that um I as I say every time these things come up I I would support a a partial um uh amnesty for for parking um you know for a set period of time the all day thing is as I say every time it is incredibly counterproductive because the employees of the village or excuse me of of the central business district know about this they get there first they leave their cars there all day long and the customers can't get it so so from a from a marketing standpoint I think having the day start without with free parking and having it end without Day Parking I think becomes a little more complicated with Halloween in the park I think downtown for the holidays is a little easier if you say 5:00 on free parking come celebrate the the tree lighting that type of thing I think that's a little cleaner um I think it gets a little more complex having it be free up until a certain time on Saturday you might consider having free parking on that October 26th date and then just just implementing the 5:00 free parking on the 6th of December so I have a question has the guilt approached the late Thursdays again are they going to come yeah again Tony indicated when we did have our meeting he was in attendance at that meeting that the chamber organized uh that he would be making that similar request again so there's going to be an additional additive for the four right this is the these were the two that for the rest of the year for the chamber and the I haven't received correspondence from The Guild yet okay I I would support for um de for the Christmas tree lighting something from say 4 or 5:00 on for the um for the Halloween um uh uh event I would support you know a three or four hour um you know in the morning with signs posted saying it's free until you know right in front of the garage when people come in the the problem with Halloween is the preschool crew goes out early you're not just I I so let's like December 6 I think does everybody agree four o'clock five o'clock yeah four four four so let's do that four the problem with Halloween is Littles like mini minis in the preschool will start trick-or-treating at like 10 the event well keep in mind it's on October 26th so it's the Saturday before but when they're in when they're in town in their costumes they will continue to trick or treat okay you know throughout that's just what they do they love I have one kid who really loved Halloween but the event is 11 to2 aren't they going to go home and nap at that point um I don't know I mean maybe we could do it should we establish it till 3: so people have another hour to not worry about it before they have toart C can the kiosks tell them your your parking is free until 3 o' I think we'd have to post it which you know but again it's only at the garage so we would post it so it was high there's only one way in so you know everyone yeah and I'm I'm good with a a three or 4 Hour Okay so do should we say till 3: on the 26th fine yep till 300 p.m. from 9: to 3: and then 400 p.m. on on the sixth okay great very good I'm wondering when our nap time is okay um the next item is um under budget uh this is Award of contract for the central business district uh tree planting Endeavor uh the shade tree commission and the parks direct Department uh wish to finalize the tree well plantings through the central business district um eight new trees watered twice a day twice a week for 3 weeks after planting um and installing the gator bags uh the recommendation is to award this contract to tow Landscaping contractors in the amount of 91 152 and this is um a capital budget item this went out to bid right yeah this one's a quote because it's under the bid threshold yeah because the third one is for one tree it's not for eight trees the one from East Coast Landscape is for one tree well they're they're also the high quote right but I I just didn't understand why they were quoting something so vastly different well who who speaks Latin is that is that the paper bark I me remember they were searching for that a long time ago but we're not going forward with it I don't know but all right fine the low bidder is somebody else the low bidder will be a trees finalized in the wells yeah okay um next item is the award of contract uh under the sourcewell contract for three police vehicles uh for the special law enforcement 3 Program uh which was previously approved with the Board of Education this evening it'll be three Nissan ultimas um the way this works with Enterprise um is we pay out um over the course of the lease but then we receive funding back um as is explained in the memo um when we turn the vehicle back in um so the net total cost over three years is approximately $3,500 for which is insanely reason that's why Lieutenant Lieutenant Juck values the program that he uh that he discovered good job okay and I asked him about it does it come in in no not electric I asked him about because we don't have charging stations but I asked him about hybrid and he said it gets such good mileage over 35 miles per gallon that it that it's not worth it okay the next item is a recommendation from engineering with regard to the award of purchase and installation um of materials and supplies for the um ska system at the water pollution control facility uh we're in need of new rotary acuator and butterfly valve to control the air distribution throughout the basins uh this is essential for effective treatment at the water pollution control facility uh the current actuators and valves were installed during the plant upgrade which was 2005 uh this recommendation is to Northeast technical sales uh not to exceed $ 36,7 n0 good yep let's go next is also recommendation from Chris with regard to uh Parts materials and supplies for the fleet division uh this contract would be awarded through the New Jersey state Cooperative purchasing program not to exceed a $100,000 uh this primarily has to do um with tires um and tire capping Services uh keep in mind uh tires are something that has been hit hard by inflation um but this is the recommendation from Chris and Mike junto with our fleets division good okay okay next item is recommendation to award remedial investigation and remedial action work um at habernickel Park we discussed this briefly earlier tonight uh this is for the soil characterization sampling in accordance with the njd regulations and requirements uh this is recommended to be awarded to Matrix um not to exceed $30,100 let's go next item is memorandum from Sean Hamlin uh for a new recycling truck this is a request for a change in Vendor uh for the purchase of one kennworth dual steer cab overdesigned two-man cab for the division of recycling um to be mounted on a new leech Model 2r3 25 cubic yard rear loader this is available under the sourcewell contract not to exceed $349,900 36 the purchase order was originally made out to sanitation equipment however they cannot complete the sale and he is now recommending um that gabrielli Trucking sales uh be the vendor to purchase the vehicle from is the price the same yes same not to exceed next is the recommendation to reject all bids for the annual residential tree planting and tree irrigation program uh bids were received on Wednesday August 14th 2024 there were nine registered plan holders we received five bids the bids ranged from a low of 134 830 to a high of 66490 uh Chris and his team reviewed the bids and noted significant flaws in from the four lowest bids the biders miscalculated the cost of the tree irrigation uh the only bid that correctly bid uh was the highest bidder um and we do not have the available funding to make that award so he is recommending that we go out and we rebid this project good okay next item is 14 C8 uh which is to increase the fines for overgrown Central business district tree Wells this is a recommendation coming from the shade tree commission so I'm going to turn it over to council member winr sure um so Lorraine and I have worked on this um so basically uh since taking our office we've had this long-standing issue with the maintenance of the tree WS downtown and the way that it's written right now is uh it's responsibility of the land owner who you know where the property owner in front of the the store where the tree resides there's been several problems with this um and in the short term we've had mulch Monday we have weeding on top of that when we've noticed taking care of the um tree Wells we have a general maintenance problem of some of the property with overgrown weeds um I want to thank code they've been and Keith and Heather even before Keith we've been um sending people out to remind them of their responsibility a a lot of discussion has ensued and we're still having this discussion of where does the ownership how should we deal with this but one thing that and line you're going to chime in and hopefully say I think I got it right lorine and I both felt that the fines for um trees and unmaintained tree Wells and weeds need to match and that we want to go a little heavier on the second offense so on the last page of this um I feel I feel like code vered I found all the ordinances he printed them all out you'll see the tree well the first find is 50 with a no secondary burden and the weed the first offense is 125 and the second offense is 100 so crazy why would it be I don't know I'm new here because because a second offense know generally speaking is supposed to be so that's what I want to discuss so this isn't a recommendation this is what's on the books now oh this is what's on the books now this is like this is where I say duh you guys did this before the old English offense this is the or so what I want to discuss and gain consensus on this is just facts and information for you guys to so one we feel that the findes should match because To Be Honest Tree Wells are in some sense is more important because we have an asset sitting in them and then two we feel and then I'm going to stop speaking collectively for Lorraine and I that the second offense should be heavier handed so um lorine had when we were talking at one point when we were weeding we said oh $ thousand dollar we're just joking but um the weeds are out of control sometimes so um because we put it on there I I I feel like the first offense at 125 is reasonable and I'd love to do tree walls matching that and the second offense I'm going to let Line Take the Lead I think it needs to to your point Paul it needs to be higher it needs to be more heavy-handed so that's the discussion should they match I think we all agree they should match and two what should they be and before we just get to that part of it what's the difference between the tree Wells ordinance and the weeds ordinance because aren't we talking about weeds in the tree Wells we're talking about two separate things so the tree Wells which are like micro Parks that's what we all them we they have they can be you can put rocks in them you could not maintain them and that's one issue the weeds sometimes like on a let's take a building that's vacant you'll often see weeds growing up by the door in the seams of the sidewalk those are outside the weeds ordinance does not apply to weeds in the tree Wells right tree Wells are separate and the weeds in the tree Wells are part of tree well maintenance got it okay so okay go go heavy on what you think so I mean I say first offense equal 125 and second offense I say a minimum of 250 I'm willing to go way higher and I'll give him the ticket myself I'm F I'm fine with that and I think the weeds or plant growth in excess of 10 Ines is too lenient uh 10 that's a big weave yeah I'm sorry five in six in at the most that's a big weeds grow weeds do grow fast but 10 10 Ines is really big it's a big weed but but they but they here here not in your garden but in in I would even call it my garden on at my house they they grow fast yes but this is they the WEA okay so the problem I think is that that we're putting this on the owners a lot of the owners are absentee they never see it they're not there Florida they have to have it in their leases with the shop owners something because the person that's there every day the shop owner the manager is walking past that tree well to get in their front door everything every single day yeah but they come in the back door well we need to tell them to come in the front door or they should come out the front door and sweep don't they sweep in front of their shop I I think sometimes not well sometimes some of the the owners being mevolent to them and I want to stay focused because it's so late I want to go with the match but some owners have a sole worker who really just doesn't have the luxury of going outside it's it's here it's it's not a question it's not a question of having the luxury of going outside it's that they don't care what goes on out side and I've been dealing with this for 30 years in the central business district and um and unless there is here's here's it's a two-part problem you need to make it you need to make it hurt and you need to enforce it because what happens is I mean if you go down if you go down Ridgewood Avenue and the side streets you're going to see a bunch of tree Wells that are in violation of this ordinance not not now because nobody gets a ticket I mean nobody gets this year they did they did we did code did go out so let's let's focus so is everybody okay with 125 for the first yes yes okay and is everybody okay with 250 for the second yes is that going to hurt 250 here it's only going to get fixed if it hurts right it's 250 it's it's because otherwise nobody's going to do it and and that's going to be because because if if landlords put it in their leases that that the tenant is responsible for this for reimbursement right then then that tenant after the first offense is going to start to pay attention to it and and it's got to be it's got to be more than than 50 bucks and the tree wells look like and I really think the 10 Ines has got to change I mean if one weed is higher than 10 inches whatever one grow so what do you want to change it to but some people have like a carpet of weeds this big I'm sorry well I I I like the parallel 10 inches because in the weed ordinance that that homeowners are held to it's 10 inches I'm I'm good with I'm good with 10 inches because at that point now I don't mind somebody getting find $ 1225 or $250 and I and I have many friends who I say to them do something come on it looks terrible and they and they don't they don't pay attention to it it's just it's unimportant I'm fine with I'm f i I think 250 is I think 125 and 250 are both good what about a third offense at 350 oh rather than make the 250 higher why don't you do a third offense why don't we I like that good idea good idea 500 third and subsequent M 500 that's a lot that's good if you did it if it's it's it's it's here here I I don't mind I don't mind hammering everybody you know why don't we why don't we make it 5,000 um no but if you get to the third offense you deserve it after being a tree Captain you may go with that number I'm I I think I think that here 250 is a big number for a small store owner and I think that um my own opinion is second all SEC second and subsequent offenses are 250 believe me the they're not going to they're not going to get too many Beyond a second offense at 250 nobody's gonna get so Paul the only the only thing that like and this is a larger discussion I don't want to blabber it but Paul Pam and L the reality is is that mulch Monday has sort of covered a lot of Labor already so we you know one of the things about mulch Monday that I've heard criticism of is we're doing something that we shouldn't be which is technically right because we're covering someone's responsibility right and and Lorraine is and those are discussions and I think the council respects I heard that and I we still did it because the town needed to be beautified and I think that was a good discussion but the reality is is we're going to have to look at that structure as well because what if what if I stop mulching like what if that happens I mean how many landlords came to you and said gosh thanks for doing that several really yeah several did I mean we had I will say that this year we had a lot more positive experience and feedback on the trees and I will say because I love those volunteers that did it it was the right thing to do it does look better everyone I mean it looked great for the Fourth of July but um we had several people who were very appreciative and we even had actually Saul from um jackelin Hyde he mulched he not only took care of he he came and was one of the mulchers which is very nice so I'm going to go with a couple not all of them and some of them do still need to say it but anyway so are we going 250 second and subsequent or are we going heavier I think think you need to go heavier so on the third I think so too ju just just just so you know again uh in whatever my opinion is worth in terms of being downtown 250 is a big fine for a small shop owner when you get to you get to 500 it's it's a it's again it's it's it's like it's like it's like saying um you know you know three years in prison for shoplifting okay so let's go to 350 on the third again I'm I'm I'm 250 is a big number that that here whatever the council wants to do it's fine that's as far as I'll go I'm fine with 350 okay okay so that's going to go on for a vote next week 1225 250 350 third and subsequent and that that's and we're keeping 10 inches so thank you I I do want to just say that's great this is excellent shade tree will be very excited but we still have to have the broader discussion let me ask a question we've always in the past given a warning first before the and then a fine but like how many warning you know I mean to me I'm like start off with we always send a letter explaining and telling the owners that this is their responsibility you have a copy of the letter in the pack then if we don't do it then if they don't do it then they get a warning and then if they don't do it then they get a fine I I I've I've always believed in one one warning everybody should get one morning MH and that's it it's too we're already into the summer by the time they've gotten the letter they don't abide by the letter then they get the warning they don't abide by the warning one warning is the letter a warning no the the the that's what I'm saying we're already into July by the time the letter and then the war the letter the there's several letters that go out there's a letter from Village and then there's letter the letter from shade tree we have onc calendar go about March because we want people to know and then the weeds don't really get kicking in until like June June right and the only give the warning and then we're in what I would recommend here is administratively I'll talk to code enforcement I mean we're talking about picking weeds here we're not talking about a major investment right in in time and money and resources I think what we do is we we ask uh John to give a warning with five days compliance four or five days compliance so we'll shorten that window okay so we can get it done and then on the fifth day or the sixth day depending on how he does the calculations then they get hit with the first fine good is that is that is that a good compromise to that's good but they go out go out earlier looking for understood the warning and I and I think when you when you introduce and pass this ordinance it'll certainly send a message to our compliance folks that you know this is this is an important well I think we should send the business owners a note when we pass it okay I mean we could do that through the chamber and the and Chade tray too I mean I think that would be hey heads up things have changed okay because this is going to be yeah right right no it's but this is just a no not in the ordinance but as a as a as a practice right okay good there good okay number nine is um the insertion of Revenue into the 20124 municipal budget this has to do with uh the $100,000 in opioid Grant monies that we received uh from the New Jersey Department of Human Services Division of mental health and Addiction Services um this is a uh housekeeping item for Bob to insert the sense in the budget um who found this grant um so this is actually the result of a settlement of a lawsuit um and it is a portioned throughout municipalities in the state of New Jersey based on the settlement but the money has to be earmarked for opioid abatement education purchas of Naran things of that nature and how will we be using it through which departments is that dep so don is spearheading this in our health department she's she's meeting with the police department and also uh with her Outreach people uh to a portion of the money so that we're hitting both the education goal and you know purchase supplies for the police department that they need in the case of an overdose situation okay good okay um number 10 is a refund of overpayment of taxes on Heights Road the amount of $2,597 could to be refunded to an attorney account as mentioned in the memo number 11 is the award of the lease for wireless telecommunications on the roof of this building uh you have a extensive memorandum here for from our village engineer Chris rudish Houser uh bids were accepted on August 21st uh we had four registered plan holders only one returned the bid uh he is recommending the award um of this bid to New York smsa limited partnership uh Verizon Wireless uh in partnership with celco um it's General partner they're out of Monroe Township New Jersey uh the quote is $6,000 per year for 5 years uh the intent of this proposed lease as we've talked about at prior Council meetings is to assist in providing significantly improved cellular telephone Communication in and around Village Hall um on Veterans Field especially during large events like the 4th of July but this will also extend coverage from the central business district all the way over to the Valley campus uh the improved uh cell phone communication upgrade will require a durable and reliable source of emergency power I.E an emergency generator this big incorporates um an emergency generator to be built out at Village Hall our current generators undiz and approximately 20 years old uh so we will receive an infrastructure upgrade as part of this lease agreement um which is why the um the Pere cost um is built around the inclusion of the generator of the bit of work is the generator Up on the Roof no right Chris what's the location here he comes that's why he stayed uh now the generator is too large it's going to be a probably a 400 450 KW generator our current generator is 100 KW we anticip P putting the new one in the same spot the current one is at which is where up at the northwest corner of Village Hall okay um Up on the Roof where they're going to have their telecommunication stuff how much how much room do they need up there it's mostly going to be mounted on the wall uh I believe the council had seen a schematics uh about three months ago was how it would be mounted uh there'll be conduits probably running across the roof for the information and so forth and so my question is does this preclude solar panels on the roof we have solar panels on the roof now the nonfunctioning ones exactly so this will be a functioning project right now the solar panels are just gorgeous to look at I just what gorgeous to look at but I guess the question Chris is none of the solar panels that are on the roof will need to be removed to accommodate this project uh I don't know yet probably maybe one or two okay certainly nothing on the scale like to build a posos plant down at water pollution okay so if if there was ever an appetite amongst the council to replace the solar panels on the roof there would still be adequate room to be able to do that yes we have most of the panels on the roof are on the barrel portion on the old roof um in a few years we're going to have to take the those off to re-roof the roof and then reinstall them that'll be an operation just like we did at the main Firehouse okay and and just to confirm the Aesthetics piece of this uh you know those facades are included in the in the bid specification that would block any visibility of the uh of the antennas correct uh yes the intent is that the product The Village sees and has built on Village Hall looks very comparable to what was shown in the schematics to the council earlier this year you has screening um just architecturally extending the current walls to hide the the 5G noes he Heather and Chris had both shared when we started to talk about this the concerns that neighbors visitors of Veterans Field might have with the Aesthetics so we did everything we could to to block that and there'll be very limited site if any of the actual antenna I mean you're going to see a change in the building but it's going to be a blended change it should not be a jarring change and there is a public safety element of this police were involved in making this decision because our cell communication in the in the lull here is uh is is troublesome especially when you have emergency responders trying to Comm with communicate with each other and I will tell you not to prolong the meeting but when we had the um the temporary cell truck out here for the Fourth of July we were here for the fireworks no interference everybody on the field unlike the experience last year year where no one had any type of Self Service on V vets field during the fireworks demonstration it was UN it was uninterrupted this year outside this one's a no-brainer okay all right thanks Chris um item D under policy was removed that's going to be carried to the uh 25th work session under operations we have a declaration of surplus property from the parks department in Old chipper and Declaration of surplus property the police department patrol Vehicles as listed in the memorandum any issues with either of those nope mayor that concludes my portion of the agenda thank you very much we will return to public comment Paul just before we do that um just I have one I know we have instituted an 11 o'clock curfew we've obviously blown through that tonight I just ask in the future as we've done in the past if we are going to see the 11 and we take a vote on it and discuss it you are absolutely right I to interrupt because there's work to get done but I think if we're going to have a rule on the books we need to to follow it you're absolutely right Evan and forgive me for for not putting it to a vote I I apologize sorry bu uh good evening boy a loving uh just a I believe a correction I believe the manager mentioned something about the parking garage for the um what event was that it was the Halloween event on October 26th and downtown for the holidays I believe it's de member 6 okay the Halloween event for the uh the parking event for the Halloween I believe the the parking starts at 10: not 9: on a Saturday okay I believe you said nine okay so just don't want to have people paying to park it yeah I mean we will uh we'll confirm with Bob bruny the appropriate times and Heather will list that in the resolution in accordance with the established time frame okay uh I'd like to uh thank councilman whites for suggesting this this topic about whether you need to give your address or not street address address complete street address winds up on a future agenda uh for many many reasons uh Daniel's law notwithstanding I am dead set against continuing to have to give my address uh I believe it's a security issue um the person who this happened to has left the room but here in this room somebody came up to somebody who had spoken and said I now know your street address was like a threat so uh I don't feel comfortable giving out my street address when I'm here and have to give it out my house is vacant uh I don't know why you need to know my street address I absolutely do not know why you need to know it I know it goes on the meeting minutes that's a practice that has to stop and as I stand here and say it it's being recorded on YouTube it's being recorded and it's being posted on The Village's website why are we doing this what is the need to know where I I live if you want to know where I live you go down to the tax office and you ask you ask the tax collector where I live or go to the assessor and ask the assessor where I live there's no need for me to say that publicly in a televised broadcast so I do hope the discussion goes that way uh I know the board of education has a policy that says you have to give it I'm going to be talking to the super over there and ask him to change that again in today's day and age I don't know why somebody has to give their Street address in order to make a public comment uh I also like to mention it in TX several years ago there was an unsolved murder woman's name was Joan Davis she was a regular speaker at teac township Council meetings and she was found murdered one night after she got home from a meeting there is a belief that the person got her address because she had to give her address at the microphone and shortly after that murder kex stopped the practice of people having give their addresses at the microphone so I hope it goes the same way here again uh I'm dead sent against having to do this um I'm not picking on you mayor but mayor I know that people when they have not given their street address you have asked them repeatedly please may I have your street address I think that that's got to stop thank you thank you boy and I think that that's based on past practice which doesn't mean that past practice is what we should continue going forward so I I think you raise actually a very good point and we're going to consider this at our next meeting I believe good evening An Loving a couple things about uh stuff that was said tonight first of all on the signs at habernickel and at shedler um they they give you a number that you can call main village hall number if you have any question I mean if you don't know anything about it the signs were a little alarming or they could be environmental investigation clean up in progress at this site and if you call the main number which I did um and you wait and you wait and finally you go to the operator and it says the morning operator is this person the afternoon operator is this person and you can leave a message I mean it's not easy to get further information about the environmental investigation by calling the main number um so anyway I think that uh I think that that you should provide better information on the sign also I had thought that at habernickel you were going to delineate the contaminated area I know it's a very small area but we heard at a previous meeting it was going to be marked off and I don't think that has happened regarding Clinton Avenue um I don't believe that Mr Glazer said that the soil was contaminated um I know you took issue with that Mr kasmar but I think he said he was worried and that you know with what has happened at three other sites in town with contaminated soil being brought in he was just concerned and he didn't have any faith that it wasn't contaminated so he was just worried he didn't make an accusation the way I heard it regarding The Pedestrian tunnel um project the three additional mirrors that I think need to go up haven't gone up yet and I don't think that's part of the historic project I think that could happen um regarding the new Oprah forms um that are going to go on the website I'd like to thank Miss Mander for doing that but I hope there'll be front and center on the website because I personally don't find the website that easy to navigate there's not banners that say Oprah this and that you know so I hope that'll be front and center for people who wish to find the new form finally um regarding the uh Tre well and weeds fines first of all I hope those fines can go into the tree budget that would be a logical place if the fines can go directly there secondly in Hoboken they have signs on the sidewalk and I can photograph one I the the wording is something like this this is our town if you see a weed why not pull it up if you see a piece of trash Why not pick it up or it's something like that and it makes you think yeah I see a weed I'll pick it up I mean maybe we could come up with something like that here as well that's it thank you very much thank you an and we have one caller on hybrid access Mr haliy you are the last one of the night yeah yeah yeah roric CBE one Franklin Avenue uh I should say I did not immigrate to this country to stand in fear of people finding out where I live this is terrible this is paranoia of the worst kind and uh if you don't disclose your name you can easily find it on the internet so yes roric Hal one Franklin EV secondly uh look listening to the police the five policemen talking made me think how lucky we are in rid to have such a fine police force and every time I walk past a police officer I thank him or her for keeping us safe uh I was very very impressed by the presentation by these uh five officers uh lorine said something which surprised me about people having a second bite of the Apple I've been attending meetings for about 10 years and as far as I'm concerned you only had one bite at the Apple whether it's under 40 minutes or not really had nothing to do with it the other thing is I do apologize for using the word stupid or or or uh what have you when I really should have used a more sophisticated term like the nighted but I am a big uh uh big student of Churchill who basically said that the Anglo-Saxon word is much more powerful than any kind of a word that's that's derived from the Latin and uh and frankly uh Paul you and Pam got on your high horses High horses when I use that word when you should have been upset when the comment was made about the village spreading Poison Poison dirt poison on their lawn this is how rumors start you should have been defending the employees of the village you should have been defending the engineering department now very few people have blocked horns with engineering department as I have but not in a million years would I say or think that they're spreading poison soil on anyone's lawn so really PA you should apologize frankly to the Village employees for someone stating that and First Amendment or no First Amendment the First Amendment doesn't protect you from from shouting fire in a crowded crowded theater and when people are spreading misinformation if not disinformation then it's your job to protect your employees of the village by stopping them in their tracks and saying the village does not do that thank you very much thank you ruic motion to adour Mayor I just want to sayate I need 30 seconds I just want to say publicly that with regard to cordoning off the area at Hackle Matrix told us that that was not necessary that the um compound that was located there is well below surface grade it is not in the grass area it is essentially capped they didn't use that term I'm using that to best describe how I was explained the situation but it's all below grade and there is no need to cordon off that area and I'll just say I definitely have spoken more than once Council meetings during the same public comment I've seen it happen it's you know it's not an every meeting occurrence but yes that is the way it has been for as long as I've been going to meetings anybody else no motion to adjourn so moved second all in favor I