##VIDEO ID:mxovw4B5Law## e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e welcome to the meeting for the township of Springfield County of union state of New Jersey for September 10th 2024 this meeting is being held in accordance with the public laws of 1975 chapter 231 and adequate notice of this meeting has been provided by a no descent to The Star Ledger the local source and posted in the main lobby of the municipal building and on the township website we'll be led in the pledge of leedance by Carl Ard Vice commander of post 228 please rise United States of America stands Na indiv and jusice for all please remain standing for a moment of silence for our soldiers overseas and at home thank you roll call Mayor Weber here Deputy Mayor laer here committee man capes here committee man Yuber pres committee man Kaiser yes Springfield residence 55 plus the September 2024 calendar was out you can get that at the Chism Center and on the website all all days are filled everything is filled so there's an activity for everybody stop by get the calendar a lot of good stuff in there townwide garage sale scheduled for this weekend September 14th and 15th townwide garage sales September 14th and 15th which is going to be followed up by bulk pickup we're back in business for four times a year the next pickup is going to be Wednesday September 18th 2024 we do not have a date for the final pickup yet but September 18th on Wednesday is going to be the pickup senior bus trip to Wind Creek Casino Tuesday October 1st register at communitypass.net cornhole 21 plus League 2024 Sundays September through November from 2: to 4: at Chisum Chisum Center details and registration also at communitypass.net National voter registration day Tuesday September 10th 10 to 5 at the Springfield Public Library uh 911 ceremony starts on 911 tomorrow at 8:30 in front of town hall the township extends their condolences to the Clinton family on the passing of Terry Clinton a longtime Springfield resident and the Chief Operating Officer of the summit area YMCA who passed away in August uh at the age of 53 way too young Terry was the Township's partner in the operation of the Springfield community pool for the past four Summers she was heavily involved in the Clubhouse party rentals special events camps Sports programs membership drives marketing seasonal hiring safety training health code Conformity and also the recent resurfacing project during heat waves and extended maintenance issues or repairs to the Springfield community pool Terry graciously offered our members the opportunity to use the sister Berkeley Heights community pool at the Berkeley Heights YMCA Terry was also involved in fitness programs fundraisers scholarships and teen activities that benefit Springfield residents through the Township's relationship with the summit Area YMCA for many years Terry was a friend and colleague to countless Township employees and departments as well as local organization leaders and will be deeply missed for for friendly demeanor hardworking a professional Spirit an extensive pool knowledge and facility management experience Terry's immediate survivors includes her husband Joseph daughters mallerie and Haley mother carolene husband Herb and her husband Herb and uh brother Todd and wife Heather so we ex um sorry to hear that big part of the of of our program second note we have um T Township is extends their condolences to the schwar family on the passing of Don schwar senior who is a retired Springfield police Lieutenant um I didn't know him Chief cook is going to say a few words because I'm he worked with him for a very long time please um yes so Lieutenant schwar who's also known to everybody as the colonel back in his day had been recently ill and has succumbed to his illness peacefully on August 21st at the Fantastic age of 96 Don started his career with Springfield PD in February of 1960 as a probationary officer after working several years for the United States Postal Service prior to this lieutenant schwar had served our country in the US Navy post World War II from 1946 through 1949 when he received an honorable discharge Don reenlisted in September of 1950 while the US was fighting in the Korean War receiving an honorable discharge in 1954 I know he had served on um several different ships um during his his Navy career with the Navy Lieutenant schwar was promoted to a patrol sergeant in June of 19 1976 and then to patrol lieutenant in January of 1980 retiring at this rank in July of 1989 during his career with the Springfield Police Department Don served as a hostage negotiator senior senior Firearms instructor and as a member of PBA local 76 served as the PBA State Delegate Don also served as the post commander of the American Legion Post 228 was a member of the VFW and it was a life member of Elk Lodge in 2004 and they just had a ceremonial um interment uh yesterday at the Brigadier General um I don't know Carl probably forgive me forgetting the name but the uh Cemetery down in South Jersey uh was a beautiful service they had the Navy held for him thank you thank chief um the Springfield bid summer concert Thursday September 12th 5:30 7:30 has been postponed correct we're just no no date no anything right now just postponed all right just postponed so we have a firefighter and a police officer being sworn in today this is pretty exciting um I don't know who do I pick first police or fire I don't know for Point okay all right the only thing I will request is so we can get through the ceremony after we do the swear again everybody kind of take a seat hang back because there's going to be a lot of pictures taken you the family can take pictures I'll call for a recess you guys can do all your pictures everything you want to do and uh then you could either stay for exciting Township stuff stuff or you could just leave as quick as you can all right so first we're going to do the swearing in of police officer Victoria dagio [Applause] okay going to be some blanks you're going to fill them in I I state your name Victoria sorry read your right name do solom sare that I will support the Constitution Solly swear that I will support the Constitution of the United States of the United States and the Constitution and the constitution of the state of New Jersey of the state of New Jersey and that I will bear true faith and I will bear true faith and Allegiance and allegiance to the same to the same and to the governments established and to the governments established in the united states in the United States and in this state and in this state under the authority of the people under the authority of the people that I will Faithfully that I will faithfully impartially impartially and justly and justly perform all the duties perform all the duties of the office of police officer of the office of police officer for the township of Springfield for the Township of Springfield according to the best of my ability according to the best of my ability so help me God so help me God congratulations do the badge her badge just don't stick her with sweet you guys want to talk before or after okay congratulations congratulations we'll take good care of them I'll give you all right one more round of applause and next we're going straight into the swearing of firefighter Eugene rolls man both of you are so young wow wow man raise your hand all right you I state your name Eugene rolls do solemnly swear do Solly swear that I will support the Constitution that I will support the Constitution of the United States of the United States and the Constitution and the constitution of the state of New Jersey of the state of New Jersey and that I will bear true faith and I will bear true faith and Allegiance and allegiance to the same to the same and to the governments established and the to the governments established in the united states in the United States and in this state and in this state under the authority of the people under the authority of the people and that I will faithfully and I will faithfully and partially and partially and justly and justly perform all the duties perform all the duties of the office of of the office of firefighter for the township of Springfield town of Springfield according to the best of my ability according to the best of my ability so help me God so help me God congratulations con congratulations [Music] congratulations combined age of both of them 35 wow [Applause] conations congatulations [Music] [Laughter] congratulations Eugene once again congratulations on behalf of the fire department and myself I want to say good evening to everybody thank you for coming out here I want to thank mayor Weber and the entire town committee for their continued support of the fire department today am I am honored to officially welcome Eugene as the newest member of the Springfield Fire Department Eugene is the 85th firefighter to be sworn into to our department over the past few weeks I had the pleasure of speaking with Eugene and I am truly impressed and excited to see the passion he has for the job and it's clear he understands the importance of the work we do and I'm confident he'll be a valuable addition to our family Eugene as you begin this journey always remember never take this job for granted study hard train often and always approach your duties as your life depends on it because it really does look to our senior members for guidance and most importantly hold on to that pride and excitement you feel today for the rest of your career remember you hit the lottery in joining this fantastic inter teric Department lastly I want to thank the current firefighters for mentoring Eugene and helping him understand what it takes to be a great firefighter your teaching and training shapes the future of our department and I am grateful for what you do congratulations Eugene thank [Applause] you I probably should have went first just now I now I got to try to live up to that so I'm sorry if I don't make you sound as good as you know he would have um all right so I'd like to thank everyone that's here tonight to support Victoria uh her family and friends um fellow officers fellow fire well fellow firefighters we're all one big family so fellow firefighters I'm not sure if there's any auxiliary or OEM um or first aate Squad people here but so our department has been holding interviews uh for quite some time looking to fill a position open due to retirement and I thank the township committee the mayor and the township committee for letting me be able to do that um because we are we have been short um Personnel so I'm elated to say that we have found an officer who we know will be a great fit for our department and Township and that officer is Victoria dagio officer dagio grew up in parsipany she graduated from Bloom Bloomsburg University having majored in criminal justice with a minor in Psychology she had developed a great work ethic early on from working for her family's business I'd like to thank her mom and dad and dad's working now that's the work ethic they have he's missing his daughter's swearing in but he'll he can watch it on TV um for building that character in Victoria so thank you mom for that Vic as I got her okay to call her that uh having a desire to help others who cannot help themselves decided that she wanted to pursue police work she applied and got into the Morris County Public Safety Training Academy alternate route program from which she graduated in 2022 um for those who not familiar what that is it's an officer who doesn't have a job but you commit yourself your time and your own money to put yourself through the police academy at the hopes that you're going to get hired um so I give you a lot of credit for that it's that's a tough a tough choice to make she had then worked for the mendum Township Police Department as a police officer before coming to Springfield this month after Vic had interviewed with our captain and a lieutenant they both told me that I needed to see her in the second interview which is part of our process when I met and spoke with her I knew she had the qualities and skills that would work great in our department and I was excited to extend an offer of employment to her uh Victoria was already officially sworn in um beginning of the month and tonight's ceremonial cuz it's a town Tre committee meeting so she's already been out there working for us and making a difference already uh and I'm proud to introduce our newest member officer Victoria [Applause] deao all right um okay they're they're clear right now I'm I got one thing but you want to end it or you want me to I'll end it congrats to everybody um welcome to Springfield and I I know you'll have successful careers I'll keep it short and sweet um going to give the same speeches I've given for the last six years uh Springfield is not what you see a lot of times on television turn the TV off everybody here you you have everybody's full support on everything all right this committee has proven over all of the years we'll back you guys till the end of time on anything that you do that is job related you you go out there the township you will find that the these residents love you they they really do they're happy to see the fire truck pull up they're happy to see the police car pull up they're happy to sit there and just talk for a minute and just be curious to see you know why are you on the Block tell them you know hey we're just checking a smoke detector or we're just you know doing a speed detail or whatever that makes them happy all of our phones are always open you can ask anybody you work with back there or who you will be work with our phones are always open we we're always receptive to everything um you're you're you're getting a great opportunity here it's one of the best towns to work for you've got fantastic leadership here okay chief cook Captain mron will not guide you wrong in any way all right good luck um congratulations and look forward to seeing you at work thank you with with that said I'm going to call for a recess I I do think we need a few pictures um you got pictures oh we got pictures then I'm going to call for recess you guys do whatever you want to do you want take pictures you want to just talk for a few minutes 10 minutes e e e e e e e e e e all right we are back in and that was fantastic always love it h there's always a level of enthusiasm that is unmatched by new hire employees and we love it up here because it excites us to have somebody working for the town who really wants to be here so with that we're going to go to public comment on agenda items only if there's any public comment on agenda items only step on up we do not have anything from the email um nothing was given or nothing was emailed in I should say and we have no comment public comment on agenda items so we're going to move on to reports administrator Report with Mr John baso thank you Mr Mayor couple of things uh Ruby Park we finished cutting down the ash trees at the back of Ruby Park they were all removed by the low bitter which was a tremendous deal for us and he did an excellent job we were concerned that we were having trouble reaching him but he actually did come out and did a great job on it he also uh pruned a bunch of the other trees in that back at some point I think that's something we need to talk about and are we going to use that back for something and what do we want to put back there so just keep that in the back of your mind we had two bid openings this week one for Pit Road one for miltown and Smithfield Pit Road went to ajm and miltown and Smithfield was awarded to porino so those two are on tonight for reso and they will be put in the queue to be done psng has sent over a list of roads that they've ripped up we're going to meet Robbie uh Mr Bacher myself and our engineer Mike disco are going to meet to decide which ones we want psse G to pave because some of them they only are required to pave curb Line to Center Line we may want them paved curb to curb so we may take some of those and switch out some so we're going to juggle them around I'll get back to you and let you know what we end up deciding but those roads should be done in a not too distant future next week we're going to bring to you Mike mustre our planner and myself we're going to bring to you the Scotty's 55 and older location we've got the final drawings and we got the final floor plans I think you guys are going to be very excited and happy with that we met with Gomes yesterday on site um Mike disc call myself and Bob Herbert he is would like to change and eliminate the angled parking on Center Street now if you remember when that was approved there was angled parking and the street was one way coming down so you got to the DMV lot and then it was two-way coming up to the DMV lot both ways so what he would like to do he would like to get rid of the angle parking make that parking along the curb and go on from there now we still have to talk about that we asked him to provide a drawing asked him to provide some verbage on it so we know exactly what he wants to do taking out those angle parking spots there are 13 there we can fit 10 cars parking them on the street normally if we there's two telephone polls on that side we would make those two little bump outs little Islands we would like them for him to recess the street where the curb is now we'd like to go back a couple of feet to make those cars closer a little bit to the building that gives us enough width to have two cars comfortably pass I checked with PD and they were not actually they were not big fans of the one way when this was brought up back in 15 so they're in favor if we can go back to two way actually by doing all of that we actually lose one parking space we had 13 we get 10 but in the DMV lot we were going to have to shift the driveway down because of the one way we'd have to make it closer like towards the library by doing that we lost two parking spaces by not doing it we gain those two and we only lose one on the angle parking so the net effect is one parking space so we are going to discuss with him some that we're going to want as a town in order to give him that relief and I will let you know as we progress on that we have a meeting on the 17th with them and hopefully we'll have some update for you at that point other than that uh it's oh I know there was one other thing Mr Mayor you brought up about the cars getting full of tar on Route 22 we contacted the state I also contacted Union because most of it was really down in Union it wasn't ours I spoke to the ba and Union Don was nice enough also to call the state and complain we got an an email from the state and we did post it on the website so anybody that got tar on their car if you look on the website they can contact ASA Paving systems Tammy Massie and there's a phone number and an address they will pay for cleaning the car they'll do it at their own expense now it may be done somewhere of their choice I don't know how it's going to go actually we haven't contacted them but again if you've got that problem look on the website there's a phone number and an address you can contact them and get it taken care of I am three bottles of bug andar remover deep right now finally gotten it off you should have waited just a little bit longer I'm actually thinking of giving them a receipt for the three bottles hey give a go um can you there's a lot of issue about the the water up at balol up top yep can can you just give us a rundown of what you found out today with it please yes so what what happened with we had some issues up by actually Overlook hospital had no water and water pressure up on the top was dropping what happened was the water company said when they get a pressure drop most of the other locations have an automatic relief valve so if the pressure drops the valve takes over and increases the pressure so that they continue to have enough water when they went out and looked all the fire Hydra when they weren't having a problem and they checked four of them they all had between 55 and 70 PSI at the fire hydrant so they had enough pressure so they believe it's the relief valve that is causing it so on Monday they replaced the fire hydrant on Fernhill and the valve there so hopefully that's going to cure the problem and we don't have it again so I will keep you a breast as we find out more info but they did address it and did do a bunch of work let's hope that that was the issue just want to be clear if if CU I know you know tap and and the News places follow uh our meetings it is not a Springfield Township issue this is an American Water issue we are trying there is times we're on the phone with this this this place 10 times a day that that's accurate we we we've sent DPW up there we have gone through everything there was no leaks on our behalf no anything this is straight American Water we're trying and I believe they've come to the the conclusion of what what the problem was hopefully this fixes it and we're passed it okay are there any other questions or anything great thank you guys all right um go on to minutes I will make a motion to adopt the regular and executive meeting meetings of August 13 2024 and the special meeting minutes of August 22nd 2024 as emailed second all in favor I have to abstain I I wasn't here for one of the two I don't remember which but I'll just abstain for both of them um move on to new business ordinances with a second reading ordinance 20246 this ordinance authorizes the Township's acquisition by gift of certain real property from outfront media LLC as memorialized in a property donation agreement I will make a motion to adopt ordinance 2024-25 second okay uh public hearing any comments on ordinance 202 24-16 any comments up here no no roll call committee man Kaiser yes committee man Yuber yes committee man capes yes Deputy Mayor laer yes mayor Weber oh that yes that makes me so happy finally done finally um okay so if anybody's asking um we've covered it numerous times but you see uh if you drive down Mountain Avenue you'll see those Billboards are gone after 80 years or more finally so exciting stuff all right let's move on to First reading I need a motion to table ordinance 20247 a motion to table ordinance 20 24- 17 I second roll roll call yeah committee manber yes committeeman capes yes Deputy Mayor laer yes committeeman Kaiser yes mayor Weber yes okay if anybody's asking we table that because we're not prepared yet to to go forward there might be some might be some further modification okay I just want to say something I just thought joh our Forester sent letters again to I know to me in my block again everybody was well informed that the trees were coming down so I don't think anybody can say they didn't know they were coming down cuz there were and it looks my house is right there and I can my my bedroom I can see it and it's a beautiful field now it is right yeah so we got to decide what we're going to do you know we have talk and get ideas but it's good you know really looks good trying to do that anywhere that we've got a a tree one of our trees that would impact the residents we're trying to make sure they're notified so we're sending letters out and just trying to keep the residents informed they were I got two or three letters from them so nobody can say oh was surprise I I heard that we're looking to build a pickle ball Coliseum back there keep you awake all night long we'll talk about it so all right we're going to go with resolutions looking for approval by consent agenda I would read them off if anybody wants anything pulled please pull resolution 224-2000 I'm sorry wait resolution 24 2024 d210 2024 D table that t table what pull are we pulling pull it I mean okay we're pulling 20 24210 okay 20 24-2 11 2024 d212 2024 d213 2024 d214 2024-25 20 24-26 204-217 2024 [Music] d218 2024-25 20424 d220 202 24-22 2024 d222 and 2024 d223 hey I will adop The Following resolutions on consent agenda resolution 2024 d211 through resolution uh 2024-25 second okay committee man Kaiser yes committee man capes yes Deputy Mayor laer yes commit manber yes mayor Weber yes Okay resolution 2024 to10 this resolution authorizes settlement of tax appeal entitled Township of Springfield versus Redstone Garden Apartment Inc pending in the tax Court of New Jersey for the property located at block 3601 lot 3 commonly known as 835 Mountain Avenue Springfield New Jersey I will make a motion to adopt resolution 2024-25 [Music] people from the community help us with the taxes we didn't just go and do it I just want people to understand that people of the community sat with them and everything and you went over to taxes the only reason I pull that one okay I want them to understand okay um roll call uh committee men cities yes committee men laer yes committee Min Huber yes committee M Kaiser yes mayor Weber yes okay going to move on to uh zero discussion action items and we're going to go to finance with committee M Kaiser all right I'll make a motion to adopt payroll invoices for the period of August 14th 2024 through September 10th 2024 in the amount of 9,800 31621 second committee M Kaiser yes Deputy Mayor laer yes committee men capes yes commit men Yuber mayor Weber yes we have some correspondence Township of Westfield land use ordinance 202 24-21 in regard to definition of the floor area Union County surrogates Court opened a satellite off office in Westfield Mondays Wednesdays and Fridays by appointment only jcpnl virtual public hearing Monday September 16th 2024 at 4:30 BPU docket number ER 24301 91 public hearing planning board Thursday September 12th at 6:30 at the municipal building for the variant for the grusing group Township of Milburn land use ordinance [Music] 20687 d24 with final hearing on October 1st at 7 p.m. now we we can go on to public comment on any governmental issue any governmental issue at all if anybody has any comments please step forward seeing none motion for adjournment motion second keep it going another few minutes another few minutes we got just a few more signatures here Alex going to be staying behind for a while all in favor uh the the N the national debate the the debate is on tonight at 8:00 9:00 9:00 I thought it was 8:00 too I it was 8:00 900 P p.m. on literally any channel you could ever see and we have a 911 ceremony also this is I have to my prediction this is going to be the most watched televised debate for presidency ever have a great night everybody for