##VIDEO ID:8nzS-PvGrgY## e e rest e e please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance set up and yes Al flag of the United States of America and to the rep for it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all roll call Mr Schiff here Mr Franco I'm here and Mr Cabrera I am here compliance with the open public meetings act chapter 231 Public Law 1975 the notice requirements have been satisfied as to the time place and date of holding said meeting by posting notice on the Bolton board in burrow Hall and by mailing and emailing scene to the heral of Kate May County on October 4th 2023 and the Press of Atlantic City on December 13th 2023 in the event of an emergency your emergency exit is your back right the door that you came in our front left or just by the American flag uh this meeting is being shown live here today Brian we got a sound check we're looking good all right uh on the Burrow's YouTube uh which also streams to the Facebook Channel if you're watching this meeting remotely and you have a public comment you would like to make uh there's an access code 888 363 4734 and when prompted you're going to enter the access code 969 9020 followed by the pound or the hashtag in the event you watch the recorded version of this meeting and you have a statement you would like to make or a question you would like answered please email our clerk clerk lwood crest.org or phone her at 69729 84 Madam clerk we have one ordinance on for adoption that is correct it is ordinance number 1436 and it is the salary ordinance motions that ordinance number 1436 be placed on second reading and final passage by title only I'll second it it has been moved in second that ordinance number 1436 be placed on second and final reading by title only call Mr Schiff yes Mr Franco yes Mr Caba yes ordinance 1436 reads as follows an ordinance to amend section 59-3 of the code of the burrow of Wildwood Crest known as the salary ordinance fixing and determining salaries and compensations of the burrow of Wildwood Crest and providing for the raising of the amounts thereof by taxation and for the time and method of payment a motion at a public hearing now be held on ordinance number 1436 I'll second it it been moved and seconded that a public hearing on ordinance number 1436 now be held roll call Mr shiff yes Mr Franco yes Mr cabara yes floor is open for public comment on ordinance number 1436 the salary ordinance anybody on the conference line have any public comments on ordinance number [Music] 1436 hearing n motions that a public hearing on ordinance number 1436 now be closed second it it has been moved and seconded that the public hearing on ordinance number 1436 now be closed roll call Mr shiff yes Mr Franco yes Mr Caba yes motion that ordinance number 1436 be passed on second and final reading and advertised according to law second has been moved in second that ordance number 1436 be passed on second and final reading and advertised according to law roll call Mr shiff yes Mr Frank yes Mr Caba yes next we have the resolutions the first is establishing a junior firefighter auxiliary program for persons who are 16 to 17 years of age for the Wildwood Crest Volunteer Fire Company number one in the burough of Wildwood Crest pursuant to njsa 4A colon 14- 95 at seek on motion uh second it has been moved and seconded that the forgoing resolution be adopted roll call Mr Schiff yes Mr Franco yes yes Mr Caba yes next is authorizing Award of contract for the Bayside bulkhead replacement and flood mitigation improvements project I'll motion I will second it has been moved and seconded that the forgoing resolution be adopted roll call Mr Schiff yes Mr Franco yes Mr Caba yes next is adopting a form required to be used for the filing of open public records act requests with the bur Wild Crest in accordance with the provisions of the New Jersey open public records Act njsa 4 7 col 1 A-1 at seek motion second it's been moved and seconded that the forgoing resolution be adopted roll call Mr shiff yes Mr Franco yes Mr Caba yes motion that all bills properly authorized as submitted be paid uh second it has been moved and seconded that all bills properly authorized as submitted be paid roll call Mr Schiff yes Mr Franco yes Mr cabera yes okay that brings us to correspondents non listed uh we have nothing listed under new business uh under old business let's see we'll start uh police composition possible ordinance Amendment anything on that nothing on that rental occupancy issues I believe there's uh a draft ordinance um by Mr gunis we're going to meet with uh Mr Allen after this meeting to talk about potential some final changes on that anything on Lightning detection right now just waiting to hear from the other two communities all right uh artificial grass planning Board review I think we can take that off because I believe there's not going to be any action on that very good uh U 5year plan that's uh that's already been submitted by the by the uvz board so I believe we can take that off as well can do all right 250th birthday committee we're still looking for volunteers uh wild craft Municipal app is 2025 old tourism building use 2025 Historical Museum 2025 uh proposed amendment to chapter 79 I know that uh Mr gunis is waiting for some information for that so that's forthcoming concession agreement Hotel Zone and beach chairs is also on hold uh traffic calming is uh that Grant's been submitted we're just waiting for to hear back on the award Back Beach exavation uh waiting to hear on the official start date uh with the the army core of engineer new Dune anything on draging no Scott douas has retired um and we were supposed to have some sort of transition meeting I'm still waiting to hear back from them from do on who will be taking his place they have not yet named his replacement so we will have a transition meeting um as soon as that decision's been made okay uh New Jersey Avenue infrastructure pre- counties pending uh I I believe we received a new uh proposal from Mark's office uh for that and I believe we're waiting for uh Capital meeting 2025 discussion all right Public Works roof that project should be starting uh any day now bayall out balls uh capacity ball okay we can take that off because we just awarded that contract as of today very good resolutions Washington cvw we're still waiting to hear back on that Grant okay any commissioner do you have anything you want to add on any of the old business items thank sir uh public comments for is open for any public comment all we need to do is come up to the podium and just give uh your name okay my name is uh Mike Moro and uh just giv an update we uh last we met uh we agreed that I was going to get together with the CFO Chief of Police and talk about numbers so I want to say that that's completed and um what I did a after that is I did a 5-year projection based on those numbers estimates things I've looked up on the internet to uh fill in some of the blanks on cost I've provided all that information to all the Commissioners to the Chief and to the CFO so um if anybody has questions about that you know let me know if I can help you with any other research again let me know okay okay anybody else have any public comments yes sir my name is Tony marabell I live at 7210 Pacific Avenue about a year ago I put an application in for a uh handicap designated spot and uh I was denied now uh my park I got parking problem because my neighbor across street I don't have a problem with they have eight cars up the street there's two handicap designated spots they have driveways okay the one guy young guy he walks two PE two doberman to the beach and I was denied now I spoke to Mr ship I he called me and he said he was going to get back to me I haven't heard anything I spoke to uh Lieutenant Hol and that she said the chief was going to call me but I never heard a word from him I'm 100% disabled have two Open Hearts Serv sures and uh I'd like to know the story what's the prerequisite because up the street they have them and I can't get one Chief I know that we looked I'll reach out to you I was I was not told to call you so I put the application over a year ago that was we can discuss it thank you all right Jim McGinty and I don't know if this for commissioner or for chief but um last week I watched a YouTube video I couldn't be here um but I I you know getting the information Chief question how do we determine the number of police officers to properly Patrol the bur well uh it's multi level uh so right now um Chief why don't you step up here so right now what we're looking at we have uh 28 full-time members of the police department and in the summer season we bring in seven to 10 class two officers we had seven class two officers this year what we're looking to do is bring in three more full-time officers to eliminate our need to for the use of the class two police officers so those class two police officers they're young kids they go to an abbreviated Academy right the full-time police officers go to a 22- we Academy and we have them year round the seasonal officers come in in only the season um most times they're revolving door so we'll have them for one season they'll leave they'll go to another Police Department get hired fulltime so we're bringing in brand new officers The Following season so they come out of the police academy most of them right before the season starts or for the spring Academy they come out right before 4th of July weekend right so we're bringing in these brand new 7 to 10 like we had seven this year and that's typically where we're at to supplement the force is right around seven uh seasonal uh class two police officers so they're coming out right before fourth Fourth of July weekend what also has to happen with these officers they go to a uh field training go through a field training program with a field training officer all right so they're not I I wouldn't say competent but they're not really like what we want in a police officer until probably August full-time police officers like I said they're here with us they go to a 22- we Training Academy compared to a 9we abbreviated Academy so what I propose to the government learning body is we suspend the class two program and in in instead of using the class 2 is bringing those full-time police officers the full-time police officers those three officers will be able to handle the call volume and the pretty much everything that those seven we're handling right now our field training officers and our supervisors are are spending so much time supervising training retraining these class two officers they're not able to focus on what their job responsibilities are because they're spending so much time with these young officers now you got to remember they're 18 19 20 year 20 years old a lot of them are in school most of them have left already they didn't even make it through the month of August so we're essentially getting a lot of these seasonal officers for a month month and a half and then they leave they go back to school or they have other things that they have to leave for all right so what we're trying to do and a lot of our what we need our full-time police or what we need our police officers for are in our shoulder season Memorial Day weekend we often do not have class two police officers to bring in for Memorial Day weekend so we're working a lot of overtime on those weekends we're bringing in full-time police officers to handle the call blot then you have our again September we have all these uh busy weekends that we deal with we have uh Labor Day weekend we have uh firefighters weekend we have seaf fars we have the race in October again we're having to bring in extra people on over time for to handle the call volume during those weekends because we lose our seasonal officers before those uh special event weekends happen so having those extra three officers outside of our season full-time year round not only are they going to be more trained and more capable of doing the job but they're also going to be available to us when we need them and we're not going to be paying as much over time and we'll be able to utilize those officers during those special event weekends during the shoulder season it'll also help us with training in the offseason training time off um those are always difficult because uh we're not allowed to take time off in during the uh summer season so we have to then Focus all of our time off plus all of our training during the off seon what most police departments um not the seasonal departments throughout the state they have 12 months to get all their training and time off in we have an abbreviated amount of time because not only are we not allowed to take that time off or our police officers are not allowed to take time off during the season but I don't know if I'm explaining it well enough no I think I think maybe maybe my question too was how do you come up with the number 28 what methodology does the police department use to protect serve the citizens of Wild Crest how do we come to that number of 28 so we when I first start uh started as Chief we had 22 or 23 full-time police officers and we started having problems with getting class two officers and we were also looking at the call volume the arrest numbers and we needed to bring in extra officers to handle the the call volumes and also because of the difficulty that we were having hiring those class two seasonal officers bringing in those extra officers have not only given us the ability to rely Less on those class two officers but we're also now we we have the extra full-time capacity during those shoulder Seasons um what used to take an hour for an arrest with everything that's changed the bail form with uh the new um system for um processing arrestes what used to take an hour can take up to 3 4 hours so with our call call volume and with a lot of changes that have happened in law enforcement over the years it's very involved and it takes a long time for the officers to handle those arrestes so basically what I'm saying to you is um things have changed in law enforcement quite a bit um when I when I first started as a police officer it was very different than things are now um [Music] so guess I'm not sure if I'm answering your question I think so I was just wondering if it was a per capita issue like do we do we look at so many officers per thousands of people in W Crest is there any nij methodology that we utilize to say hey per the population of w Crest we W Crest Police Department need X police officers to be able to service that population so if we want to be handle our call volume we have to have a certain number of police officers so what we provide here in waa Crest is a service like if you if you call for the police department we're coming okay no matter no matter what we're doing um we're we're coming for whatever the call is the level of service that we provide and that our citizens and our visitors expect from us if we don't have enough law enforcement officers on the street we may not be able to handle those those calls that may not be um high priority um as far as any algorithm or um I I don't have anything that that we use to calculate how many police officers but what we're looking at is as an Administration and what I look at as a chief is the level of service that we provide to this community and we determine how many officers we need to be able to handle that based on call volume and response time I mean if we're if if somebody's picking up the phone and calling for the police they expect that we're going to show up in a lot of cities they're taking reports over the phone or they're having uh people email reports in what we provide here in wild with Crest is you're going to get a police officer no matter what the issue is we're coming to you to take your report to handle whatever it is that that's going on and by proposing adding these extra three officers what we're going to have now when you get a police officer now and I'm not saying the class two police officers are are not capable or or that I don't think we should have class two officers but I I do think that the ability of a full-time police police officer far outweighs what we're getting with those class twos and with the margin for error being so thin having those less trained um younger officers that have very little life experience there's a liability there if you call for a police officer whether it's a theft or you had a burglary at your home do you want a full-time police officer coming to your house or do you want a Class 2 police off officer who's got two weeks on the street and just went through a abbreviated Academy you want the full-time police officer who knows the town who knows the area who has investigated things that are similar to what you're calling for so to answer your question we need officers that are capable and that was what I proposed to the governing body so to bring in these three officers and eliminate the class twos we're bringing in those capable police officers for this community I think you did based on full volum based on I if you're looking I mean I in the last meeting can I say something sure Police Department is like any of the other departments that we have okay we see the need because of the volume so in in the mayor's Department he hires more people to come in to do the work that has to be done I know the beach Patrol does the same thing we don't have um a chart to say well we hit this we're going to do this and it's the same thing with the police department the qual volume is actually increasing as you heard the numbers last month from the chief so we see a need to increase the department full time uh Francine can I ask you a question M so what's it cost us um for the seven class twos in the way of of Taxation money is that a penny or a little less than a penny um yeah just about a penny I mean give or take about a penny and what will the CL the uh three full times cost us next year yes um a little over okay okay so that's what we're discussing right now and for me um I feel that it's important to add these officers in because of the call volume and it's like any other place like my other departments that we have or EMS uh fire department Beach Patrol we are getting hit with more people and we do need more help so that's my justification and of course when it comes to Public Safety that's where that's where my heart is that's where I want to make sure that we're covered chiefest has been doing this stuff for a long time and uh has actually predicted the class 2 problem for quite a while wood I think how many wood want and how many they get I believe their want was 40 and they got 13 I believe and our want was well our our want was seven fortunately we were able to actually get the seven okay year because we have a good department they want to work for us but all the one thing that nobody's talking about either is it's like uh who's got the higher price tag for these class twos do they want to come here or do they want to go somewhere else for $7 more an hour and the chief has been very uh steady to he doesn't want to pay the class twos more an hour than our fulltime time officers so that that's where we're at right now I hope that helped a little bit it did yeah I appreciate that thank you thank you Chief thanks Chief I don't know if that's where you wanted to go but we wound up talking about what I was talking about earlier and just to bring it up again since we did that I think the ask here was what's the cost of taxpayers right and we couldn't get all numbers right you couldn't get and determined what the cost would be today and in the future you know when I run numbers I see a big difference and I'm a 5year prediction I don't even want to say how high it is well everything everything does everything in all truth I agree okay but I also agree that every Department goes up everybody's salary goes up cost of living goes up so I do see it I didn't understand I didn't project any cost of living going up I just tried to predict numbers being spent this year project them out five and do you want me to say what the amount is that I saw you might as well right it was a half million dollars over 5 years and it was a 62% increase in spending so I'm just asking us to consider that when we make a decision what's it going to be to taxpayers you can say it's in your budget your budget is from tax ta payers so consider what you're doing to taxpayers and don't look at just this year project it out that that was my ask all so if I could add something so what we're looking at now with these class two officers is a continually increasing hourly rate the hourly rate for class two officers has increased more in the last four years than it did in the previous 20 there's no end in sight for that as far as I can see basically what we're doing is we're going to continue to pay extra money just to bring these officers into our municipality and the quality of candidate has decreased so we're we're paying more for a less qualified candidate and I'm not willing to just put a body in a position just to fill a spot and to have somebody drive around in circles that's that's not good for us it's not going to help this municipality this class two program it from what I can see it looks like it's going to collapse on itself the cost is going through the roof the quality of candidate has decreased we used to get 75 to 100 applications in no time we're lucky I think last year we got eight it's the candidates just aren't there and if we don't have these officers to supplement our Force we're going to be paying a ton of overtime and we're going to be overworking our full-time police officers and it's going to be it's going to be a problem you can't overwork your police officers if they're they're not getting sleep or they're overworked or they're tired from just constantly working on on their days off 10 12 hour days that's not good for anybody we we we we are G to be in trouble if we can't get these officers in I get it and I want and I I that's what I want too I want that for for this Police Department I want that for the municipality I want that for our citizens or visitors because quality is better than what we're getting right now but if you don't know what you're going to spend I don't know how you can propose I don't know how you can come in here and say this is what it you can't tell me what it cost today and what it's going to cost in the future I don't as a resident I don't get that what what don't we know what's what's I I asked uh for several things that I couldn't get numbers for in our meeting you told me to ask the Commissioners right I I that's not what I said I said I didn't want to speak for the Commissioners okay on certain things I know the CFO has done a workup which was provided to the commission so they can make an educated decision on whether this is appropriate or not okay I still don't know how we can do it without knowing cost I don't know how you can propose it pass it as an ordinance that doesn't make sense to me when I when I run numbers in my head and I hear 150,000 and you're saying you're bringing in three police officers in my head real quick I said okay it's 50,000 Fe you can't hire 50,000 we know that so there's salary there's benefits there's pension there's equipment there's uh things like uniform that you have to every year give them money for I mean all those things overtime if you don't know what you're paying overtime how are you going to project with that officer is going to draw over time there are the things I think we need to talk about so I feel comfortable with it well we've been talking about this can I make a suggestion feary at the end of the day this was why the last meeting I had asked that everybody get together go into the meet go into a room talk about numbers everyone has all their questions answered I didn't I don't want this to be a a freefor all on the floor here so at the end of the day I'm going to say again if there needs to be another meeting let's have another meeting I know Mr Marino submitted his numbers I know our CFO Francine submitted her numbers I'm in the process of digesting both of those documents um I suggest you all get together again I know that I've I've been able to draw some conclusions from from the numbers at least on my my initial cursory revieww I going to take some time I'm going to review it again um but I am not interested in running and jumping into um a decision without understanding the numbers and I I part of that Mr Marina I will give you credit because you did wake my eyes up to a couple things and we had a follow-up phone call over the weekend um and um I understand the meeting was short and I anticipated that mean to be maybe a little more informative but apparently it wasn't so um I just want to do my due now on my end I can't speak for commissioner Franco I think we know where commissioner shiff is so uh have another meeting if you need to but I don't want to be here hashing this out on the floor for the next half hour 45 minutes if I may fair enough okay it's fine and I don't even know how we got there I I thought what I said was it but um that's okay so Point okay okay any more public comments I just want to I want to wrap up make sure we had all the public comments that's so Mr Maro brought up that the numbers Mr Marabella requested a meeting Mr M commissioner shiff and with the chief uh to have a meeting about the handicap space if we can accommodate and Mr McGinty you got your you got your questions answered on the police department okay was there any other public comment that we want to tell anybody on the conference line have public comment uh we'll go right to commissioner comments I am good mayor hey we had a great Labor Day everything went well I appreciate everything everything from all the Departments and hopefully uh our next events are all taken care of and it's going to be fun so thank you and thank you the public too thank you and hope everybody had a happy labor day uh weekend and um I will uh entertain a motion to ajour motion second