Borough Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening, everyone. This is a record meeting of Jennifer Deborah Clark of the World Movement on Tuesday, June 9, 2026, at 7 p.m. A closed meeting is ordered by the Speaker of the House.

I am the Speaker of the House of the United States of America, and she is the representative

. . . . .

We also have a municipal clerk, Brianna Smith, business administrator, Michael Songar, and borough attorney, Dawn Sullivan. This meeting is called for submit to the provisions of the open public meetings law. Addictive notice of this meeting was that this meeting was advertised in the Herald News on January 9th, 2026. Copies were provided to local news media and posted continuously in the municipal buildings. A copy of this notice is available to the public and on file in the office of a municipal clerk. As per state fire code, I am required to acknowledge that two emergency exits in this council chamber. The main entrance, which you entered through, and the secondary exit to the left where I am seated.

If there is an emergency, walk orderly to the exit, exit through the door, down the stairs, and out the building.

If there's any questions, please raise your hand. Seeing none, we do not have any non-agenda items tonight. My motion to open up early public comment.

All in favor? Aye. Okay.

Anybody who wishes to come up, please come up and state your name and address.

Charles Carvalho, St. Claude, New New Jersey. Just make a quick comment on the SLDO contract. I'm very pleased that you're doing it. The reason is, this particular job is perfectly suited to that position. I need

He's a gentleman and he works really well with the kids. He's very well-liked. Anyone else? Seeing no one, a motion to close. So moved. Second. All in favor? Aye. Required committees.

Evie? Mayor, this Saturday is the Postal and Park Festival. June 13, from 3 to 9, there's going to be between 8 and 10 food vendors and a lot of vendors that Jen knows a little more about. There's going to be two bands. Max Scout starts at 3 and the Mug Shucks start at 8. And I encourage any vendors out there for the following events that we have, which are the fireworks in town, which are on June 27th. If you have not submitted your paperwork, please do so. And also, for the Bloomingdale Senior Center. Again, they're back at their new senior center.

Back in their home.

Back in their home. And I missed their welcome back. But again, if any seniors want to get involved, They have trips. They have chair aerobics. They have their walking club every Wednesday at 9 AM, bingo. And they have several trips planned to Washington, DC, and lots of things planned. You can go to their website or visit them at the Senior Center. Also, for the Chavarro Thursday squad, they had 70 very numbers for May, and they were 156 for May. Year-to-date, 748 calls. Chavarro had 129 calls. Covered on 21, they missed 8, which was 94%. Calls to Butler were 59, calls to Bloomingdale were 59, Keelan Long 36. They also had Mutual A's, Compton Lakes, and Wadi Q. Duty calls were 72, and all calls were 49. And Gail said that their instructional discipline is graduation paper.

And also with Harvard, I believe the refurbishment came in. They're meeting tonight at 7.30.

I'll go there when we finish. Do they have a wet down or anything? No, it's refurbished.

I don't believe they have it. I know there's another one on the order. When that's coming in, I don't know. And I also, eating last week, I was up in Menacohet, and I went up here to partake in it, and it was nice. A little salty, but we went up to one of them, and they were very hospitable. I haven't been up here for a year or a few minutes. Okay, John.

I'm at the Olympic Mission. As a reminder, we have red, white, blue, and yellow. There's a program going on, so that's for... residents to sign up to decorate their houses to celebrate our 250th birthday as a country. I've already seen a lot of houses that started with their decorations out, and I think that's great, and we should keep them out as long as we can. If you need to put them up, you can put them around my board, and I can put them in. But I did sign up for it, and this is also open to the businesses as well, as you know, to decorate Long Beach Street. and also let us know if there's any types of social programming or social things that we're going to do. For example, at Munchies, they said that they were going to have a photo booth on the 4th of July, and we're going to do a hot dog for everyone that has an order.

So those are the types of things that we're hearing from the businesses, a lot of responses to the money from the state, and we're going to make that more and more known throughout the next couple months. David?

So, we were environmental. We were loaded and ran through the state of New Jersey and on Monday 15th, Mike and Estella and Pat Scowl were going down to receive that grant. And the board of education, we got our next meeting at 6.30 on Monday, June 24th. And then we'll see you very soon.

Do you have a comment on the small car principle? We are a minor tanky in every region. Sometimes we send in a flyer to see who he is. I think if you get a paperwork, it's a pretty difficult job. You kind of have to mobilize in the shadows. But if you do this well, it's going to continue to slow down. It's going to be a good day. Flyer has some really, I don't think there's any people at Sloan Park. It's already been launched with some of our meetings. which is holding up their story to link with that. They are also doing a dinosaur fossil program on June 29th at 430 at the Stevenson. They're actually bringing full-size fossils for the kids to look, and they're just going to finish the year, and they're certainly looking forward to doing that. That has to kick you off the summer program. They're also going to be doing a lagging program to support America's anniversary. That has to continue. on the board, but it is one day. And on the 25th, at 7 p.m., if you don't have any minutes until this time, you can go to the program. Also, the power sign-ups are on the website, and that will also be here. So it'll be pretty fun. Yeah, if you want to get in there, it's going to be fine. Everything in the ACC can be done at the library. that Allie's putting together, she really pulls it very, very fast. So, the incredible, mom, we could put an anniversary, we could put an anniversary at the wedding next summer now, and that would open their celebrations. So, things are going really well there. We're ready to help.

We're glad you're here.

Oh, I just wanted to mention something else. Tom Riley at the, Mr. Riley has the Bloomingdale Museum and it will be open on Saturday. He always says it's open on Saturdays. But I just encourage anybody that wants to find out about, you know, the early beginnings of Bloomingdale, he gives a wealth of information.

And it's located at 30 Ballston Street and hours are 10 to 4.

and he'll be there both on our slow park on this Saturday and for the fireworks on the 27th of July.

Yeah. The NMNL street is going well. The laser playground So they're getting rid of the tin, they're getting rid of the stone. They're donating that by token. Also, they're donating the stone to go to one of the ATR resorts. So they're getting rid of that in the next stage. So that should be done within the next week. So that should be done by the end of the week. The chestnut culvert, the contractor goes behind to do another work in town. So they're gonna start that project. really like it all is we good I'll I'll I'll I'll I'll I'll I'll I'll I'll I'll I'll I'll I'll I'll Not a visual. But you are going to get a hundred grand in the museum space. We are going to get, I can't even remember the number, but a hundred thousand for the welfare benefits. All of it is a public meeting. A public meeting in the black lab. And it's going to be a visual announcement at the end of the day. All right, next section.

You done it?

Yep.

We're here. The school project has started. The fencing is up. The fencing is up. It's electric. It supports the construction. And the trailers are ready. Yeah, I saw that yesterday. I stopped over there yesterday to the softball. The softball thing for games tonight. And it's all electric. And they have a construction truck there. And they're all down there. And they've got to help people. And there's one bed. And then the best, you know, it's covered in ice. So, um, that's, that's, that's great. Great. Great. Um, here's what's going to happen today. I actually received an email yesterday from, um, CFO. So, I am praying that. So, I don't have to do this now. This is regarding one of his, his, uh, it so I don't know how to say really easy to get over there I'm not going to go all the way up on that it was a very short I think it's hard for you and as it's a close to the and my life is very very out of the first I got to keep moving so I spend a lot of time already by this with this gentleman really super nice guy uh... uh... uh... uh... But it was a great conversation with a local resident. You never know who you're gonna run into. Okay, and we had, another thing, we had several structure fires in town that I've been at. One at Tree Top, which we had a rescue of a light there. And that person, from my understanding, was doing well. And then over the weekend, we had a structure fire on James Ave over Roy. I don't think nobody was sold, nobody was hurt, but the response we have from not only our town, the local towns around us, it was hot, and the party first aid, I believe, was there, and then our first aid came in, and our ladies in the facility did a tremendous job supplying everybody with water, and very minimal amount of damage to the garage there, so it seems to be happening a little bit more locally, in the past years, but luckily nobody was hurt in our PD and fired for that rescue up on tree top, which meant to get that person out of the building, which was good. She got it backed out. We don't understand what she's doing. All right. So let's move on. Item 8, resolution number 2026, 6.1, consent agenda. Motion to approve the consent agenda.

Second.

Any questions? Roll call.

Brockert?

Yes.

Graziano?

Yes.

Hagen? Yes. Schubert? Yes. Yaffe?

Yes. Okay. Ending items. Item A, second final reading of the public hearing, ordinance number 8-2026, index rate cap bank.

public notice statement please yes mayor this ordinance was posted in the municipal building published on the borough website copies were made available to the public so that a motion may be made that it be read by title so no motion to read by title so moved second all in favor aye to exceed the municipal budget appropriation limits and to establish a capping. NJSA 4870-4-45.14. Okay. Okay, so we'll motion to open up public hearing.

So moved. Second. All in favor?

Aye. Thank you.

I'm going to put a public question to come up.

Charles Carvalho saying public hearing has This rate cap allows you to use $50,000 in bank cap. When you're done with using this bank cap, there will be $12,000 left over in bank cap instead of what? Is that what you meant to say? Any bank cap has to use this. If you don't have cash right now, you can get back to me. No, my other topic would be on other topics. All right. Let's go through it. Thank you.

Any other questions regarding the index rate and cap rate? So you know when the motion is closed?

Salute.

There would be approximately $198,000 for the next year's back cap.

The $198,000 includes the next year's back cap or the best back cap of today after you consume the $350,000?

Today after we consume the $350,000.

So it's after the 6th inning?

It's after the 6th inning.

So we're all going to have 91% advantage.

Okay.

Thank you.

Is that a motion to vote?

Yes.

All in favor? Aye. Okay. Motion for adoption?

So moved.

Second.

Both in favor?

Yes.

Aiden? Yes. Schubert? Yes. Yancey?

Yes.

Crawford?

Yes. Okay, we're going to do a budget presentation. Mike and our financial staff, we are going through this. And then we will open up for questions once we get into the reading of the monthly loan statement and the resolution.

but for the introduction.

So if you can, keep your questions available now, and then we'll get to them when we get into the next step. And then we'll be here to answer any questions we have. So folks, please throw questions through me, and then I'll direct you where you need to go.

Thank you. . . We'll talk about the budget this year. It's what we introduced a couple of weeks ago at our meeting.

This is based on it. As you know, we're not at the top of it tonight because we're on the state review every three years. We have another state review.

They have found some issues with our budget, which our auditors and the finance department are working on. We'll investigate it now and we'll go through it So some of the loss points we're going to talk about tonight are revenue versus appropriations, year-over-year overall expenditures, budget challenges, assessed valuation, tax breakdown, capital projects, expenditures, and strategic revenue review. So our budget this year, our proposed municipal budget is $16,628,784. That is a 7.8% increase over 2025. And we're gonna get into what makes up that $16 million in the next few slides here. So the appropriations, that's what the borrower spends money on. The finance committee, I say the finance department will sit down and they'll go through the appropriations with certain things, majority of these things, that they stick and they put into the budget. There's only a very small portion that comes from outside, called department budgets. That's that 10% there. That we get from our department heads. They'll submit a budget to us.

We'll look at that budget.

When I say we, myself and the finance department, we'll make cuts at that point. put it back into the budget, and then the finance committee comes in, made up of three or five members, the mayor, Councilman Yazzie, Councilman Graziano, and they'll make cuts to the budget, but pretty much the only thing we really touch is that. Everything else now gets thrown in for a little bit.

It's pretty much uncontrollable. It is what it is for a living. So, debt and capital makes up 11% of the budget. Health insurance Just health insurance and the money we pay people that opt out of health insurance accounts for 13% of the budget.

Statutory expenditures, which is your police and fire, retirement systems, social security, and your unemployment compensation makes up 11% and yet no control on that. The reserves for uncollected taxes makes up 2% and that comes from formula as well, that we have no control over. The O&E business, we do have limited control here. This is everything else that typically looks like there's a table and there's O&E. I split up the O&E so that the department heads and the department buzz is where we really need all our time. The other part of the O&E, we pretty much don't touch, is made up mostly of your shared service agreement offsets.

State federal grants is 22%. And that's at the point of time when we get introduced.

We've got about $20,000. We'll get into this more in the next few slides. So the $20,000 that we got from grants. And those aren't the DOD grants. Those are your, the Golden Group Vets, the police, the community, the public, the government, the grants that we get. in the negative right now, but since we actually picked up three or four more of those grants, so we're probably in the plus, but at the time you're talking, we're in the negative. And salaries make up 32%, and those salaries are made up of 63 contractual employees, PBA, Blue Collar, White Collar, and 26 non-contractual employees, Blue Green Department heads, and some other average positions in town. A total of 89 employees. Next slide we'll jump to is revenue. This is what the borrower is going to be having on the line. Or how we're raising the money. So we have $16 million in appropriations. We need to raise $16 million plus in revenue to pay for all the appropriations. So you can see on this slide here, the delinquent tax is 2.5% of the budget. That is for the tax that we did not collect last year that we got this year that we can use to fund our budget issue.

You can't go back to last year. That's not necessarily the reason. We'll talk about that a little bit later also. Fund balance surplus is 0.4%.

That is also a way down from where we've been in the past. And I have a slide on the fund balances. We'll get into that a little bit as well. fees, permits, quarter fines, one-time revenues from the land sale, that makes up 20.5% of our revenues. Our standard services that we have, our garbage collection, street cleaning, everything else that we do, that we offer, not that we pay for, we offer those services. That makes up 11%.

The state, that's 3.4%.

That's what we get, obviously, from the state. And that has not changed since the same number we got last year. And the grant, again, is 0.2%. So the finance department find all that revenue and then look at appropriations. This is really simple plot right now. And they say, okay, we have $16 million, we have $8 million in revenues. Where are we getting the rest of them? It goes to the tax from the people. So that's what that big pie, that's 52% tax collected from the residents and businesses now to help offset the revenue side. We get the greatest revenue, that massive appropriation. And 3% of that tax elective is also a library tax, 33% of the budget. After the date, those things match, the appropriations and the revenues. Then we have to rely on professionals, which is Andy and Joe, our auditors. They come in and sit with Heather and Jasmine and myself, and we go through the appropriations, the levy tasks. Appropriations is three and a half percent, and the levy cap is two percent. And they help us when they come in, they find exceptions, exclusions, and additions that can be taken out of the cap. It was your in-cap, out-of-cap. In-cap, you're limited to those percentages that you can increase. But it's those out-of-caps that helps you fall into the new budget. Once you get those caps in place, you would be equal to or under those caps of 3.5 and 2%, then you can introduce your budget.

And that's what we were a couple of weeks ago when we introduced the budget.

So this is just looking back the last six years of our municipal, just the municipal budget.

You can see we're at $16,628,784, which is the last line there, 1.2 million over, or 7.8% over 2025.

Since 2020, appropriations have gone up 25% or on an average of 4.2% a year. Obviously, the next slide is identical because this is your revenues.

Revenues have to match appropriations.

So we're at the same $16,628,784 in revenue. Let's talk a little bit more in depth about the appropriations. So the first line there, salaries, which is all staff, which I think I said was 89 people, that accounts for $5,362,000 for an 8.6% increase. And the dollar associated with that is $426,000. Keep in mind, $384,000 of that is contractual.

It's set in contract with the PBA, white collar, and blue collar.

We can't touch it at this point in time. It is what it is. What we can touch is the non-contractual, or the 26 employees, and that went up $42,000, and that's every year around November, December, the government body passes a resolution that whatever the percent change is going to be for those 26 people for the following year.

The operating expenses. Again, I broke this down a little bit because I wanted you to see where we actually have influence.

And that is in the individual budgets. So the individual budgets for departments is $1.7 million, or 27%.

It went up $11,000 a year.

Last year, we cut that budget $60,000. So 0.7 is, it barely gets us where

Our partners are struggling, we know that, and we just have to find a way to keep the taxes down, and that's where we really make an impact.

The health insurance, $2.1 million.

It's a 24.6% increase for the dollar amount.

It's $424,000 increase this year alone in health insurance. Again, that one there, uncontrollable.

We belong to a hit, and the rates are going up. And the rates are going up in the state health benefit plan also. And we have employees, and they're guaranteed contractually to have health insurance. And that's the number that we pay for the insurance.

How much did the state go?

I'll get to that in a little while, but I want to say it's 36%, I think the number is.

But we'll get to that later on. 100%. And last year, the same thing. We went up like 20% last year, and the state went up almost 30%. And what I'm hearing on the street is that the state is going up even more than the 36% next year. So hopefully we hold true or some things that the gentleman in the back here is going to talk about later on, trying to get the state involved, lobby our legislators to think about the state benefits. Because if they can drop state benefits down for us, our contracts read that we have to provide equal to or better than.

So if We do a resolution which I'm in support of, which Charles is going to talk about a little while later. It only helps if it passes.

If they get rid of some services, then we can drop our health benefits as well. So we'll see. The library. Library is $453,000. It's a 10.5% increase for $43,000. We have no control in that either.

That comes with a formula, a third of a mil formula that the state sends to you. and they said this is what you must pay your library to have it run. That's year over year. Year over year. Every year they come back and if I look at my thing, I want to say it's probably been up 10 something percent each year for the last seven years.

I think it's been up $170,000, $180,000 since 2020. Went from like $280,000 to $453,000.

It is today.

But again, we don't have any control or any say on that in this room.

We're limited. Share service, which is utilities. Come insert your share services, which is, again, accounting for what you're bringing in share service-wise.

Utilities, meaning just what that is, electric, gas, all of that stuff. And all the other insurances, liability, all the other insurances that come with that, and any other miscellaneous items. That's $2.9 million. It's a 4.6% increase, or $129,000. That also, we really have limited control over. unless you back out of the shared services, which also messes up your revenue, so you're in it, and it's really nothing you're gonna change at this point.

Statutory, I'm sorry, state and federal grants.

That's one we talked about before. Again, we had an introduction, $20,000, it was a 58% lower than last year, but we've received three or four more grants since then, so that's probably a zero, or actually, that's probably a plus. Statutory expenditures, the unemployment insurance, pensions, social security, all that, $1.8 million. We don't have control over that, but lo and behold, it went down 5%. So we saved $101,000, and that was pretty much due to pensions. Capital debt and services.

So I broke this out into two lines. The vehicle leases. So

years ago maybe seven years ago the government body that sat on the day is decided we weren't going to bond for vehicles anymore we want to put it into our operating budget we want to take out just like you do at home a three five seven year loan on vehicles so this number this 367 000 is what we currently have in our budget today and those are vehicles from 2022 through last year We had a 21% increase, or $64,000 increase from last year. And that $64,000 includes two police cars, which is $20,000.

And the balance, the $40,000 to $2,000 balance, is for a sweeper payment that was previously budgeted under a sheriff's service line. So we took a sheriff's service line, we offset the cost of that. But we moved it into budget because we instructed it, when we brought it under a capital leases, to take advantage of a cap exception permitted by the PCA. So that's why we brought it inside CAP. We had a benefit on the other side of it. The infrastructure improvements. This is all of your debt that we pay on bonds and notes.

Principal and interest involved. $1.4 million is a 9.7% increase, or $127,000. But keep in mind that that is infrastructure improvements, which is pretty much

all the road improvements that we do in other improvements in town for the infrastructure.

That is current outstanding debt that comes from the early 2009 through today. So this is not just debt we took on the last two years. This is debt we took on the last X amount of years that we're paying payments on through, I mean, there's probably 20-year notes on some of these, 20-year bonds on some of these in 2009. But we were making payments each year to pay things down and pay things off.

Uncontrollable at this point in time.

We bonded the money. Previous government bodies bonded the money. We had to do the payment.

So you can't cut it out. You can't stop anything.

And the reserve run collected taxes is $3,200,000. That's a 53% increase, or $112,000 increases in money.

We don't have control of that either. This is mandated due to the increase in the lack of collection of taxes from last year. So we anticipated on collecting, I want to say 99.4% of our tax base.

We did not collect all of that last year. Some came this year. That's why we had that earlier in the revenue.

We had a reserve, I mean the delinquent tax.

We can use it this year. But doing that, now our, what they call a RUD,

went down, so we can't anticipate as much revenue as we have passed.

So we have to increase our reserve in order to cover that. So it's $112,000 increase in the budget that this government body had no control over. So total appropriations, $16,620,074, 7.8% over last year, or 1.2% increase.

On the revenue side, so again, the grants, we talked about a couple times.

It's not a true number. We have to wear that now. State aid, we bring in $560,000 from New Jersey, which is the exact same amount we got last year, so a 0% increase or decrease. The library, we have to raise $153,000, a 10.6% increase over last year.

Again, we want to be full on that. We have to raise the money. We were mandated to pay that to the library. Shared services, our shared services bring in $1.8 million, or a 2% increase, and that's indicative of pretty much all of our contracts with active shared services. Year over year, it's pretty much the same increase. Then we'll probably look at, in the future, shared services down the road. The pilot, land sale, fines, licensing fees, All of that brings in $3.4 million, or 17% over last year, what we actually brought in. Fund balance surplus. We're using $65,000 this year, which is a negative 90%. We just didn't regenerate our fund balance and surplus that we've had in the past. We'll talk about that a little while later, but I think most of that is attributed to payroll,

And more health insurance. Because in the budget, that is a place where you can, I don't want to use the word have, but you can add a little extra more money into those line items in the past. And that's where we built the surplus, mostly from.

But being that the health is so high, and salaries have gone up, that you can't hide money anywhere in there.

We're trying to cut as much as we can to make taxes work for the residents of Bloomingdale.

again, to bring in as low as we can, is serving us on the fund balance or plus side of things.

The liquid tax, this was, again, the $437,000 that was not collected last year, 145% increase from last year to this year. We're using that as a revenue, but again, that's not a good thing.

And then at the end of the day, what we need to raise by taxes is $9.8 million for a municipal budget, or 11.6%. Total revenue, again, the $16 million change and a 7.8% increase. This is another 17 high-pending look back. Oh, yeah, I did talk about the land sale. $800,000 of that was land sale on M&T, on that pilot land sale and lines line. All right, let's talk about some of the budget challenges we had this year, and last year, and probably years to come. First thing is health insurance increases. Then we had an issue with tax collection, which we just talked about throughout. Emergency weather this year in January and February, our fund balance slash surplus being down, and then one-time revenue used to balance our budget.

So health insurance, you can see 2025, last year our health insurance went up $355,000.

This year, our health insurance went up an additional $424,000. This is, again, uncontrollable. We can't access mandatory contractual obligations. The HIF, the health insurance fund we belong to, versus state health, Councilman 24.6, and it is 36, state health went up 36. included in these increases for health or premiums for retirees that are long gone from the borough that we still require to keep on our insurance for contractual severance agreements. So again, stuff that the government body before us, members of the Bureau, with prior employees, we have to cover those bills, something we can't control at this point. Tax collection and reserve gap, this is what we're talking about, the RUT, which is reserve on collected taxes. So you can see our historical average was 99.4%. And the reserve on that was $208,000 and change. Being that we came in under, we couldn't use that number anymore, so we took our last three years and averaged it, and that came out to 99.12%, which drove our reserve up to $320,556.

And that 0.28% drop accounts for a $112,000 increase to our budget this year. It's uncontrollable, but we can't do it.

The governor ought to be able to control that. To provide clarity on the reserve for uncollected taxes, or the rough adjustment, the increase was driven by specific timing issues regarding subsequent tax payments. In a typical year, lien holders, who already hold a stake in a property, usually pay the subsequent taxes, like the fourth quarter,

to protect their investment.

This year, a significant number of those subsequent payments were not picked up by the lien holders before the fiscal year end. Because these payments remain outstanding when the books close, our actual collection rate drops, which by law triggers a mandatory increase in our abrupt appropriation for the following year. To prevent this overlap in the future, we're moving our tax sale to an earlier date in the calendar year. By holding the sale sooner, we create a wider window tax office to identify non-payments and engage with lean holders well before the year-end deadline. This shift in timing will ensure subsequent taxes are captured within the correct fiscal year, helping us return to our historical 99.4 collection conditions. So that's our plan for that specific item. Next one we talked about here, unforeseen snow operations January, February two major storm tests. They both happened on weekend. So not only did we have to pay Saturday, five and a half, we had Sunday at double time. It cost us $109,000 for payroll and also the surge in the salt and the icing.

They were unanticipated costs. With the direct result of the back to back storms,

In Musilwadi, we planned for a typical winter car, but these pollutants require 24-7 mobilization that moves us from maintenance mode into emergency response mode. When we have 8-plus inches of accumulation in a single window, we cannot simply wait for the next business day.

To keep emergency routes open for police and fire, our DPW grew for a 16-hour shift through the night.

This $109,000 includes a mandatory overtime pay required to ensure that every primary and secondary road was passable for emergency vehicles by 6 a.m. each day. Beyond labor, a significant portion of the survey went towards consumables. During these high-intensity events, the volume of salt and the icing material required satirized. Furthermore, when every municipality in the region is ordering salt simultaneously during a crisis, we see peak pricing and delivery surcharges. We had to restock our bays mid-storm to ensure we didn't run out during the second event. While these costs were unanticipated, the alternative of failing to clean the roads was not an option. The liability of a block yours through or slipping multiple car accident due to an untreated road would have far exceeded the $109,000 spent. This was a necessary investment in physical safety for residents and the protection of our infrastructure. Again, an item that was uncontrollable in the budget from this governing body.

Mike, also with that, the days after, when we had to go clean current Chicago, Red Lake, for example, we had to pick up the dump Take it and remove it from the street. Remove it from the street. And that also took a lot of time.

The only plus is that that money, that $100,000, that should be able to come from Vermont. And out of cap. Correct. So it helped us as we make our numbers in cap. If that was not allowed, if the state didn't allow us to take it out, we would have really been hurting this year. We would be at a point that didn't cost you. But for a great revenue, we got that $1,000,000.

But it's still part of your overall budget.

It is, 100%. It's part of that $16 million. So let's talk about the fund balance. So here's a snapshot of the last seven years. And you can see where we were with our fund balance and what we used and what we did with that and the reason we did it. So in 2020, we had a $1.1 billion fund balance. We used almost a million dollars to keep the average house at a tax increase of $23 million. In 21, we regenerated that same $900 and something thousand dollars. We used all of it to feed through our taxes at $25, or a 0.7% increase. In 22, we generated $1 million. We used $1 million, and we actually brought the average tax down $6.

In 23, we regenerated $1.7 million, and again, I think a lot of this regeneration was, it wasn't a padded department head budget,

finance department and previous CFOs and treasurers, that's where the money was was really in payroll and health.

Because they were big numbers that you can add more money in if you don't use it all. It's good to have it if you need it purposely, but at the end of the day, if you didn't use it, that's where a lot of the surplus came from. And in these subsequent years, when hiring hires versus new paid people who brought in veterans, new hires, when that dropped, that was the first three lines. also all those new hires have grown in starting to head up especially some of the people with steps so salaries started going back up to where they were pretty good prior to this and then obviously the health just with the roof so you can see in 2024 we used 1.2 million of 1.3 was a 58 increase and then the next two years the group got hit We only generated the $715,000 in 2025.

We used $650,000 to try to keep it as low as possible, which was a $204,000 increase. And then this year, we only regenerated $152,000.

We're using the $65,000. We made $7,000 in there, but you see the increase is $356,000 to the average home. As a whole, for the last seven years, we've used it for the government bodies. Some people have disappeared for those seven years, and some new people won't.

$6.3 million in surplus was used to try and keep taxes down for residents of Bloomingdale, and that kept it below $100, or roughly a 3.43% increase over the last seven years. Three. 2026 assessed value, or net valuation. So Bloomingdale look down properties there down to net valuation taxable 2026 we've had 2656 properties that we tax and that we make we get our revenue from whether that's commercial residential vacant lands people that don't have home on or construction on and farmland and you can see each one of those in the far right what they actually contribute to the taxes So vacant land, 79 properties, they contribute $1 million to the taxes. Residential is the 24, 25 homes. They contribute $31 million to the taxes.

Farmland, the 18, contributes $76,000.

And the commercial in town contributes $3.8 million to our taxes or variables to help offset.

If you go down now to total, the total number of properties in Bloomingdale is 2,752 properties. That's the difference in 96, and that's what that exempt is.

There's 96 properties that just don't pay tax, whether it's Northern Green, whether it's the House of Worship, whether it's borough-owned, state-owned, county-owned. There's things that they just, there's tax exempt. And just for sake of doing this, those properties, 96 properties, their assessed value is $72 million, or roughly $3.6 million. Obviously, we can't you'll never collect any of that, or you won't collect most of that because of, just as we said, they're public lands that we use, the state uses, Northern Green, 50% of our green area in Bloomingdale. So you're not gonna see much of that money. What I did put in here though is under the town-owned, non-public-owned. So the town-owned property, everything that's not public-owned, so this building, this property is public-owned, the senior center is public-owned, the firehouses, animal shelters, those are all public homes. We have property that is not. It's sitting in residential areas, it's sitting in business zones, it's sitting in our M1 zone. And it's valued at $5.6 million worth. Revenue coming in, if it was all built out, would be $282,000. Part of the things we're laying around, some of the things we want to talk about possibly doing is looking at selling some of that land. It's possible if you use a board, put it down for auction. So you get a one-time sale and you get it on a rateable as opposed to just sitting there and getting nothing. The town just has a piece of property that's sitting there. You've seen a couple that we, when I say we, myself and the mayor, have seen a couple that we have the tax assessor looking into that seem like viable properties that can be or probably will be sold to somebody who wouldn't be interested in them.

Whether it's a surrounding property or somebody that's coming into this water and sewer actually right within,

50 feet of the property line. Possibility. Then the last one, exempt vets. We love the vets.

What they've done for us. The state, they came up with that exempt vet or disabled vet doesn't have to pay tax, which again, I'm all for.

Well, unlike the senior threes, when seniors come in and get a senior threes, and our taxes go up, they pay the total tax. We're all And they get reimbursed, whatever they've grossed at. With the vets, it's all on the taxpayer. The state doesn't reimburse us for anything. So those 19 homes, which is $264,000 of revenue we don't see because of the state. So they just wanted to put that in there. That's something that the taxpayers have to come up with, that extra money there. base that was introduced here on all of this. So you have $727,882. That rate was, the tax rate on that with the budget that we introduced was 5.004. That's where I calculated all these numbers from.

Our estimated tax rate that we put in was 4.889, so a little bit less than what we introduced.

So some of these numbers would have come down a little. I also want to key note is that the $727,000, that number, the valuation of Bloomingdale, actually is down 0.2% from 2025. We were at $729,000 change last year. And that is partly due to you see buildings that are being demoed and now are no longer have an assessed value. All they're doing is vacant land. So that drives down that valuation. The computation tax rate, I'm going to say about last year, people were questioning why we do estimated tax rates. Our third quarter taxes are always estimated, unless you have certification from the state and everything is finalized.

Typically, by the time we do, we don't.

We know ours. We know the library. We know our open space.

When we introduced, we didn't know the school at the time. We now know the school. So we used the school number when we did our estimate for the rate.

We don't know the county yet. We won't know that county for a while.

So when we do our third quarter computation for estimates, we take the assessed value of the home, whatever your home's assessed at, and you divide it by 100, which is $100 for our assessed value, and you multiply that by the rate, which in this case, the estimated rate was 4.889, and that gives you your yearly total. You take your yearly total, and you minus what you paid the first two quarters, and that gives you what we call the second half, You divide that in half, and that's your third quarter payment. And then somewhere after we adopt, and the state certifies that everything's good to go, the entire budget, we get the assessed value of fourth quarter computation, assessed value divided by that same $100, multiplied by the new official certified tax rate, and that gives you what the official taxes that you should have been paying for that year. And if you take that total number and you divide that by four, those are the first two payments for the next quarter one and quarter two of the following year.

So we always, your rate for this year, the first two quarters of the following year are assumed from what you pay this year in taxes. Then we estimate again, third quarter next year.

Fourth quarter, we balance here and get that.

I'll just do a tax breakdown here on the average home.

So that evaluation chart we saw a couple of slides back, the average assessed house in Bloomingdale, the value is $256,432. We use the tax rate, because we know the schools, that's why I highlighted in green, of that 4.998 per $100 assessed value. So the yearly taxes for an average home for 2026 are $12,816, that's the estimate. And you can see in the chart where that's going. So the municipal government,

This government body here, again, 27% of that were $3,460. Open space, again, 0.5.

Open space is for your field, your parks and rec, the lakes in town, maintaining them. $64 of your taxes goes towards that for an average home. Library, 1.5 is $192. which also includes their open space, is 17% for $2,179 of that money, and in the school is 54% for $6,921 of the assessed value for the home. Just one idea that I just did.

While the borough is required to collect all the copy taxes, only 27% goes to municipal services. The majority of these tax deductions They go to the county, they go to the county open space, they go to the library. All of them have independently set their own budgets, whereas the library case is set by the state, in which it impacts taxes beyond borough's control. You can see the $36 million we need to do our taxes this year, all in, estimated.

19 and change goes to school.

Six million goes to the county, and just on the county side, The open space in the county is about $100,000 is for the open space of that six million. And if you just look back at our history, the last three or four years, even a little more, we actually receive 200 something each year in our open space range.

So for the 100 that we're putting in there, we're getting back almost 100% profit on site and on top of it, which is kind of nice.

The town itself, 9.8 million of the total. Liner is getting 253,000. Open space is $181,000.

So the average home for the municipal pays $3,460 in taxes. Or if you break that down by a day, $9.50 a day. And for that money, you receive all of those things in that sum. So public safety, emergency response, community medicine programming, public works, administration of the government, and infrastructure. So for the $3,460 or $950 a day, you're getting a lot of services for residents, community employment. Our capital improvement. What we've done this year, obviously we've been talking about for a while, the Volcom playground. We finished up Catherine and Bailey, and we did the Starlake Road stormwater improvement. The pending projects, or carbon funds that are going on, and Elm Street, water as well as road improvements. The senior center floor, actually slide it over and clean it, is now done. The laser playground, which is in the process of being done.

Stormwater improvements on Reeves and Chestnut. Chestnut started in July. Hillcrest and Cook.

I did that on the agenda this night to introduce the improvements on that. And Fisher, Lakeside, and Woodward. the current project, and the laser bathrooms and backstop of the laser. And I just want to keep in mind, most of these projects, other than the stormwater improvements, are partial or full grant coverage to these projects. So a couple of the strategic investments.

We prioritize infrastructure. This is appreciation, and this is for our debt is going up. We know this, but we have to maintain the infrastructure, otherwise it's going to cost us X amount of time more to repair and fix things in the future if you don't take care of it now. So this includes critical road work, stormwater system upgrades that are essential for the long term. This is reliability.

By investing wisely today, we can protect the tax basis tomorrow. And avoid the emergency multiplier costs. in our data analysis for you in the next slide. So statewide in-debt starts with recognizing that our current obligations represent infrastructure we've already delivered.

We aren't adding debt for operational costs. We are paying for the roads we drive on, the equipment, and the workers we fund as we use every day. Our strategy is to synchronize new projects with the retirement of old debt. By timing our capital improvements carefully, we keep our annual debt service payments predictable and flat, preventing spikes in the tax rate. By stabilizing our debt-to-revenue ratio, we maintain our high credit rating.

This ensures that when an emergency does happen, we have the borrowing power to react at the lowest possible cost to the taxpayer. And just looking at some of the multipliers, this data comes from the Federal Highway Administration.

They talk about emergency repair costs between 4% to 10% increase over a planned event. So massive cost of deferral, waiting, put it off, put it off, you can see there, Road infrastructure, $100,000 proactive today could cost you $400,000 in emergency down the road. Utility and air repair could cost you $50,000 today as a surgical fix. In an emergency, it would be $250,000.

In a vehicle police service, $5,000 today could cost you nine times more than $5,000 for failure for replacement down the road. So you can't not stop. doing projects and fixing infrastructure in town. It's just not a smart investment.

Debt reality, you cannot unpay a road to save the interest. Current debt is the fulfillment of past infrastructure promises that are now serving our residents. Debt service is a fixed statutory obligation.

These are already incurred charges for assets the public currently utilizes. They must be honored by the law. We'll talk a little bit about our strategic revenue review.

Our shared services, talking with the finance department, we need to look at doing a full audit of agreements to ensure a rate-through-black 2026 insurance and labor costs. We also need to look into additional shared services without adding any additional expenses.

more manpower to do a project or bring in equipment to get to what we currently have today or is not viable to look at at this point in time. And ensure that future contracts, when they come up, or we've been negotiating about now, have the ability to revisit the set percent increase each year based on all variables.

In the past, it was always 2%, 2%, 2% because of our budget. Can't go over 2%, so that was a doctrine that everybody used. But I'm saying, we're all seeing it, that health insurance and other things are out of our control 2% doesn't cover it anymore. So we need to be able to have the ability to go back to it and say, hey, we have X amount of people working on this, and our insurance plan for this, we need X to cover the additional increase in the hard rate. Fees table.

So updating, we're in the process of updating our administrative fees to ensure that the fees cover costs, not to general taxpayers. We're also doing an internal audit of our vendor agreements to eliminate any potential redundancy in services.

Currently we're looking at our phone services its own carriers.

And in new streams of revenue, it's imperative to focus on diversifying our tax base through business attraction and personal redevelopment. And yes, that means looking at possibly using pilots to bring developers in here to do work and take interest in Bloomingdale. We talked about this before, the vertical land sales, one-time revenue, plus yearly tax rateable Right now they're currently exempt properties. We're not getting any more. And we know there's at least two that we're aware of that we think are viable options.

And evaluating ordinances for licensing and regulatory fee opportunities.

So the artist review committee is working on, so we'll be working on that. So our goals, our goals are to balance our budget. increase our revenues, save lives or debt, or service families without sacrificing infrastructure improvements, and manage the fund balance and surplus. So balanced budget, this isn't just making the numbers match, it's about ensuring the municipality's long-term survival in a high-inflation environment. This year, balancing the budget required aggressive management of non-discretionary spikes, specifically the health insurance and contractual labor lines. We have balanced these by tightening the Department of Discretionary Spending. While a balanced budget is always where we stand today, increasing the revenues is a strategy that ensures we can continue to improve quality services tomorrow without overburdening our residents.

Increasing municipal revenues, we cannot rely solely on property taxes to fund 21st century services. Our goal is to diversify our revenue stream so that the burden of the borough is spread across the wider variety of sources.

We are reviewing our fee and firm schedules to ensure that those requesting special services like construction inspections or land use applications are covering the administrative costs. General taxpayers should not be subsidizing private development. In shared service agreements, we've been treating our shared services. We are treating our shared services agreements like a business. We are auditing every contract to ensure our neighbors are paying a fair market rate that reflects our actual 2026 labor and insurance costs. Just in summary, and we hit on a lot of stuff here, just in summary here, and this is really for yourself, Councilman, you brought it up, 85% of the increase, the $1.2 million increase we had over the last year in the municipal budget is comprised of the following uncontrolled and or limited control variables, storm expenses, the rut, health insurance, contractual salaries, library obligations, and debt services.

Any questions? The other 15% that you said we can't control, it's like shut it down, right?

It's like department budgets.

If you shut it down, you're shut down.

And I say limited, they're limited because, yes, the government body could, if they wanted to get rid of furloughed people or They could, but then you'd also have to give them the services if you did that. So that's the juggling act. What I'm saying, 85% of the budget increase is really what it is, unless you made some drastic, drastic changes. Health insurance, $700,000 or $700,000 in two years, it's unbeatable, right?

Nope. And how do you bring in more revenue to offset that $700,000? Yep.

news when i look back at our health insurance uh over the last since 2020 is done up 82 for 13 a year and that all really took place the last two years we were health insurance in 2020 actually went down but then 2021 went down 4.7 percent in 22 it went up 0.1 went up 18 in 23 It went up 2% in 24, I'm sorry, 18 and 22, 2.1 in 24, 22% and then 29% this year, the last two years respectively. I'm looking for something. You said about this site for next year?

Yeah.

No, you have to look at, and we use, like I said, we use one-time sales to help us bringing in as low as we possibly could would be a smart thing to do. Otherwise we could have been looking at some crazy numbers.

Crazier numbers.

So we had an opportunity to use a one-time sale and we took that opportunity and we're using it this year.

The other thing that kind of hurts us is we go in and we make cuts to the department head budgets. By making that cut, and our department has to watch what they're spending, but by making that cut there's no reserve that's going to roll into next year. So you're really cutting on both sides of the fence here. So it helps you maybe a little bit this year, but it's going to hurt you next year because that doesn't go to your... Surplus.

It's like a library. It's got to be a mountain. So our job, and our staff is doing it, is they're watching everything to Mike and Heather and Jasmine

is to watch what they're spending this year so we have money to roll back into surplus for next year. So we can start building our surplus back that we get to where hopefully we're all comfortable.

Keep in mind that that's like 11% of the budget is what you're, 10% is the department budget, 10% is what you're really touching.

So 10% of $10 million and $9.8 million is what we're really touching. that we have control over.

Sometimes you still have contracts and stuff that each department has that we've signed up for year over year, software, whatever. Even that's okay. I have a couple questions.

Sure.

With the sheet 10, the $800,000 that says it's a sale, when you were talking about the sale asset, is that amount refundable? Because you said we have the empty...

So that's an agreement that the government body has signed with M&T partners.

We received $800,000 this year.

It is not refundable. It is ours.

And then the Also, sheet 10, the $290,000?

Yes.

Which items include the capital count? Was that overfunded?

No. This amount was comprised of the canceled ordinances where we completed the project under the award amount. So that money was left over. We're using it in here. So it's not new money.

And also on sheet 10, what is the reservation fee?

The reservation fee is also part of the agreement with M&T.

We own the property, so we don't have tax on it. It's just that they're paying us $100,000 a year holding it.

Until they own the property and they get a building permit, then that reservation fee goes away.

And then on sheet 13, It says financial management salaries and wages. They went up to $68,000.

Yep. We hired a new full-time CFO, and we canceled the shared service with the part for the CFO. So that's where the $68,000 increase came from.

I'm sorry. On sheet 14, the public buildings and grounds, those salaries also went up, $61,500? Yes.

They're actually a new addition. They're not new. They're moved. There was no public buildings and grounds employees in it, but they were all inside of the streets and roads budget, so I broke them out into their own department, kind of where they belong. So I moved them home, where they go on.

It's just easier to control. You can see where the money is actually coming from in each department that we have, whether it be water, DPW, buildings and grounds.

So some salaries, obviously, they go up some with contractual obligation. So they did go up with whatever our contract said they were going to go up with them. As Heather said, we also adjusted the budget to take them out of that line item and make it easier on us. financially to control and look at where people are.

And from Sheet 15A, the streets and road salaries went up $130,000.

Does that mean... That went up because of the snow emergency, the overtime for the snow emergencies, and the contract, the white collar, I'm sorry, the blue collar contractual agreement we have with those employees.

And, yeah, the snow, that's just, there's nothing we can do with that. It says zero for 15 feet. Snow expense is $65,000. Last year, it said zero. Why is it zero?

That is a statutorily permissible line. We are putting money in for snow removal.

that will not last for the budget when this budget year is over for 2020, that money can be transferred to the snow reserve.

So we'll be able to utilize it in prior years if it's not less than 2020.

This will help us. We just got hit during a presentation. I told you that over time, expenses with those new storms, this will help with that.

But is there like a comparable, like, I know probably didn't snow as much last year. Do we have like a comparison?

We had zero last year. We were at zero the year before that. We never put any money in that line item, but our CFO recommended that we do a snow expense line for that reason. When there's an emergency, the money's there. If I do that, it won't hurt us.

We have money there. And you, for an emergency, it doesn't fall over to the property. So it helps you in the long run.

And then another question. The storm response recovery, the 109, 833, are all of these related?

Yes, they are. Yes.

And then, sheet 15B, employee health, which you said there's nothing we can do about that, but it's doubled.

Yes, yes. It's actually $424,000 that went up this year, which we had no control over. That's what the health insurance fund that we were in. Those are the rates that they increased.

It was 22, 23.6, whatever that number was. You were talking about shopping around for... I think you said you were going to start shopping around for power or some kind of services for vendors. Is that a possibility to look for a different health thing for the town?

You have two choices. You either go into the state fund, which is a 36% increase, or we're in the hip of the jiff now, because I don't believe there's another group that handles municipalities. other than these two, these two carriers.

So we're in the one, we purchased the island state going back many years ago, because it was more reasonable for the same coverage.

And in years past, they would only go up maybe 3%, 4%, 5%, sometimes they didn't go up at all. And the state kept climbing.

So we were better than, And we're still benefiting because we're about 12 to 13% less of an increase than what the state package was because contractually for our municipality, you have to either give them equal or better to insurance.

So we shopped it, that's how we became a part of the tip of the gym. Going back, I'm gonna say 10 years now, 12 or something around there, and we shopped at big time, but these are the only two carriers that really cover municipalities with the same quality of coverage.

Yeah, you're in contract, so I don't think you just self-insure what you have with your current HIF. In the contract state, you have to be equal to or better than the state health benefit plan.

Okay. another question, and I really thank you for what you gave us before. Sheet 26A, leases on vehicles went up 303 to 367. Yes.

That was, I talked about that on one slide in the presentation, around 67,000. 20,000 was two new police cars we bought this year, and the other 40 was the

street sweeper. We took it out of the shared service line.

We used to offset it with shared service money. We put it into our budget, operating budget, because we had better benefits on the back end of the money. Put it back into our, and take it out of the shared service line.

And I definitely, I appreciate how this just keep everything clean and definitely voted yes for a lot of stuff but just asking questions and my last one is the debt service the debt service that went up a million dollars it went up $123,000 $123,000 the debt service went up and again that was uncontrollable those are principal and interest payments on bonds and notes

dating back as far as 2009 to last year.

And then with the state, you said that they're questioning, like, what's the deadline? So the next time we're here is when you're adopting it?

As long as the state, when we send our responses back to the state, the questions that they have, and as long as the state approves our budget, then we will adopt one the 23rd. which we feel confident that that will happen. It has to, but every three years we go into a state exam. And this is the third year. So we're obligated to send our questions to the state for therapy. And then when we have questions, our finance and auditor handles all the questions. They send out their responses and then the state will either accept it or they'll ask you more questions. So we feel confident that with our responses back is that we'll be ready to adopt

Thank you, Mike.

Anybody else have questions? Great job. Great presentation. It was more than just a budget.

It was more of this is how our time runs.

This is what your expenses are.

This is what you can and can't control. It's been a lot of time.

As much as it hurts all of us, right?

We don't like this. A lot of it's...

I just, on behalf of myself, like to thank

three of these for a long time.

I know when I come into the office and I look at them, there's papers all over the place, and then you have Andy out in the back who just types away looking and getting things, and then Joe comes in, and then we come in and care of the part that they go back and start typing in. But it's a real work in progress.

It doesn't just take a week to do this.

It's a lot to put everything together, starting back in January.

And this is not just a boom and down thing. This is every mentality in here. I was going to say, I've talked to other municipalities. Everybody's going through what we're doing.

I knew it was going to be this year. It wasn't going to be before last year. Okay. So we have to... ... ... ... ... ... Okay, item C, 2026 municipal budget and tax resolution for 2026.

The budget was approved by the governing body on May 6th, 2026. It was advertised as required by law together with notice of hearing for this time.

Dr. Resolution number 2026.6.7, reading the budget by title.

Do I have a motion?

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Yes. Before I open this hearing, I wish to outline the procedure.

Each person desired to be heard will write or give his or her name in an address before speaking. I will recognize one speaker at a time in order of rising as nearly as I can determine. Address all questions to the chair. Where necessary, they will be referred to individual members of the governing body or municipal officials. Questions must be combined slowly to the municipal budget before us. School or county matters are not proper subjects for this hearing.

They cannot be discussed or answered here tonight. I now declare the public hearing for 2026 to open. Do I have a motion to open up public hearing?

So moved.

Second. All in favor?

Aye.

Anyone wish to speak about the budget?

Come on up. Real simple question. Great presentation. When will it be available on your website?

It's already available.

It's actually there. The interview session. The presentation will be up there. What budget?

Presentation. Presentation.

It's on there now. It's on the website now.

It's up now? Because I looked earlier and all I see is the regular agenda.

We upload it around 5.

About 5 o'clock or so we put it on here.

It's after regular business.

Okay. Maybe I'm looking in the wrong place. Because when I look, it's the agenda. I just want you to look in the right spot. I see the file listing. It starts number one, agenda two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. List all the items.

Number 12.

I don't see a 12. Maybe it didn't refresh. Okay, that was my question. Sometimes you can see it on your phone, but you don't see everything.

It's coming up on my phone. We did it at 5 o'clock.

Okay, maybe it's... for some reason it's not refreshing anyone else so i have a motion to close public hearing all in favor all right okay request a motion to post on the budget adoption for further review by the division and the governing body

The adoption of the initial budget will be postponed to June 23, 2026 at 7 p.m. So I have that motion. Second. All in favor? Aye. Good business. okay new business adoption of resolution number 2026 6.8 approval of the change order uh number one for ann and ellen do i have a motion to accept the change before we um this is for the the uh the water life memorial court If you're familiar with the works being done in the Denton Street, which was right off of Lakeside, around the corner from the end, that we just added that water line. There was no sense going through what we're going through and leaving that section out. And we added a new fire hydrant up in the, I think up in the call center. So we put, that'll be all brand new because that's all asbestos water lines that are through there. So now it'll all be ducted line through because we're going to pave there. So there was no sense not doing that. Roll call.

Schubert?

Yes.

Gadsby?

Yes.

Brockwood?

Yes.

Graziano?

Yes.

Nagin? Yes.

Okay. Adoptable Resolution Number 2026.6.9, Approval Change Order Number 1 for Seamless Center of Alterations.

Do I have a motion?

So moved. Seconded.

Seconded. Nope, that's where we did a chair rail. It was the only part of it that had a chair rail, so we did a chair rail around the whole thing when we were doing that roll down. They did some concrete work by Pat's office. We took that out and those who rented it.

So that had a little more cost. So a couple of things that they added in. So I have a motion by Ray. I need a second. Any questions on this? I will say it came out very nice inside here. It's nice to walk on a level floor. Without that wall, it's a huge, huge, huge. Roll call, please.

Gatsby?

Yes.

Proctor?

Yes.

Graziano?

Yes.

Hagan? Yes. Schubert? Yes.

Item C, introduction of bond ordinance number 9-2026, various road improvements. Do I have a motion to read by title?

So moved.

Second. All in favor? Aye.

Onwardness provides for the reconstruction of various roads by and in the borough of Kingsdale County, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, appropriating $415,000, therefore, inclusive of an NJDOT grant in the amount of $331,080 and authorizing the issuance of $415,000 bonds or notes of the borough to finance the project. Okay. The second final reading and adoption will be on June 23rd.

Do we have a motion to open a public comment? So moved. All in favor?

Aye. Anyone wish to come up? These are the most effective. but extra effort it's very hard to clean it up so that tears can get back in and so thank you for that also I've been working with Mrs. Sondermeyer regarding some resolutions one is on health care I mean the school system is the same impact as the municipality I believe that you have 500 school districts and 500 municipalities you have a thousand voices I think those thousand voices should make it clear to Trenton that we need relief on health So that's one resolution that we're supporting. The other resolution, I'm working with Susana Meyer, and I'm working with Sabra Garza, is the Highlands Resolution. We're in the highlands. The state right now is looking at some kind of relief to the highlands, and I think we should give some strong effort to look at that to see if we can encourage the state to give us relief on that area as well. Because I think we both benefit from putting our efforts to give relief to the state on that front. So that's our two candidates, finally.

Well, I'll just say I'm in support of both of them. Even though we have a small section of candidates in the Highlands, it has hurt us in the past. And I've been reading the articles for the local towns around us, as far as Jefferson, and I totally agree. So when we get that all together, I'm sure we'll hopefully get support from both.

Even if we don't sometimes directly benefit, I think, supporting our neighbors, we might just take the cuddle. at least on the school side, just to be aware of it, we might just need to come up to be able to get the state to give us some support on the school side, which will benefit the taxpayers. Thank you for the opportunity. Anyone else? So you don't want a motion to close? Second. All in favor? Aye.

We do not have an executive session today. Our next meeting will be June 23rd at 7 p.m. We have a motion to All in favor? Aye. Thank you all.