Borough Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening, everyone. This is a regular meeting agenda of the government body of the borough of Bloomsdale, Tuesday, August 18, 2026, at 7 p.m.

I call this meeting to order by the salute of the flag.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, and invisible with liberty and justice for all.

Roll call.

Mayor DeMoto?

Here.

Councilman Ruppert? Present. Councilman Catalano?

Here.

Councilman Graviano? Here. Councilwoman Nagin? Here. Councilwoman Schubert is excused. Councilman Gassi? Here.

And we also have Ms. McClure, Breanna Smith, Business Administration Administrator Michael Sondermark is excused. Borough Attorney Doug Sullivan. This meeting is called pursuant to the provisions of the open public meetings law. Added to the notice that this meeting was advertised in the Herald News on January 9, 2026. Copies were provided to the local news meeting and posted continuously in the municipal building. A copy of this notice is available to the public and compiled in the office of the municipal clerk. As a person named Fire Cook, I'm required to acknowledge that there are two emergency exits in this council change. The main entrance, which is the entrance room, and the secondary exit to the left of where it was 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. Do we have a motion on that? So moved.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Any other questions? Do you want to move that one?

No.

I'll just stand here. Okay, I can lean in. Okay, in reference to eight, F, and G, I'm just concerned with how many trucks we have.

I can tell you that those trucks, or the oldest trucks in the fleet, are pickup trucks. In the winter, Dave and I went down to actually thank the DPW for the hard promotion of us.

And I opened the door and opened the doors of these two trucks,

the, God help me out here, what's that called? The... No, when you open the door, the... The running board. The running board. The running board provides for electricity running through there. It's on set. We took those vehicles out of service, including the saunters, which were shepherded.

So we have to replace those vehicles so we can do our snow removal in a way.

Okay, so we have, for the Department of Public Works, in 2021 timing, These are the ones that are in the lease. Both Silver Island and Tomah are no longer in the lease. 2022 Ford Pickup, Ford Explorer, Ford F350s. Ford 2023 F350s. Ford 2024 FL350s. And then, looking at the bills, I think there was another one that was from the beginning. got any plates for it?

I don't think so.

Well, it's on the bill's list that we would get any plates for a car in January 2026. For a car? No, for that 350.

I'm not 100% sure. I can't answer that question. So I think we got, maybe we just got any plates for a vehicle for some reason. I don't know. It was 2026.

So you didn't get to skip the plates for replacing it. It was a 2026. So that's four.

I have to look. I did budget for them last year. We did purchase them. I don't have an answer for them.

But I just think that, I mean, I know that a lot of the entries are going home because you don't have to move the apartment.

That's true. But there's other reasons for that, too.

When we have people that have to respond to orderly breaks, we call them and respond right from their house. Those trucks go home. They do not move unless they're coming into the borough business. It's not for personal use. And there's parking issues at the DBW. That's the reason we're starting. We did the salt shed. We let some guys take it home when it was working out. And have personal cars. We were working on people hitting other people. DBW is crowded with vehicles. Because I kind of ask the same thing. Why are we still letting this happen? So I reach out physically myself to look. and DPWR with all the garbage trucks and everything that we have there, the storage of the saunters, the plows, and are we arguing in and out? We decided, or might decide to just continue what we're doing.

Well, my concern is that you said that you aren't going to report me anymore. Now, you may not consider me to be deaf, but it is deaf, which is the equipment that's going to have to be paid for, so it's considered that we're not... Well, it's part of the budget.

We're not bonding it. We're not paying for it for 30 years like we have for the patent. But it's still deaf. It's still deaf.

And... For last year's budget, we had $303,000, almost $304,000 of leased .0 oil.

And then we're going to add two more, and we're going to add three more to that.

So that's going to be like another $30,000, .30,000.

And I believe, when we talk to Mike about this, we have leases that are falling off the books next year. I don't know if you guys can, from the budget, because I have a question. I think we're going to start going home. Okay. This is going to be... Me too. That's it. But these trucks were taken out of service because they were unsafe. Where will all of the F-350s be used for?

For our DPW workers to go get their jobs. What positions are they doing that they need all these F-350s?

Well, they need them for cloud. That's what you have to use a 350 to push them. So take a 350 part of it. That's a need. All right, but the other stuff on there is the power equipment and the soldiers that we have to replace every minute.

So that's part of all this too. They're out pulling trailers to do all the maintenance of the fields. All right, we have several trailers that we pull around with all our lawn equipment.

We don't put the lawn equipment or some of it at the Walton Street firehouse, but we're trying to get that cleaned out, as you know, because we want to expand the museum down there. We use them for going over longitude when needed. They're vegetative waste. We follow a high there. Our water department is part of those too. So they all have service.

I understand that.

The vehicles are there.

Everybody can use them.

The water department also has vehicles.

If it's a water department, I believe it's charged with water. But these are per choice. I mean, we do all of the repairs on the streets when we have to do it. There's potholes. Whatever the DPW does, if they're trying to get it clean, they're open to senior centers. If he has a truck that he needs to take his cleaning stuff with, it's just normal everyday business.

I personally think it's expensive. By the way, it's like $186,000. I appreciate that. I think we have that in our hands.

Okay. All right. Now on the budget, I mean, on the municipal expenses.

There's a $1,500 charge for vehicle subscriptions on page two. Do you know what that's for?

What is it for?

Vehicle subscriptions.

Vehicle subscriptions. I do not know what that's for. The budget's a long budget. I don't know. I understand that. It's a long budget. It could be where we

Outfit no structure with lettering. That's a description.

I don't know. Okay.

Okay. I don't know. Does anybody know any of this?

I do not. No. Hello? Hi. Okay. Linda, can you tell me whether this is the first time it's appeared on Bill's list? Okay. It's a personal question. It's something that I did not see previously.

So you take it, Bill. The only subscription that I know of that we're using are GPS. Now, that's all over there because every truck is GPS so we can track what they're doing. When we get complaints from the house, the garbage picked up, we can go in there and say, nope, we were there at such and such a time. Every barrel vehicle.

Now, they will have that. And that is a subscription I'm not 100% sure that that's what that is. So my question is, who is helping you? Normally, Mike would be here to answer that.

Normally, he can answer what it is if you're going to say yes to pay something. Yes. That's my question, sir. Thank you.

Anyone else? See if no one wants to close.

So moved.

Reports, Joe.

So one item for today, we have replaced on October 10th, there was going to be a scavenger hunt, as we've done in years past. The ABC has decided to do a movie night, so it's going to be called Movie on Main Street over in Sloan Park. It'll be some sort of Halloween-themed type of a movie, starting around 6, really sundown at 6.30, so that's when the movie should start. We're going to be partnering with the library on that as well to help us out with a license of a big screen. We'll have at least one food truck selling more desserts and things like that.

Still working through some of the details, but there is a swap in the schedule.

So that's starting on October 10th. That is a Saturday. Starting about 6 o'clock in Plum Park. Comments?

So the environmental committee met last week and we are looking for volunteers for the 3rd of October.

We're going to be tagging some vegetation.

at Oakwood Lake, which will be pulled. We received a grant to clean up Oakwood Lake, so it's going to be a multi-step process. We're meeting a representative from the DEP later this month to get some clarification on what can and cannot be pulled.

We will then be tagging what will be pulled on the 3rd of October, and then purchasing the replacement plants and plugs from and doing the planting in the spring. So we're looking for volunteers for October 3rd at Oakwood Lake for environmental. Also, there was the Board of Ed meeting.

They completed the installation of the new flooring in some classrooms at Walter T. Bergen, as well as the upgrades and repairs to the two bathrooms. and construction on the extension is going well.

That's all.

Okay, okay.

We had the ice cream social, which was very well received and attended. That was a really nice day. A lot of people came out, and we also had the Moon Arch donated by Jesse from the UBC, so that was really nice, and people seemed to enjoy it and take pictures. It was a nice day for a period where you could come out and spend some time together. We also have coming up the 25th anniversary of 9-11. That's going to be starting in Baldwin Park at 6 p.m. And then from there, each park will be a ceremony on Baldwin Center. We are pushing through with Celebration Day in the Baldwin Center. just the under the for me under the um 9 11 walk and we changed it from seven o'clock to six o'clock because there is a high school football game that day and i know that

Butler PD needs to make sure that their officers are at the football game. And also the first aid squad needs to have an ambulance there if it's a home game. And then give other people a chance to participate and vote with that.

So that's why we moved it to 6 o'clock so everybody can get everything in at night.

So it's more of a walk than a candlelight walk. It'll still be closed anyway. But we'll do it more normally.

Yes, just as a quick point of knowledge.

So some quick thinking here, just trying to answer your question about the subscription services. It's under all data, and the all data vehicle subscription service line item is for the subscription for repair manuals for vehicles onsite. So all of the online services that our techs use in order to determine what's happening for repair of the vehicles, that's what that service is. Thank you. So we can all understand what the cost is. Thank you.

All right. Jeff, this is Ron. With Lakeview in the way, I've been doing some writing through and selling over there to see the progress of the work being done over half they should be almost done with that and then the curve work should start and then probably sometime in September I would think just by me looking at it is when that will get should get paid okay I'm told about the last meeting with the leisure field grant opening for the park there is done so that is open and being used which is really very very nice the next thing we're working on down there with grant money is we're working on think we're going to replace the backstops at the leisure field with open space money um for down here so that's probably our next project and also the i think we received money for the new exercise equipment up at the one t's multi-purpose so this is all all grand which is um and the ice cube social that we went down it was nice to meet people that we've never met that came down today that some people we didn't know. So it was really nice for me to open up their doors for us and host it for them. So that was really nice. Yeah, there's people up on Mary Street that have been over on, I think actually something on Elm was there. And a person from the Sheriff's Department was on Van Damme came in, so it was very nice. Very well attended. Okay. Resolution.

Number 2026, 8.1, consent agenda.

Do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda? Mr. Mayor, I'd like to make a motion to approve the consent agenda line items A through E. And I think it pertinent to table line items F and G for further consideration at our Bill of Ops Committee and continue approving items H through J.

So we'd be tabling items 8.5 and 8.6 from GovOps? I am not in favor of doing that at this point because those trucks need to be replaced. They are in stock that we can have them and get them outfitted.

With that, these trucks are definitely needed because we cannot continue our salt operation when it happens. So we can put it off now. It's not going to get any different in a month or two months from now.

So they need to be brought here.

They have to go get outfitted for the plows, so that that doesn't just happen overnight. So I am not in favor of a loan. You guys make the decision. I think that's the wrong thing to do.

The trucks that we're replacing, have they already been sold? They've been auctioned off property. So we're down to...

They were undruggable. Unless you want the truck to break in half and hurt the employees.

And they're that bad. I still believe they should be reviewed by DevOps. If I can't get a second, then I'll leave the motion to someone else.

I move to... You've got to establish there's no second.

Do we have a second? So we do now.

Move to approve resolution A through J. I have a second.

Second.

Roll.

Okay.

Yes.

No. Yes. Yes.

Yes. Okay, new visits. Resolution number 2026, 8.10, initial obligation to our motion to pay the bills.

So moved.

Second. Any questions?

Roll call. Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes. Yes.

Yes.

Okay.

Item number 10, make public comment. Motion to open up and make public comment.

Second.

All in favor? Anybody wish to come up? Seeing no one, motion to close.

Second. All in favor? Aye. Okay. We do not have an executive session tonight. Our next meeting is September 1st, 2026, 7 p.m. So a motion to return.