Town Council - Regular Meeting

Can we all please rise for the uh flag salute allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for allow

this meeting is being held uh with the benefit of public notice as required by the open public meetings act. Madame clerk, please call the role. Mr. Caribelli, present may have. Yeah. So, they take it, I think, one division at a time. So whatever order it

Okay. So did you want to start with a statement or you just want us to roll right into the budget? You we can just roll into the budget. I just I thank mayor and cancel for another wonderful year here in Hamilton and I think we keep on get progressing in the finance department and uh working together with administration the mayor and all the directors it has been very exciting

speaking on behalf of C council I'm sure they're going to want to have their own comments uh we appreciate what you do too we know that you got you work hard your entire department works hard. Um, we rely on you and you always outperform. So, we appreciate you and all the hard work you and your staff do. Please express that to them. Thank you. I will. And, uh, just asam a example of what how hard they have been working. We were able to complete the annual financial statement on time and they and the annual debt payment and what now the auditors are starting here doing the 2025. Okay.

So, and they're going to be a promise for the next month trying to complete that much earlier than the last but you know they had a lot to work with last year. Okay. We look through your budget. We're all we're all finished. chicken. Okay, that's April Fool's.

Sorry. Saying what are you crazy? We appreciate you being here and appreciate everybody's time. We're going to move through in a timely fashion. Um my colleagues jump in uh when you when you see fit. We're going to start with the audit service. Is that okay? All right. Yeah, there's not not much really to look at here. Yeah, no comment on that one. Audits all zeros. So, I'm Thank you for all the zero% line items. No, they have just the one with just the one with our auditor. Yeah, the separate area. Yeah. The next one is the surprise is under page.

Yeah, we can move next to uh right into um finance free admin. I'm just trying to find her. Okay. J, can you just um you want to just tell us a little bit about the and I have the personal um sheet here, but just wanted to give us a little bit more background on the administration, what it looks like, any changes this year because I noticed a little bit of an uptick in the salary and wages obviously is due to um contractually the you know step you know steps and contractual increases but

just give me an assessment of your office what it looks like. Basically, Saturn wages the increases have been contractual for the most part and uh John has been with us for a whole year now in finance. So that other than that they're really and he wasn't included in that salary. Uh he was not because we moved in the middle of the year. No, we did move him in 24 at the beginning of the year. Yeah. So he was included. There was also a position budgeted for that had a pretty big increase. They hired a principal payroll clerk. That position was previously budgeted at4. It's budgeted at $70,000 for this year. So that's a $30,000 out there. I forgot about that. 11%. Yes. Okay.

Yeah. Because we were going to try with a just a clerk and it didn't work out. We needed somebody with experience. That helps. And she is wonderful and we thank the sheriff's office for training her. Excellent. Do you want me to go um under other professional consultant the 028 um what is the fixed asset inventory? I'm sorry I just don't I need to understand that

as part of the audit it will require as a municipality to have fixed asset inventory to have inventory of anything that is 5,000 or higher.

Okay. And uh the in the past we since like everybody has we it has been very kept in Excel. Now we want to try the auditors that was part of the audit write up and we they said that we will fix it by 2027. So we want to hire somebody this at the end of this year when we move into the new building because I who cares about the inventory here, right? So when we new move into a new building for them to come in a professional company I is I believe it's the same company that the board of ed is using right now. Okay.

And for them to do an inventory. They tag it. They give you an inventory all everything. Tell you exactly what you have. they tag it and then we we have to keep up with any deleteds because we sell them at auction or any any new and this will bring us and this will bring us into compliance under yes and that will be in inventory for the whole municipality okay WPC the you know the police building and the municipal building we we don't know the last time it was done here it was done at some point if you see these uh little metalish tags

yeah I know what you thing that means at some point and we think it was many years ago was done here. That's the bigger expense when they come in to do that. So, we need that. I want to say it's updated, but it's going to be more than an update because it hasn't been done in so long. And because we're going to have all new assets, right, in terms of furniture and things like that and even buildings, right, when we um so they they they keep that whole inventory and then it's maintained all along through finance so that when we make purchases, it's added to the inventory. As Eugenia mentioned, when they have auctions, as we're required to do, we can't just sell public assets, right? It'll come off that inventory and then you value the inventory and it's noted in the audit what the value of the fixed assets are.

And the finance software that we use right now, they have one of one of the lines for the fixed asset. We wouldn't have to pay anything extra to use it. But right now we are not populating because we really don't have a fixed asset per se. So the whole idea is to take that inventory of fixed assets. You know get maybe an intern somebody to key in all of that into the financial software fixed assets and then the departments between the departments and accounts payable. It can be kept up to date and we're going to we're going to work into that an agreement with um the school the school. Is that the idea? No, they're not for use in No,

they'll keep they're required to as well. So, they'll keep their own success at it. Just happens that we're probably using the same consultant to do that inventory. Okay. And I believe the consultant has been doing this full inventory for quite a few years now. Excellent. And this fixed asset inventory that doesn't include real estate. I'm sorry. That doesn't include what? Real estate. They also It does include real estate. It does include real estate. except that we are not a gap accounting. So the real estate value that we will be putting in the as a fixed asset is the acquisition value is the what value? Acquisition when we acquire the real estate. Oh, so if we got it 10 years ago, we're using that number. Okay.

And the same with everything else because we're not accounting and it's not like those are liquid assets anyway. It's not like we could sell parks,

but land and buildings are included in the fixed asset inventory and their own separate category. There's all categories of different things in there. So, they'll be on there. We have a sense of what our properties are and what our buildings are at this point. So, it's just going to be really an update on that part. Uh because we need those each year. We submit those also to our GIF, right, for our insuranceances because we have to have coverage on all of those properties as well. All the equipment it will be with the you know with the serial number of the equipment the license plate and the location of the equipment all of that is will be included as well. How frequently does this need to be done or is it is it required?

Well if we haven't done it it is required. Okay it's required and the auditors ask every single year for it and they want the update what was deleted last year what was added last year. we have not updated and so this is going to be basically starting fresh and basically we give them the old outdated inventory that we've had for years that doesn't change unless we maybe add some things or not so it's not been kept up. So once we do this, we should only have this cost for this year unless we have them do updates, but we shouldn't have to have them do updates every year. Good.

Because we should be maintaining it throughout the year. It's a constant maintenance, but once a year we have to turn that over to the auditors. So right now the biggest would be for them to come out and do the inventory and then give us the report and then also for us to enter have somebody to enter that in the ESON software of the fixed asset inventory because that's the one where it's more detailed. Yeah. Okay, that helps me. Thank you. Thank you. I'm good. Move on to revenue for you to go to revenue. Yes, sir.

We can move on to revenue uh collection when you're finished or when you're ready. Yes. Uh for the revenue administration. Did you add a new position there? No, we do not. We did not add a new position. We have the same salary. The salary is just up by um about 45,000. That's what I was asking. Yes. It's it's more it's the same positions that we have. It's basically because of the unit contract salary contract. Yeah. Which one?

Thank you. And also we have a you know we have the tax collector that she's going through her second year. Yeah. Her salary went up a decent amount from last year's budget. Okay. A little bit higher than 3%. Last year our tax collectors are just um any title bumps for next year. We don't see any any not there. No. No. So there's an equalized staff in there and so they're it's it's really made up of each of them getting either a step or an increase uh in salary and wage and of course the tax is decrease as well because it's 10%. Yeah. So

yeah, we will be have we might be having some changes in within the staff there, but nothing nothing major. It's just some of the cashiers.

Um hers is about 15%. Again, first year of appointment, you kind of prove yourself. And then after that, because she's an appointed person or whatever, the mayor usually sets the salaries as you see right in the uh the salary or understandable. Thank you. Under other professional consultant, the 91,000 is just contractual with admins. That's the that's our agreement with admins. Yes. All the tax software that the tax collectors use at months. So it went up. Yeah. From where it was last year.

Yeah. It went up a Yes, it went up a little bit. So just just looking at these numbers, it actually has come down over the last three years. uh for other professional consultants. It was uh 719 and 22 71 about 71 even and 23 down to 67 and 24 down to 63. I appreciate that but why do we need to budget 91 for that? Can we can we

I think that the difference in the actual and what we budget is mostly because the online tax sales because they budget for

they they they usually before the tax sale they might have 400 line items 4,000 line items of delinquency. By the time people start coming in after they get get their delinquent notices those numbers go down. So there's no way for the tax collector to know how many line items they're going to end up in the tax sale. So the online taxel software company because we use their bidding they we pay we get we have to pay them by the number of items that they handle through the tax sale. Okay. So that's where

item end of the year at the top that they think it might be and take they have to take a conservative approach on what the Yeah.

And also if you look at 2021 we discover they only have 21,000 there because we discover that they were taking that out of the revenue and that's it's not allowed their own expenditure. I mean they were it wasn't any wrong transaction other than the way that they did it right they were paying for it they used to just reduce the amount of revenue that they would give us from the tax sales by those itemized amounts and so instead brought it to their attention that they're not allowed to do that by state law so we have to budget for it right and then do it at as again a conservative approach as if we're going to have the most

available items. Makes sense. And if you didn't make the changes, would the state have notified you that that hey, there's a problem in your way you're doing your calculations. We don't catch every little thing like that. Okay. But our auditors do and we have new auditors and so they absolutely auditors should have Yes. And it should have been caught earlier than that. But I'm thankful that Eugenia caught it really. And then also it wasn't giving us a a realistic tax sale collection amount because you were lowering by that much. That was my only question in that section. Yeah, that's all I had. Okay.

Tax appeal reserve. Sorry. Lots of questions here. There's nothing there. I mean, I went somewhere else. It's under other professionals. Oh, I'm sorry. That's all right. We We're going to move on to tax or tax. Tax assessment. Tax appeal. There's nothing there. Tax. Yeah. But tax now actually question on that one because there you requested 65 and we're budgeting 132.

Yes. Yes. So when we originally put the budget together, when we got that budget from her division and from Eugenia, um we were, you know, guessing basically. Since then, we've had a couple of um decisions that are coming in that we haven't fully resolved yet. They haven't come to an agreement yet because we usually try to mediate those and um resolve them without having it go to a court judgment. and then the court, the tax court accepts whatever um agreement we might come to. So, we're thinking there might be a couple of the the state um tax uh appeals, which are some of the larger ones um state tax courts. So, that we may have other settlements that we'll have to pay, but we're not sure. So, it shouldn't be a lot. And I have to give a lot of credit to our tax assessor and the professionals that he works with because um they try to do it so that we don't have to refund folks even when we settle and we are going to allow them to reduce their assessment and reduce their taxes for whatever reason. We try to get that uh paid out if you will in credit going forward so that we don't have to do an actual check payout to them. But on the the few that we have to, we thought we were going to need a little more in here. So,

and the tax appeal attorney, that's exactly what that's saying. As of right now, I asked the tax assessor to tell me because the deadline was March, right? Yeah. The end of March as to how many appeals are in the New Jersey state court as well as the Mercer County appeals. And right now, he's looking at 15 and 45. Not all a lot of them, especially the smaller ones that are in the merren county, the tax assessor does not use the the attorney. He tries to work it out and settle as much as he can, but some of them they go they go to the New Jersey and those are the ones that the attorney handles.

So, there's a feeling overall that there's going to be more appeals for Hamilton. I'm sorry, I was we're not quite sure. We're not quite sure. We're not quite sure how they're going to come out. So, we just wanted to make sure we had enough in here. So, the good news here, this is one of those line items that if we don't spend it, right, we have a reserve in our trust account that we move it to so that

if we do have a surprise year, right, we have a little bit of reserve in there that we could end up using for it as well that you don't have to read in the budget all the time. and a lot of the tax appeal settlements that have been coming forward to you because he has been trying to clean them up in 2024 and 2025. They have been tax appeals that they started maybe three four years ago when it is a long time. The New Jersey tax appeals is usually commercial properties that they're appealing maybe for three, four years and keep on going the next few years and they might not settle for a few years. Wow. Okay.

So those are the ones if you look at the resolution is usually a few years that are involved in that in that settlement. Okay. Interesting. Let me see. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. sound. Yeah. Actually, that's rare. Did you lose an employee? Yeah.

I know it didn't go down much, but you you lost an employee there. Salaries are down. Yeah. Oh, half and half employees left. And then we had a part- timerr that we made full-time to replace instead of replacing a full time.

Yeah. Under um just a quick just for clarification under professional consult and other professional consultants 028 um second page going on to the third page. These are just you know the costs there are you know they are what they are the appraisal consultant we always have an appraisal consultant for you know on call in case we have the appraisal consultant it's my understanding what the appraisal consultant is doing is they're going they take care of a lot of the overflow in the inspections of all the new cos

okay so basically when some of this the ban and his office handles some of them but this there this all for every co that gets issued they go out and inspect it in order to increase the assessment because of that con new construction or you know renovations or whatever it is. So that's what it is. The more the busier we are in the construction department, the more CO they issue. Then that's when the inspections have to be done. So and then they is the added and omitted taxes that we get in October.

Okay. I just noticed the uh costs for this particular section have just really been all over the map from as high as over a 100,000 to as low as 25,000. Mhm. Um why why those why those wild swings in the it's because of the pain. It depends on how many inspections. But I think also it has lower a little bit because then has been more proactive in him doing more inspections than what they used to be doing in the past. So giving less to the to the consulting also trained some of their staff to be licensed.

Yes. As well and he can out to do some of these inspections as well. So he does do more. So we have the consultant in there to use on an as needed basis. So that's why you don't always have a heavy syndrome and that's why you can see because he came on board also in at the end of 22 I believe 22 sometime in 22 after me like a month after me so June of 22 so you can see how that cost has dropped.

Yeah. Okay. One more. Any final questions? Um, before I close this out?

No, I just want to second what you said earlier. I want to thank you guys for the work that you're doing. um appreciate you know um the lean budgets that you bring to us and all the improvements and process and everything else that you've been doing. So thank you and thank you thank you for your support and thank you for the support of the staff. I mean they all have been doing a great job and now hopefully we have a top financial office.

You do a great leader. You've been doing a great job. Appreciate you both. I I can't echo that enough, right? You guys remember when I first came in 2020, I'm an administrator in ter, you know, from a CFO, but in my time here, I've been a CFO twice

and I don't want to be a CFO anymore. It worked out okay. I didn't do a much proactive stuff. I just kind of held things down because we didn't have a really big staff or a good staff at the time. I don't mean the people that were there. or it just meant it kept changing a lot. But when Eugenia came on board, she had a whole bunch of goals in place that were exactly what we needed in the town. She built a staff that there are second to none really in the in the township right now. Um, and you know, and not to mention the other financial things that she did, cleaning things up, getting our audit in order, you know, everything is just she just makes all of our lives so much better. So and you and your team we just

but it also has been wonderful because what made it easier all all of those changes throughout these years and work in finance is that Kathy was a CFO. So we have been able to work together and you know come up with ideas and whatever and you know anything ironed by her to make sure that you know we're in the right track we're making the right decision. of that and helping with annual financial statements in the past few years. It's it's a he has he was a big help when I was drowning

and and fun fact uh Eugenie and I were both in the CFO classes together and that's when when we got to know each other. We won't say how many whatever you told me about. Yeah. 25 years ago when we started. Where was that at? We were at Mount Laurel was we but yeah we met at one location. That's when they used to have the CFO classes and you would travel to the other side of the state for the class. Not me. I live 5 minutes away. When I found out you were coming in for an interview, we have a mutual friend and he says all your problems will be solved. And that was the first thing he told me. We have a mutual friend and you know who it is and don't worry it's going to be fixed.

I knew 25 years ago and then you hear about each other right throughout your your career. So, it's, you know, 20 plus years later. You don't have to keep saying. Well, I'm I'm kind of over it because I just hit Medicare age just last. Welcome to the club.

I've accepted it and I'm moving on. But um you know uh when I saw uh the application that had come in for that was interest in the job and I was helping to interview too and um I saw the name and Eugenia is not a hugely common name isolated to finance but the last name was different because of course she got married since then. Well so did I too but a second time. So uh but we're not going there. No we're not. And so I was like, could this be this would be the best thing in the world, right? Because I know Eugenia and if that's the same Eugenia. And so when we came and we did the interviews right up here in the in the council conference room

and I think I opened the door and peaked in and I was like so it was good and you guys have a great team here with everybody singing everybody. Yeah. Credit to Jeff for putting together Oh, absolutely. a really a good team attracting people to come. We're good. Thank you guys. I appreciate it. You're more than welcome to stand and sit in the audience. Enjoy. I'll stay for moral support for Carrie.

Thanks guys. So next up in our book is legal. Uh municipal wants to go. It's up to you. Who whoever wants to jump ahead is up is really your guys. I was hoping the judge would go last because I really wanted to give him a lesson on how to use the gavl properly. I'm sure Pat lets me do it. He's a gavvel man. He's a par like me. I'm just a quiet man. Misal court. Where am I going?

Yes. Prosecutor first. Court. I see savings on uh legal advertising. Blue legal services. I guess the rules change there. Right after department of law. You don't have one that says municipal. What was that? Uh Councilman, I'm sorry I didn't hear you. Next blue sheet. 50% decrease on legal advertising. The rules changed. They don't have to. Right. What page is that though? Can you the first page? It's called division management. Oh, I'm sorry. All right. Yep. I see that. You're on a different page. Is that municipal court? We're in municipal court.

Oh, I'm in legal, sir. The next blue page. Next blue page is water pollution control. All right, scratch that, judge. For the record, no advertiser. No, we don't advertise. Yeah. What would you have to advertise? I don't know. They find you from the mornings. They know where to go. They find you. Try to hide. How's everything? How's everything running down there?

Well, I I I always want to thank you folks for your support. And I don't mean that gratuitously. I I mean it. I've been a judge for a lot of years in different places and I can tell you without exception. It is so comfortable coming here and seeing everybody. It's like coming to see friends and I appreciate anytime we've had a problem, you guys have been there for us. And um I always start off a little bit because Jessica's very shy. Is that right? No. No. We've never

No, I I do want to tell you all though, and I'm going to extend it again as I do each time I'm here. You're welcome to come down to court, sit in on one of our court sessions, see how justice is done here in Hamilton without you. I start off my sessions with an opening statement that I'm required to do. But I been adding something in it recently and I tell people when they come in that first moment that I have to talk to them, I welcome them to what I consider to be the best municipal court in the state of New Jersey. And I tell them flat out, I said, in case you don't know, there are over 500 municipal courts in the state of New Jersey. And a lot of people are stunned at that. And I said, I'm going to explain to you later on why I think that's true. I go through here my opening statement. When I get to the end, I mention the fact that we are one of the few courts in the state that do drug court. This pilot program's been in the books now for two years. We're now into basically start of our third year doing it. And I tell them that when the attorney general started out with the program and came up with the idea three or four years ago now, he decided to do it in only six courts out of the 500. And I tell them I'm not someone who believes in misrepresentations or disinformation or all those other things that are out there on the internet. I tell people specifically I don't dance on Tik Tok. Okay? So you you'll never find me dancing. But what I do tell them is I believe in truth. And I tell them I don't believe that the attorney general of New Jersey put 500 names in a big hat and picked out six. I think he was looking for six courts that were already doing a great job. And we were proud to be one of those six. And I tell people now we are down to now only four in the program. Two of that court those courts have dropped out.

And I recently had conversations the last couple months with the attorney general's office, with the county prosecutor's office, the county administration where they've told us out of the four that are left, we are doing the best job. And that's a credit to the young lady next to me and her staff. I tell people I'm just along for the ride. But I also had the assistance of a wonderful judge with me, Judge Ellington. And just a perfect example happened a few minutes ago. I don't know if you saw Jessica lean over and show me a text. I texted I just text Judge Ellington. I said, I'm going to be in a budget meeting for an hour. Would you take my police calls for me for an hour? And her response were two words, of course. And that's the kind of teamwork that goes on down there in the court. And as I said, I I don't know why I'm also fortunate to be involved in this court, but I'm so happy to be involved in the court because of that sort of teamwork that's involved in it. Now, we have in the program, well, have had in the program a total of 255 people. And this past Monday, I had a session of our drug court where we graduated, I think now we're up to a total maybe around 95 that we've graduated. And what that means really what it really means is these are people that had a drug problem. They either were using and they're charged with using they charged with drug paraphernalia. Maybe they were shoplifting from our stores in the area requiring police presence to come to those stores because they were feeding that drug habit. They're selling stuff or whatever they were doing with it to get money to buy more drugs which of course would impact our community as well. And as a result of the program that we're doing and as a result of what the state has allowed us to do in doing this program where I can dismiss those charges against them once they complete that treatment, they get those charges dismissed. And I've had him in in front of me this week

on Monday and I said, "How is your life now?" And a couple of them said, "So much better." I had the one gentleman on and he was so happy on Zoom with me because he's out of state right now. and he said, 'I want to thank you and you know, don't worry about me. You know, thank yourself. You did the hard work. And he said other nice things about the court and the program. I said, 'Do me a favor. Send us an email. Send us a letter because we want to give that to the people at the state to show them that the program's working to help people. But as I said, that's just a credit to Miss Hamls and the staff that they do such a great job in setting it up and a credit to, of course, Judge Ellington, who I don't know, you appreciate how hard it is sometimes to get judges that don't want to look upon as just a job, just a paycheck. And I can tell you there are judges out there that feel that way. Judge Ellington, after I was doing a year or two of drug court, came to us and said, "I want to do it, too. She volunteered to do more work." That's the type of people that I'm surrounded with here in Hamilton Township, and that's why I'm so proud to be here as well.

Thank you. So, I do thank you guys all for that kind of support that you give us. Um, what do they always say at the state? The state of the union is good. Start off all the time, right? That's a good way to start. The state of the court is good. Thank you. Anyway, how much time usually passes uh between when you first see one of these drug court participants and when they graduate? It's a good question. Jess and I have been just recently talked about it.

Yeah, Jessica. So, uh, depends on the person, but something that we've implemented that was not in the f into the program that I did not agree with that I felt could we could improve upon it just most recently is that we we are now mandating that there's six months of sobriety. Whereas before, um, they kind of took it upon each case. If somebody maybe was every month prior to coming to court and and being accepted into the program, they would use that time as well. I want them to do six months with our advocates. It's at no cost of us. It's all grant money through the state. Um I just I for me it's not about how many graduates we have. It's about are they going to graduate and and are they going to continue to be sober? Like the whole idea of this is that they're not, you know, committing these crimes anymore. Um, so for us it at least six months.

Yeah. Then the more time, you know, someone who has a problem puts between them and that problem, the greater the probability that that it'll stick. So absolutely, we've lost two people unfortunately to overdose, which considering how many people have been involved in the program is not that high. Um, we also have a plan. If somebody is not engaged in doing what they're supposed to do, we bring them back the very next month. If you're engaged and they're doing everything and they're telling us that, you know, you're getting clean drug tests, we'll push them out two months.

But anybody who's not complying, they'll they'll be pushed out just to the next one. We want to keep bringing them back. Keep bringing them back. Just checkins and reminders to keep doing what they're supposed to be doing. But it's been successful. I'm very proud of it. We have Browington County is currently wants to come sit in our sessions and kind of pilot what they want to do what we're doing and kind of follow that suit because they know it's been successful. So, it's it's definitely something for Hamilton to be proud of.

Yeah, I I am proud. I'm I'm grateful for that. I you know, I know a lot of the you know, petty petty type crime that's that's where it's it's originating out of out of these addictions. So, thank you for that work and congratulations on on the success, judge. Um, and Jessica, uh, how are we cutting through some of that backlog of cases that we had during the pandemic? I know that was something that you had mentioned a few times.

Yeah, I I think we're pretty good right now. Of course, you know, these cases that we're having in drug court actually go into a backlog, and there's no way around that, and there's nothing wrong with that. Other than that, I think we've been in the top. You know, there's Trenton with all their parking tickets. There's Princeton with all their parking tickets. And they have the biggest numbers in terms of a backlog and tickets amounts. But other than them, we're the busiest court I think of other other than those two. And our numbers are always around 40% I think of our backlog. And it's kind of steady. There's not a lot you can do with it. people don't come to court, you issue warrants, they come off warrants, it goes back into your backlog. Um, so it's a kind of a number that needs to be kept steady. Um, you know, we have other courts around the county that are up around 60% 70% and they're not doing what they need to be doing. They're not our problem. We're worried about Yeah.

Um, just real fast, I'm sorry, just just to piggyback on that question. Where does it show on the revenue sheet? Um section I think this is section four. Um the re I just want to take a timeout. Um we just want to pause for a minute. We were trying to get up the first manned um mission to the moon since 1972 just took off. It successful launch. Uh we were trying to get it up to see if we can get the TV working but we couldn't. But at least we wanted to recognize that it was successful takeoff. Oh well. Sure. Yeah. Had we known we could but at least wanted to recognize it. Sorry. No, it's all right. Thank you, Tommy. Where would I find that on the uh sheet? Just the revenue for the

budget. Oh, just just the court revenue overall from year to year. Oh, yeah. That would be it wouldn't be specific. It wouldn't be here. It wouldn't be. It doesn't get pulled out right here. He meant for the past few years. I'm just I just want to see a compare if it's in between 25 and 26. I can get that for you. She might have exact details in there. Yeah, there you go. Jesse, you think I can read this? I'll read it to you. That's all right. So, let's see. So, while they're looking at that, you guys mind if I Yeah. Here we go.

So, on standby. Um, we we bumped that up to 35,000. Um we've never gone higher than about 23 in actual expenditure. Uh the note says increase in salaries a point 07% rate or 7% public revenue. Oh yeah. So my question is this is what they've done in so far this year.

So here's here's what I'm doing because of the year that we're in. Well, they changed the hours, too. So, they changed the contract for standby. They used to get 12 hours for standby. Now, they get 16. Actual thing that was negotiated. That's an increase of 236 hours of standby. Union. Yes. Which union? Okay. Okay. So, contractually we have to have that much there,

right? So, it was negotiated with the whole package there. They were currently getting 12 hours of standby because you can speak to why you have the folks on standby for all that they do after hours, right? And um and it was changed to 16 hours. So they didn't get that automatic pay for being on standby for the work that happened after hours. So it used to be 16 hours back even when I was a deputy court administrator. So what they're doing is when law enforcement wants to put something on a warrant, they are the the they're the check and balance. They call my staff who's on call. Yeah. Every day for a week,

anytime, 2 in the morning, 1 in the morning, 3 does not matter. And they have to log into the system, read the complaint, ask the officer questions, and either authorize that warrant or not. And staffers are authorized to do that. only deputy court administrators, court administrators and directors that are certified. Yes. Yes. The judges also could do that. In some towns they do um but they're doing the temporary restraining orders in order two months. And so that's why we you know consider an increase to the standby hours because they showed how many incidents there were lots. Okay. thinking about I would say anywhere between 15 average of 15 calls per week

after hours. Usually that's that's a lot of work. We're busy. We're a very busy core. If you go to Robin might not be enough if you get that many calls. Jessica, you need

that's not good time. Nothing good happens after hours, right? Absolutely.

I do want to share with you one possible change coming which I did speak to administration about. Uh current legislation they may be removing the fee for public defenders. So that will be gone when that takes place. So usually the jud the judge assesses an amount. It could be $50, 100, 150 or 200. And then that money goes to the town. New Jersey is looking to take that away completely. Um, we average about 40 to $43,000 a year that we bring in for that cost. So, that's the only thing that I project to actually change as far as revenue. What's the purpose of the legislation?

They feel that somebody shouldn't if they're if they're eligible for a public defender, they shouldn't have to pay anything. So, oh, hold on. So the over legislation the fee is being paid by the defendant. Correct. It goes based upon their their their income. Okay. Same people that pass bail reform, right? Oh, so no across the board. It's going to be in New Jersey. Correct. And that looks like it's going to pass or is it hasn't passed yet, but it's in it's still in the process, but it seems look like it will probably move forward at some point. Do you have a bill number on that? A what? A bill number? No. Oh, wait a sec. There might be one on here.

Hopefully, they would make it effective 2027 so we could plan ahead for that if I do not have the phone number in here. No, it's a link to cut it over legislation.

State New Jersey spoken to the state about it. You know, I've always been a believer that, you know, the person comes in to see me and they're on their heels and there's nothing we can do. I do zero and so does Judge Ellington. I have people that on disability, you know, they're getting $8, $900 a month. Sometimes I'll do zero. Sometimes I'll just do $50 as a token as the idea that they're paying something. Um, it really is an expense the municipality. And when Jess told me about it a week or two ago, I was very disappointed that they didn't be considering that. Um I don't think it's fair to have the municipality paying completely for all the public defenders. I think everybody should give their share

some states. So even if it goes into effect, it's it's not going to have this immediate like budget issue because generally we uh budget fully for what we need for the public defenders. And then the revenue that comes in, we're allowed to put in a trust. So we hold it in a a trust in case we need to use that because we haven't budgeted enough. So we have currently a trust. I don't know what's in it, but you know, we generally to each department or

No, the trust is is only for you can only use it to pay for public defend. Oh, they have to turn their money and they have a month and they have so many days but they have to turn the money to municipality and that money goes into the right and they also they they support the revenue based permitting at the same time and that goes to the revenue right but that comes to us and yeah I have okay

I I just have one um one question on the um other professional consultant category. I noticed an uptick of um $10,000 from last year. The language services cost is mentioned there that it went up 20%. Is this something that we were able to shop around and try to or was this a renewal of an or extension of the contract and it just went up because of that?

Overall, they're all up. We did last uh during 2025, we did try a different company. Um, and here's the complicated part about working for the judiciary is they have to be certified through the judiciary. And a lot of companies will say that they are and then the judges are required while on record to say, "Are you certified with the judiciary?" And these interpreters are saying no. Therefore, we're not allowed to use them. So, um, the company that we did go to try to use, we could no longer use. Uh, I would say in general we see a big increase, especially Haitian Creole and Spanish. Um, and I did speak to other towns. I'm the president of the Mercer County Association for Court Administrators, Deputy Court Administrators, and every town has seen quite a bit of an increase. Yeah. And then I am budgeting for security cameras, which I budgeted last year and was approved. However, our microphones started to completely go. I had to use those funds instead for new microphones for the judges benches and for the prosecure bench.

So the majority of the the majority of the items under that contract are the language services and then the security cap and then the other part of that for visiting judges. So anytime Judge Stansy or Judge Allent needs to take off, take a sick day, that also comes out of that to pay for a visiting judge. He never takes off. He goes on one big trip a year. I have never taken a sick day. Never. In my entire life. I do. God bless you. Congratulations. I have to say neither has Judge Ellington. Unless it's a pre-planned doctor visit, right? Yeah. They come in. So, cause for gratitude. It is always good.

Tell people watch this guidelines. You're pretty healthy, too. You don't seem to get sick much. I know, right? Oh my gosh. We're very happy to have him. Yep. We feel very privileged. I know he's not allowed to retire. We're not even You have to listen to Jeff. I know that in the 19 years that I've been here, I've I've worked with some some not so great and some great. And you don't want to be on the other side. What's what and I never I never mentioned this before, but telephone charges are just for people that

Well, we No. So, we have um we do have cell phone. We have a a a w the box that has internet. I don't know what their property where you kind of hook it up to your computer. Is that my Mi We have a MiFi. Oh, that's what that is. Okay. I didn't know. Now, that we may be looking for next year to get rid of, but that's still in talks for now. We may get rid of that in the future, but right now, and we also have a router in the courtroom. Okay.

I have nothing else to ask for colleagues. I'm good. We appreciate you being here. If you ever need us, call us. be happy to come in. It's always pleasure to be here. Thank you again for all your support. Thank you. Thank you. You too. Thank you. Less than an hour.

Melissa, I know why you gave us that candy, but I can't can't talk for seven minutes after I eat one. So chewy, delicious. I got a lucky work, guys. See you later, Joe. You set yourself up. All right. So, we're going to the apartment wall. Oh, I know. Oh my god. Yeah.

So I guess the big one and I know why most of this is here but legal services uh obviously

so uh earlier uh so this 2025 we put out the RFP because uh the Ton waterworks litigation was somewhat on hold. Not on hold but it was sort of at a stay sort of we were treading water. So, Jen and I were, Miss Eugene and I were able to handle Oh, she's actually calling me right now, so I'm going to turn that off. Hopefully, there's nothing going on. Um, the we were had been able to handle most of the most of the litigation going on, but we are now because the political negotiations between the mayors and the D sort of broke down. Um, the judge said we are now, you know, we are now in it. We are litigating. We are going to depositions. We are doing full full discovery. Um we're going to you know so it everything is is much much higher level and um it's the kind of case that would literally consume Miss Eugene and I pretty much full-time and um not be able to handle all of our responsibilities just dayto-day here. Uh so we went out for an RFP and um at the time we hadn't decided on we were starting to get back some of the some of the submit submissions and um some of the law firms were charging upwards of $1,000 an hour. Um which is even more than I I I only left private practice about six years ago when I came to work here and it was it was

eye opening. It was stunning to me what the the the the outside law firms are now charging. We have since decided on um a firm called Maritti Falcon LLP. They're out of Cedar Nolles. They are specialists in environmental law uh water and wastewater authorities and and and litigation. Um their uh hourly rate is not $1,000 an hour or even close. So we had asked for 500,000. I know that we went down to 300,000 and and that reflects sort of the process of doing the budget when we were like we don't know who we're paying to get.

Now we know what the hourly rate is and what's agreed upon. So that's that's where we are. I I just had a question on other professional consultant under 028. 028. Yep. Yeah. This is for like title searches and property appraisals for abandoned properties, the tax sales,

right? It's Yeah. So it's it's it's it's a number of things. It's for property appraisers. So when we're doing enter domain, when we're doing that when we're when we're actually doing an arms length transaction, I'm required by law to turn square corners. So whatever it is the whatever is the fair market value, I have to offer that. Um I can't go in and like wheel and deal. Um when when there's a piece of property for example that a this is going on right now a it's a piece of property that's sort of like a unused piece of property that we own but the neighbors want to buy it I still have to get it appraised so that I can say this is what I can sell it to you for. So, property appraisal is one thing. Arbitrators, we do when when when we have personnel issues that go to arbitration, we have to pay for half the arbitrator's cost. And that's usually several thousand, okay,

per arbitration. So, that's that's what and and I know I probably asked this last year, the increase from 21,000 to 58,000 last year was reflected of a what was that reflective of? like that there had to be some sort of increase because everything was like right around 20 and then we went up to I think it was because we thought maybe TWWW was and then we were doing the last bits of eminent domain for um that that was one of the things we thought we'd be going to trial for in demand for the last remaining East State Street cases. They didn't go to trial. They're going to go to trial this year.

Okay. Okay. And and so that's that's a several day long um testifying and so you know that's by hour and fun stuff. So I'm leaving those stone on. Okay. Printing and binding. the most you spent on this is $54 the last five years, right?

Until until we go to an appeal, in which case then it's thousands and thousands of dollars. And if we don't have that money, so so the problem is courts when you're at an appeal level, they require some some upwards of eight to 10 binded copies of all the transcripts of our of our briefs. And they and you only and and it's a fast turnaround and so it's it's hundreds of thousands hundreds of pages if not thousands of pages that need to be bound in a certain way with certain paper with specific paper with specific font and I mean it really is obnoxious. Um but that's the court system and so most of the time we have normally I win at trial level. Um, occasionally there has been a time when I have had to appeal and at which case then I've got to spend lots of money at the print shop

because I we we can't do it in house. So, we've talked a couple times, Kathy, uh, about like trust when money is unspent. So, shouldn't there be several thousand dollars in unspent printing money? So this isn't one that legally you're allowed to take and and sock away into a trust. State doesn't allow you to do that for everything. So they have very spec, you know, specific line item types. So So this goes back in with fun, right? So it's So we're starting from zero every year with this. Absolutely. If this gets turned over to surplus, it gets to

un usually by November I know if there's anything coming down the pike. you know, if if if there's nothing no appeals coming down that I need to write a brief or although I tend to have to always write a brief, these kind of briefs over Thanksgiving break, which is I mean, I I can't tell you how many times I've literally been cooking at Thanksgiving with the computer in my my kitchen. Um it's happened more than once. It's ridiculous. But usually by November, I know that I'm not going to need this line item and so that can be easily be switched out to something else. Yeah. legal services. This is up 148%. We just talked this was this Yeah, this this

I missed it. This was due in large part obviously to the uh ongoing litigation and she thinks it's going to ramply mentioned that it's going to probably ramp up in hers. Tram Waterworks, correct? Yes. And so when I asked quick quickly the three it keeps giving three sentences. One, I didn't know how much it was going to cost because we were in the process of going after RFP. When we were getting in the numbers, there was there was $1,000 an hour for a lot of the firms for for the partners. We have not hired those firms. We've hired another specialist firm that's much smaller. They do not excellent firm that doesn't charge that much.

Yes. and and and and there are specialists in environmental and waste water and water and and um regionalization and so forth. So, uh that's why it went from, you know, $500,000 to $300,000 because by the time we got to this end piece of paper, we'd gone through the process of our piece and we anticipate in the coming year, we're going to have ongoing expenses.

The case management order was entered in January and we are we written paper discovery is now essentially done. We have just a few little things. We are going to deposition testimony within the next several months and there's going to be probably upwards of I would say 20 to 25 depositions each a day to two days to 4 days to 5 days long and then we go to uh we go to um by the end of the year is expert testimony, expert witnesses reports and so forth and then then expert witness depositions could be weeks long. Now this next question if this is something we need to go into executive session on another day for you to answer but is there any sign of uh willingness to come together on this

the political the political negotiations that have been going on that that was public knowledge that that has not worked. We have said that in in in um open court and so we are not at a place where any kind of negotiations can occur because we literally need to start do the discovery so we find out what we're dealing with. All right. Alyssa also did um each town that's involved hire their own uh they outsource their own legal team.

So Hopewell has Hopewell is now in they have hired outside counsel. Um, so Lawrence is they they have outside counsel too. Um, Euing use it they they don't have an in like they don't have an inhouse lawyer like me in Euing. They have an outside firm that's there. Their firm is also handling the litigation. Okay. Um, so and Trenton has Trenton has their own council and Trenton Waterworks has their own outside council too. So yeah, it's there's a lot there's a lot of lawyers lots.

So other professional consultant, this is just another section where I see the most we spent in the last 5 years is $8,100 and we're 28. Yes. For $61,675.

Right. So the the anticipation as we've already gone we had just described we thought that there was going to be some trials where I needed my experts to be on on the hourly several days. Um those trials are going to happen in this year. So this again this is one of those things where we don't know how many arbitrations we're going to have that we're that we have to pay for. Um and and those are several thousand per. So again I could handle everything. There's no problems. everyone does their job perfectly and then I sit and twiddle my thumbs at my at my desk. But to this point, that has never happened at this job. So, it's it is it is a rainy day fun for when things get when things go heavy.

Yeah. And the way you you just said last year you were expecting some of these events to come to pass. Now we're that much closer to them actually coming to pass. Correct. A greater expectation in 26. Yes. That we're going to need this. The problem is we're not not that much closer to the finish line.

Right. Although you know, you know, for example, there's there's there's cases where I'm expecting to need my appraisers to be testifying. I theoretically could still settle it and then so I'm we're gearing up and we need them next week and I settle the case on the Friday before the Monday trial. So that unfortunately that's just the the nature of the beast. So next question is on uh personal personnel expenses and training. Oh, maybe I misread this. I because it's not even about the dollar amount. I was going to say we have to pay for notary services. Don't we have like 10 notaries in this building? So time to be nervous.

It's just if if one of we have a new secretary coming on board starting today and I don't know I I honestly don't remember from the interview process. There's training and you have to be you've got to get like the you have to go to your like assemblyman's office and there's there's a whole procedure with that. I know I remember that from the bank. All right. Um Let's see. That's all I have in that section. Sure. I'll ask if I do. I'm asking. Like I said, I'm leaving no stone unturned. I'm not,

you know, ruffle anybody's feathers. It's just where we're at. That's why we're here. Hey, miscal prosecutor. Yeah. Prosecutor's ups. The only really line item there is the professional services. Professional services is really the only big line item there. Right. So our prosecutor is is done by RFP. Mhm. So that's where this that number comes from. Yep. Yeah. So it's 3. It's 350 per session. We have 10 sessions a week. Um makes sense.

12,500, right? I Kathy will know that you never ask the lawyer to do that kind of math. We don't allow them to add or subtract. I trust her. So that's pretty close to the bullseye that number. Oh yeah. There's nothing we can scratch back from that. No, because being an agreement after we do the RFP, they get a certain amount per session. They come in for that number of sessions. Sometimes they use them for additional sessions, right? And sometimes like for DUIs, we have different a different pot of money that we can use to pay for the DUI trial specifically. Um, so

they ask you something. No, pollution control. Done, right? Yeah, you're good. municipal court or wait. No, we just we just admitted we did that. My my notes are out of order. I got off you my and we go to WPC maintenance. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. Now for the main event, ladies and gentlemen. The headliner. You heard the main event. They're wonderful.

Don't think you're getting Oh my god. Sure. Oh, sorry, Alison. You're the main event.

I get all kinds. Thank you for joining us. I'm waiting patiently. Thank you for having me. I saw a lot of zeros as I was going through your budget. Thank you for all those zeros. There's numbers. Well, there's no 0% increase. Oh, I know. There's there's some numbers. It gave her a little bit of a panic. Oh my god. Wipe out my whole I didn't mean that. I meant the percentage increase. Thank you for being here tonight. We appreciate it. And we know you're busy, but we're all current. We are all and thank you for having me.

Yeah, you're always so squared away and have everything you have all the answers. So we we look forward to this. So we have that same standby the salary salary increase with the it looks like 19% increase. Is that just just steps or do we hire more people? Do you need more people? I'm looking uh right at the first page. President, can I give a short intro? Yeah, sure. Okay. Good evening. And what I'll do is I'm going to cut this down by about half from last year. No, my intro. Yeah, my intro. I I'll say good evening. I don't need to say all the names. I'm going to say thank you to Mayor Martin, the administration, and all of you.

So, I have to say thank you for supporting us. I think I have

2025 7.0 2 million gallons a day that treated waste water for over a 100,000 people. 100,000 people includes all of Hamilton and all of Robinsville. Prices continue to increase. Again, I'm cutting this down. I'm cutting a lot of the other stuff out. Uh prices increased a lot. Energy, chemicals, and health insurance. Uh we were able to stay within budget but this year a substantial increase. Aging workforce still a big challenge very big challenge. We're still trying to fill vacant positions with motivated skilled workers. We're trying starting from labor positions. We're trying to train and motivate and let them grow into various uh career ladders. We've we've created those. We provided those uh for the staff.

Carrie, how many vacancies do you have? I'm going to say about a dozen. We have quite a few. What what's what do you find the problem is with hiring? Just not qualified enough to even start at the basic level. Well, we our most basic levels are clerical one or I mean laborers. Labor, right? We have a mandate in Hamilton. They must be from Hamilton labor level. other skill level. Uh that is that's from the administration. No, I'm just

so what we there may be others outside that but they want to make sure they stronghold Hamilton uh skilled labors above that we have hired um above that in positions but then they need to do their job right if they're going to have skills or they're going to have licenses. So we hold them to that. So, but we we run a tight ship and uh the old days are way gone the way the of running the ship the way it was long ago. In regards to the basic laborer, right, that you that we mandate that they live in Hamilton, are you having a hard time just getting basic laborers? Yes.

Okay. So, with that in mind, okay, so we we hold a standard live in Hamilton. If we can't find them, don't we branch out to other Mercer County residents? I mean, we just leave these positions unfilled. Comm uh Councilman, you'll have to talk to the administration, right? Okay. Well, that might be uh something we have to look at. There's We just had a job, right? We just had a job fair. Did we have anybody sitting out there openings? We did get personel. They were right in front. Did you walk in right next to personnel? Perfect. Did we get any We got some applications there. you did. There you go.

The turnout was good. And so I think it's it's worthwhile to look at and we review it on occasion. We have staff meetings monthly um directly with uh Carrie and um so she brings all those things to her team. Typically she has a large staff um doing various things there right inside and outside. And so she has a lot of vacancies at any given point. So, if we get to the point where a bunch of those are laborers, we might try to look to see, right, let's expand it out. Let's advertise on um the uh the league website, right? And not limit it to just Hamilton. And so, and there are occasions that we don't that we not for laborers, we we try not to do that, but if it is the case that all of a sudden we have so many vacancies and we're not attracting folks to come in and fill when folks leave or get promoted or retire, you know, we have to kind of look at stuff like that. So, we certainly will. Um and although we don't like to do that first. So we'll wait till after we see what happens with the uh the job fair. That's early on in the year pretty much is in March. So um but then maybe right after this, right, we look and see what the needs are with Carrie and talk to her about those and how we can attract folks.

So we don't have a restriction like a residency requirement there. We do not have a residency requirement on the book that I know of. Oh, actually I think we do, but it can be waved. Right. And so mechanism,

right? And um especi and so as a as a rule of thumb and part of our policy that the mayor has implemented if you know we go with a vacancy um but we open it up even initially to others uh outside of Hamilton if it's one an appointed position or if it's an a position that is difficult to um find somebody for and appoint Um, and then that's why it takes a while sometimes to trickle down to to laborers because they're not always difficult to fill, but there are sometimes you go through kind of waves where all of a sudden we're not getting anybody or anybody qualified. So, um, so it's worthwhile to look through. We love to keep it in

Oh, yeah. So do I. But I mean, at the same time, we want to see these positions We want to see these positions filled, but we want to make sure we get qualified people, too. I mean a quick check at her website shows the jobs are posted on the website and to to second that her a lot of her positions are very specialized as well. So that's the other position the way we kind of budget for other departments if they have a vacancy sometimes we'll budget half the year for it in anticipation that we're not hiring until say 71 after adoption and everything. So with her positions, we budget the full amount in case something comes across. We want to have her somebody that's hugely qualified and may not be at that starting rate, right? So make sure that we could go a little higher.

Is is there a mechanism in place like let's just say you were you I'm not I don't want to interrupt with your presentation today, but you know it's concerning when you hear about trying to fill vacancies. So when you have vacancies like that and you're having a hard time filling it but you still have um abundance of work say for labors let's just use laborers okay for instance okay operators even if it was an operator you know heavy equipment say can we do we send people say if DPW is you know department works is slower say not that they are but can we like rob Peter to pay Paul you know transfer laborers over on a, you know,

the the titles aren't hugely interchangeable because, you know, you don't have the same heavy equipment operators that she needs over there, right? And so, probably one of the few things that kind of maybe coincide is the maintenance of the the grass and the grounds and buildings and grounds and that type of thing. So, you could do that if you didn't have somebody that did that or whatever. we would look and they do communicate like that and on other occasions you find somebody who's in public works maybe not tremendously happy what they're doing and look to see what's available over there and vice versa right

so we've had some employees that switch they do that on their own it's not necessarily that they get a different assignment that day right so it's a little tough because that is very specific work specifically when you're talking about inside plan. Oh, yeah. You just hate to see it short of change with with workers, you know, especially a facility like that needs to be maintained and and there's always work to be done to to make sure that, you know, the facilities operating at at full capacity without any any holdups because of manpower shortage. Yeah, you're right. If I may also, aren't some of your positions require the certifications from D? A lot of them do.

A lot of them do. And if they have been since co there has been a problem with that because a lot of the people he hasn't been offering from since my entire municipality they were not offering the exam on a regular basis and a lot of people either they don't want to pay go through all that accommodation get the higher up license or get the license depending how many people have okay I understand thank you so the labor Um, we try and roll out the red carpet in an honest way to be to be frank and we try and motivate them. We try and show them a career ladder. Not one but a bunch of career ladders.

Sure. Driving nice vehicles. Um, operating a plant, licenses, salaries, high salaries. High. You're talking special. I mean, a lot of wastewater related specific titles like Kathy said. Um, oh yeah, that looks great that they come in. Two out of the three labors we brought in temporary. Two of them we had to let go. One just kept calling out, didn't come in, and then after a while you didn't come in at all. We said we got to let you go. So, so let's talk about the younger generation and their mentality first. So, right, we can have a half hour discussion on that. Today's not the day.

So, this is this is just my brief. This is everything we're facing. Um, in addition to talk about wastewater, right? Doesn't always smell nice. I don't want to do that. Well, it's your job. Hello. Right. So, it it it but you're going to be paid. So, it there's a lot of yin-yang and we have retirements, etc. Let me continue. So, so I'm I'm proposing to keep the count that we had last year, 68 total. Uh, same for this year. Um, again, we need to hire the rest of the ones we don't have. And that's eight. You're you're short. Eight. You said I think I just said 12, but it's it's somewhere between 8 to 10. 8 to 12. I forgot the key.

That's a big shortage. That's like 20% shortage. There are a lot of things. Yeah. I mean, we're we're probably we're missing two laborers right off the bat. We're missing we're missing a couple of plant attendants. You know, we need uh our our lab person we hired only a few months ago. That person just left is leaving. We have the administrative assistance retiring at two months, etc., etc. Okay. Uh operated uh we talked about increases, health insurance, etc. Aging workforce, retirements, etc. We'll get there. Um 68. Okay. Oh, he left.

No, wait. uh 28 25 last year. In 2025, we did replace the six RBCs we talked about that was bid and replaced installed RBC rotating biological contact. You know this it's it's the heart. I brought the picture last year. That big plastic set of discs that's in that big. How could I forget your two tours? Yes. Yes. Well, they even give you a tour if you want. They did. I've already had two. So, we replace those,

right? Big deal. Helps the process. This is treatment. We have to have that biologically. And they're at the tune of each of them about 300,000. Right. So, you replace six. We replace six. This year, we're going to bid out for eight more. How many? And we have a total of 48. 48. So the administration and I have worked together and decided we're going to stage this over a set of years instead of two years or this is critical. This is critical. It's a critical thing. Yeah, it's absolutely critical.

Uh what's on the horizon for 46? We're going to do the uh 2026. We're going to do the other eight in January. It's no longer going to do in 26. We did it. Okay. I got to share a picture. Uh this is I didn't staple it, but you may have already seen it. And that's when we started hauling our own sledge with our own equipment that you bought. I noticed your note.

Here's the here's the online glass that Bianca made. Did it so beautifully with a few pictures. So, we're very happy about that crowd. And when the prices are now over $1,000 a load, a container or box, whatever you want to call it, a a truckload of sludge, $1,000 a box. They used to be close to $300. That was only four or five years ago. How many? No. One container is a box. You know,

that's called a box, right? When you're talking over $1,000 now, a hall to Pennsylvania, which is what less than a half hour away, say total. That's the contracted cost or contracted cost bid. We're in our last year. We're in our last year of this. We're going to use them for backup services. We're going to continue increasing ours to we're doing almost all of the hauling. We want to keep them on the string for another year in case we need them in case we have a vacation. How many these trucks did we buy? One for WPC.

Um public works has several of those roll offs and they we're going to tag them and certify them to back us up if our truck went down. Carrie, where do we take our Where do we take it? Into Roseville. Rose landfill is in Pennsylvania. Okay. Yes, that's what I thought.

So, um, so this is a big accomplishment, biggest big savings. I didn't do a recalculation, but we're about on track and that's about a year and a half payback for the equipment. That's like very, very little for payback on that. And then we'll be way ahead as far as cost, never mind everything else, fuel, etc. Um, and of course we're going to have more design and construction right now. We happen to be in a little bit of a design phase instead of bidding out uh contracts and I want to bid them out bigger instead of probably 13 million instead of 2 million, 5 million, 3 million because it's a lot more administration to take and monitor all the contracts. Of course, we'll have inspection all that, but

you're going to bundle them. We we want to combine them. Right. Right.

Very good. Um, what are we talking about relative to sewer budget total? $28.0 million salary and wages included and statutory costs. Unfortunately, that's a 13% increase over last year's total approved budget. 13%. Capital budget depends on where you what you look. We'll be using quite a bit of old money. Um, but we will need uh about $8 million. I'm probably going to have to bond for this year. That's for the replacement andor lining of the Yardville Groville force lane which comes from the pump station on the other side of Route 130 approximately two miles down the road on Broad Street. So it goes down. We have to watch out for bus schedules. So this it's a whole orchestrated thing that's getting ready. Uh and it's it's not funded through the I bank. Too difficult. But it's

you're not it's um it's it's moving its way through the permitting process, etc. So, one more picture. You know, it was cold. You know, it was cold winter. I kind of like this picture. Despite I mean it was really cold. Fantastic. No problem. So, I just wanted you to see that. In closing, I want to thank the men and women. I cannot thank them enough. also the W at at WPC for the hard work they do 24/7 for Hamilton. I will tell you right now, Kathy, you're probably aware that this afternoon we have force main break.

Just had a what? Force main break. Oh, that's big. So, so it isn't bad. It is a 90 degree elbow. They believe it's about 10 ft down the ground. We immediately got our our contracted dig companies out there to dig it up. Um, so when I left and I was driving here, uh, they said they're on site and they're digging. So, is it a, you know, you know a lot about construction? Is it a thrust block? Is it tie rod problem? What happened here? But we have sewage on the ground and that is not allowed. So, we had to call the D hotline. It is is right next to the pump station, Route 130 pump station. Oh, yeah. So that's new piping that was installed what in 18. Oh wow.

So it's not corrosion. It's not corrosion. So So that's uh So we'll have to look at all that. Yeah. So we have and the contractor that's fixing it right now is the one that installed that pipe. So So more well let me ask you a question on that. And I know that's not part of the budget. I know it's not. So but the question though these are inspected naturally for your back fills that the thrusts thrust blocks are installed properly so there isn't a problem right it's restraint so there's various methods tie rods right there's all kinds of things not just thrust blocks right I yeah

right okay yes they are inspected we have we have contracted inspectors we have our own people so if if if for instance in the case it is tie rods and the tie rods broke or were rotted out or whatever the case may be. Is there somebody there from us that's visualizing what took place so that it's documented so that the contractor is responsible?

We have we have people Yes. that are with them right now. Right now we're watching to make sure we don't exceed staff limits of 16our shifts. The next shift is going in at 11:00. That would 11:00 p.m. And that will relieve them from exceeding these labor requirements. So we have technical staff, managed staff and we have lower level people um white collar, blue collar down there to assist. Yeah, we we will document we will look into the team that's there extremely knowledgeable and defends Hamilton like none other.

Good. And you know um very tough when it come I'm a civil engineer so I know about thrust blocks etc. I know that stuff. Oh yeah. So okay um so I want to thank the workers at WPC immensely and I'm here to answer your questions. So did you have um where did you want to start? Uh 1000 let's see where was it? Utility management. Utility management was our first sheet. Yeah. Okay. Okay.

I have that right there. So, uh, Traaser-GIS maintenance and updates. Oh, can you give me a number? I got to find that. 01. Let's see. It's uh 006 the two numbers before that 001- 024-006. Got it. GIS. But aren't we Is this under utility maintenance? It's under utility. Uh yeah, this first section.

Okay. By the way, our page numbers always get cut off by the odd number page three at the bottom, I believe. Yeah, I see it now. Tra. So, okay. I'm just Why the increase? Yeah. Do we expect it to exceed last year's cost? Yes.

Why? Right now, we're in program modification mode with them. They're they came on site and they're working with our staff to make sure that our assets can pro be properly put into tracer, right? So it accommodates the right fields and so we can pull it and sort it by the right information. So we not only put in the assets, we put in data, we put in video, camera stuff, we can pull it up by pipe segments, but we're doing pump stations and the plant now. And that means we need to be able to go into each pump station will be documented and in there it's not only going to be the asset name plate data on and manual for that pump pump curve etc

but it's also eventually going to get cost information for that it's going to say the year it was uh replaced or not that type of thing good data so we need to we need to beef up the program itself is going to modify it and that cost money so we need to make sure there's money in there for that they're doing that right now actually. All right. Uh my next question is vehicle maintenance which is um 001-025-00001. Um now I see public works invoices you I guess they do the work on the trucks and then they invoice

WPC. Um, and that's been going up up up. What do you attribute that to? Is it aging? The cost of goods goes up. I mean, well, it's in house though, huh? You'd have to steal the parts to replace the parts. Yeah. If you're replacing parts, you're not talking about an oil change. And you'll see at the garage, they'll complain about their price increasing if they've been dealing parts. you go buy tires, you're going to buy parts for your car. It's and the sad part's going to get worse, you know, because they're delivering with diesel and the cost of diesel through the roof and it's going to get worse.

The other thing is that now uh we have and we've acquired this over the last few years and that is maintenance contracts with our specialty equipment like our jetack trucks, right? This the maintenance shop isn't going to see those. So, we now do what's proper and that is go out, have them manually checked out, do a big overhaul, make sure all that special stuff is working properly, which is if it's my my special my favorite thing, I want to make sure I take donkey care of that thing. So, now we do that with our bigger pieces of equipment, which is which is as it should be,

right? But um some of these m specialty things require special parts and we've gotten some big bills like the tune of $6,000 from public works. So I turned to them. I said, "What is this about?" And they then they send me from the vendor these pieces cost a lot more money and they're going to back charge us. So just these increased costs. Okay. You're not that far above where you were at. I mean, you know, you maxed out last year on what you have budget. So, and if nothing's going down in cost, which when does it ever?

Okay. Um, let's see. NJ PPEs permit fees. So, it's never uh let's say D calculates that, right? Oh. Oh, that's yeah, that's supposed to be NJD permit feeds, which is um 2805 that I'm with you. I'm with you. Okay. So, what's your question? Why so high? Well, it's never exceeded in the past 5 years $210,000 for these permits and we're asking for 295.

So, I'm going to try and not give you a story with every question, but but you're going to want to understand it possibly, right? I want to understand. So what happens is the D dictates this fee for every plant in New Jersey that discharges to uh anything river, creek, stream, whatever. The prices were all over the place as you can see year to year. We're not talking a few thousand, we're talking tens of thousands.

And the smaller treatment plants were considered mediumsiz. The smaller plant said these huge budget swings we can't accommodate. They're unacceptable. So the D went into a mode and said we need to evaluate this fee, this specific fee and and make it so it's more steady. Instead of one year, maybe make it over a three or five year kind of curve. Okay, that's all. Well, that's what came out of this this thing. And what they base a lot of it on is your harm to the environment. So, we have violated our treatment plant permit, our Egypty's permit, which is what says all we have to accomplish in cleaning the water before we put it in the creek. For that, we are fined separately. But in that in that calculation here, they're going to charge us more for our permit. So, we need to get in compliance. But that's why this has jumped up. This price is not a projection. This is an actual bill.

This is an actual bill that's come in. Okay. So, so I say the hell with that new calculation, which is I think a bill, right? It hasn't fully passed in comments still. Um, but I think that's the story. Thank you. So, so, um, what are we doing to get any compliance? Oh, that's a whole another story. All right. The bottom line is we need u more treatment processes the tune of 50 million. Yeah. We need a lot more money to build more processes literally just because we've grown a town.

No, because the because the the ammonia that's coming into the plant is it it is basically it has increased over the years. We've shown a 20-year curve for ammonia, which is we flush down the toilet, right? Literally, it's steadily gone up. Low flush toilets make it a little bit more concentrated, right? So ammonia levels have gone up in waist waste water. Our flows have gone down in waste water lowflow toilets. We're getting a wa clean stream water or ground water out of our pipes by lining them. We don't want that water. So we sew our flows go down. And that ammonia now the treatment plant was never designed to treat ammonia. You're going to say, "Well, it's in your permit. Why wasn't it?" We have engineering plants sorry uh studies and reports that say right in it this plant is not designed for ammonia. So it was fine for many years. It was fine but now this this crossing curve and now we're not meeting that consistently. We're not. That means we need to uh develop a process. There's a variety of processes there. Everything costs a lot of money. It takes manpower to operate these things and chemicals. the administration has been um I bring them along with me all the time as far as where we're going, what we're seeing, what we're facing. So um it's recently that the mayor has said that we need to now really consider building these processes. So he just said that recently. So that's going to be the next steps on top of the other aging infrastructure in the plant and the collection system. So

I have a question on general engineering 028-018 28 01 8. Yes. Yes. Got it. So last year this was $460,000. This year we're looking at $742,000. Are you at 028018 028018? I'm looking at 018ended total. You see this general professional consulting? I am too. I don't see the numbers. You're looking at extended. You're looking at the total, right? You want to look at this? Oh, that's the total. Yeah, it's 300. That's everything. That's everything. All right, scratch that.

Yeah, we reduced it. They asked for three, we gave him 250. 250. That's correct. I misread it. Uh, electrical maintenance. What number is that? Some electric is that O2? What number is that? Um, let me let me find it. The last six six numbers. I don't see it. We got so many line items. Should have written down the numbers when I was taking my notes. Oh, electrical costs.

Electrical maintenance. There was a big jump in the number. Now I need to find it in the Yeah, I think it's in the next one. Next segment maybe. Oh, there is electrical maintenance. Oh, I think it's O3 is electrical. Oh, in the next entire sectional maintenance is is in O3. All right, let's get through first. Parts for mechanical supplies. And I wrote down electrical maintenance.

All right, let's get through one first. I ran out of time while it's taking I think we're up to WPC maintenance of sewer line. Sounds good to me. I think so. O2. Yes. Okay.

I mean, these were all pretty much zeroed out from last year, so I didn't have any I'm sorry, my mic's not on. This was zeroed out from last year, so I really didn't have it any questions on this. There's just replacement parts. We know what that's all about. And mechanical supplies going up. Just pricing. Oh, too. Yeah, this is O uh 02-039-00001, but we reduced the requested amount. Yeah, we Well, we increased it slightly. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, we increased it just because probably because of of the year before. Look at it. Yeah, they asked for 12. Yeah, they used 17 18 almost. So, I really didn't have any questions on that section.

I would like to ask a question on O2. Okay. I see here on 03801 I see it looks like it's reduced to zero. 0381. There's a note that says that we move that over to 01. Oh yeah. General hardware and minor tools. Two places. That was one added two places for general hardware. Okay. Okay. Which is not a big ask. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Three. Yes.

Maintenance of treatment plant. Um pump station. Oh, sorry. I jumped. Where's mine? Oh, there. I don't think there's no we're on plant pump stations on our is after plant maintenance or treatment plant and then stations is after that. Okay. That's why we Yeah, we're at Yeah, we're at the um maint treatment of plant because that's where uh Rick's question is. Um

yeah 04 02602 the 33% increase is was uh Rick's question why it went up from 60 to 80 however it looks like the actual in 2025 was 119 and it had to do with 40 to 119 the actual expenditures that's a huge jump I have 60 to 119 for 2025 they they uh appropriated 60 and spent 119 they spent. Yeah. I think what Rick's saying is the year before was 50, they spent 40 and then the following year we spent 119. Yeah. You know, but then again, if you look back to 23, we only spent 18. So,

the rising if the due the rising cost, the number of costs um that 119 does look it does look stick out like a sore thumb. I'd have to pull I can pull the actual bills that are from that um and see where that come from because there's something that's sticking out oddly. Unfortunately had a big um electrical repair last year $50,000 or something. We did Oh, was it last year? Yeah, I think the electrical substation. Yes, we we had a and the generators on that. That's that could have been it.

I think that's what it was. It was one particular project that drove it up quite a bit. without that it's it's flat almost flat or a little higher still but okay and is there like an electrical issue at the plant do we have it

it it was from where the power uh tapped off from PSNG main connection to the plant so until it got to our substations inside the plant and stepped down to our generators it was that all of that um we worked with administration, etc. And we want to make sure that everything is solid and proper, that the units are dried proper, heated inside so there's not condensation, therefore rust, uh, etc. Some very old parts. And I said, "That's it. Done. We're replacing this. We're taking care of this now." Because we had to go get a generator offsite because our main generator was now down. So,

we have a we have an old plant. That's that's the bottom line is the things are going to come out that uh okay all right thanks for that explanation. I notice you're you're you're um expecting some crane costs this year too for the um recent inspection indicated that there was some needs for additional funding in that category under um annual crane inspection, SER, maintenance, that whole piece. 30 time crane.

Um the crane company we had for that we can no longer use. um we may go into a potential lawsuit with them because of their failure to do a proper inspection. Enough said. So, we are finding another company to do that work, but a an inspection we had the end of last year to meet our state requirements for crane inspections for safety. Found tremendous amount of problems actually uh with the cranes, meaning they weren't really doing a very good job, the old puppy. And so, we're going to have a lot more cost. You're going to get hit with a lot.

We're going to Right. And we bid it out and we did not get we did not get any companies to bid and the companies we bid have to have all these certifications and public works all and union all these things. Well, we don't want to say nothing about that. No, there's something like it's called what is it called? It's like pipe fit or something or other and you have to be a certain union and if not you have to hire them just to stand there because you have to have this certain public works certification. Um by purchasing department is very clear what we have to have and not all who can provide it.

No that all those inspection requirements they don't go away regardless of the age of the equipment or anything else. No, this wouldn't be solved by new equipment. We're going to have the same requirement regardless. Yes. Yes. And so one crane has a lot of problem itself. So the question is are the repairs uh uh not smart and is a new piece of equipment to replace it smarter? And so we have to look at that that that equation. Yes. And we do several hundred,000 for a new crane like uh depending on the height. What we have a 47 ton crane. That's a big boy that's in the RBC building to pick up one of those racks, right?

Um I don't know how much they weigh. Um, but the most of the other ones are smaller, two-tonon, you know, and they run down a Montreal, run back and forth. We have to pick up a lot of equipment, pumps, etc. So, but those must be safe. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Uh, let's see. So, disposal sludge, we're doing good there. You talked about that in your opening remarks. We're ramping up and we're going to see realize additional savings now as as we go forward with that. Um, okay.

I was conservative here on the numbers for costs. Um, we should be realizing more than 50% of last year's numbers, but I wanted to be safe because the unit price did go up this year also later in the year based on the uh the contract time. So, uh I noticed there's a line item for electricity supply and delivery. uh when we did the inventory for solar was was WPC considered for that.

I don't know the answer to that directly. I don't think we did any assessment of solar. Did they when they came to look at all the municipal buildings? I don't believe so. Right. I don't I don't I wasn't there if they did and I don't think so. unknown because it really Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um our buildings are pretty tough. You know, they're some are too small, the wrong roof, all these weird things and etc. So, and we don't have any land for an, you know, field of things. We don't. We're landlocked. There's nowhere else except for where the band house up at the the historic one at the corner. the field

and then it's probably not enough really even to adequately supply them. I think most of the locations we were looking at for that weren't necessarily things for tops of buildings although we are doing that at at least one location. Um the rest were in their parking areas there. There's open space where they're putting the solar panels. Oh, we're doing it over the parking lot. Yes. Okay. Yeah. That's good. Yeah.

Yeah. So, Carrie, uh, I guess we'll be I'm jumping the gun a little bit. Apologies, guys. Uh, we're going to be talking about your capital budget. I I haven't had a chance to really get too deep into it. Um, you've got an aging fleet of vehicles. Uh, is there any possibility or any opportunity for um, hybrid or electric vehicles for any of the, you know, as we replace vehicles in your fleet? Um there there is and I'm always cognizant of that. Um we we've tried to make sure first we have a charging station. We don't at our facility. There's not too many. Um

you find the vehicles. I'll make sure that we get you a charging station. Okay. That's on the record. I like that.

I absolutely. Um Um Um We are That's one thing, you know, when we have to drive around all the time with collection system, we have to have updated vehicles. So they're not not in bad shape. They're not. Okay. We're pretty up to date. But uh our next one, absolutely we can do that. And we do have increased number of golf carts in the plant that are all electric. All of them. Uh actually last year or the year before we got I think two that were gas but um electric. And we are now um based on some idling uh excessive idling numbers we've seen. We said walk. So, they're walk or driving a golf cart. This is better for everything. So,

and can we reduce a vehicle or two? We have I know you've you've been very frugal with over the years we've seen that. So, thank you. Uh trying to be frugal Oh, with with things. So, you know, I appreciate that you're always trying to save the taxpayers money. Uh, let's see. What else did I have? Oh, the cost of water. What was that? Oh, what line item is that? I'm not um public water. So,

do you have that? It was 43 and 24 went to 155 and 25. Uh something happened and when they looked at all the numbers it it was a billing billing problem where they

we were supposed to get a monthly bill or some some recognition like that. They didn't bill us for like a year. So and we kept telling them we want the bill, we want the bill. Anyway, so when we got the bill, they said this is it. And then it just kept going up because we're like, "How can it be this?" So we said, "You're not coming to read the actual meter. Come to our plant." So they said, "Okay, we came last week. We went to the camera. They didn't come." We said, "You come again and I want you with somebody and we're going to go to you with the meter." They did that and they read the number. So that number minus a year ago and that was what came out. So prices have gone up. Price? Yes. Prices have come out. I said I said pay the bill and then if we have to sort something out we will. But at least we knew that the number red on the meter was actual, right? Because I'm not going to we're not going to do an estimated for that amount of money. So

okay, it it it was crazy. All of us uh were alerted and not not happy and and we're bumping that. So it want to come back down though. Why do we need to bump that number up then? because the uh last few years we've budgeted 80,000 for water and yes we had this extraordinary event years before that it was like 43 38 51 so why do we have to go from 80 to 100 then death lost it

we we could we could um it's a it's always a matter of um risk or or what's going to happen and prices of everything have gone up everything have gone up yeah I know water has gone up for everyone your home at your home, right? Same thing. So, um that's 20%. So, but you could cut it. I just feel like if the normal order of things is in the ballpark of 4050, 80 seems like a generous number and we're bumping it to 100. So, maybe we can sure.

What's the reason what was the reason for the administration wanted to go to 100? So I think that it's still an unknown to us in terms of the increase and the actual usage. So we haven't had a full year yet of actual usage that we can trust. And if that money is not used, it goes back to the the fund balance. Correct. Yeah. Surplus from WPC which event which eventually is going to be used for something else if it's not used now. Correct. very help. When we were looking to the bill,

when we were looking to the billing that they had sent, there was really no process set by the word company as far as billing for coming out with estimated monthly. So, a lot of you look at the past yearly we know whether when we went back whether we were actually being built every month. So, it's you know which if I'm not mistaken, didn't this happen uh to businesses other than Justin Hamilton where they were they were sending them out and they had them build for X amount and it was estimated not actual and they just randomly started collecting money.

What happened? They didn't send bills very often when they estimated it. would take nothing. And yet they would when they figured out that we hadn't been build in a while, it wasn't just us, they, you know, finally had somebody that's looking at it evidently. Then they decided to do all estimated builds for however long that they had missed billing us, right? Just so that they could get probably just get some cash flow in just the money grab. Yeah. Yeah. And keep going, you know, eventually do a true up with just one bill to say, "Hey, this is what you know, the last meter read,

estimated meter read that you got build for, but the the actual meter is really this amount. So here we're going to give you a bill that's, you know, 100 times we gave you last time." I would think and I' I'd request that they read the meter every month. We're not a household. We're not a h we're not a household where you do estimates just like your public service bill. They should be out reading it every month. And for them to get allow away with not doing that, it that's a problem in my mind. I mean, obviously the numbers what it is and we have to allocate that and just in case their problems. No, it is it's ongoing problems out there and but we end up have to pay the price. Oh,

for their incompetence. I don't mind saying that on the record. Yeah. And so and that's why I said we Carrie did just that what you're talking about. She made sure she said this is not accessible anymore. So even I think you kind of notified your staff too that if you get a bill in and you see it's an estimate then you know we have to talk we have to make sure that we're reaching out to them and say we don't want an estimate and you'll send somebody out to read it. So yeah, I I you know, listen, if you got to contact them, you know, to say, "Hey, we want a meter the meter read monthly." No estimates. Okay? We're not relying on your estimates. You to come out and read the meter when somebody's here to verify that you're doing it, too, cuz I don't even trust that.

I don't know if I could rely on them to read it. Well, well, that's what I'm saying. Somebody have to be with them from from from our facility. That's what Carrie did. just made. So that's good because it's a bit less complicated than some other businesses where Yeah. I think that should request should go in. It should be mandatory. And the problem is they won't sometimes they didn't call us back. We can't even get people. Yeah. Then I'm not sure. Have our mayor called their mayor.

We do we know those droughts, but you know, at least we kind of got all right. We think we're up to date at some point, but now we want to track and see what our actual usage is and what the cost is going to be because, you know, their rates are unknown, too. I mean, they've gone up and so that's their main source of that's their cash cow. Not for long. Yeah. Not at the rate it's going. They're going to it's going to be years. All right. Where we at? All right. Yeah. Let's keep moving. Pub station. Yep. Pub station. I only have one question in this section. Car, get out of here. Rick, I'm impressed. You've done a lot of homework.

Yeah. Uh, let's see. I wanted to ask you about the 44%. Let me You know what? Give me one second. I need to That's the extended total. That's not the real total. Yeah, that's extended. Yeah. You have no questions on the second. That's right. It's extended to Next salary because it actually went down. Yeah. Yeah. I'm pumped for that salary and wages. Thomas needs to do more talking during our meetings. I'm very impressed. He's way too quiet. You guys haven't given me up too. That's not true. All of these things. That's not true.

No, listen. I'm very very very impressed. There's a lot of there's a lot lot of very impressed because she's very capable to answer as well. A lot of moving forces answer. I just I'm very very impressed. Carrie, you get a reprieve. Yeah, he's Thomas is going to help me out with my question. We we that's why we like All right. So, we are salary and wages. That's all I got. All right. Oh, we got to go through your capital budget too, right?

Which which just right now we got the capital all we have is salaries right there. I don't have anything. I got it. Okay. Which one? Capital. Capital. Okay. The way you roll. I think we already kind of talked about

favorite tables. Oh, we got it. These beauties. You don't know how much work goes into these tables. finance and IWP's a lot more. These old eyes need bigger print than this next year though. No, we got a smaller page though. Yeah. Oh, that's why that's the size of her. Mine is shrunk down, too. So, we have to get you bigger pages. You want to go make Oh, we're going to have to bring you back then. Next year. Okay, let's roll. No, thank you. So, okay, I'm ready. Go ahead. Who's up?

Question. Oh, I really Can you not read it? No, I It looks like a lot of this in my mind is right now in the engineering stage. A lot of this stuff I see it is quite a bit of it. Yeah. Right. I see a lot of it, you know, valve replacement, um, pump replacements, but right now it's in the engineering phase. There's no specific projects like you said that might the RBC those are going to go into design and also the bid that that's going to be this year. We have a bunch of stuff in the pump station collection system right and if you see that uh $6 million that force man talked about that's on page this is the lower half of the page car the second page

carry. Yes. So you replaced six RBC's, correct? And then you have how many more to replace over the next few years? 48. Oh, there's 48 total. So that's 42. 42 left. And we're going to do these this year. So how long what's the lifespan of these things? Um, we're past. I'm going to say we're past like 25 years, maybe more, maybe. And our oldest one right now is they're all about the same age roughly. Okay. About how old are they? 40. 40. The twice passed their useful life. Oh wow. And that's why the shafts are beginning to break and you can't fix a shaft.

A uh drive you can fix and we have and replace them, but the shaft you can't. So how many do you anticipate doing next year? Another eight. 26 this year eight. Next year another eight. But if you remember the environment, very humid. Very humid. Right. That means all electrical is corroded out. So that's being designed into that. So you have 88 88 like that. But now you're going to have a whole new redo of all the electrical conduit wires. It's all replaced

including the MCC buckets etc. which go into a whole different room. Has to be HAC controlled all that type of thing. Last month you approved a resolution for Gopher's short-term loan long-term loan with HAB. that came the whole core of that six RBC amount for 2.4 million. Okay. Well, now that the project's finished, so what they do, they put you on a short term. So she does the project and they we submit all the invoices for rent for reimbursement. Then when the project finished and she just finished in February,

this Yes. The six the six we just finished that total done. We're going for long-term loan now for Hamilton for that. that the the AJ converted that into payment that total cost of the project convers now we pay so who does all that electrical work is that the contractor it's going to be bid that will be bid we use local people right oh we did bid it's union labor right no it's not well it has to be um wage it's got to be prevailing wage that don't mean it's union oh that's right that's Sure, we could do something about that. Just like to see the local people, if you wanted to peel that out of the bid and do a

PLA agreement, right? Correct. Glad glad I brought that. I don't know the nature of that project and that may be a big shift. So, we'd have to really look at that and see if that's a component that can be carved out easily to to be able to do that. So, most likely it will have to subject to the purchasing laws. I don't know what they were talking about. Yeah, it's still in line with purchasing laws. In fact, it's probably more just as much in line as everything else because they're prevailing wage and right. Yeah, prevailing wage is prevailing wage. It doesn't include anybody outside from bidding it, right? You know, that's against

because we finance with NJIB, then we have to go through their process and there's certain phases. So, I don't know where you are with that in terms of the application. So we'd have to have that all ready at least how we're going to bid it before and then send us to bid NJ do that. So the state have to approve or probably not how many we doing this year jobs local. How many are we doing this year? How many we replacing this year? Eight. Yeah. But total total you have about how much you bump all the jobs that you have on on the horizon for this year. Was it like 14 million something like that? Um, that's a good question.

Are you talking about collection system, too? Everything we're going to bundle together. Uh, I probably have to add this or look at this. You don't have to, but I mean it's there might be a total at the bottom. The threshold's been lowered to zero, so it doesn't matter. It does say um projected uh 14 million. Yeah. Right. Right.

And of that, how much? You know, we can look at it, but I think we need to to identify. Right. And especially the timing of everything, what could we carve out of a bid, right, to allow us to go into a a PLA so that you know for electric or for any other labor pieces that are in there that we can go with local, right? Exactly.

We're trying to do it everywhere. And so we've done it for a lot of big projects. Brett has done it now. That's also so it's worked very well for us and we're kind of getting that feedback that so are a lot more complicated and I want to make sure you know we do understand it more from an engineering standpoint what can be parked out to do. So one great financial question is can we take equipment which cost say that this equipment cost uh what uh say just alone those RVCs without the drives motors anything else that cost $3 million draw no profit none none of the rest of the added do we buy that ourselves and put it on the side yard and say now contractor. We're going to bid out the electrical with the labor and the installation of these RDC's because we're going to we're not going to pay you for the profit on the on $3 million of equipment, right?

We have other equipment that's coming in a million dollars for a screw dewatering piece of equipment. Why am I paying them? a lot. I've talked with finance and purchasing and we've decided that there's a lot of risk with operating long-term um maintenance bonds all that we're purchasing our own materials. Yeah.

So we've decided fundamentally now we're going to keep it in the same contract for so so what do you do and now the next date next year the next date after that we're going to need building modifications ventilation which a study has shown in a year to happen this year. So we need other things for that eight that building. So you might say why are we spending all this money for this RBC building right it's the heart it's the biological process which eats the stuff in the water. It eats the food which is we have to get rid of for the fish. Can we go to another process? I asked that question. There are other treatment processes to do that.

Um most of them are more complicated. So to operate them it takes more operator skills. So that's one thing. It's called activated sledge and there's many a spin-off of that. It also takes more land. We don't have a lot of land and frankly if you look at the hydraulics of the plant right we don't pump it comes in the plant and it flows downhill through the processes out

and that's very good energy-wise right and if there's a storm and the pump goes out then what do you do right you have a generator but there could be problem so you want to have it flow downhill through the process and the plants to get to the end if you can and we may not be able to adding is another process I spoke about briefly earlier with the yes so we could eliminate that but land we have an issue pump private possibly an issue we got to operate while we build that thing you you we all know this yeah right construction I've been in the field inspecting for several years I mean so I've seen I know so oh listen I'm sure you carve that out

there's there's many things we have to look at take a look you'd have to yeah you enough. I think it was a good question. We just kind of elaborated on it a little more. That's Yeah. Next. I think I think all you have is capital. I think I think we went through all Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Thank you, Carrie, for all that. Thank you very much for the work that you do for this and and your answers. You also are not allowed to retire. Yeah, they did. The guy did an excellent job today. I hear I hear the guy at Trenton's retiring. I did too. I heard. Yeah, I heard. Huh?

Waste water. Waste water. Waste water. What's his name? Le or something? Me? Who they replace him with? They they will replace him. Um I heard I actually had a meeting. I was at one of the meeting about a year ago and I said, "Come over." I said, "Come over because he has an S4." and he said he would consider but it depends on I frankly my it won't surprise me put it that way my energy is in Hamilton so the replacement the the way to order plant he's saying is not yes microphones are on

okay we're not done yet I'm We have Oh, that's right. We got main event. Main event. Seems the best for last. Caramel. Do you think I need a little pick up?

I was packing up over here.

All right. Where's the caramel? I need something. There it is. All right. Where we at? Council. They're good, but they're messy and they're chewy. Yeah, I know. I lost clerk. Yeah, all right. You lost it out there. I'm sorry, Pat. Let's Let's uh municipal everywhere. There it is. Okay. Sorry. I know why. I mean, we we Allison, the reason why that number's up for overtime is because the the county that whole that was the whole decision by the C that they're no longer paying overtime numbers. Yeah. No, explain that.

There was I think the prior years were misbudgeted. There was certain things with um Britney working the meetings being allocated incorrectly and everything like that, not being properly budgeted. So we're kind of getting on track with that. Back on track handling and everything just matching what we're actually want because they kind of have a thin budget as is. So by going over on overtime takes from other areas of their department which you know we don't want because they're such a small department. Yep. Happy to you. Love you too. Thank you very much.

You can't say enough about your team too. All of great thank you to your team. We do a good job. Very, very appreciated. There's got those guys, men and women out there working tonight. I have two uh questions. One, was the overtime number up because tonight's meeting has been so long because Rick had so many questions. And number two, uh are we looking to fill the deputy uh clerk's position? No, I I don't think where did we land on that? I don't think so. That had been removed that request.

How much What's the difference in uh pay if we were to add that title back? So, the promotion would be There's a range, right? Yeah. So, the promotion for Britney, it would give her a It's not much. It's a $1,283 increase. So, if we were looking and and we haven't spoken much about that um as a team, right? And then we have to have individual conversations. Um are we not making that promotion because of the $1,000?

No, I don't think it's it's fully that I just don't think that it's been considered um at this point. I shouldn't say this. I think it's been said thought about each year and just you know for whatever reason that or that and have not felt like this is the time to do it and and you know I have thoughts that I'm not going to articulate right now. Uh what I am going to say is I appreciate our staff. I appreciate the clerk's office staff. uh the work that everyone has done to improve themselves and to get better at what they do. Um you know the staff has gotten better and better in my time here.

So that's speaking generally that's all I'm going to say about it and you know if we need to talk about it offline then then I'm happy to talk about it. Yeah, I certainly I know that those your opinions and recommendations would would go a long way. Mhm. Yeah. Just, you know, looking looking to the future and I love my clerk. So, that's nothing against her. Many years to come. Yeah.

Our clerk for many many many years to come. It's just a I just I just um you know me, I like to build a bench. I like to look and I like to make sure the team all gets taken care of in the proper way. So my clerk my clerk better not leave either. She's not leaving. I can't even find the uh what pages are your employment numbers on? Uh and this thing personnel numbers. So that that's different. That's she won't have access to that. That's the budget book. So this paints like an overall picture of the budget.

I like when people are prepared. This guy's impressed. I'm sorry. He is. He comes right to you. Yeah. All right. Well, I mean everything's the same since last year there. So, we have left the mayor's office and we we started to talk about next the OT and there were reasons for that the election thing and um well like Tom just stated just the oh we're bringing it up to that's right we're bringing it up to

to reflect what we're actually the priority for regular overtime and then in election salary and wages it allows for overtime for elections and that's not just clerk staff that's other departments that we utilize primary and election night right that charge off that account so we borrow from inspection whoever is available support staff from other departments here and then they charge that yes opportunity for them to seeing that get some over time for some people

Alison's like oper request they have to go through your office right and then your oper request like we've still seen like a we got a level right we're we're high we're high really even though it's all online it's it doesn't help you doesn't matter and we we do try to like especially let's say realers and such to try to find permits we try to put them they want to put it in. So, yeah, we're over 700 so far this year. So far this year. Yeah. A lot of those are realtors looking for Oh, yeah. All kinds. It's not just that specific. I mean, we, you know, attorneys and Yeah.

chunks of different professions that need information from us. Even from finance, they want all uncash checks and the lists of those. They want the escrow balances. And so you need report after report, but a lot of them are very complicated and you're not even really sure what they're asking sometimes. So sometimes there's this whole conversation back and forth asking you have to clarify this or we have no responsive document. So then they just reward it and send it back to you. So the first office does really a good job with that communication to try to narrow down the the red tape so to speak of doing this. You know,

I feel like we had a period where with the animal shelter, people were up in arms and like we had a lot of people who are sending in Opus who maybe aren't now. Well, no. Yes and no. But I I think a a huge thing is now would be body warranty. There's a lot with that. Yeah. Yeah. That takes a lot.

Yes. A lot of time from PD back there. They have to be reviewed by the legal and so not every Oprah gets reviewed by the eagle because you guys write manage that. So, but we have do have to drag legal in quite a bit on its own. people outside and it's it's and again even though you do the bulk of it and you're the responsible one for it these all get attached to whatever division department or whatever that also is working you know

but I I've also seen changed a little bit in staff um overall where and it's been my experience parents in other towns too when I've been there. Everybody's so protective. Let's do everything we can not to give to me. And I said, "Wow, why are we trying to find ways not to give it to public information just makes your life easier? Give it to them. I don't care. Just make sure that what you're giving them is what they're asking for. Don't give them more than that because you're just making assumptions. Then if they want this, give them that. Don't wait the full seven days if you don't have to. Don't spend it if you don't have to. And you guys have been great with that. Just trying to keep that on track because the other half of what they do is chasing down the other department to say just do, right? We haven't sent us anything yet and it may need to be rejected. So, you know, so they're trying to get people more used to that as well.

And people are less afraid of giving that much that information out. I get tagged in at least like two to three requests daily through finance and purchasing you to like set aside all your other work. Some of them not not all of them are for me but I get assigned to them just being part of the division so I could see what's going out there. So I mean with finance and purchasing I mean they're getting inundated. Do you have do you have enough staff in your office to handle all these? I mean, in the perfect world would, you know, more staff be great, you know, but we're we're we're holding strong. Danielle Danielle and Daniel are really

when Danielle came from Jackson, Danielle had a taste of Oprah. So, she didn't come in with without any knowledge. So, she's really been a good backup for Britney in that respect. Good. some of the stuff. Can we like bypass the Oprah process with some of these? I mean, if they come through an Oprah, then you have to go through. Well, we do. Not to interrupt you, but yes. Like, in other words, if someone comes in and requests something that you can legitimately put your hands on and hand them, we try to tell just give it to them. Why waste time filling out a form and Yeah. So, like, you know, you want a copy of a resolution or ordinance? Yes. Is it on the internet? Right. But if you want a copy here, right?

And there has to be, right? still like a document has to exist. You don't have to create documents. No, we do not create. All right. Yeah. It's just it's either exists or it doesn't. It does not. Yes.

Sometimes the requests are so vague that you kind of figure out, well, do we have something that responds to this or not? And so again, we've kind of gotten away from, well, we have something that's sort of what they want, but we have to manipulate it. And so we don't do that anymore. basically say we don't have a responsive document to that or can you clarify your request or whatever and record management records management plays a big part in that as well because if the departments are processing their records management requests properly then those records are disposed of so therefore there is no responsive record.

Yeah. Sometimes they ask for it and we don't have any uh responsibility to keep it that long. So, no, we don't have it. Are are we still getting those Oprah lawsuits? Uh, well, we have one now. We have one. Like, I know for a while we were just off. I'm sorry. They're at the GRC. All right. I'm not sure. You know, I know like a lawyer can I thought it was sue. I don't Maybe it's I don't know. GRC Government Records Council. So in other words, someone is saying that we did not provide them the documentation that they requested. Do they put a complaint into the and then there's a a fine or something on us?

I think the local finance board uh that complaint and they make a decision as to whether we were responsive correctly or not like for lawyers fees or whatever. So there's some result cottage insurance. Okay. Thank you Allison for No, I said I don't say it enough. Thank you. They are we are we are you guys are very good working group. We try. We appreciate everything you do. I know. Thank you. What else we got left? Council, I'll cut cut.

It's already zero. Yeah, you could cut the clothing allowance still if you want the 500. Yeah, get rid of that. Do we have an allowance? Really? Is there allowance there? We used to get shirts that all this time we haven't been buying clothes. Well, we got shirts a few years. We did get shirts. Have to let me know. I just ordered something through somebody else. We could cut it this year. For sure. You get some shirts. I would I would keep it. You never know what's going to come up. $500 is the probably not going to change $170 something million dollar budget. I would keep it the way it is in case we decide to do something, but maybe especially for the 250 if you want different.

All right. All right. Thank you. Thank you. I don't know why I jumped the gun. This