Council - public_hearing

Good afternoon. Welcome to the budget hearing of the North Municipal Council on Wednesday, August 5th. Council President, council members, the first department presenting is the Department of Public Safety.

Good afternoon. First and foremost, I would like to extend my sincere congratulations to all the city council members on their reelection. Your continued service reflects the trust and confidence that the residents have placed in your leadership, your commitment to the City of Newark. Thank you. Good afternoon, City Council, Council President, members of the City Council. I'm pleased to present the Department of Public Safety the budget for the fiscal year. This plan reflects our continued commitment to ensuring safety, resilience, and well-being of our community while maintaining fiscal responsibility. Tonight's presentation will provide an overview across our three divisions, police division, fire division, emergency management division. The Department of Public Safety represents our largest operational responsibility for the safety and ongoing support of the Newark residents. During this presentation, you will hear about our commitment to the city by reducing costs, generating revenue, and keeping in line with the governing bodies and policies. We look forward to discussing these parties with you and addressing questions as we talk through the specific of each division. Thank you.

Council president council members. Do you have any questions?

Yeah.

On, on the, uh, police and fireside. Can you give me the year to date spending for police and fire?

Excuse me. We have a presentation. Let me do the presentations. WANT TO DO A QUICK PRESENTATION.

ALL RIGHT. SO THE POLICE DIVISION, THE BUDGET YEAR TO YEAR, WE'RE GOING TO GO OVER THE REVENUE GENERATION, THE POLICE DIVISION HIRING, THE NEWARK POLICE ACADEMY AND OTHER PROCEEDS. OUR BUDGET THAT WILL BE REQUESTED THIS YEAR WILL BE 185, 815, 369. And this is gonna be a differential of 10,957,526. And the reason for that increase would be due to salary and wages and other issues with contracts and stuff of that nature and other things that we'll discuss later on. Expense justification. This year, new officers that have been hired so far, we have 47 new hires. And last year we had 86 new hires. And a part of our, we have a civilian plan that we're currently implementing. And so far this year, we have hired for 13 positions as we continue to put more civilians in the workplace and more of our offers out in the field. And with that, we have already put some more civilians in our fleet management, legal affairs, emergency services unit, our com stat unit, property room, candidate investigation and communication, where we currently have civilian supervisors for our call takers, which is a position that we hadn't had before. REVENUE GENERATION FOR THE POLICE DIVISION. WE HAVE PROCEEDS FROM E-TICKETS FOR THE FIREARM PERMIT PROCEEDS. THE NORC POLICE ACADEMY IS SOMETHING WE'RE IN THE PROCESS OF STARTING TO GENERATE INCOME ONCE WE GET THAT UNDERWAY SO THAT OTHER AGENCIES THAT COME INTO DO TRAINING IN OUR POLICE ACADEMY THAT WE CAN HAVE, WE CAN GENERATE INCOME FROM THAT. WE ALSO GENERATE INCOME FROM OUR OUTSIDE EMPLOYMENT UNIT AND OTHER PROCEEDS AND GRANTS. Now to break down with the e-tickets proceeds. Last year, we generated 14,275,106 dollars. This year, year to date, we're already at 8,392,876. So we're projected to make for the year of 2026, 15,715,488 from e-tickets, which will be higher than what we generated last year. And also if we're going to go into our firearm permit proceeds last year for a year to date for the complete year, we had $166,896 that we generated this year. We're already at 148,551 and that's as of July 15th. So we're on trend to make more with those proceeds as well. The police academy, we have finally been removed from our probationary period. We received a three year PTC certification. And we are now establishing revenue generations in the way of the alternate route training, outside agency recruit training, and also outside agency training miscellaneous. Our grant hires that we currently have under our COPS grants, every year we have 15 officers that were hired in the year 22, 23, and 24 who still remains on the department. So those are our grant-funded police officers that we currently have. And in our outside employment unit, we generated for this year, 634,500 in vehicle fees. Last year, we went over 1 million at 1,381,505. With our forfeiture proceeds, We work with our federal partners and with that relationship, we bring in a lot of forfeiture money that we use for the department. That is no money that comes out of the citizens or from the city. And with that forfeiture money, we've in our past purchases, we've done the initial payment for our CAD RMS system, which is now up to date. We was almost about to lose our technology because we were so far behind. So we were able to update it and we have the most recent system in place now. We also have purchased with our forfeiture money marked the unmarked vehicles, the bucket truck for the fire department and also the drones. Our priority and capital improvement projects that we currently have is the list, let me click to the next one. The list for that will be for, we have for our ballistic vest, our drones, our ESU truck, the gunshot detection, surveillance camera trailers, the PO cameras, community policing, the CAD RMS system, Axon, 311 technology, and also our computers. Our priority projects that we have underway and we're in the process of going to do is our first precinct station, which was long overdue. Our second precinct station, which is also something that we've been long waiting to get done as well. Our outside employment software, where we've had complaints in the past about the outside employment, and we're looking to move into another system before the year is out. We continue with our civilian plan. We will continue our technology expansion plan and also for the revenue from the police academy. And now we were going to the fire division.

Mr. President, just just a few questions before you switch over and want to thank you, Chief. So based on the information you shared, it looks like the table of organization or the number of personnel assigned to the police division remains pretty consistent to what it was last year. So are the increases being driven primarily by the contracts that the uh various officers have with the unions and those increases tied to those contracts is that that is that what's driving up the personnel costs on the police side yes that's correct um we um everyone have a current contract so we have everyone that's moving up in their steps our civilians and our police officers

our sworn officers. And also we brought over 27 sanitary workers to do the cleaning in the building that we had to bring over to our budget. So we have them people as well.

So those individuals weren't reflected in last year's budget?

No.

And what's your overtime ask for this year?

30 million, which is the same as last year.

So last year shows you spend a little over $32 million in overtime. And it's something that the business administrator, I don't see him here, but I know he mentioned yesterday that he, I don't want to paraphrase or put words in his mouth, but that they were focused on trying to better control the overtime cost. What's driving the OT here? for the police division? Is it all these special events that you guys got to cover that, you know, sometimes, you know, the city is able to recoup money, but that money doesn't necessarily go back to the police division. It goes to the general fund. Like why, why is the overtime number so high?

This year, we had a couple of things that were going on that we usually don't. Specifically, like FIFA was a high money generating overtime and other things that we've had this year that we usually don't have. And also with... the people's contracts and the pays being higher, that kind of generates more overtime. So when we break down our overtime, we're actually down right now from last year based on money. But if you go into the hours of overtime that was work, we're down even more because of the difference in the pay rates. Our money rises higher than the hours that we worked.

And I just want to state, Mr. President, that during the how many days of FIFA, you guys had that beautiful fan village on Ferry Street. There were a lot of police personnel tied to that. And they did a great job. By the way, I had a chance to go out there a few times myself. But I did read like in Bergen County, for example, Congressman Gondheimer was able to get you know a ton of federal money to different departments police departments in that area to deal with some of the police costs associated with fifa and and it always seems like our region is ignored when it comes to those resources which i'm sure would have been a big help um actually applied for um for grant money for fifa and we did not get it we weren't able to get the money that we applied Special events besides FIFA, like parades, festivals, like is that also a concern for the police division as far as you allocating staff and expending a big portion of your OT budget? Is that a driving factor as well as it relates to OT costs?

If I look at the breakdown of the overtime that we currently have year to date, if you just break out like the Prudential Center, Symphony Hall, special events, parades, and also housing, that all equals up at this point to over $7 million in overtime.

And with other expenses, like the contracts, about $5 million on the police side, what are the big ticket items there? What are the big contracts? I know probably the 911 system or whatever system the police uses to respond to calls for service. Is that one of those contracts that we pay for?

Yes, that one is one of our higher ones. But like I said, we have the newest technology and we're able to eventually generate money through our system because the way it's set up, we can have other agencies that work within the city of Newark can come onto our system for fees. So that's something we're looking to go into as well. So not only do we have a higher price system, that's the latest technology, but it also can generate funds as well.

And I know to get the police academy built, the city didn't have the bonding capacity to build it so they went to a private entity to build it and you pay a significant amount of money every month as a result of that deal that was done with the private developer. Does that come out of your budget or does the city pay for that lease payment directly?

FOR THE POLICE ACADEMY. THAT DOESN'T COME OUT OF OUR BUDGET CURRENTLY.

THANK YOU, MR. PRESIDENT. APPRECIATE YOU, CHIEF. THANK YOU.

ALL RIGHT.

I'M NEW AT THIS. I'M LEARNING. OKAY. SO HERE COMES THE PROBLEM, CHILD. LET'S GET TO THIS OVER TIME. I need an explanation of why approximately 50 to 75 officers are making over $100,000 in overtime. For me, it equates to you never sleep, which means you can't give me work performance.

But if there's a justification, I'd like to hear that.

Secondly, while you're doing that, you know my pet peeve is executive protection. And I know we in the millions because previous mayor's ticket was 22. Um, I would like to know what the total cost of executive protection is and who all gets the persons and how many people are there.

Okay. We'll be able to get that. I don't have that broken out right now, but the one thing I can assure you that we have a process in place where our officers are not allowed to work 24 hours straight. They can, they're only allowed to do 16 hours before they have to break. So that's something that we make sure that they're not tired when they're at work.

Okay. Because like I said, for me, I see people at 20. I see people at 50. I mean, some of the... I have no idea who... Well, I do know some of the names. I'm not going to read any. Absolutely not. But I see that... THE REGULAR OVERTIME FLOW IS BETWEEN 30 AND 50. I'M VERY CONCERNED WHEN I SEE PEOPLE, AND THIS IS ONLY TILL JULY, WHEN I SEE PEOPLE AT OVER $100,000 ALREADY. UNLESS THEY'RE IN SOME CAPACITY WHERE THAT HAS TO HAPPEN, WE NEED TO DULL THAT OUT AMONGST THE OTHERS. LET EVERYBODY ELSE INCREASE BY 10,000 OR WHATEVER. THAT IS TOO MUCH MONEY FOR YOU TO ADEQUATELY WORK FOR ME and make, and I know you're not getting enough rest and I know you're not giving me a hundred percent. I don't care who it is. It could be me. I mean, I think I can probably work 24 hours a day and sleep maybe an hour every other day, but I think we need to really rally in on the who, what, where, when and how of that, and I'll await the email because I've been talking about that executive protection. The other request is going to be that, and I know I have to send this to the administration, but that needs to be reduced, and I mean drastically by at least 80%. There are other municipalities around us. Here's the president of the United States. who does not have the amount of executive protection that this mayoral staff has here, this administration. And it is not going to be continued to be tolerated on the city's dime off the backs of the people. We're going to have to come up with something else. Maybe out of their salary, they got to pay to have somebody come in. But I cannot have at least 20 officers, because I know that's what the number was under Booker. So I can only assume now. And I know it's more. that 20 officers I'm taking off the street, out of operations to get some things done that need to happen in the city. Because we have less hands on the job, that's how we allowing some of the little stuff to get out of hand.

Absolutely. We'll get that for you.

Yes. In terms of the 911 center, is that yours as well?

Yes.

Okay. So here we go. I don't have my book that I've marked all up. I had about 99 of them little blue tab things on there. But this is my question. Who over there is certified? Who over there has passed the background check? And is everybody that's in 911 need to be in 911? I have very serious concerns when residents from this city call in and then have Joe, Small, Carlos, Matthew show up at their door five minutes after the call. That has got to stop. And it's been going on for a long time. But I do know that the folks that's in that 911 center are civilians. I get that part because I'm pushing the traffic, non-police too. But we cannot have people jeopardizing the public in our own 911 center. And that is happening on the police side. So if you also could send me that through email, who's a certified 911 civil service, because for me, it makes a difference, right? Because I call sometimes, hey, what's up? What? Excuse me? Not even 911, not even emergency. The unprofessionalism on all levels. But I want to specifically talk about 911. And then you have some outstanding folks. Outstanding. Who will walk you through a panic. Because I've experienced that as well. Not just for me, but while someone else is on the phone. So we got some great folks over there. And I hope I'm not... throwing them out with the bathwater, so to speak, because they are not certified. But I think that people need to be credentialed, people need to be trained, and people need to be held accountable for what they're doing. Quick note on outside employment. There was a lot of issues with outside employment. We made some changes, and then we made some more changes. I am totally against privatization. I don't care who's presenting it. I think things need to be kept in-house so we can keep our hands on it. So whatever we've privatized that has not come before this council, and maybe it did before I got here, it's unacceptable, particularly if we're contracting with another country. I have a problem with that.

Yeah, we're not privatizing it. We're actually going to use, I'm sorry. We're using the current system that we do now with Scooboo and Orion, and we're going to use that within that system. So they're just putting in place something for us to use for outside employment. It's still going to be ours. It's something we own internally, and it's not anything that we're going to send out to a private company.

Okay, good. And do we have the people that can operate that?

Yes.

Okay. Two more and then I'll send you the rest of my questions. Do we currently have staff at 480 that can work that computer room on the second floor? And I say that because there's a lot of stuff going on. He never can retrieve anything from the police department. I've had two personal experiences where the resident's home video was able to let the police know if they put the wrong car under investigation. And in this day and age when we're pulling motorists over, Every day. Some justified, some not. Because I was involved and I didn't do anything. I didn't rob the Amazon driver. But that's what you guys thought. And it wasn't my car. So when I'm put under investigation, when I'm using, he's the partner cousin. Larry's car, for example. The elder who owned the car, had that happened with him, he probably would have had a heart attack. because the man that owns the car is 71 years old. And so we had to present video from his home to the North Police Department to let them know that they illegally towed the car, illegally had the car under investigation because who they were looking for that got into Larry's Amazon truck was not me or Mr. M. for privacy purposes. Then you show us on video riding down 18th Avenue. I'm the passenger, Mr. M is driving, and you say we involved. We not involved as we saw in the third video. So I think what I'm saying is two things. Who's running those cameras on the second floor? Who's watching the TVs? Who on the second floor inside 480 has the capacity? Because to my understanding, we don't have anybody. Okay, because prior to Mr. Bishop being there, I don't know if we didn't train anybody. I don't know if anybody doesn't know the software, but I'm very concerned because I myself was now put into a middle of investigation that I should not have been able, that I shouldn't have been in. I have a problem with North Police having me on a video going down 18th Avenue, sitting in the car with Larry and talking about I sold an Amazon truck and I conspired with him to do it. It's a problem. You guys got to learn how to work the software because it's me. I mean, I've been on hard times, trust me, but I'm not out here stealing Amazon packages and I know what's happening. So do we have qualified folks? And that's my key question all the time. Do we have qualified folks working in these positions? And is there someone now on that second floor at 480 that could run that video back? Because I think it's very disheartening also to the residents to have a major accident somewhere, anywhere in this town and not be able to have the video footage retrieved. That's the difference between if I hit Amina or Amina hit, no, you don't know this. Or she hit me. And you guys can make that determination if we correctly use those cameras. What we got all the cameras up for if we're not going to use them and have people that have the ability to do it. So I can wait for that in the email, too. And then the last thing I have is when are we going to reinstitute giving a civil service test? And I know that was not your decision, but I think it's the worst decision that we ever made. The worst decision. You cannot bring people on. I just was fussing with code enforcement yesterday, and I'm gonna fuss with the department that I love. We cannot continue to bring folks on the job that can't pass the basic test. It's just like a teacher in the classroom. I'm not gonna certify Larry if he doesn't pass the national teacher exam. He could be a sub, but he can't be a teacher. So I think that we need to be careful how we're doing what we're doing. And I need to see some more Naukas on the job. I really do. That last graduation class for police and fire, concerned. Very concerned. Because I have children, students, well, they be my kids because they 22 years old, right? That told me they passed with a 92 or 94, 90 something. And they're not on the job. How? When we just brought a whole class in. i know one of the times we have problems recruiting but i can't keep having residents that live here just because the kid live on passion just because the kid live on jello just every block out here now is a gang block i don't care what block you live on we don't have to shoot it now somewhere we don't have protocol someplace and we can't keep discouraging our young people particularly in the black and brown community that passed the bar So, you know, if I could have back in the email, just on my concerns, definitely that over time I need to. Yes, well, absolutely. I need to borrow some money, too.

We only hire Newark residents for our police and fire. We don't hire outside of the city. So all the academy classes that come through for police and also for fire, they are Newark residents. And another thing, just to mention about the way that we have been recruiting now and bringing people on through the portal, as opposed to civil service, the only thing that's different is they don't take the civil service exam, but they go through the same background that anybody that comes to civil service, they still have to go through the background check. They still have to go through the drug testing. They still got to go through the psych testing. They still have to go through everything else that we do before we bring people on. So we don't shorten anything because they came through the portal as opposed to civil service. The only difference is with civil service. Their seniority starts from the day they start the academy through the portal. Their seniority starts when they graduate the academy because that's when civil service picks them up. So they still are part of civil service, but only once they finish their academy.

OK, I'll take you. Thank you. Thank you for that.

Thank you, Council President. Thank you so much, Chief Morris. I apologize for being late. So if I missed this, please forgive me. I noticed here in your top priority projects, one of them, the civilization of certain police services, and I know that bringing on civilian workers and putting actual officers back on the street that will hopefully help with the overtime because you have more bodies on the street. But what I didn't see in the package, and again, maybe I missed it and I apologize if I did, the actual head count that's required to make sure that you are working at optimum capacity with officers in every department division level. What is the head count that's needed for each for each area?

Yeah, we would have to break it down because if you look in the book that we gave all you guys, we have the vacancy report. We also have the breakdown of all the officers, but we don't have it broken by division because we go by what's happening in the different areas and maybe something might start occurring in one place that's not in the other. So sometimes we kind of transition around with that, but that's something we could break down a little better for you and we'll send it to you as well. That's fine.

Yeah, because I just want to know what the headcount is needed and then what's the plan for getting to that? And I know part of, you know, some of the challenges with every department, we talk about funding because, again, I'm talking about the budget. But is, you know, are there even conversations to talk about a strategic plan of how we get us to where we need to be so we don't have, you know, officers working until they can't see or... know racking up hundreds of thousands of dollars in in overtime as as my council colleague has mentioned um and also just to make sure that that we're all safe because i i call the police like everybody else as you know i'll call you so um we definitely need our public safety to be um working at optimal capacity and we can't do that if we're draining everyone at every area so if we can get that information i appreciate it yes

Thank you, Council President. Good evening, or still afternoon. Good afternoon. And I do apologize, too, if I missed this. I'm going to ask the question and just see. With regards to your fire prevention specialists, I know in the past, I think this has been almost an ongoing conversation every budget season we talk about. the need for additional fire prevention specialists. I know Councilman Council has brought it up a number of times. And so the question is, a couple of questions. So there's six current ones, all right? You budget, you're asking for an increase of 14, is that my understanding? And with that, if that's included in the budget, it was as baked in your budget right now, the $800,000 for that? That's correct. Okay. And what is your process in terms of, because my understanding is it's difficult for folks to pass that test, to become a, I think if I'm incorrect, you can correct me. And so is there something in place, a process in place that you have to make sure that we get those necessary fire prevention specialists? Because at the end of the day, it's one, it's a revenue generating process. definitely generating too. It helps our businesses because now they're not waiting for somebody to come out. And three, it hopefully prevents something happening to our residents or to our businesses that we don't want to happen.

Yeah, I just think that we need to do a better job as far as advertising.

I think that's the biggest issue or concern, excuse me.

We just, we interviewed 30 applicants all right, with their resumes. And most of the applicants, when they submitted the application, didn't have the certifications or the qualifications. They just submitted. So out of the 30 that we interviewed, only 30, excuse me, only three had the certifications and the qualifications. But we're going to continue to promote and advertise and maybe a little bit more clearer in terms of what the needs are as far as the qualifications are concerned.

and is there some discussion as to increasing the salary for them for those because i understand that that's an issue that comes up a lot of uh or not a lot but i know of a few that may have left and gone to irvington for example or other places absolutely it's a huge concern and that's something that i'm addressing as we speak we looked at the different municipalities and we wanted to make sure that we are in a competitive salary

We want to ensure that the inspectors are receiving the salary that they so deserve. So I looked at the different municipalities that are close by. And we're not competitive to our neighboring municipality. That's the bottom line. We're working on that.

And another question, and it is apropos, because I'm sitting in Councilman Gonzalez's seat, previous seat. He would ask regarding shared services with other agents, other cities to possibly help with regards to the inspections, since we are limited in the number that we have. Is that something that is considered or on the table to help? That's a great question.

Let me get the facts on that. And I'll definitely get back to you. All right.

Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you, Council President.

Thank you, Council President. This is my dinner, lunch, everything right here. How you doing, Chief? How you doing, Director? How you doing? Good. Former Councilman, now Director. Glad to see you, man. One of my questions is, HOW LONG DOES RECRUITS OR POSSIBLE RECRUITS HAVE TO LIVE IN NEWARK BEFORE THEY'RE CONSIDERED FOR HIRE?

ONE YEAR.

ONE YEAR? CORRECT. SO SOMEBODY FROM BELLVILLE CAN JUST MOVE HERE FOR A YEAR AND THEY CAN BE HIRED?

YEAH. ACCORDING TO THE CIVIL SERVICE WEBSITE, THEY HAVE TO BE A RESIDENT OF THE CITY OF NEWARK AT THE TIME THEY APPLY FOR THE APPLICATION.

Is there a process, and I don't know if this is, if it's legal or not, but is there a process to make sure that Newarkers who are Newarkers who have been living here for a long time has the ability to go before the person who was living here just for one year? Be considered before them, or is that not a process?

I don't necessarily think that's a process. Again, the process is that they have to, at the time of the application, they have to actually live, they have to be a resident of Newark. The qualifications are a resident of Newark, high school diploma, US citizen, and a valid driver's license.

So if someone is from Monmouth County, where a lot of our ICE agents come from, and they say, you know, five of us want to, let's go try to join the Newark Police Force. Let's live there for a year. Have you guys been experiencing that? People try to come here to work for Newark? Just to live here for a year? Because I know people who say they go to a school and they need an address and they don't live there. I'm just trying to figure out, do you guys run into that situation when it comes to the police force?

I think our candidate investigation do a thorough job in terms of investigation. But we can probably do a better job.

and uh making some changes changing some policies in regards to that but um i i would ask yes you know i would definitely ask because you know a lot sometimes when things are said you don't know what's really rumor or true but um i've heard in our local area lounges, some people who did not look like they were from here and saying that this is what they were about to do for the fire department. So please, let's do a better investigation and maybe formulate a better process of singling those people out who just come here for a year, push out people who have been living here all their lives, and they don't get... you know, selected to be a part of something that they grew up around their entire life.

So that's a good question. One of the things that we already implemented was getting fire involved. So now there's several layers when it comes down to the candidate investigation.

That's good to hear. I would love to really You know, people talk, so I would love to hear that that has really changed in the coming future. And one thing, just to be clear, like you guys have a thousand percent support from myself, I'm sure from a lot of our colleagues, because you're one of the most important agencies in our city. So we just want people to be safe. We want people to have the opportunity to join you guys in protecting and serving our community. And that leads me to another question. Does the psych doctors, the psych that goes over, reviews your recruits, do they give, is one of their stipulations, do they give bad reviews to suspicious tattoos?

That's a negative. The administration basically hired a psychologist, right? So I think they do an excellent job vetting THOSE NEW RECRUITS, BUT IN TERMS OF THAT, NO.

SO THERE IS NO, FROM FAR AS YOU KNOW, I KNOW YOU SAID THE ADMINISTRATION, BUT SO AS FAR AS YOUR AGENCY KNOWS WITH COMMUNICATION WITH ADMINISTRATION, THERE'S NEVER A PROBLEM WITH TATTOOS.

NOT THAT I'M AWARE OF.

JUST TO COMMENT JUST OFF ON THE POLICE SIDE, WE When they go through the psychological exam, there's two parts to the exam. So the first thing they have to go through is a written exam. So they don't even see the psych. Originally, they go through the written exam. So a lot of people are knocked out of the process even before they get to the psychologist. So we don't discriminate based on tattoos, but what we have put in place for newer people coming on and who's not in the department now is that you can't have tattoos that are disrespectful tattoos. You can't have tattoos on your face and on your hands. We're trying to get more like the state police where we don't have the vulgarness and stuff of that nature that's showing on people. But the guys that's already on, of course, they're on the department already. So the tattoos is not something that we look upon negatively. But that is that we are making sure that the newer guys that's coming on, that they are

PRESENTABLE SHALL I SAY THAT THEY DON'T HAVE LIKE TEAR DROPS ON THEIR EYES YOU KNOW STUFF LIKE THAT UNDERSTOOD COUNCIL MEMBERS I'M I'M SO SORRY I'M SO SORRY WE NEED TO MOVE ON CAN WE JUST AND WE JUST DO COUNCIL AND ROUND TREE AND THEN WE CAN CAN I CAN I FINISH MY QUESTION LET HIM FINISH SORRY UM SO YEAH I MEAN I WOULD LOVE TO GET OUT OF HERE No, that's not the issue. It's an emergency, but go ahead.

Oh, okay. I'm asking this specific because you don't discriminate with New Jersey Devils team, like the New Jersey Devils, our team, tattoos on the arm?

No, what it is is they go through our intelligence and they identify tattoos that may be gang-related. So the only type of tattoos that we do discriminate is gang-related tattoos.

So does the police department discriminate against a New Jersey Devil Team logo tattoo on the arm of one of your recruits?

Not if it's not gang related, no.

How do we know a New Jersey Devil Team tattoo is not gang related or it's gang related?

I wouldn't know for sure. I would have to speak to our intel guys. Like I said, they have the training, so they're the one that kind of go through the tattoo system.

And I'm being specific because these are the type of emails that I receive of people who are not receiving, who grew up in this city all their life. And because they have a New Jersey, their belief, I don't know, but their belief is that they didn't get accepted when they sent me the grade and everything that was high, but they said that they were refused because they have a New Jersey Devils tattoo on their arm and they grew up in a certain area.

Yeah, if you could, could you send that information to us and we'll look into it?

This was last year, but yes, I can. Another thing, my last thing, is there a cap on overtime hours or are the officers allowed to make as much money as possible?

Like I said prior, there's no cap on the actual overtime, but there's a cap on the amount of time they can work. So like I was explaining to Councilwoman Jackson is that they can't work a certain amount of times straight, that they would have to take a break before they could come back. But no, we don't have a cap on the total amount of time

So the cap was 16 hours, right? Can't work more than 16 hours.

Absolutely.

But together, how many hours? Are there 2,000 hours that they can't go over?

There's no cap.

So there's no cap. Thank you very much.

No, I'm going to yield and go forward most of the questions that I was going to ask. I did want to just piggyback on, well, if he's going to ask one, I'm going to ask one. I want to go back to the residency. I know at one time they were trying to put forth an ordinance for a five-year residency because it's kind of, people move here just to get on the police force and then move on and that's sort of to Councilman Duprey's point and even Councilman Jackson they come live here for a year get on and then move on to another municipality um whatever happened

I just want a record. I just want you to- Yeah, it did go into effect. I know it did. So they did have five years of cumulative that they lived in the city of Newark prior. They weren't even a Newark resident today, but they could prove that they had been here. Maybe they went to high school here and stuff of that nature. That's something that they did bring forth and that came through. But the only thing now when we talk about civil service, if that's something that Um, like councilwoman Jackson mentioned about doing more civil service hires, they go by the city and they don't send you the list based on the ordinance that we have. They would only send you the list based on the residents.

That even somebody could have been a child here for five years or 10 years and then moved off and came back, lived here for a year, get back on and go back to where they were raised. I mean, that five-year piece. So it's illegal for us based on state law to put that into effect to say that they've had to be a resident.

Right. And they have to agree to move back for a certain period of time once they get hired. Right. Okay.

Yeah, sorry, Mr. President. Just real quick, follow up to Councilman Kelly's point. Is it possible someone to earn over $200,000 in overtime on the police side? Is there someone on the list that thought it was like an error or something? I would have to look into it. And then for fire, I noticed that you guys have a substantial increase in your requests. There are a number of positions that you're looking to add. I'm glad to see that you guys are investing in inspections because we get a lot of complaints, especially from businesses, about how much time it takes for them to get their fire inspections done. And sometimes that impacts their ability to get a CO So I think that's a good thing. I noticed that your OT, a lot of it on the fire side is eaten up by superiors. Is that because you're carrying a lot of vacancies with captains and other higher titles within fire? Yes, absolutely.

that's the biggest driver is you know some of those non-duty injuries a lot of our captains are out long term so and then the other biggest driver is manpower shortages so but currently the members that retire they're currently still on the books the budget books until they come off then we actually promote so you're going to promote more uh

fire officers into superior positions to hopefully reduce some of that OT? Absolutely. Thank you.

Madam Clerk, you had a concern about the museum. She had someone from the museum. Can we just listen to the museum and that because they have...

I just had two questions. I'm done. I'll get them later.

I had to get a new...

engine. Can you explain the process of overtime? Who gets it first? And then who's called then last? Like we break down the protocol of overtime for the police division. Regular overtime.

Well, that's pretty much based on the need and what's occurring at the time. So a lot of times if we're having like festivals and events and stuff of that nature, we try to go to the administrative guys that work in the office and bring them out on the weekends. So that way we're not overdue.

So is it sergeants, lieutenants, or like I know you're saying administrative guys, but the way that it's broken down, who gets the overtime first?

It depends on the need because we might have an event where you need one supervisor and five officers. So then we will have one of the sergeants come out. If not the lieutenant, we would try to start at the Holy Springs and work our way up that way. And then we'll bring them out later. But when it comes to overtime that's on the streets with the precincts and stuff of that nature, then that goes to the officers. Because a lot of times our problem comes with manpower shortage that maybe somebody's calling out sick or maybe they're short and they kind of start holding over the guys that's already working. So when it comes to that type of overtime, then it'll come straight from the guys that boots on the ground already because there's already there. And with our schedule, it's hard to bring people back in who's not working now. So a lot of times when it's in the different precincts, those guys in that precinct are the ones that get hit with the most of the overtime that's there. But if it's something that's ahead, And then they got asked for volunteers and stuff of that nature and who's signing up and things like that. So we try to spread it out as best as we can. But sometimes you might know like the fifth where a lot of our crime happens, they might have a lot more overtime there. And their guys will do the overtime because they're used to that precinct. A lot of guys sometimes don't want to go over here and stuff of that nature because they're getting enough overtime where they are.

And is that policy driven? So I know we're talking about being equitable, but that's policy driven in terms of this is the overtime policy that we have. Is there a policy on the police side? I know that the city has an overall policy, but is there a policy on the police side that says this is how we govern, how we handle overtime?

We have an overtime policy, but it doesn't break down who gets called first. Because like I said, it depends on the need. It depends on what's going on. It depends on manpower that you have at the present time. And depends on how far ahead you know that the overtime is needed and where we could get the people from. So no, we don't have anything specifically about that, but we do have a policy in place for overtime.

So when you talked about the 10 million increase that you're looking for in an overall budget, you talked about some of them were other contractual issues. Do you know what those other contractual issues are and what would it cover in that 10 million breakdown that was asked for in the increase?

I would have to get that breakdown for you. I know the majority of that is the contract and the raises, but I would have to give you that breakdown of exactly where all that lies. But mostly it's in, wait, let me see. I might have it here though.

I don't want to tell you if I do not have the correct answer.

And why are you looking for that? What was the proposed budget for fire for 2026 and police? And how much have you spent year to date? IT WOULD BE UNDER WHAT YOU PROPOSED FOR 2026. WE LOOK AT WHAT YOU PROPOSED, WHICH PART OF THAT IS THE 10 MILLION INCREASE. HOW MUCH HAVE YOU SPENT YEAR TODAY?

So for police, our proposed budget was, because I think you might not have been here when we were going over the PowerPoint. So it would be the proposed budget would be $185,815,369. And last year, our adopted budget was $172,557,843. All right. So that's a year today.

How much, how much have you spent?

I would have to give you that year today, the year to date, how much we've spent, because I can give you overtime what was spent because that's something we track every week.

I'm good. So clerk, can you just forward forward to me the year to date numbers from fire and police? I know they have to get out of here. I appreciate it. Thank you guys.

And for you, you wanted to have someone from the museum. Yes, they're present. They're there for time, right? Yeah. So you would talk to the Department of Public Safety agreeing that you would give them the opportunity? Yes.

Is that correct? Okay. Yes. Yes. I'm Eric Pennington, Business Administrator. I just want to respond to two things quickly about the overtime. The question about whether or not an officer made $200,000 in overtime, if you're saying that includes all police personnel, that is accurate. It is true. The top 10 people, employees, and more in the city of Newark are public safety personnel in terms of total earnings. The deputy chiefs have a particular opportunity to earn more in overtime because they have mandated on-call time that they are paid pursuant to the contract. I think that that contract is more onerous on the city than it has to be. I'm the one who negotiated it, and I made a mistake on that one. I will take some responsibility for it. We are looking at eliminating... They don't know this right now, but they're going to find out in 30 seconds. We're looking at... eliminating the deputy chief's position because it does seem to be too much overtime for not representative work. And I have to deal with that. I will address it. And one of the ways to do that is to eliminate that position. The other overtime issue I think it was sort of related to EPU. An executive protective unit that we have now has less officers than were here under Mayor Booker. To the extent that you, counsel, want us to decrease that number, the administration, this part of the administration, we do not engage in operational issues with respect to the police. We trust the operational decisions of the chief. She is responsible for all operational decisions. The director of police reports to me and the mayor. The chief reports to director, and the chief is the one who is responsible for uniform operational issues, and I don't tell her what to do.

Clerk. Yes.

Yeah, I can speak on fire. In terms of the overtime distribution on the fire, we do have an administrative clerk that distributes the overtime. It's being done fairly, it's being done equitably, and it's done by contract. So in terms of our overtime, we also look at the knowledge, skills, and ability. So the overtime is built based on the knowledge, skills, and ability of that member, depending on what the type of the overtime is for.

Do you want to?

Thank you, Public Safety. We appreciate you. council president council members i beg your indulgence for the next two minutes to do a brief introduction of the president and ceo of north museum of the art who unfortunately has her signature event in less than a half an hour so we would like for her to come to at least introduce ourselves to the council and then rent and we're going to bring back yes okay because that's

This is very present. Very important, too. I love the museum, but... We're going to come back afterwards. We'll come back. All right. Thank you.

Okay.

You will be right back. How long would the museum need? An hour, half hour?

No, five minutes. What is it?

Okay. Can you have the person from the museum come?

I'm going to work. Okay.

So we stay, we stay.

Good evening, everyone. I'm Lisa Funderburk, the new director and CEO of the Newark Museum of Art. Thank you, Council President Katana, for saying you love the museum. We love hearing that right off the top. It's an honor and privilege to be here. And I want to say thank you to our city council, to the Honorable Mayor Baraka for the continued support of Newark Museum of Art. You all don't know me really well. Some of you have gotten a chance to chat with me in between. Councilman Crump sits on our board, but we are doing great work at the museum and we're poised for the best five to ten years that you can ever imagine. And I'm not saying that because I have to say it is saying it because I know it, but I'm available for questioning. I'm here with Shirley Thomas Ward, who is the lifeline of this museum. Do you all know her? She's a deputy director of learning and engagement. And I know she has been in direct service to each ward and really stewards this community well. So we just wanted to say thank you and hello. And congratulations to each of you, too.

Thank you. Thank you, Council President. Just real quick. I just want to say that, you know, I appreciate the work that you've done so far. I've seen Ms. Funderburg at work and she is doing a phenomenal job at the library. Excuse me, museum at the museum. It's hot up here, for whatever reason, at the museum. And so we appreciate it. And I do understand that you have to run for the program this evening. But at some point, Council President, hopefully we can bring Ms. Funderburg back to the council for a special conference, so for a real introduction, so we can really see how she's doing.

As noted, Madam Clerk. As noted by Councilman Crump. The other thing to the members of council, uh any questions regarding we are going to forward them to you uh questions on the budget so if this governing body will make sure that we raise those questions like we raise questions to the other departments of vacancies and etc so we will follow you we will send some correspondence to you thank you

And we expect that, and you will get a timely response, and we're excited to partner with you. So thank you. Good luck on the rest of the evening. It's Michael B. Jordan Day at the Museum for the Newark Black Film Festival. So hopefully you all wrap up early and come see us before you go to bed tonight. So thank you so much. Hear that, Councilman?

Wrap up early. We'll wrap it up.

All right. I appreciate you all.

Have a good night. Public safety. By the way, public safety is very dear to me, you see, because my kids are public safety. But, you know, when we talk about this overtime, right, I'd like you to compare one of these afternoons. My daughter's a Port Authority. You got to see their overtime. You only need two sets of these to look at the overtime. And, you know, when you see the North Police overtime, Sometimes there is a lot of, that overtime is a lot of investigative cameras and et cetera. And we have the finest police department in this whole country. I'm happy because I have a son that's in the police department. And, you know, the police is dear to all of us. And I just want to say, you know, it's been an opportunity seeing the growth of the North Police Department and the fire department. And then seeing John in a position where he has experience with making sure that first responders and that they're on top of things. But look, it's important that you continue and tell us because we're here to help. We're not going to be here to erase things and and we are here to add on to what you need. So let's continue. Thank you.

Thank you. I do have a couple of questions for OEM and just one last comment for since Mr. Pennington clarified who is in charge of the executive protection. All due respect, I'm just sorry. Since we're talking about looking around the state of New Jersey, there's no other mayor in this state that has more than two people escorting it and what we have in this city is ridiculous and a slap in the face to the residents who have to call for your services while we have all this whole team oh i don't care if it's 10 it's too much Right. And that's on the record and that's out and that's blunt. And I don't know what itinerary you have, but it's no more itinerary than any of us have going back and forth to work and we don't have it. And so because you make that decision, you know, I have the utmost respect and I do love you. You know that whatever their issues are, some of that stuff need to move over to the private side. And I'm being very serious. The residents of this city do not deserve to shoulder the burden of executive protection that is overrun with ridiculousness. Joe D is the county is that he got one guy driving him and he's over the whole county. OK, so my message is I don't know if my council colleagues agree or not, and I don't really care. I know the residents of this city demand better service. We need response. And all of those people don't need to be assigned to be sitting at somebody's house, to be sitting over here, to be walking in a supermarket, to be making sure. No, no, no, no, no, no. We don't have that. And guess what? The same complaints they have for the mayor, they got the same complaints for the council. When we go in the supermarket, although some of mine is a little different, but I get the complaints too. When we go in the supermarket, when we go to places, we get the same energy. And so I'm just cautioning us I'm just really cautioning us, because as a council person, I am outraged at the amount of money, even under the book administration, that we sent on executive protection. This is not Washington, DC. This is not. And if people are uncomfortable in their position, go somewhere else. Because elected officials should not have to have bodyguards. I'm just being very serious. I can see one officer driving. I can see that. I can see maybe one driving and one in the back. Okay. But when you get passed and three and four and a car following, it's a little too much. And I'm not allowing that in my police, but they never have something to say about it. So that's my part.

Donna, I was there one time. And just tell you that the office of the mayor brings a lot of You can't compare it to sheriff and county exec. You're dealing with people who threaten you every given day and threaten your family. And sometimes the executive protection is important. I witnessed it because of the hate letters that came in when I was a short time as mayor. I realized that executive protection is important because you become a target once you're a mayor of a large city as such. And you know that, your father, Sharp. Sharp Mary James had to have that, too, because it was at the house. Someone has to be at the house because there's those times that become serious. When you get calls that something may happen to you, there's always somebody trying to harass you at a given place, an employee who's distrunk and upset because he didn't get what he wanted. They come to your house. So again, you know, I think second protection is important. I see that as when a person who was there for nine months and met, it was important to me because I was getting letters and I was not even elected. Mayor, just the appointed, you know, and serving the term. It was really tough at that time. You know, dealing with, we know where you live, we know where your house is. And, you know, you sit in the office across the hall and you start thinking, somebody's telling you that we know where you live. And what time your wife comes home, what time your kids come home, you tend to, you have to have that protection. Then at the time we had the gang, different groups of gangs who were threatening. They said, we'll get you. So again, we got to look at it. And I think I had executive protection at a given time. Not that I needed a lot, but I needed it because, again, the concern of my family. So I just want to protect this.

I understand. I'm just talking about the manpower. I accept that, and I accept the threats that come with the job. But if that's the case, then all of us need it. And so what I'm saying is I don't want it. I don't need it. Because I live in the city. If I got a beef, I'm going to handle it. I'll go with you. But I just don't want us to keep... The amount of people is ridiculous. The people in the community can see that and it's not a good look. It's not, I get the threats are, but sometimes some of that threat comes from

I just wanted to say something real quick. I respect my colleague's opinion, but we also have to take into account, Councilwoman, we had three council members killed in other cities in the last two years. Killed. I take that very serious because I believe Newark is rougher than those cities that they were killed in, right? And I say this because I don't feel unprotected in this city, but I've had people put my house on Facebook with my wife and my child. And if it's going to take me out of my character, I would rather have protection. And I don't have protection. We don't have protection as council, but I've had people put my house on Facebook, say disparaging things in the same house that I got my children and my wife in.

and they would want me to have protection that's all i would say yeah i don't i don't want to get into this rabbit hole but i just want to say that i can't get the police to secure my parking spot in front of city hall that's the real issue minimal protection but i do believe you know my colleague has a point you know we're talking about a situation where limited police resources. And I think it's important for all of us when we ask for information to get it. I don't think it's personal. I don't think anybody's trying to not protect the mayor. I definitely agree that the mayor should have executive protection, but we need to better understand how many people have executive protection, how many officers are detailed. to those individuals how much overtime is being expended on those details you know it's an expense right like we we run a city we have expenses we're accountable to the taxpayers and i think when you ask those kind of questions you know people shouldn't take it personal it's just he has a right as a councilwoman to ask those questions so that we could all better understand how resources are being deployed so that's my two cents

No, I just wanted to say from as far back as I can remember in the city hall, there's been EPU. Even a couple of our council members that have had threats on their life were assigned EPU or detectives or sergeants to travel with them. Growing up around Mayor James, there were people sitting at his house. There were two people traveling with him. And I've never seen in this administration more than two. So I don't know what other people are seeing. I've seen the one and the other. That is, which is what you said. You said one with him and one in the back. So I've never seen more than that. So I don't, I don't know what type of report, but I would believe being an elected official, as I stated, there were council people that had to be assigned because of threats on them at some point, which took away manpower to cover council people. We just know folk that can be. whatever, whatever. But I just want us to be real clear on the facts of what we see in 2026, as opposed to 1986, because the same thing was going on in 1986. And there was a rotating, if I'm not mistaken, nobody works four days a week and make overtime with EPU. I don't know if that would be something you would report to council women that acts, but I think they worked the 16 hours as you stated. And then, am I correct? And then there's a turnover in manpower for who's going to cover. Because you also don't want nobody to be coming up on you with a gun, councilman counseling or councilman Bay. And the person has been up for 24 hours with you or 16 hours. And you're not able to respond to anybody around you because while he's working, people around him are still under threat as well. So if somebody comes for me and I'm standing next to someone that someone has fought with, We all in trouble at the time. So these people are trained for whatever circle you're in to protect. So I don't know about the new and whatever Councilwoman Jackson is asking for, but I don't think this is anything new. And maybe you can explain that if it is.

But Councilwoman Jackson. Councilwoman Jackson and the rest of you also. And as was stated by the BA, the EPU now is less than even when Booker was here. It is. It's a lot less. And people don't realize because Booker, he didn't even have family in the city. That's right. And he had more people on his EPU than Booker. we do now. And I think we just, you know, we want to make sure that our mayor is protected because we're blessed that he decided to stay in the city, in the neighborhood to make sure that he was a part of the neighborhood. And we want to make sure that a part of that is that he is protected.

We all agree. We all agree. Now back to, uh, regularly televised, uh, the permit increase for the firearm permits. What was the number this year compared to last year? Yeah, fire arm permits.

Oh, fire arm permits.

I'm sorry. I heard fire, and I'm like. So the number of permits from last year, what was the number of permits this year?

I have the amount, so I would have to give you the actual permits. Because I know we had, they were back a lot at one point this year. And we had a couple of guys that we assigned over to that unit to make sure that they caught up. So right now we don't have backlog into last year like we had previously. So right now we're up to date, maybe a month or so behind. But for us, that's really great because there was a time when we were working the year prior.

Yeah, so if we know the plus minus of what those permit numbers look like, obviously because they're going up, but then that just tells us that there are more people that are applying for firearms, right? So it would be good for us to know what that number looks like in terms of the increase. Then in your training line for fire and police, how much have you allocated for not just internal police training, but outside police training in your training line? the number from last year to this year. What does that number look like that you budgeted for?

So with the permits, you're correct that it went up a lot because the law changed where more people are allowed to have weapons. So once that law changed, we started getting permit requests in tenfold. So we definitely have a lot more permits being requested now than we had previously before the change in the law. So that information I'll have for you.

and the other one the training line do you want me to send you something kind of break it down yeah i mean you should you should have you you should have the information and your uh budget presentation about how much you've allocated for your uh training i could tell you how much that we have on the budget line but not what we've used so far so what did you budget what did you budget for Right, so just forward me that information.

Yeah, because as you know, our budget's pretty, you know, intense, so I would have to.

How many number of police officers do we have currently, staff?

Police officers right now, I believe it's 1079, but let me give you the exact number.

And how many number of firefighters do we currently have, staff?

Total number of firefighters that we currently have is 468.

460 firefighters? 468. 468.

And police is 1079.

And police is 1079.

Yes.

Gotcha. Thank you.

Okay. Two quick things. Two for OEM and just one across the board. Where are we lacking at in equipment? I'm talking about from tape to trucks and cars. I was very upset. I was down here about three weeks ago. A detective was responding to something for us. Amen, thank him. Hopped in the car, pulled out the parking space, and the car cut off. Unacceptable. I know it's not personal to anybody here, but unacceptable that we have equipment that does not work. He could have been responding to any one of us. any situation, and for the cars that's parked on the street not to work. What do we need to do? Do we need to vet out some of the older ones? Do we need to get some of those cars that we got sitting up there in the parking deck washed off and get them on the street? You don't have to answer it now. Just give me an overview.

I know with the police cars, we always change them up because they run 24 hours a day. So our cars go down a lot. So we're always re-upping our fleet that we have. And of course, we have our own fleet department, so we try to fix what we can, but a lot of times we cannot. So we're always renewing our vehicles, doing leases and such, any way that we can kind of save to get enough in there. We try to do the... The was it the worst, not electric, but the hybrids. So we even try to do the hybrids and stuff like that, or that nature to kind of, you know, bring it up to date. But our problem is that we have a lot of vehicle accidents, which I know has come up before in the council. And that's something that we work on as well, because what we do have is a very young department in the process of having a young department, the police car sometimes is their first car.

Yep.

So we're always, like I said, they're getting ran in the ground and we're always getting more vehicles. So that's something we do almost every year as we try to renew the vehicles.

So equipment. I'm also talking about crossing guards. I know it's not before us today, but I need to see something in the budget for these crossing guards to have walkie talkies where they can get immediate contact.

We're in the process now of recruiting to bring on more crossing guards. Because as you know, the school year is starting up. And we have a lot of guys. It's a high turnover with the crossing guards. So that's one of those positions. We're always hiring it. And right now, we're having to push out now to try to get more crossing guards in before the new school year.

Right, so you all just heard that out there in the land during the budget hearing. We're also doing a super hiring here. You need crossing guards, ASAP, stop by any precinct and pick up the application. And I think it's also online, correct?

Yes, absolutely.

Okay, so online and stop by any police station. I'll print them out and drop them off because I know paper is an issue. um same for the fire department uh just real quick before we go on is our helicopter working now i know it was down for it's not working okay because it is up and running we're going to lend a few dollars to get it fixed amen but on the fire side we definitely have a need for additional apparatuses okay um

we're currently looking to purchase two engines and two trucks at this time we're going through a leasing program so you we should be seeing something really really soon but um most of the apparatus that we have are not nfpa standard and they're not up to code they're not up to uh nfp standards so most of them are over 15 to 20 20 years old so we're definitely in dire need of new apparatus okay

So I think we need to, Mr. P, you and I, we'll put our heads together. We'll work that out. Find a philanthropic dollar to help us out with that, sir.

Since you called my name.

Yes, sir, absolutely.

Real quickly, the fire apparatus is in process of being increased Fortunately, through the efforts of Senator Ruiz and others working with Mayor Baraka, there is a new fee that is assessed to hotel usage where $3 per night goes specifically for use by the fire department. Because of that, the fire department now is in the process of ordering, I believe, two tankers and a ladder truck, and it will be paid for from that fund. So they don't need an increase in their budget for that equipment, but they may need other adjustments to the budget, but not for that.

Okay, thank you, so good. So in terms of hoses, and I know it's little stuff, but I know in the years I've had to take the yellow tape out of my car. It's not ever a problem, because I stay at Home Depot. But do we have what we need? Do we have the defibrillators? Do we have a fire extinguisher? I know the new team was working hard to make sure those are inside the police cars. Are we where we need to be? Do we need to order extra? Because that one second um and we've lost a lot of staff so i just want to say that if you got to respond to me if you have to respond to the chief if you have to respond to director james if you have to respond to my friends here in the second row from the pd department i want us to be able to get there and i want everything to be working if it's a fire extinguisher defibrillator whatever we need i need it to be working do we have And if we don't, please tell me because I'll go get the money. Do we have all of that stuff in the back of every police car right now today?

In terms of needs assessment, we do have hoses and nozzles and appliances. So we apply for grants, AFG grants and different several types of grants to be able to purchase all the needs, all the tools and equipment that we need.

Right, because I know at the boat fire thingy and a couple of times we've had the, I know it's low pressure as well. So I can't put it all on the fire department. But do we have the adequate hoses? Because I remember two inch and we needed to have four inch. No, we have the adequate hose.

We definitely do.

Thank you. Just wanted to make sure. Another question. Are you all right with the tape over there and the little yellow markers for the crime scene? Because I know one time I saw some cups out there.

So what it is, like each of our officers, as they go out, they're supposed to inspect their vehicles. So we wouldn't know offhand each vehicle that doesn't have anything is up to the officers to let us know. So sometimes they may not accurately tell us what they need until, like you said, there's a day out in the street when they realize they need something. So we depend on our officers to let us know what it is that they need. And they're supposed to do an inspection every day when they go to their vehicle. So as far as I know. Gotcha.

everything is it should be there okay but if if it's not then that's something that we would have to you know make sure that our captains are letting us know my last public service announcement to the npd and the inept if you guys don't have everything on the truck if you don't have it in the back of the police car please send a email to the chief and if she needs 12 more dollars i'll be more than happy mr penderson you didn't hear that i'll be more than happy to plug it in Now to Mr. James, Director OEM. We are in the middle of a storm season. Between public service and the city, we did the best we could with what we have. I need you to tell me what we need But I also need to tell me, how many generators do we have on hand? Because I know per region, PSC and G are supposed to have 50,000, and they do not. When we lose power, we need to be able to help some folks get the power back. Now, a generator probably would not have helped that family on Grumman when the tree fell into their home. But when we had that power outage, because we... hired someone who doesn't know what they're doing and they knock that power out in the south ward building that new precinct where the old precinct was um we needed some generators at that point and we didn't have them so do we have how many do we have what do we need um and i know i need to deal with dpw with the trees and things like that but what does oem have to supplement uh dpw when we have a storm like we had once psng gets the power off we need to be able to do that because i was there when i'll just use this last example and i'm this is my last question council colleague the tree fell in front of the apartment building in hillside yes when that fire truck pulled up from hillside they had three soils on that truck Them firefighters jumped down. They was looking for permission to cut the tree. I said, well, I'm the council woman. I guess I text a big M and said, look, they need permission. I think you granted. I don't know. Cut the tree. It was our tree. It fell across the street, which means it landed in hillside, but it was blocking the door. So I just need to know what we need to make it happen. So close your eyes. You in the, we in the mega millions ball here. We winning. We got a billion dollars, what you need.

Every department needs something. But honestly, Councilwoman, let me talk about the protocol. First of all, in an incident like that, whenever it's electric, PSC and G is going to have to respond. We do not touch. Fire does not touch. We cordon off the area. We make sure residents don't get injured by coming in live wires. We do not come out there with generators. And if we know what the power is going to be out for a significant amount of time, then we look at relocation. It's primarily the landlord or the homeowner's responsibility. We don't hook up their house to a generator. It just doesn't work that way. But all of our equipment at OEM is purchased through UASI funding. And so that equipment is roughly, we're talking about 11 to 14 years old. So we're going to be looking at some of that stuff being in disrepair. But we do keep it up to code. We send it for regular servicing. And we use it majority right now at most of the music festivals or outdoor events that the city uses, has. know it actually works. We don't want to generate a sensor for 10 years having used it at all. That's what we do right now. But we have a multitude of generators. There are about four big ones, and we have a lot of portable ones which we use throughout the city. That's currently what we do right now, but we don't jump up there on the wires. We let PSCG send the people out, and my job is to get them out there as fast as possible. Okay. I know they were a little slow.

Don't worry. I took care of that with my email. um on this last storm where we had all that damage all over the city but grumman we had that major the east war they're not going to be slow to respond here with what they charge us for our bill that's another time however my concern is i need a list of what you have how old it is what needs to be replaced what we do and don't respond to because i'm going to go back to sandy as i sat over in new hope for a whole month of my life which i did not mind doing we were not prepared at all And for me, what I saw from Sandy to today, I don't see anything different from Sandy to now. And these little storms are becoming major problems. And if we're not ready for the little storms, which we're not, but FDNY and FDNY, Lord Jesus. That's my friends in New York. I apologize. north fire and north police uh oem we did a yeoman's job you guys got the boats out there you're doing what you can do we just need to make sure we have the equipment that when the sandy comes because she's coming okay and we're prepared this time i don't want to wait till it gets here and we have to think about how we're going to move and maneuver including folks who are home that need to get in here, right? Because we want people to go home and get rest. I'm talking about the overtime. I want the officers, the firefighters, OEM, DPW. I want them to go home and go to sleep. But we also have to make sure people can get to where the emergency is. And I've been with DPW when we talk about the tree trucks and all that, that we should have had 20 by now. But, you know, that's another budget hearing. But I just want to make sure that whatever you have, I need to know, we need to know what that is, how old it is, how soon it needs to be replaced. And are we storm ready? Because I know we're not. Thank you. Yes.

I have a question. All of you have already been invited to the tour, the OEM and EOC next Friday. So we can talk more detail. Some things, you know, I can't discuss publicly. But I will tell you this. The federal government is moving away from funding FEMA. and uic so they are actually talking about getting rid of fema which has been phenomenal we know over the years dealing with disasters uh worldwide and they have already cut our uic funding 50 so uh there are a lot of things that we need to fight for on a legislative level on a federal level uh which we're not getting anymore they're already out of maintaining equipment so just like the helicopter we received the helicopter they're not paying for maintenance UASA is not paying for any vehicles anymore, and this morning they said they're not paying for any radios or radio training. So they're really scaling back funding, but that's something we need to discuss and push to our legislative leaders.

Director James, if you could forward that information through the clerk so we would all be – she would send the information to us, we'd appreciate that. Yes, Councilor. The final question is –

First of all, I just want to say thank you, Director, because I've communicated with you with a couple of emergencies over the years in the West Ward, and you've been Johnny on the spot, man, and been there and got everybody out of there. and make sure that the families was taken care of. You really did a great job and communicating too. And I really want to thank you for that. Real quick for the fire department, you know, we've had two tragedies with two firefighters in the port. You know, that still is really heavy on the heart of the city. And what type of training, is there money aside for training for our firefighters in the port?

Absolutely, we just went through a rigorous training. So because of that situation, we look at lessons learned. So after that situation, we've been training day, night, quarterly, weekly. And in terms of training, the city hasn't worried about anything because we got that under control. But is that in terms of shipboard firefighter training? We've been doing shipboard firefighter training as well.

So is that an increased director in our budget? Does the training, the new training down in the port, does that cause an increase in the budget?

Negative. It was not an increase in the budget. No, absolutely not. And most of the training that we search for is grant money, which is an offset to the taxpayer. It helps us out a lot. Thank you, Derek. Appreciate it.

Thank you so much. We will forward all the questions that... Council members may have. I know Councilman Silva had some questions. We will forward those questions to the department as soon as the clerk is prepared with the questions we will forward them to you. Thank you. And thank you. And thank you for, this has been a marathon today. We started with a council meeting and we're ending with budgets. Thank you. You're welcome.

Thank you. Thank you guys. Appreciate all of you.

thank you thank you next department to present will be the department of public works public works okay thank you chief director james i'll get you one if you come prior

Thank you, Chief Morris.

Donna. Yes. Yes.

Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you, Director Anderson.

Thank you.

You know what? Hennant. That's Hennant. Hennant. We're going to get you one, Doc. Councilwoman, we're going to get you one. When she's finished, we're going to need EPU.

She's praying for you, she said. She's praying for you. She is. She's like, I'll take it.

She's also going to find a lot of money, too.

I have, can I ask the first question? Yes. He's gonna do introduction. Okay. He's gonna do his introduction.

Just before the introduction, real quick. How you doing, director? Can't even get his intro out, right? I just wanna say, what happened to the new guy?

Yeah.

No, this water is sewer.

Eric, he just introduced.

Is this water a sewer?

All right. I'll let him do his intro. I'll let him do his intro. My bad.

This water is, wait a minute.

He's a Westwater. Leave him alone, man. That's my guy.

This water is sewer, right?

Westwater. Don't hit him too hard.

Okay. What department is this? Water is sewer?

No, no. Public. All right. Let's let him do it. Oh.

Okay. Okay.

good afternoon council president good evening good evening good evening good evening been here all day right afternoon good evening council president council members uh all those that's in the audience and and everybody that's viewing us the department of public works is committed to enhancing the quality of life from new york's residents businesses and visitors by maintaining a clean safe attractive and sustainable city This is a desirable place to live, work, and visit. At the heart of that mission is one simple priority, keep the trash off the streets of our great city. In the past year, we've made significant improvements to leadership, staffing, and operational procedures across all divisions to increase the efficiency, responsibility, and service reliability These changes reflect our commitment to greater accountability and shared ownership and responsibility among our workforce and residents to help keep Newark clean. As the city is growing, DPW is growing. We continue to invest in the department by purchasing new equipment for enhanced service delivery, timely collections of trash and recycling, and optimized snow removal. This year's fleet expansion includes 24 new garbage trucks, 10 new supervisors pickups, and six snow plows with spreaders. These vehicles are equipped with GPS trackings, cameras, radio technology to foster internal communication and operational efficiencies. This month, we received the first of our eight electric garbage trucks, advancing a more sustainable low-emission fleet. The department is very close to being a 24-7 operation. We're at 90% right now. By September the 1st, we'll be 100% at 24 hours. That means every eight hours, we'll have a shift coming in to May and DPW, including Saturday and Sunday. around the clock cleaning services at the same time skilled employees including mechanics and buildings maintenance staff are performing more work in-house maximizing our workforce talents and reducing operational costs the department strengthens its public outreach strategy by providing residents with timely collection updates throughout his website social media channels quarterly city-wide mailers and enhanced customer service these efforts keep residents informed of collection schedules holiday changes and best practices for trash disposal and recycle this summer the 2026 brick city cleanup brought together more than 700 volunteers including residents city departments non-profits and first responders to restore city pride and support ongoing efforts to keep their city clean in july we welcome a new director whose leadership will set the department up for a continued growth and future success this was a year marked by change challenges and steady progress we are grateful for the ongoing support of mayor ross baraka administration and the new york municipal council in helping dpw we move forward to become an exemplary institution for the city cleaners collectively we'll get there together i just want to thank you know the residents throughout the city it's been a challenging year um of us optimizing the city and getting garbage picked up on time and you know changing the culture citywide or how we do things um with that i'm gonna put on my hat for the beating and i'm ready to take the questions council ramo's and councilwoman bain oh that's from raymond's mb

Thank you, Mr. President and Director Deema, welcome back. From your one week hiatus. Eric still got to explain to us what's going on. So I noticed in your budget that the number of employees proposed for 26 is about 18 less than what was approved last year. Is that an accurate statement or could you explain to us a little bit about what's going on?

yes so so towards in march this the the water i mean in march dpw did a restructuring and reorganizing with some some of the cleaning staff became a part of the actual departments that they cleaned on their budget now so the public safety uh chief explained that there were about 20 something employees that i would imagine were

part of your organization that are responsible to clean the public safety complexes that are now budgeted under their department? Yes, we thought it was. Okay.

Councilman, yes, we thought, to give you a little clarity, we thought it was better that they're being supervised by the people they work with. We've seen that it was challenges over the last two years with our supervisors trying to get to all the multiple buildings that the city may have to try to ensure the staff was doing it. And the police would say, I'm not supervising them. They don't listen to me. But we thought that was better that they supervise the staff.

So your salary and wages, the request is about 1.2 million higher than it was last year. Is that attributed to salary increases because of the union contracts? Or did you add additional personnel since you were able to move those 25, 30 maintenance staff over to the appropriate departments?

No, that's a contribute to the contracts or the settlement of contracts increased through the union contracts.

And then under other personnel expenses, you see a reduction of 1.4 million. What is that attributed to? It says personnel services, other pay. Is that overtime pay? Is that the benefits? Maybe Darlene can answer why there's a reduction there.

I'm sorry. Yes, yes, Councilman. That was the reduction in the per diems that we were hired.

okay so you were paying those as contracts or temporary employees temporary per diem employees yes okay actually um what one of the and and i do appreciate you know that and and your assistant director your leadership i think a lot of us have seen uh an improvement in in refuse collection um we we did have some some very uh tough times that we went through where we went through weeks where garbage and recycling wasn't picked up consistently and i do appreciate the fact that you've really worked hard to get that back on schedule along with the team that that makes that happen at dpw one of the complaints that we still get a lot of is regarding um street sweeping and the inconsistency and just last week i had um a bunch of residents call because on the police side they did the ticketing and in some cases they do the towing but then when they don't see the sweeper go by um you know they get very angry and understandably so and from my understanding one of the problems that we have is that the equipment is down a lot AND WHAT IS THE DEPARTMENT DOING? ARE THOSE PIECES OF EQUIPMENT PURCHASED? ARE THEY LEASED? WHAT CAN WE DO TO MAKE SURE THAT WHEN WE HAD AN OUTSIDE CONTRACT WE HAD ISSUES BUT IF THEY WERE RESPONSIBLE TO GO DOWN SUMMER AVENUE BASED ON THEIR CONTRACT THEY WENT DOWN SUMMER AVENUE WHETHER THE PIECE OF EQUIPMENT DID A GOOD JOB of sweeping and whether it had water was another issue. But I think one of the problems that we have is that the sweeping, since it became part of the in-house responsibility of DPW, has been very inconsistent. How do we improve that? And are there needs that you have when it comes to your budget that would enable you to accomplish that?

Council President, Councilman, first I want to introduce, I forgot, my apologies, Interim Assistant Director Jessica Cavaco. First and foremost, over the last year we did an assessment We never had the correct amount of sweepers. So we're in a capital bond that we're doing for the equipment purchases. We're looking to get eight more street sweepers. We think the city needs about 12 to 15 daily on the street, meaning 12 working and three that sits in reserve. Right now we have nine sweepers in any given day. with the rate that they may break down, we can have six between five or six. So currently it's seven working. It was seven working this morning of those not two in the shop. So we do realize that we're binding out to make sure we get ahead of that by having the actual total count to be 16 street sweepers for the city. Thank you, director.

Council.

Thank you, Council President. So first, I want to say thank you, Director Dean, because I know it's a yeoman's job that you are covering down on two of the largest departments in the city. And you've definitely been very responsive. So I do appreciate that. But with that being said, to piggyback on what Councilman Ramos said, we are constantly getting calls about, you talked about Ms. Street Sweeping, Ms. Pickups. And I'm one of those calls because I got Ms. Pickups yesterday. And so when we talk about the upgrade of fleet under your top priority projects, how many... additional trucks are we talking about pieces of equipment when we talk about upgraded fleet how many what kind what are going to do when you mentioned the i think you said you you just you just purchased eight electronic trucks so are those the trucks that pick up those big garbage cans that we now have that will pick them up instead of the workers picking them up is are those those trucks are they different

Council President, Councilwoman Banks. So the trucks that we purchased, they do have tippers on them. So the tippers are those things that you put on the back of the trucks, but the men is a challenge for making sure the men wants to use it. They figured that it slows them down, but we do have them on the truck. Those trucks are coming with tippers too. I think that most every one of the 24 new trucks that came in, even for the eight yarders, They have tippers on the back. That's when they pick the garbage can up and dump it in. All those have tippers. What we also did was recycling. We brought it in-house, but we never had the actual amount of trucks that we need. So of those 24 new trucks, 18 of them went to recycling. Two of them went to our trash pickup, and it's another... Four, they'll be waiting on the decals to come in and they'll be going to like the evening shifts to pick up and to make it 24 seven. So to answer your questions about the equipment, We currently have 49 refuse trucks that's just for garbage, and we have 18 that's just for recycling. But on a daily garbage day, we could be using from 29 to 33 trucks can be out on the road.

So under your top priority projects, also you mentioned optimization of routes for garbage and recycling. What does that entail? Because there's no details here.

You say it again, you say it.

Under top priority projects, you have listed optimization of routes for garbage and recycling. What does that entail and what's the cost associated with that?

I don't, so the cost of, I don't, it's not a cost associated. We looked at the optimization of routes, meaning that at one time we're still operating on some routes, maybe 80% of the routes in the city was things that we did 30 years ago. So 30 years ago, you go across South 11th Street, there was no houses on it. Might've been 10 houses between 18th Avenue. I mean, between Avon, I mean, Woodland and 16th Avenue, you may have only seen maybe 20 houses. One side of the whole street was vacant. Now both of those blocks are occupied. So optimizing routes mean we may have these trucks that's doing long routes that they need to be split in half. So we need to, as we bring on more fleet, one route may be cut into two now, right? Because we got more houses on some of the stuff that was vacant for years. When a part of the century, a lot of the century world was vacant, it's not vacant no more, right? So we need to pick that garbage up. So as optimization, we started moving the dumpsters. We have our own crew that just pick up dumpsters, whether they're front load dumpsters or rear load dumpsters. Optimization meaning making all of our dumpsters to be a front load dumpster, meaning the front load means the truck comes in, picks it up, dump it, put it back down and keep going, versus the men coming with a rear loader, hooking up a dumpster that's kind of getting to be unsafe and dumping it into the truck. That's another part of optimization. The other part of optimization is the technology we institute, like putting the cameras in the truck. We're doing a pallet soon and put the 360 cameras around the entire truck, the front of the truck, the back of the truck to see it and the size of the truck. The other part is making sure we put radios back in the truck, with GPS in the truck, and create a dashboard. the dashboard that we were looking to go live but we haven't went live yet is to make sure residents can log in and see where the street sweeper at they're supposed to do that block see the garbage truck see the recycling truck and see the stove vehicle that came down the truck so when they're calling us we can guide them through our we opened the office of customer service two years ago so we can guide them through and we can say log on the street sweeper is coming but it's two blocks away so it didn't get to your block yet so you can pull out your mobile phone and say it's coming Or making sure optimization is making sure our supervision is visible. So of those 10 new supervisors trucks, we mark them up where it says supervise, right? And making sure we're We changed the culture where we don't say we're supervisors of DPW, not supervisors of a certain division in DPW. Because the residents don't know that. They just know you work for DPW. That you should be able to ride to your neighborhood, whether it's a tree, whether it's a street sweeper, whether it's recycled garbage or illegal dumping. You're the supervisor. You should be able to make a call to get it abated.

I just have one last question. Thank you so much about staffing. What percentage of your staff are provisional and what's the head count that you need to work at your optimum capacity?

The provisional head count right now is 27 that I have. And that's related to civil service. Some tests, some exams didn't come out. And the exams that did come out, I'm happy to say that personnel, I think they hired a new person maybe like six or seven months ago, is very aggressive. And when the lists do come out, of asking us to make these people permanent. So that process has started not just in DPW, but also in water and sewer. The total head count. We haven't locked down a total number with that yet because we've started bringing on temporary workers that we hire from our reentry workers that works five hours, right? So we can get a better understanding of what we need. But the current headcount right now is about 490. That means about 150 to 160 are part-time five-hour workers. Thank you. DPW does consist when people just look at DPW council women as sanitation. DPW is also the tree department, the department of motors and public building.

Thank you, Council President. A couple quick questions. One is actually a request. With regards to overtime, first of all, good evening. With regards to overtime, there's no information with regards, we get the total amount, but not broken down by each person like in other departments. Can we get that information? Sure. And part of that, in addition, I guess a question is, and that's for 2025 as well as up to date, year to date. Can we, well, my question is with regards to overtime for 2026, it seems like it's less than half of what it was last year. Is there a concerted effort to reduce overtime?

Yes, there's always an effort to reduce overtime, but it's also an effort to become more efficient. Overtime is not sustainable at the rate that it's going. So when you bring in efficiencies, you're looking to reduce overtime. You start seeing things where you don't need overtime.

And what helps with the reduction is the hiring of new employees or...

so council president councilman crump what helps with the reduction of overtime is monitoring making sure overtime is pre-approved right from the highest level also uh Making sure that you're having staggered shifts. When people come in at different times, I said DPW should be a 24-hour operation. They're making sure that we're maximizing and optimizing how we do things, changing the culture a little bit. If we can do things, for instance, we picked up on holiday something we didn't do last year. We did it maybe once or twice last year to figure it out. But this year, January, we started picking up on holidays, right? And we didn't do it last year. We also know that is a big increase with overtime because of the storms around snow, right? Most of our workers get double time doing snow, doing snow or ice weather related. That's a union negotiated thing that came in place. But the goal is not only to reduce overtime, it's also to optimize your workforce to making sure you're getting the maximum load of work out of your employees.

And with regards to, thank you, and with regards to Councilwoman Bay touched on it, the provisional workers, can we get a list of the provisional workers and how long they've been provisional? Yes. And another question, a question I actually had was in terms of revenue generating measures. HOW MUCH, AND IT INCLUDES COST ASSOCIATED WITH DEMOLITION AND BOARD UP ACTIVITIES, ET CETERA, DO WE HAVE A DOLLAR FIGURE IN TERMS OF HOW MUCH WAS GENERATED LAST YEAR IN TERMS OF REVENUE AND WHAT IT IS CURRENTLY?

WE CAN PROVIDE THAT NUMBER, COUNSELOR.

THANK YOU.

That's all I have.

Thank you, Council President.

I was looking at, okay, I'm trying not to do too much talk, but I do have some questions. It's long. You said you had 26 provisional?

I think it's 27.

So based on the report, it says 61 complete. So the 26 are who and in what division of DPW?

So, Councilwoman, the report is as of 7-1, right? This is where we put it in there. I said personnel has hired a person over. I think her name is Sider. She puts it out. So some of that stuff is in the process of like legislation. This is changing, this is inaccurate. It's changing daily.

Right, okay. So it's not 61 anymore. No, I don't think so. So Councilman Crump, I believe, asks for how long, because we do get calls of people that have been provisional for a very, very, very long time. And I know there's another report that probably comes with that. But I'll just wait on whatever information you send to Councilman Crump. That was your question, is that correct? How long and how much? Is that correct? Right. THANK YOU SO MUCH.

TWO QUICK THINGS, AND I'LL SEND THE REST THROUGH EMAIL THROUGH THE CLERK. YOU KNOW RECYCLING IS ONE OF MY PET PEEVES, AND I THINK WE NEED TO MAKE A CONSERVATIVE EFFORT TO COLLECT OUR STUFF. I understand you said you had to get additional staff for us to effectively do that. But I'm going to ask the community, as I did before, that when these folks are coming on your block, taking those recycling bags and sitting at the corner with 15, 20 bags, and then you know they're going around the other corner to put them in the truck, you need to start calling 911. I'll come with my car till we find the truck. and pick the bottles up and bring them down to recycling. Because for me, it's a lot of revenue we are missing. The aluminum prices, and I don't know where they are now, but I know last year they were increasing. And if that's the case, and I know you discussed, we need to ask the state to do better reimbursement on recycling. Not a problem. I don't have a problem doing that. But we also need to get the community to buy in. I know Newark Housing Authority does little to no recycling, and we need to improve that. But I know on my block and your block, the upper end of the West Ward, the South Ward, the West Ward going into East Orange, they are killing us collecting these plastic bottles. And they're only taking the bottles. And I know why, like you said, because they can go to New York transfer them over, they give them a receipt with money, and if they're making money, we should be making money. So if they found a monopoly on that, and I'm not fighting you, you know that. I'm just... knowing that we need the revenue that we need. We're in a budget crunch. We need more revenue coming in so you can do more things. Police, fire, everybody can do more stuff, hire more people, get more code enforcement officers in. So for me, every revenue stream needs to come on so that we can do the maximum of what we have to do. I may have to ask the police director to give me one officer per ward so we can get our bottles back because maybe that's the program we'll call it, get our bottles back. Because we need to do that. They are so sophisticated and organized now. They have houses that they put in these bottles in. So for me, I can't look the other way on that because that's my money. You know what I mean? I got to look at it like it's my money. It's our money, but it's my money. You know, I'm the collector here. So I would like to see us do something aggressively to get that under control. A police car will be serviced because all you got to do is pull up on them because I've done it on my block. I'm not scared. Put the bags down and get on, right? Get out of my can. I come outside. I don't care, one, two o'clock in the morning, get out my can because they're stealing our property. Bottom line, and I'm not playing with them no more because that's revenue that I could give to you and you could get another tree truck, which is my next thing. I know you worked hard on that. I know we, I don't know where we are in terms of our tree guys being, because Rouse used to be my guy, miss him, right? But I know he was high wire certified. And I know on those trucks, particularly when those buckets are going up, they have to have those safety certifications, not only for trucks, the city, but they need to have them for themselves so that when they're up there cutting, they know when to stop, when they should, when they shouldn't, when PSE&G needs to be called for everybody's safety, right? And so I don't know the progressive plan, but I want to give an answer. Mr. P, here goes more money for us. I propose that in the next year, when I'll find somebody to give us the money, we purchase 10 tree trucks. and that the city begin to offer, I know you have to, you and Mr. Esser have to come up with the policy, but we need to provide tree services to Newark residents. I know it's touching, I know, but I think we need to do it because when these people come in here from trim a tree, wherever they're coming from, they're charging now two, $3,000 to take down one tree. And I know that the elders who were having a problem on their property, um can't afford to take that down they can't even afford to trim the branches because i just had an elder son broke his arm he trying to go take the tree down because the raccoons are in her basement and i'm just in her attic i'm sorry but i'm just thinking the city it's revenue right we talked about the roll-off containers that waste management is doing a good job at as a revenue generator for the city so as we're optimizing i agree we need to move into more service for our community and then uh not shared service provider service mr p of drive up the contract for us to other municipalities so that we can help homeowners as well because in that we could create a business within our business that will generate revenue. We're getting a little bit better. I had a little disturbing situation two weeks ago with the DPW supervisor who didn't see me. He wasn't supposed to, but I did not like the way he was engaging the two young men on the street because you're not going to be, I'm telling you now, I only didn't intervene because it was a moment and I didn't wanna, but you're not gonna be disrespectful to any of our staff. I don't want them to be disrespectful to you, but I don't want it as well. These are men and women who are working for the city of North providing us a service. And I know sometimes it's a difficult service, right? And I know sometimes it's a difficult relationship. But when we're disrespectful, and then they're disrespectful back, and our alleged supervisory management staff doesn't know de-escalation tactics, they're going to get right in there with me, and we're going back and forth. It's not a good look. And this happened at 1 o'clock in the morning. And I was outside. And I just left it. Right. And I didn't feel the need to call you because it kind of resolved itself as they looked around. But I didn't like it. Like not in the community, not in front of us, right? Not in front of the homeowners, not in front of the residents. Does that happen? If we need to talk about, I told you to go over on Longfellow. I told you to go, I'm telling you, I heard the conversation. I told you to do that side of 18th Avenue first. Nobody told you to come over here on Telford. I shouldn't hear all that at one o'clock in the morning. And the young men, because they were young and they probably just started because I could tell they weren't, ready, ready for it. That just can't happen out in the public. So just as a general rule of thumb, and I know we're working on that, but also as a public service announcement from Councilwoman Jackson, we've got to treat each other better. We've got to do that. And let me tell you something, supervisors, managers, I'm not going to allow you to talk to our younger staff, inexperienced staff in any manner. The next time it happens, I'm going to address you. Because that's my job. And you can't make these guys and some of them, some women, they dealing with stuff. Right. And so you pop off, they're going to pop off. And I don't need nothing popping off in the back of my house. OK, that's all I'll say on that. And then lastly, if we get those tree trucks to just to service the residents, because you have homeowners now because it happened at my mom's house. Thank God we got to clear it up. But when those tree roots buckle that sidewalk, they want the homeowner to fix the sidewalk. And then what happens, State Farm, Allstate and now these insurance companies are sending Louis a letter. saying that we're going to cancel your insurance if you don't fix that sidewalk. So I know we're a number of years behind in removing the tree root, but we got to do better with that. So Mr. Pennington and I will work on the tin trucks with the root removal at the back of it and the new high powered thing that'll go up a little higher because the trees are going up. But I just also want us to be mindful that that staff needs to be increased and our wages need to be competitive. I don't want these guys on the back of these trucks. I don't know all the salaries, but I know everybody not making a competitive wage. I know civil service that you don't control. We are one of the lowest paid civil service communities in this state. And that has to change for the quality of work. And I know you don't, but I'm a legislator now, so I'm going to make that happen. But we should not have these men and women working in any capacity less than what the neighboring towns are making. And right now we're the lowest. So thank you. We can work on those trucks. I think we both just did a PS announcement about treatment and how we talk to each other. And we could just improve on that. And I know some of the supervisors and managers are here. Thank you all for coming. But I need that to happen. Thank you. Councilman, councilman.

Just a couple of things. I'm out of the way. Just a couple of things. I'm out of the way. You had listed 203 precision workers. Is that number still accurate?

Yes.

Do you know how much we have spent year to date on those workers?

I don't have it in front of me.

You do? Okay, you do.

Precise? $4,883,519.25. $4 million. Okay. And do we have the number of how much we spent on type 13 waste this year compared to last year? Yeah, just give me a minute. I'm going to pull it up. We'll get to your next question. While we're pulling that up, I'll get to this.

And while you're looking to pull that up, can you tell me how much money we currently have in the municipal tonnage accounts? I'm interested in that number.

So currently in municipal tonnage, as of 7-31, we have 1,306,639.13.

What is your plans to utilize? And I know you're not the director in that position. You're just standing there. But hopefully we can get some information back to figure out what is the plan to utilize that $1.3 million that's in that $1,200,000 cap.

Yes, Councilman. We do have a plan.

You do?

Can you share it with us? I mean, so most of this goes back that the city is some lines that may have like minimal amounts of money on it. from 3,000 to the biggest two amounts was last year money that we haven't finished using. But most of this stuff is going to, you know, with the clean communities is like signage. We started buying signs. We started putting illegal dumping signs up around the city and some of the stuff that we own. When you see this area is being monitored by drone, you started seeing us putting signage in some of the islands, not all of them, but in the islands in your area. This also funds our weekend cleanup programs, buying the food waste and litter basket recycling containers, gloves, vests, all the stuff that we get for the men. So it's not that we didn't use this money. It was some money that was encumbered for things in prior years that wasn't used that we're about to use it.

So that 1.3 million is not that it was- So here's the big question. What is the amount of dollars that we still have to spend to make whole these residents for garbage cans they didn't get? And whatever that number is, that number, if it's under 1 million, should come out of this municipal tonnage account to make these residents whole for the garbage cans they did not receive. Right. So I just, I just want to point that out and once you guys in administration to hold it at, then how much is currently in the clean community accounts, not the 500 and something that we voted on earlier today to come into account, but the actual number that we have in a clean community.

The clean community count is $582,985 and 61 cents just to go back.

followed up because some of the regulations may have changed, we can't buy the municipal garbage cans out of the recycling or the municipal tonsil.

You can buy recycling cans. You can't buy the garbage cans that we gave away.

But you can purchase recycling cans out of the clean communities. Right.

But you can't buy the garbage cans that we gave the residents. We cannot use, we were informed, we cannot use that money for those. We can buy dumpsters, we can buy roll-offs, we can buy litter baskets that you see on the corner. Vehicle. 25% can go towards equipment. So the vehicles that we bought out of this fund, it says clean community on it. So when you see we had clean community, that made it came out that fund.

Clean community, not municipal times. Right. Did we ever get the number for the amount of money we spent on type 13 this year? That's bulk. And then how much have we spent on just regular tonnage, municipal tonnage this year to last year? I think that number is important. And I always ask for this number because it's important for the residents to know how much we spend on picking up their garbage and other people's garbage from other municipalities. And we need to bank that number. so that we know that we're out here picking up all of this illegal dumping and all of those illegal dumps that we pick up outside of the trash we pick up all of that goes into municipal tonnage dollars right for what we pick up even the ball type 13. all of this illegal stuff we pick up that has to be separated and taken in the book that has a number a price we want to make sure that the residents know what that price is. So if we can get that, that'll be helpful.

Council President, councilmen, council, council members. So as of in 2025, we spent $789,231. As of today, we, 2026, we spent $770,240. So we on target to spend more than we did last year. It's a lot of illegal dumping. I don't know if it's a mattress giveaway or a mattress dump off, but we probably pick up between 60 to 70 mattresses a day. You see them around your city every day. I just was on Osborne and Hawthorne. It was 40 mattresses dumped on the corner. I can't believe that. That was type 13? I can't believe that that's type 13.

Director, the number that you gave us was type 13. Yes, type 13.

I can't believe that nobody's seen nobody doing it. We don't know what's going on. I cannot believe the residents didn't see nobody pull up and dump every mattress. 40 mattresses. 40 mattresses, right? You call them. Type 10, council president, councilman, council, council members, type 10 in 2026. At this point, we were at $3,616,052.92. Today, we're at $3,239,483. I'm sorry, I read that backwards. $3,239,683 was 2025, right? 2026, we're at $3,616,052, like a 12% increase. We're going to surpass that number as well in terms of garbage pickup and collection.

yes the city is growing and there's some there's some areas that's losing their tax abatement that we're starting to pick up yeah and and ultimately as part of the the kpi and i'm saying this because i know the ba is here and you probably want to aggregate these numbers too as part of the kpi to break down how much of that municipal tonnage was caused by illegal dumping how how much of it was just off of pickup from residential homes so that you can be able to tell in terms of increase of what needs to happen budgetarily, how much you picking up from residents home, how much you picking up based off of illegal dumping. And then that is a strategic way that this council and hopefully administration be able to look at how do we put legislation together, common sense legislation to be able to attack some of these issues that are happening out here.

council council president um councilman i want to go back and just get some clarity on what councilman jackson was talking about with the recycling so you know it's residents that go around at night and in the daytime and they collect plastic bottles all plastics right that has a on most plastics even that snapper bottle you got all that water is better than Poland Spring. But it says you get a five cents if you return the bottle. So New York, Delaware, and Pennsylvania gives you money as soon as you bring it back. The state of New Jersey don't do it. But we're surrounded, our borders, we're surrounded by three states that give you money in real time. So she was explaining that in certain areas of the city, we've seen box trucks and garages that are full of plastic bottles that people collect every day. It brings extra income into the house. The state doesn't allow for that same return. As a part of our plan, as we get more efficient and effective, right we've also started notifying building owners that we pick up that they need to do practice dual stream recycling and we're giving them a point in time and when they have to do that but we'll stop collecting them because they're in violation of the state law and the city's ordinances at the same time we've spoken with housing authority and the public school system about recycling right the more recycling we can get from them and and jessica just jessica and i think andrette maybe andre kristen about three of them just we finished the municipal recycling class, right? So we get more revenue. So there's other ways to get more revenue. What I was saying, we would need to do a cost benefit analysis of saying the people that are actually going around the neighborhood collecting that trash versus what we'll collect versus what we'll collect if we picked it up. Right. And also versus how much it would cost us to have an enforcement division. So I wasn't saying it wasn't feasible, but you need to do a cost benefit. And that may cost you more to chase them down and stop them. And what the councilman just said, we're still taking that stuff to the dump. Right. That they that they're taking it with that and our additional staff. It may or may not be feasible. Doesn't mean until you look at that.

That's it. Any other questions?

I have one more question about snow removal. How many snow events did we have this year and what was budgeted for the snow events? And then how much did we spend actually on the snow events?

So the snow expense in 2025 was $495,342.00. It was six light snow events. I'm saying light in 2025. In 2026, we had 11 snow events, but we had one event that went to ABCD. So I'm going to say that's 15. The last event, not the last, the event before the last one was a little longer. We spent $3 million. $3,923,786.00. And how much did we budget for Snow in 2026? 2026?

Normally, whatever you budgeted, if it was less than that, maybe we'd have had to pull money from other accounts to cover the snow events.

Yeah, we still pull the money.

Ms. Tate, do we have to pull money from other accounts to cover the snow events? Would you happen to know? I'm just trying to find some cash, B.A. There ain't nothing over here.

We budgeted 2.7 million. And councilman, we had a big uptick. We got 29 inches and a part of that was doing snow removal. We had some lessons learned from the snow removal process. we're looking we've talked sat down with the new director and our management team that we've been going over some uh best practices learned there may be some additional costs or cost saving measures just want to also acknowledge that as of today the city has uh 75 pieces of equipment with dpw having 35 and water and sewer having 35 also So prior to this administration coming in, I think we had about four pieces of snow equipment. Some people say it was 19, but I only remember four working. You may know what was better. So what we have working, the oldest vehicle is 2017.

In the public, in the public buildings line, you asked for a decrease of 30,000, I believe, in materials and supplies. What was the decrease for if public buildings unit, they are still responsible for monitoring all of our public buildings, right? Correct? Or are they moving that stuff to different departments and making different departments pay for repairs?

No. So we asked for a decrease because the health department When Director Osbrook talked yesterday, she said that line increased because she took over the cleaning thing, half of it last year, and she has a full year of it. So what we were paying the staff, the health department, you don't have to. Right, that's the supplies for the cleaning because she got the- Does public buildings make recreation pay for- Not this year, but moving into next year. Why would that be? Because the cleaning staff that cleans the recreation is with rec- It's moving money.

So they have their own cleaning staff?

That they're responsible for.

Every department. That's going to be responsible for cleaning five recreational facilities, be responsible for cleaning the spaces they have for the other centers that they have as well?

They've been doing that, I want to believe, since May.

buffing floors, mopping floors. What budget is that going to come out of? Public buildings and be transferred to the recreation budget? We talk about the centers as a whole, five recreational facilities, the senior centers that we have, Nellie Greer, Boylan, Ironbound, which is our facilities. Are those funds going to be pulled from public buildings and placed in the recreation?

So councilman, councilman, I don't know if they're going to be, we're actually all the way pulled for this year, right? I do know that we bought enough supplies that we're giving them supplies, but the goal is not just to clarify with,

So you talk about manpower, then you talk about materials and supplies, director.

The manpower is already over there.

We bought materials and supplies to keep funding them until the budget of next year starts.

When next year comes, the 2027 budget, we will not be buying supplies for them. Police, fire, anybody else. Only the health department currently started doing this already.

I mean, I know recreation is coming up next, but then I'm going to request that they would have a separate line for materials and supplies based on whatever that number was. 2027. Right. I'm just saying, we're talking about buffing floors, mopping floors, cleaning, not just the... arbitrary and capricious stuff about just changing garbage cans right when you're talking about they have to be responsible for maintaining their kind of space that's a number and they shouldn't have to be responsible for that number if public buildings was already responsible for that and it's transitioning over so whatever funds that public buildings had it should be transferred over to an account that is made for recreation councilman council we're saying in 2027 that

In 2027, that will happen. This year, we're going to still provide.

I just wanted to make sure it was on record. Thank you so much. But one of my concerns in terms of sweepers, for the last, if you go down to Wilson Avenue, there's antiques. from all years of fact that you know they couldn't be replaced because parts would never when we purchase any of these sweepers that they should be american made the last couple years the last sweepers they picked up they were from out of out of the country and and those there was no parts for it and then they sat there for years so we need to invest into american companies that we could get parts The mechanics, because these are not just any cool kind of equipment. I agree. Hydraulic and hydraulic mechanics don't come that often because it takes a different skill. But we need to. In terms of what you said about the snow pieces, I remember back in 14, there was only five pieces of equipment with snow removal because everything was contracted. The snow removal was all contracted. So your credit, you know, it's an improvement. Just want to say thank you to you and your staff.

I want to thank the council and the administration for making that possible. I mean, I know we get a lot of accolades, but... Through the council's support and what we want to do, we were able to bring that equipment back out.

And the other thing is motors. The conditions of motors is horrible. If you go to motors on a hot day, you will pass out. So I don't understand how these mechanics are working with a small little fan. And it's just 100 degrees outside, it's 120 inside. And then the way the conditions of that. A facility is falling apart. Wilson Avenue is falling apart in a garage. But the conditions for our mechanics are not good conditions. And they do allow to turn around and putting chains on those police cars. They fix more on those police cars. And, you know, that's something that we don't look at. But those mechanics in the Motors Department, they really are dedicated employees. working in those conditions. And I just want to say a shout out to them.

I'm going to shout them out, but the motors manager, he loved that building. The motors manager, he loves that building. However, the administration is taking drastic measures to improve how we repair city police cars and our DPW fleet.

Yes, sir.

Well, I'm glad the manager loves it, but I want to definitely comment on what Councilman Quintana has said, because we have a slow turnaround on repairs. That's number one, which means maybe that we need some help down there as well. But number two, those conditions are horrible. I don't know what the plans are for the future promoters, but it is, there's no air conditioning. I mean, we're not trying to say that, I'm talking about in the actual garage. I've seen big fans. I've seen, I just haven't seen conditions where people have to work in that hot, working on those trucks, working on, I mean, I would call some names out, Van, if I had to, to get some folks down that I know I could go to. But the conditions of that building, I'm talking about Motors on Wilson. I don't know about any of the other buildings in the office space. I'm talking about actually in the garage. I'm talking about the garage. Those conditions are horrible. So I hope that for the future that we are planning to budget some type of way to update that garage. are to do some work for the individuals that have to go in there and work in the heat and work with the grease and work with those trucks. And even with the manpower, I'm not sure whether we have enough manpower for the turnaround of the vehicles that break down. Department of Public Safety just talked about the increase in the breakdown of vehicles that they have. So I'm hoping that whatever we're doing with budget, that in the future that we will look at not just the conditions, but the manpower as well.

So to council president, to your question and councilman council, women round trees, entire council, the administration, I know, cause I'm a part of the task force. We have looked at various things to do in the near future, dealing with the motors facility, not just, not just Wilson Avenue, but you know, motors as a whole, right. So we already looking at that, you know, hopefully some of this stuff will come to fruition by the end of the year.

We're going to pray on it. Meanwhile, thank you for your service. Thank you. Thank you.

Mine is short. I know we're, first of all, I just want to thank you, Director, from, you know, wearing two hats and doing both jobs. And, you know, I can only imagine how difficult it is because Just one job dealing with DPW is, I know I drive you crazy with texts and trying to get to you. But what I want to say is hello to the lady to your left. Hello. I don't really know what you do. And I'm the councilman. I've seen your face, but I just would love for you to introduce yourself and let us know what it is that you do.

Sure. Hello. Good evening, everybody. My name is Jessica Cavaco. I am the interim assistant director with director Dean at DPW. I'm his right hand. So if he needs anything to be taken care of, I assist where he needs. So I serve at the pleasure of the director.

All right. Thank you. I would definitely be emailing you. I know the director would love to take some of that pressure off of you.

Your staff definitely does. Your staff definitely does email me.

No, my staff definitely does. Definitely. I know they do. I just never really had a meeting with you or anything, but thank you.

Just one last thing now that we're talking about motors. You don't have to say it. You got the wish list. I know in terms of equipment and parts, it's been difficult. So if you could send us a report of what vehicles need to be fixed, what parts we need, if we have what we have, that's cool. If we don't, because I know sometimes it's difficult. I know a couple people work down there too. And I know sometimes we got to leave a car sitting over, truck sitting over, you know, because they're older, like you said. I get it. So are we where we need to be with the parts for the equipment to be repaired to help us get those things back online when they're down? Or are we... For lack of a better word, are we band-aiding until we get the pardon? You know, are we, you know, so we need some stuff and you need 12 more dollars over there. I still got 13 left.

I think one of our council president, councilman, councilwoman Jackson, council members, one of our biggest challenge, me and the modus managers, we went to, I think, two different schools to recruit mechanics. At that recruitment, Port Authority was there. NYPD was there. Fire Department was there. Newark was there. Waste Management was there. A lot of municipalities and private people. Throughout the region, it's a shortage on diesel mechanics, right? So you see a lot of our fleet go out. And I think, you know, we passed out about 20 to 25 different applications. There's no follow-up. People don't, you know. So it's just, and I learned, you know, recently throughout the region, It's a shortage on obtaining diesel mechanics.

She spoke about in your introduction. So because that'll probably save you on the diesel. But I do also did all my colleagues on how I have been a They say a thorn in your side, but I don't want to call it that because it's a good thing. I want to thank you, Adeem, by running two departments, director, that you've always been responsive. to make sure that when we did call on you that things were abated as soon as possible. And I like the fact that when we were going through the snow removal and the late garbage pickups in the process of time change, that you were able to actually get back and tell us the truck is two blocks away, they're on their way because of that communication connection and connecting the dots with the supervisors. So I think that is a great thing and a great way of moving forward. And welcome, new assistant director. Pleasure to meet you.

Thank you. Next department.

The next department is the Department of Recreation and Cultural Affairs.

Why don't you wait?

I want to thank the DPW team that bought in. I want to thank the council president. I want to just thank the DPW team that bought in to the changes.

And you're still a fan. Yes. Madam Court, can he stay here then?

Thank you, GPW team.

No, no, can you do water right now? Come on, let's get it done. You know, you got to go out there. You got a lot of pools coming in.

My apologies. Water and sewer, let's go. Water and sewer is next.

Oh, Lord.

Let me get my book. Let me just get my book.

We have five more to do.

No, we're going to do water and then we'll do, okay, water and sewer. Water, water and sewer.

Right.

Director, we got about 200 questions. All right.

ALL RIGHT, DIRECTOR.

ALL RIGHT.

OPENING STATEMENT.

Good evening, council, president, council members, the esteemed public that's in the audience and those that's watching from home. Our Department of Water and Sewer Utilities is here to provide the highest quality drinking water to our customers, ensuring that the proper conveyance of sewer, managing stormwater, mitigate flooding, and continue to upgrade our infrastructure for future generations of Newark residents and the surrounding towns we serve. Our water and sewer utility request for water is $75,139,596.00. And $3,100,914.00. That is a 4.3% increase for water. On the sewer side, our request is $86,530,996.55. That is an increase of 6.4%, a total increase of the budget. The total budget that we're looking at is $161,670,454.55. That's a 5.2% combined increase. This year, the Department of Water and Sewer has made significant progress on projects that align with our mission. We have completed repairs at the Oak Ridge Dam to ensure that the uttermost protection of our water supply. Our team completed the new Petty Ditch Netting Facility to mitigate stormwater overflows, right? That's off of Freelines and Apple. We're making steady progress on the rehabilitation of our 30 mile long pipeline for aquatic aqueducts. In addition, we continue to install green infrastructure sites to mitigate flooding in vulnerable areas. This year, we installed rain gardens at Clinton Avenue and Badger. In April, we broke ground to revitalize the Salvo Temple Park in the North Ward. Future projects include stormwater improvements to the Ironbound and Ivy Hill neighborhoods, two communities impacted by Hurricane Ida. Our staff continues in 2021. Our staff continues to embark on key projects to ensure our system serves Newark for another 100 years and beyond. Most notably, we are preparing to launch phase one of our 10-year plan to replace 500,000 linear feet of water main pipes across the city. This investment will reduce water main breaks and support the continuing growth of our great city. To meet increased demand, construction is on the way. on two additional filters at the Aquatic Water Treatment Plant, increasing production capacity up to 100 million gallons of water per day. We are investing in the next generation of Newark water workforce by launching the Newark Watershed Science and Leadership Academy and expanding training and educational opportunities to prepare the current and future employees for growth. I just wanted to call out three employees here. We have Tosin Atatutu, I want him to stand up. He's in the audience. We have Mark Whitaker and Sham Moore Waller. Two of these three gentlemen right here, we brought them on board right out of college. Today, we have two of them. They're now PEs. Of these other two, two of these gentlemen, for the first time in 35 years, the city has a licensed T4 and W4 operator that grew through the system like me, that graduate and elevate through the system to become our new licensed water treatment and distribution operators. Those two gentlemen right there, I just want to give them. But when the opportunities came for them to stay with the city, they stayed because they're being poached all around the country to come in. So I just want to congratulate that our investment has really paid off. We were paying a consultant about $600,000 a year to operate, but now we have, since June the 1st, we have those gentlemen right there. Sitting next to me is N.T. Muhammad Athar, our chief engineer. To my left, to my right, is our chief accountant, Harold Gene Lewis. The department continues to maximize the value of every public dollar by applying our state-revolving low-interest loans throughout the New Jersey I-Bank. For example, the additional filters at the treatment plant will save the city an estimated $14.75 million in both principal forgiveness and avoided insurance. This ensures that project cost burdens are not passed down to our rate payers. We've remained committed to excelling through continuous infrastructure and operational improvements, earning national recognition as a model for cities across the country. We are grateful for the support of the mayor of Ras Baraka and the Baraka administration and the municipal council over the past 12 years in protecting Newark's most precious resource, clean, safe drinking water. clean, safe drinking water, second to only our residents, the most valuable resource. Thank you. With that, I'll take questions.

Hi, director, director, that's a double director. How you doing? Real quick. How many water main breaks have we had in the city within the last two years?

I can get that number to you, but if off my head, I think it's about a little over 600.

600 water main breaks. I guess the real question is, are they happening more often than usual?

With the weather changes, having a real cold winter this winter, yes. I'm going to say it is expected as the weather change. So I just want to give you some history. Newark is the third oldest major city in the country. Our infrastructure goes back to 1809. However, over the past 12 years, we've put about $750 million into the water and wastewater infrastructure to mitigate flooding, but also to upgrade our treatment operations, storage operations, and our distribution operations. This doesn't include the lead service line. Right.

So out of the 600 water main breaks, what was the cost that we spent on 600 water main breaks throughout in the last two years? I can get that information to you. OK. Thank you. I appreciate that. My last question is, we've been dealing with, you mentioned it in your opening statement, Ivy Hill with the flood mitigation. I think you guys did an amazing job of attacking that. Where are we now with the, are we still having problems in the Ivy Hill section up there around? So not we'll find the back of Seton Hall or is that more we've mitigated the issue that the main concern up there?

No, we've, we've did some temporary mitigation right now.

I think we're at about 40% design. Yeah. 30%. All right.

We had 30% design. So it's a bigger project that the State Department of Consumer Affairs is funding that we're still in the 30% design phase. So some other stuff that's going to happen in the future once the design is finished.

We have 30% to go to fix or we're 30% in?

We have 30% of the design of what we're going to fix. So that means the architects and engineers have designed 30% of the project that we proposed to the state that they approved for us to do.

How long do you think before that project is completed?

Well, the design should be completed by the end of the year. Then we need to go out to bid with the approval from the state to go into construction. Out of the end of the year is not that bad, I guess. Thank you. I appreciate you. Once we complete the design, we'll have some community meetings up there to let them understand what the design is. They need to see what the design is. Then the state will approve us to go out to bid. Thank you.

Thank you, Council President. My apologies if I've missed this already, Director Adeem. Is there anything, because I think I missed it, regarding storm sewer drain ditch rehabilitation? You have listed here storm sewer... ditch rehabilitation, non-brick sewer construction under your priorities. Does this include the catch basins? Is that the same thing? Did you talk about maybe putting some mesh down there to try to keep the sewers from being clogged and prevent flooding? Was that a part of the project? Because it didn't give a lot of explanations.

No, that's it. Council President, Councilwoman Bay, Councilmembers. I think that's a different, there's two different projects. So we do daily maintenance seven days a week on catch basins. Right. However, I just want to let everybody know when we have a heavy downpours or torrential rain, it doesn't really be the catch basins are clogged. Most of the time, the systems are running full. So when you see the manholes blow off and things like that, the system is running full. When it stopped raining, nine times out of 10, the water recedes like this. But initially, it's so much water trying to get into the system. So it's like, let me give you an example. If you're in your bathroom, You got your bathtub full of water. You got your toilet that you're trying to flush. And you got the sink. All three of them not going to go down the drain at the same time. As the one with the most strongest sense of pressure is going to drain first. And then after that drains all the other ones. So to tell you that, you know, catch basins, if you know one that's broken or damaged, we're constantly trying to track down a little close to 20,000 catch basins throughout the city. just had a meeting i think friday with the mayor and he was asking us who's responsible for the trash or the garbage we have a program called the doctor catch basin we've had it since 2018 and what that means if neighborhoods adopt catch spaces and before the storm and after the storm you clean some of the debris off is what happens in these large storms the trash that we see on the street it sits on the top of the storm drain during the rain event. And that suction starts pulling the trash. And you would say it's flooding it. The trucks come by. We know the hot spot areas. And we clean the trash off and the water go down. So a lot of times it's just trash sitting on top of the catchmations due to the fact that it rained and everything washed to the slope of the street where the catchmations go. But if it's a damaged catchmation and you're aware of it, Please reach out to our office. You can call us. Our emergency number is 3654-973-733-3654. That's not only for you, but for the residents that may be watching. That emergency number, we have a 15 to 20 minute response time. We want to keep it that way.

Yes, just one more question. When we talk about also the priorities, is there currently or is there a plan to implement regular sewer cleaning? Is that part of the priorities or is that something that's already in place? And how much of the budget is attached to something like that?

So we've just finished last, maybe a little over a year ago, we just finished cleaning 200 animals. Philly's assessing 240 miles of small diameter sewer throughout the city. That's anywhere from 22 inch diameter pipe down to an eight inch diameter pipe. That's why normally when you see it raining, you see the heavy flood, but when it stops, you see that water disappear, right? Because we clean the sewer. However, we're still monitoring 60 miles of sewer, right? And that monitor meaning that we're cleaning, we're inspecting. In 2021, we bought our own camera truck. So we're able to do that stuff ourselves. We do call in contractors when we got a little bigger work to do a large area sewer that we want to do. So right now we're inspecting our south side interceptor. That is a 54 inch diameter pipe that goes to Passaic Valley. There's three and a half miles of pipe that we're inspecting now to make sure that we need to rehabilitate that. We're also doing some stuff on Freeland Heisen between Concord and Vanderpool from Ideal's. I think that's Ideal's. Ideal's, the little diner right there, motor vehicle. So we're doing some remediation and inspection on the sewers over there. We're doing some stuff in the East Ward, a little bit in the West, and some in the North that we're closing out some stuff that we need to do. So we're always looking to upgrade our sewer system.

Thank you, Director. Any questions?

So on 16th Ave, 15th Ave, where there seems to be new storm drains on top of the movie theater, is that us?

That's a council president, councilwoman Jackson. That's a project with the water department and Rutgers in the state of New Jersey to put green infrastructure. So at one time or another, the city applied for some grant money and Rutgers, they got a grant and they're putting bump out curves and green infrastructure to capture stormwater.

OK, so is that going to help with the water overflow?

Yes.

OK. How much? weight are we giving to the water that flows down South Orange Avenue, for example. I know when it rains, that South Mountain Hill, you know, be at the top. I'm on Telford. That water comes down. I mean, it is converging on Sanford. I'll start at Dover. Big puddle. And when it gets to Sanford, between Sanford and Stuyvesant, it's on the sidewalk sometimes. So is there any storm flood mitigation between the City of Newark, County of Essex possibly, or South Orange to try to abate that?

Council President Quintana, Councilwoman Jackson, Municipal Council. So a part of the project that we talk about the Ivy Hill resiliency that was funded through the county, the state and Newark as a part of that mitigation. What we also did right after Ida, the city of Newark with the Newark money, we cleaned the Vellsburg ditch. The Vellsburg ditch goes from West End to the Elizabeth River, which comes through Bloomfield, East Orange, and several towns. So we've cleaned that ditch. We're also looking at, we're doing, I'm glad you asked that, we're doing some investigation right now on the trunk line that comes from the ditch through Isabella that stops by the park on South Thorn Javelin. It goes through the park on South Thorn Javelin, but a part of that trunk line also has a branch that goes to Elmwood Park. So we're also exploring the north side of that. We're looking at any debris that's caught up in there, so we put cameras in there and looking to see if we need to rehabilitate or reline that trunk line that takes the water over to that Elizabeth River.

Okay. So I'm assuming because we hide the nice young men behind you that some of our professional service contracts and needing so many engineers and I get it that will be lessened in the next coming budget. Example, we have a professional service contract for professional services on Or nine of 25 or $300,000 and then other equipment.

One second. Nine of 25 and. You said 75105?

What page are you on? Nine of 25. It's in your second tab.

Nine of 25. I apologize. Billing and customer service. Okay. That's the building and customer service. So that line is professional services around. We institute a new billing system in 2023, 2024. So that's just phases of when we have to pay for that system and the consultants that make sure we still integrate stuff with them.

Okay.

So that's going to be a continual.

no it's probably going to as years move on unless we're doing some other type of upgrades on a different system on another platform that's what that is this is just a package to get it up yes we didn't pay them all at one time we got the system but we oh we we had the new billing system but we phased out how we pay for it uh the other question is i see three provisional employees

like two paid one more page um is there a move to try to bring them in permanently yes that's counselor councilwoman as i stated earlier customer service representative is that a option in your plan

As I stated earlier, one, they take the exam, and as the exams came back from the state, it was a big delay with the state, but they've been pushing them out. But personnel, I want to say maybe in the last six months or seven months, hired a new person. As they come back to the state, those certifications, we do move forward with putting people in the title.

OK. And two more things. In terms of security, I see on page 15 to 25 that we have, this again is making sure we have the personnel we need. We have two regular security guards. And one senior guard, 06-257? Yes. It's the senior guard and 06-124. Is that enough? No. Okay, and where do they cover? What area do they cover? Are they Cedar Grove Watershed and your office?

They're all Watershed.

They're all Watershed? Yes. And then... A LITTLE CONCERNED ABOUT THE PROFESSIONAL SERVICES OF $3 MILLION, BUT I'LL E-MAIL YOU THAT. THAT'S NOT A PROBLEM. AND ONE MORE THING. IN REGARDS TO PEOPLE GOING ON OUR PROPERTY, NO MATTER WHERE IT IS, CEDAR GROVE, WATERSHED, ETC., DO WE HAVE A BREAKDOWN OF TICKETS ADMINISTERED FROM 24, 25, 26? Do we have a way of telling who we warned? I don't know if we do warnings or we just go straight to tickets. I don't know. So I'm asking, do we do, if you catch me the first time with an ATV, do I get a warning or do I get a straight out ticket? If I'm doing a campfire, DO I GET A WARNING THE FIRST TIME OR DO I GET A TICKET? AND DO WE CONTROL THOSE? HOW DO WE ‑‑ I'M JUST ASKING. BECAUSE IS THERE REVENUE COMING TO THE CITY WHEN PEOPLE ARE ‑‑ AND I'M NOT TALKING ABOUT ENCROACHMENT AT THIS PART. WE CAN TALK ABOUT THAT LATER. But are we tracking people who violate our space up there, particularly at the watershed, Cedar Grove? I know when they drained it one time because Mount Morton used to be at the nursing home across, right? I saw three tires in the bottom of the reservoir. I'm saying, how in the world did that get in there? right so i don't know if that's somebody throwing it over the fence because you did do a nice new gate around it i don't know if that's somebody throwing it in somebody how did that you know what i mean so when people are encroaching when people are trespassing because it's not encroachment when people are trespassing on our land littering, campfires, ATVs, everything that they're not supposed to do. How do we track those folks that are doing that? What's our penalty system? And how many penalties, if we know the number, have we done, like say in the last three, four years?

So council president, councilwoman Jackson, council members. So one, in Cedar Grove, we just called the police, right? The police come and they arrest them and lock them up. That's a little different. In the watershed, managing those 37,000 acres, we work with the city of West Milford, the Morris County prosecutor, the Passaic County prosecutor, and things like that. We have drone surveillance that what we do actually is the individuals that we encounter, the enforcement has, you know, sometimes it's hot or cold. with those towns. We don't do enforcement. We don't have the ability to write tickets. We work with those towns. We supply drone footage, the drone footage that we flew the drone. We see that they parked seven cars over there. We get the license plates, and that information is turned over to Morris County, Passaic County, or the township PD. However, I do want to say in the water department and the law department, we conducted a feasibility study that we got back that is still under review about the watershed police force right and having jurisdiction to write tickets to impound cars and do all that um that's still under review with with law and everyone else i had to follow up to see what we had with that and what the administration does to move forward with it

Okay. I'm just, yeah, I'm concerned about, you know, because I know they're having a nice time up there on our property. They're having a good old time. And they created some ATV trails and all that kind of stuff. And I just want to make sure that when it comes to enforcement for us, that we're able to enforce that, that we're able to keep that land safe. as preserved as we can. I know this, you know, over the years, people do what they want. Storms are coming. I was very concerned when we had the fire. So when people are doing things on our properties, my understanding is someone may have possibly had a campfire that got out of control, right? So the city of Newark is not involved at all in the arrest, prosecution of those who caused the fire on our property? I'm just asking, so I'm not sure.

Yeah, if that person is caught, the city of Newark is going to prosecute to the fullest. Most of the time, we don't catch it. Again, the drone, our security guards don't have police powers, right? They can't arrest anybody. They can call the neighboring town police to see if they come. The last time when they did have a bonfire right around COVID, the people that were arrested were police and firemen from up there, volunteer firemen. Which is a problem with those cities and forcing stuff on the people that you're asking the people.

It's a beautiful land. I just want us to preserve as much of it as we can you know we we take our children up there for the camp we have excellent things used to be overnight camp i know we're probably talking like 30 40 50 years ago but i want us to preserve as much of that as we can and just stop letting people abuse a beautiful piece of we can get out the car and take a deep breath because of all those trees so i'm just one worrying about enforcement i know you have the drones i got that but I just was wondering how involved the city is in the penalty tie and bringing in some revenue when folks are doing what's not supposed to happen. I'm just hoping to catch, and I know it's probably gonna be next to impossible at this point, but the person who had started the fire himself, that they should be made to give some restitution to the city to rebuild, for lack of a better word, with the trees

So, Councilman, I think in that report, in that feasibility study we got back, it does talk about jurisdiction of who would be in charge of collecting money. Would our exes delegation need to lobby the state to give us powers when you've got to come to court in Newark, or would it be a shared fee between those Kenelon west milford aquatic all those towns so that it kind of outlines with us the directions that we can take but again the law department that thing was still under review so we did do that on the encroachment side we're actively going after encroachers so we've we've been doing that uh one with our consultant graystone we're sending encroachment letters cease and desist letters and with the help of dep enforcement also kicking off you know polluters or illegal dumpers or illegal loggers. But our goal, while I'm there with the administration support, is to prosecute anybody to the fullest so we do have a uh 2028 we finished phase one of our security plan which is a lot of infrared cameras and new fencing and new gating we're moving into phase two which is another part of our uh security plan improving some of our roads and stuff that we can get to if somebody got hurt up to even our own campus

And so when we have storm damage, does DEP help us repair?

No. We may get a grant from the DEP, but they may give us money. They don't come out and do immediate repairs. We do that.

So with the storms and damage comes to the camping ground, because I don't know what kind of... I haven't been there in a while, but I don't know if we have little cabins and stuff like we used to have. So when damage comes to the property and our things on the property, the offices, et cetera, we incur all of that repair when the storm comes through?

So we remove the trees. When I say we, the water rate payers, right? The water rate payers incur that. Even other times, we remove the trees, we improve the roads, all that type of stuff, yes. That's come out of the water and sewer utilities, obviously.

Well, I'm glad to see the new contract with, let me say it wrong, the P-Town.

Belleville, Paquanick.

No, Paquanick. You just got a new contract I saw a couple of months ago. So I'm glad to see that happening. I'm glad to see Belleville increasing their contract, and hopefully we can bring some more towns on board and sell some more water.

We're constantly negotiating with two towns to buy more water, to buy water from North that hasn't been buying water from North. And we're upgrading some existing contracts that's about to expire. So you'll see that coming through the council in the next couple of months.

Any other questions? We lost a lot of money with the breweries. i mean we lost a lot of money with the breweries you know the and as a bush that was a big account you know and that hurted us and the other the other breweries that were here so you know the other thing is um the watershed again i'm concerned many times about the security of and um I THINK WE NEED TO HAVE DOWN THE ROAD SOME MEETINGS WITH OUR DELEGATION, CONGRESSIONAL, AND TRYING TO GET SOME HOMELAND SECURITY FUNDS TO SECURE AND PROTECT THAT ASSET. BECAUSE THAT WATER, IF SOMETHING GOES IN THAT WATER, YOU KNOW, IT'S A DISASTER. YOU KNOW, AND I JUST WANT TO THINK THAT. But I think we should engage some conversation in terms of that watershed because that is an asset that anyone can do damage to that water treatment. And by the time we can lose generations of people because of and now with the conditions of what's going on in the Middle East and and all the hacking and all the other stuff that could be a danger to us. And that's an asset. I know that most of our pipes, and you have done a good job, by the way, most of our pipes are clay. They go back... hundreds of years and i know you have done a lot of work in terms of replacing the the main that just on brutal avenue and you responded right away without shutting the water and the service of the people that meant a lot because i call you that morning because people were calling and you responded right away he said look We didn't shut it off so people would be ready for the morning. So I commend you. You're always available, accessible, and you're great. You're a model just like yourself. The Department of Health, she is, you are fantastic directors. People need to, other directors need to learn from you. They'll come in here and spend some time, and you do. Maybe you don't have things on your agenda, but you pop in the door even if you don't have anything on the agenda. And that to me is commendable for people who are directors who take the extra time. Come early, leave late. That's you.

Thank you. And I just want to caution us on one thing. That Anheuser-Busch complex has been purchased to be a data center. No, no. That's not true. I get what y'all saying. I've been in the meeting and I've seen the paperwork with what that company intends.

If you can provide any paperwork that says that they have applied for a data center, that they have submitted any application to our zoning or planning office for a data center, if they have submitted anything with respect to the acquisition, please provide it to me. I'm very, very conscious of what data centers have to do. We are meeting with another potential developer about a data center, but it is not at the Anheuser-Busch location. And we would not approve a data center at a location that would have an adverse impact impact on our water, on the electric rates, or making sure that there will be any increase in the rates that our residents would have to pay with respect to increased electric use. And please apologize to the council president, council members, but that's really important, that misinformation like that. I have to to provide that information. I'm happy to discuss further with you as we go along, but that is just not the case.

Yeah, Mr. Chair, and to the BA's point, I'm the councilman in that ward. So I definitely want to speak to that because people have been putting that false narrative out And what it does is it creates a scare for something that is positive that is really about to happen in that area as it relates to the amount of jobs that is about to create, not just for South Fort residents, but residents throughout the city and the conversations that we've been having with these individuals face to face and getting the assurity and understanding our position as a city about what needs to happen in that location in space and making sure that it does happen. So I just want the residents of South Ward to be clear about that, that is listening Now, as it relates to that, the other information that the BA pointed to about other possibilities of that, that is something that may have to be handled on the administrative end. But as it relates to the South Ward and the Anheuser-Busch property, a thousand percent And I normally don't say that here, but I can say it with affirmity, 1,000% assurance that what is about to happen at that place is about to be a win, not just for the city, but the residents in the South Pole.

Okay, sounds good to me. But like I said, I will share my paperwork. We already have four data centers that I've confirmed downtown North on Halsey Street. So I get it. I understand what people tell us. But I've been in the meetings with those companies that are putting up data centers. And I'm telling you, they're not always transparent with what they're going to do with the building. Now, I don't think. that you would do anything, councilman, council, and I'm not fighting with anybody in here. I'm just telling you what I have and I don't just circle and nor do you in this city. I've been a big part of this data center thing for the last two years and the paperwork that I had and they intend to do that. Now, I would hope that if it came that way, We would stop it. I agree with that. But there are currently in Newark four data centers in four different locations on Halsey Street. That I have confirmed because I called the companies myself. Now, did we know possibly that they were going in there? Because they may be one floor things. They may be two floor things. I don't know. But I've been very concerned about that because when my public service bill goes from $215 to $618 in one month and I see what they're pushing across the country and across the state, I've got to be very concerned. And I'm not saying that you're not concerned, but I am. Because Arizona has lost 80 percent of their natural water already. So that's the only reason why I'm saying anything, because I don't want us to be in that position. We have major water that we own. Right. Because we'll just have one reservoir. And I don't want us to be turning around in five years. Matter of fact, in two years, saying one reservoir is dried up like they're doing in Arizona right now. And now, no, we're not Arizona. But I just want us to move with an argument of caution because there are already some here that we didn't know about. Just like the substation on Central Avenue and what that's bringing to us now that we've let them put up an eight-story substation and an eight-story substation next to it right on Central Avenue and 15th Street. So I'm very concerned about that because people are calling me about their bills. And so it's not personal. Please, it's not personal. I'm just looking out for all of us because it's a concern when our bills triple and quadruple like this. So just a caution. I will share what I have and I will definitely sit down with my brother. Um, council over here. Yeah. I was getting ready to call you reverend. So I know I got to put the other hat on. I know, I know. And so we can discuss that. Cause I'm, you know, we just should be watching those kinds of things coming into the city. Cause sometimes we about business and money and we don't look at what they're doing when they come in. And I'm not saying that you're doing that. I'm just saying sometimes these folks come in here. Oh yeah. We'll give you 500 jobs over here and six of it. And then they turn around, as they did in the North Ward, and they sell the city property that we gave them. That's my only concern. I know it's a private sale. Yes, sir. But I'm just asking. Go ahead, director.

Council President, council members, we've been working with the clerk for the last maybe four or five years to try to get a tour to the watershed for the clerk's office and the council members. I think we sent the email out maybe this past week. We're looking forward to try to schedule that for a part of your days because I think it's one thing to talk about the watershed. It's one thing to talk about the water infrastructure, but you need to see the improvements that we've done in the last 12 years to our water and wastewater system. Prior to that, I just want to always say this. In 2010, a report came out under the Book Administration that we needed $1.5 billion to maintain this system. The Christie Administration told us to put it up for sale. So we need to see that our most valuable resource next to our residents. Right. And what we're doing to protect it. You're right. Water is precious and valuable. We own a lot of it. Right. We have the most. We have the most interconnections in the state. When people go when it was a drought, Newark still had water. But also when towns are in trouble, they call Newark. Emergency water supply.

You're right. You're right. Because that asset, Mayor Booker wanted United Water to buy. And I was one of those councilmen who said, hell no. And it was Donald Tucker who stood here and Ron. And we said no. We're not going to sell the right of this water to Unite Water to resolve some other problems of building something else here in Newark or creating some deficit that he created that we didn't create. And at the time, that was the given. But they wanted us, and we said, hell no, we're not selling that right to no one.

So I just want to make sure that you got the email. Council President, I just want to make sure everyone got the email. We'll enjoy having you come see how we are upgrading our water and wastewater infrastructure. And our minimum is working. Thank you.

We're getting a nice department.

Department of Recreation, Cultural Affairs, and Civil Services. Amazing Director Kadeem.

Super Director.

Super.

Mohamed. Both of them failed. Both of them.

He went into the arena. Water optimization. We're having a sidebar conversation here.

OK.

Hey, director, opening statement. Good, almost good night.

Love them, love them, yes. Some good people.

This is the recreation.

And money gets spread all over the place.

I want to say great evening.

Good evening.

Good evening, Council President, distinguished council members. My name is Donnell Redding, the Director of Recreation, Coastal Affairs, and Senior Services. To the right of me, I have my Assistant Director, Ms. Keisha Rasberry. To the far right of Ms. Rasberry, I have our Department Chief of Staff, Mr. Marquise Lewis. And also to the left of me, I have our Senior Administrative Analyst, Mr. Ennis, Mr. Walker. So I want to start there with giving an opening statement. So great evening council president, honorable members of the municipal council. It is my privilege to appear before you this afternoon on behalf of the Department of Recreation, Coastal Affairs and Senior Services. My name is Donnell Redding. I'm honored to serve as the director of the department. Thank you for the opportunity to present our proposed fiscal year 2026 budget and share our continued commitment to serving the residents in Newark. The mission of the Department of Recreation and Coastal Affairs is to enhance the quality of life for residents of all ages by providing safe, inclusive and impactful programs, services and opportunities throughout each of our five wards. Through our recreation centers, centers of hope, Senior services facilities, cultural programs, parks, athletic initiatives, and community events, we create welcoming spaces where residents can learn, connect, engage, and thrive. The proposed fiscal year 2026 budget reflects our commitment to responsible fiscal management, operational excellence, and strategic investments that deliver meaningful community impact. We may focus on maintaining safe and accessible facilities, expanding programming opportunities, supporting youth development, enriching the lives of older adults, promoting health and wellness, and celebrating Newark's rich cultural environment. In addition, over the past year, the Department of Recreation, Culture Affairs, and Senior Services has continued to strengthen services through recreational programming, cultural initiatives, senior engagement, youth enrichment activities, athletic opportunities, community partnerships. These accomplishments are made possibly through the dedication and hard work of our team members. who continue to provide a quality service and programs for Newark residents every single day. As we move forward into the fiscal year 2026, our priorities remain centered on enhancing our facilities, increasing access to programs and services, investing in our youth and seniors, strengthening community partnerships, and ensuring that every investment made by the city creates a positive and lasting impact. I would like to extend my sincere appreciation to Honorable Mayor Raj Jay Baraka for his continued leadership and vision, our business administrator, Mr. Eric Penenden, and the administration for their partnership and support, and the honorable members of the Municipal Council for your continued commitment to the residents of Newark. Thank you for your time and consideration. It's my honor to present the Department of Recreation, Culture, Affairs and Senior Services fiscal 2026 budget I look forward to sharing our accomplishments, priorities, and vision for the year ahead. Thank you. So I'm going to go a little bit in depth, right, in terms of what we're asking for in our budget. So we really wanted to streamline our budget to keep it as it was the budget for last year, which was $10,470,000. Due to the reorganization, I heard, I'm quite certain you heard Director Idim earlier stated that the reorg of the business service workers and other different divisions, well, we also had a reorganization, and our reorganization consisted of bringing Parks and Grounds back into the Department of Recreation, Culture, Affairs, and Senior Services and taking on our business services the BSW workers to actually operate at six of our recreation facilities, four of our centers of hope facilities, and also five of our senior services facilities. So with that, that would bring us, right, with our budget, we was questing for 10.4 million to keep it stable across what we have for 2025. It's going to be an increase of $1,354,628. That is a five, at this particular time, that is $5,480,000. $89,078.61 at 46.42% that's year to date. Our precise employees, I just wanna run them down in our department. We have 11 precise employees for senior services, for recreation, we have 25 for the director's office is zero. That's a total of 36. We have provisional employees in recreation. We have that number at 33, the director's office two, and our senior services is 11. So that brings us up to a total of 46. Our permanent employees and recreation, that number is 35. And the senior services division is six. And my office, director's office, is four. So that's a total of 45. So let me just jump into the reorg a little bit. The reorg, once again, consists of division, BS, business service workers, building, excuse me, service workers, which is at the number is 16, laborers at 14, excuse me, BSWs at six, that's a total of 20 team members. And also we had 11 additional members that consisted of one manager of sanitation, one chief stationary engineer, one assistant chief clerk, building service workers four, supervisors of parks one, labor gardeners, that's 40 hours at two, team members apiece, and we have another labor at one, and that's a total of 11, which brings us to a total of 31 total new team members that brought our budget up from 10.4 to 11.8. So in addition to that, I want to break down our budget from each division by line by line. I just want to go from the initial cost to how much we spent and what's the percentage of how much we spent and what we would have left if this budget is approved. So the director's office is at $533,000. The expenses was $347,000. We actually spent 65% of our budget in my office at 1601, the director's office. and uh just want to sum that up and just to give you the increase of that what we're asking for is a 1.3 one one million three hundred fifty four thousand dollars six hundred twenty eight dollars that's consisted of 31 new team members i'm open for questions questions questions councilwoman bank

Thank you, Council President. Thank you, Director Redding. So a couple of things. So you listed here that you have six vacancies, right? You listed six vacancies, but you listed, you have what, 40, was it 46 provisionals?

Yeah.

Okay. Are we looking to fill those vacancies starting with the people who are on the provisional list?

Actually, some of those positions were filled. It just didn't hit that. It didn't come print off the LGS. But our whole objective is to have those provisionals move over to permanency.

Okay.

But that's dependent on they take the civil service test and pass the civil service test.

Okay. So the only people in the department that are permanent are people who have taken civil service tests?

Yes. We have a lot of we have some provisionals that been provisions for a while. And the HR started to send out those tests. And now we have a large population of team members taking those tests. And we have quite a few in the queue that I would go over with the team to bring those over to adjust them to bring my sperm employees.

So there's no PERMANENT, EVERYBODY WHO'S PERMANENT IS IN CIVIL SERVICE, HAS TAKEN CIVIL SERVICE TESTS. YES.

OKAY.

ALL RIGHT. THE OTHER THING IS THAT I WAS LOOKING FOR THE, AND I APOLOGIZE IF YOU HAD MENTIONED IT IN YOUR PRESENTATION AND I MISSED IT, ABOUT THE FUNDING PRIORITIES, ABOUT PRIORITIES, DID YOU, I WAS LOOKING AT THAT, AND PART OF THE PRIORITIES about enhancement in different recreational centers. Because I know that in the beginning years ago, you know, there was a lot of advertisement of the rec centers and all of this stuff. And we don't hear a lot about that anymore. And I know that of course they do exist, but how are we getting the information out there? Because you still hear today people saying, you know, there's no recreation, there's nothing for the kids, nothing for the kids, but we know that you have a whole department that's dedicated to that. But I don't see in the budget that's anything that's dedicated to making sure that the information gets out to the community. The same thing with senior services. You guys do so much for the seniors. But again, we're constantly getting complaints that if you're not in a senior building, you don't get the information. And we have seniors all over the state who live in apartments, live with other family members. They live in the neighborhoods. And so... I WOULD LIKE TO SEE PART OF THE BUDGET BE DEDICATED TO GETTING INFORMATION OUT INTO THE COMMUNITY ABOUT ALL OF THE WONDERFUL THINGS THAT YOU DO. AND HAVING SOMEONE ASSIGNED TO THAT BECAUSE I DON'T SEE THAT HERE. IF IT IS HERE, PLEASE, I APOLOGIZE FOR MISSING IT.

WE HAD A COMMUNICATIONS PERSON THAT JUST LEFT. A communication officer, assistant communication officer. Unfortunately, this specific person left us five minutes. It was his specific job at that time to ensure we get all the information out to IT, to communications, through brochures, through the internet, and our City of Newark website. So we have a valuable opening for that to look for someone else to continue to do that so we can provide information to all the residents.

AND JUST ONE LAST QUESTION. I SEE YOU HAVE THE BREAKDOWN OF THE OVERTIME ANALYSIS AND YOU HAVE IT SPLIT BY AREAS, THE DIRECTOR'S OFFICE, RECREATION, CULTURAL AFFAIRS, SENIOR SERVICES, BUT I DON'T SEE THAT SAME PIE CHART OR SPLIT WITH JUST THE CURRENT AND PROPOSED BUDGET, THE SPLIT, HOW MUCH FOR EACH AREA, DIRECTOR'S OFFICE, RECREATION, CULTURAL AFFAIRS, AND SENIOR SERVICES.

For overtime, I have it listed at each division.

My office action. Yeah, no, the percentage of the budget that goes to each department. The percentage of the budget that's split up between each department. I see it in the overtime analysis in the pie chart, but I just didn't see it for the current and the proposed budget. So if we could get that, I'd appreciate it.

Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah, I understand what you're saying. But I haven't listed. I can actually give you those numbers if you need those numbers. I can read them off if you want to. At this present time, in our 1606, which is recreation, which is budgeted for $74,000 in overtime, we actually spent $35,000 in overtime. That's 47% of our budget, and we have $39,000 left in overtime.

Oh, no, I'm sorry. I was confused. No, we have it here, the overtime analysis. I mean, the actual, what your current budget is, and then what your proposed budget is, the percentage of that total number, how it's split up between the different departments, if you could send that. The same way you have the overtime analysis? Yes, if you could send that.

Yeah, I'll send it over.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Yeah. One, in your front, just what happened to your 800 lines? The 800 lines are not there. They need to be there because it gives us understanding what needs to happen. Also, under Recreation 71280, I'm a little surprised that you only asked for a $52,000 increase in other professional services when that carries all of some of your contractual stuff. some of the things that you need to make the recreational facilities go in terms of supplies. That's why I was looking for your 800 lines, because we get constant calls about shortage of supplies in a lot of these centers. And I want to know what you budgeted last year and what was your budget this year for the 800 lines for supplies, materials, not just for senior services, but for recreation. So if you can provide me with that, uh that would be important and then i just have these few questions and i'm i'm finished how much uh money do you currently have in your recreation trust account you know that number uh yeah that number is uh fifty four thousand four hundred and ten thousand twenty nine cents what was that number again

$54,410.29. Okay.

And how much do you currently have in the open space trust fund?

Well, our open space currently is $9,057,011.17. Some of that money is being drawn down on it because we already have projects in a hopper. So that number that you see, which is the number in two we draw down, that is the current number right now.

I get it. How much money have we generated from ice rink rentals?

Wow, that ice rink rentals, we don't separate that. The ice rink rentals, the community pass, the parks permits, all that get bundled up together and it goes into our recreation trust.

The purpose of fixing the ice rink and getting that up was to help as a revenue generator. And not just for the community usage, but for outside rental of rec fees. Some folks are getting $300 for ice time, $400 for ice time, $500 for ice time, outside entities and other entities. And so if we can figure out a way to get fundamentally back to that, that can be able to help. procure more revenue that can be generated through REC.

That's why I need the council's support because then I would have to come back and we'll have to do a resolution, then we'll have to change the ordinance.

You would and because it's already in place. I just think that the fundamental piece is advertising that we have ice rink time to individuals around essex county uh and other places that are looking for ice rink time doesn't matter if it's clifton or if it's irvington and newark there are a lot of individuals that need ice rink time njit hockey team ruckers may have a hockey team they need ice rink time and so fundamentally if we get get the ice rink time and use those dollars some of those dollars you can use to even have a staff member come in early to facilitate what that looks like with the ice rink time. So that was it. And then just want to reassure and go back. I just want to go back. I just want to go back on a record and ensure that the dollars that were supposed to be sent over for maintenance parks and grounds be sent over as well. that we make sure that that goes over. And then...

So I do, if I can add, kindly, respectfully, Councilman, that also next year, if we're looking at 2027, that is also going to show a reflection of an increase also within the budget again.

Well, it... It will, but based off of what the administration has said, they're going to move those funds into a different account that you'll be able to monitor. Really needed those 800 accounts. I don't know why they're not in the book. We have the 800 accounts in front of us. We could submit it to you. We could send it. Yes. so I can have that number. And then lastly, I'm not sure where the VA went, but Ms. Tate, I'm requesting that we, instead of the 52,229 that we find and rounded out an additional 100,000 to go into the 71280 line under recreation professional services. That's just an addition of 48,000.

Thank you, I'm good. Thank you, Council President. Just a question with regards to, I guess, the community pass. How much money has been generated from the community pass for non-residents?

Remember you asked me that before the last couple of years, we got to run a report for you. So I'll give you that information. We're running a report for residents and non-North residents and look at the comparisons.

Okay. And would you also, I guess you would also have the number of community passes too.

Yes.

That'll all come on or off the report. Okay, great. Thank you. I just, it's not a question, but something that just came up as you're sitting here. I was told by a few members of the senior community that Nelly grid needs to be cleaned up. That's all I'm going to say. All right. So maybe since I look into it.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

I don't know if that's going to come out of this year budget or next year budget. They talked about moving those funds from public buildings, but the floor at Nelly grid needs to be redone. immediately. So I don't know if that can happen this year. We shouldn't have to wait on it, but that floor needs to be redone. All of the tile is ripped up. The floor is loose. And I'm quite sure that people would have reported it or should have reported. And if not, Just want to use this little moment to report it, but that entire floor needs to be redone. And if we're able to get some quotes within the next two weeks or so to figure out how do we get that done so we don't have any slip and falls or injuries at that facility, that would be greatly received. I speak with my director colleague on that.

WHEN YOU COULD, IN TERMS OF STAFF, I JUST NEED TO SEE THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A PROGRAM SPECIALIST, A PROGRAM EVENT COORDINATOR, A RECREATIONAL PROGRAM I don't mind people making money. I do not. But the big ticket items here. Manager of sanitation. What does that job entail? In regards to the lifeguards, I see some make 20, some make 40. Is that a difference of full-time and part-time? Yes, seasonal.

And then the numbers that you mentioned for recreation program coordinator versus the program coordinator slash special events, those are our civil service position. One, recreation program coordinator make more than program coordinators due to the state and civil service.

We only have one of those titles. No, I got you. So in the big ticket items, everybody that make over 80, I'll just leave it like that. If I could get a list of them and what their job title is.

Yeah, it's in your book right there.

But it doesn't tell me what they do. I want to look a little... I gave you justification. If they are an assistant to you, if they just do programming, I'd just like to know that and whether they are or are not civil servants.

Okay.

If you don't mind, thank you so much.

Is that specifically over 80 or are you starting from 70?

Yeah, over 80 is good. Okay.

Thank you, Council President. Director, how you doing? Great. Mine is not so much of a question right now. I think my council colleagues asked the questions that I wanted to ask. But I just want to say thank you, because when I call your office, when it's concerning seniors, seniors eating, seniors riding the bus, um you guys are there you know um and you let me know what's real what what can be done what can't be done and um when it comes to the youth i i think that sometimes um it might have been councilwoman um jackson at or maybe it was Pat, but talking about communication. Oh, no, I'm sorry. It was Amina Beck. To get the information out to the people, right? Because you guys do so many great things. And I think that the booklet is amazing. I think that... we got to get into the future as Congresswoman LaMonica used to say, the 21st century and get these websites in a way that, and I don't know if it's some room in your budget to kind of push that to make the website just kind of more acclimated to the things that you guys do and that's easy to say right because a lot of seniors don't use the computers that way right so it's like a rock and a hard place but i do think that you guys do an amazing you guys have amazing programs and the people that are watching if you search it you will find it you know um as well as us trying to disseminate it to the people So thank you for that. Thank you for the things that I call you for with the youth in the West Ward. One thing that we just did this weekend that was amazing, taking the children to out of state to Connecticut and New York City. Thank you for that. But the main thing that I'm excited to partner with you with, and you're a Westwater too, I don't think the BA understands that after these budget hearings, I have a whole deck coming to him about rebuilding Boylan Street Recreational Center. That has been a project of mine since I got elected in 2022. The mayor said it was very ambitious and he was right. It is ambitious, but it's deserving of our community, of our entire city, not just the West Ward, the entire city. I'm so excited about it because I've been working on it through the whole through two years ago. And I feel like it's coming to fruition enough to put on the VA's desk. And I have, you know, we're talking about seven to $10 million a phase in four phases. And I have some great leads, BA, great leads. Thank God for the music industry. But even more so than that, I can't wait to really sit down with you to show you what this public partnership looks like and be able to talk to you and put it on all of the people who need to be involved all the way to the B.A., to the mayor, to everybody. But I think people are going to be surprised what 2 Westwater is about to do with Boylan Street Recreational Center. So thank you, too, for your support.

I was a woman. I was a woman.

I guess I won't be the only one that don't say anything, but I'm going to piggyback on everybody very briefly. Councilwoman May spoke about the information getting out and you're getting ready to hire someone. But I do know, because I sit in some of the other meetings, where the mailers do go out to those who sign up. That's for the senior population, because you deal with two very vulnerable populations, the senior population and our youth. So the mailer goes out to those who have signed up and they get all of the information for the calendars of everything you do all month. Councilman Kelly is speaking about the youth and them not getting the information and the books are good, but I'm not sure that when you get the person that's going to be your communications person to get the information out, whether we put these books in schools, whether we have liaisons between recreation, senior services, and other entities to get the information out, because everybody's not on social media, even though our young people are very social media savvy, and seniors are definitely not. I'm always on social media platforms. So as you move forward, which I know you did discuss, that homeowners that do call us and complain about not being able to go on the trips, Newark, New Jersey has one of the best senior services programs in the state. How I know? Because I catch people and tell them they don't live here, how you on the trip. You know, I'm just saying they do it. They sign up and maybe use auntie's address or something. So other municipalities want to do what we do, but we want to make sure we don't leave out that homeowner population and the youth. that might not be getting the information through the books that are sitting in our offices or in City Hall. Thank you so very much. And thank you for partnering with me on so many things with the seniors and the youth. Some of the programming that I've done when I was in administration and since I've been on the council, it never happens had it not been for you partnering and being a sole participator of making sure those programs were a success. So thank you for your leadership and your team.

Thank you, Pastor. Director Internship, Councilwoman Bay talked about messaging. I think we have to message it in different languages because, again, there is Portuguese, Spanish, Creole. I mean, we have to do a better job in all the departments of messaging to the folks. Some people don't know us. Councilman Kelly said, the wonderful things that Obama Recreation does because they don't read about it. They don't know about it. I remember back in the 90s, it was, JFK was the main attraction. They would come from every swimming team around the state of New Jersey because we have the best pool in the whole Northeast corridor that has an Olympic-sized pool for competition. So they used to come over by busloads to use our pool. So the same thing has to be done with the hockey, the other amenities that we have in the city. So again, the messaging should be in different languages so that we can get people to come in to use our facilities. We have great facilities and you're doing a great job, thank you.

Thank you, I appreciate it.

And thank you for the scoreboard for Alba Coutinho that my councilman still wanted me to let you know that. IT WAS VERY APPRECIATIVE OF YOUR EFFORT.

THANK YOU.

THANK YOU. NICE DEPARTMENT. THANK YOU.

THANK YOU.

HAVE A GOOD NIGHT. HOW MANY MORE WE HAVE?

24, 22.

THANK YOU, GUYS. SO WE HAVE MAYOR'S OFFICE, CLERK, AND THE LIBRARY.

AND AFFIRMATIVE ACTION.

THE LIBRARY IS GONE?

Just the mayor's office and agencies and then me.

In the kitchen, in the cafeteria? All right. Dinner?

Let's go. Let's go to the mayor's office.

Mayor's office and agencies?

All right. Welcome to the marathon.

Banquet.

Oh, we got the courts.

Yeah, yeah. No, that's.

No, no, no.

Courts too, Keisha.

Courts, affirmative action. Courts and affirmative action and the mayor.

The library. Yes, mayor's office and agencies. The mayor's office will open.

The mayor's office will open.

The agencies will file.

Right. We got books for them. All right. Good evening, council president, members.

Can you speak to the microphone? Okay.

Here come the agencies, Council President.

Good evening, Council President, members of the Municipal Council, and members of the public. My name is Amira Britt-Jones, and I thank you for the opportunity to present the proposal 2026 budget for the Office of the Mayor. To my right, I have Chief Public Defender Herbert Washington, and we will be representing the Office of the Mayor, the agencies to follow... Sorry, thank you. Agencies to follow would be NORC Workforce Development Board, and that's Karen Gay-Lloyd, which is the Executive Director, Grace Yee, Chief Physical Officer. For the affirmative action, I have David Carter, Senior Program Manager. I also have NORC Public Library, and as you know, NORC Museum has already presented themselves. I'M OPEN FOR ANY QUESTIONS. I'M NEW TO THIS, SO PLEASE FORGIVE ME.

ANY QUESTIONS?

GOOD EVENING. AND AGAIN, I SOUND LIKE A BROKEN RECORD. I APOLOGIZE IF I MISSED IT. Is there a breakdown, because you have so many different departments that go under the office of the mayor, of provisional employees by department? How many, who they are and how long that they've been provisional employees?

That would be on section three or tab three. I CAN PROVIDE THAT IN WRITING OR I CAN PROVIDE IT TO YOU NOW. I KNOW.

YEAH, BECAUSE I ONLY SEE ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR, FIVE, AND THAT'S ONLY THE MAIN STORE, BUT THERE'S NOTHING THAT HAS THE OTHER AGENCIES.

YES. YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT I'M SAYING?

I UNDERSTAND. SO IF YOU CAN SEND THAT. YES, MA'AM, I CAN PROVIDE THAT. I APPRECIATE IT.

ANY OTHER QUESTIONS?

IF I COULD JUST HAVE A LITTLE DETAIL ON YOUR FIRST PAGE WHERE IT SAYS OTHER EXPENSES, $18,822,000.

IF YOU COULD JUST SEND ME WHAT THAT COVERS. AND I HAD ONE MORE, BUT MY BLUE PAPER FELL OFF. I saw a couple of staff. They had a blue paper on here. I saw a couple of staff that were being paid by another agency, not necessarily the mayor's department. And I had my little blue. Give me two seconds. If I don't find it, I'll send it to you in the email. I did see a couple of staff members that weren't included in the budget. BUT THEY WERE THERE BUT NOT PAID FOR OUT OF YOUR BUDGET NECESSARILY. SO IF I DON'T FIND IT, I'LL SEND AN E-MAIL TO THE CURRENT. ALL RIGHT. OKAY. OKAY. THANKS FOR MY COUNSEL COLLEAGUE. IT'S NOT COVERED BY A GRANT. I'VE HAD IT.

I KNOW I JUST HAD IT, BUT I CAN BORROW YOURS IF YOU DON'T MIND.

OKAY. SO THERE'S SEVERAL INDIVIDUALS HERE THAT RECEIVE PAYMENT, STAFF NOT FUNDED BY CITY OR GRANT. AND THERE'S SEVERAL SALARIES. I DON'T NEED TO CALL ANY NAMES, BUT HOW IS THAT, YOU KNOW, WHAT

So what tab, I'm sorry, are you looking at? Is that tab 12? It's behind 12, yes. Okay.

And the top reads make office of mayor and agency staff not funded by city or grant.

Yes, those are our precise employees.

Okay. Got you. And if I could just have that miscellaneous breakdown.

The miscellaneous.

That's on page two. I mean, in the very front.

The miscellaneous that we have, it's actually.

I'm sorry. The total of expenses. I apologize. It's not miscellaneous. It's the 18 million.

I'll provide that for you. Right. Thank you. Okay.

Thank you. And that's, I've got to conclude my thought.

Any other questions?

Okay, good afternoon, good evening, evening, evening. A question with regards to, and I apologize because it's late and I can't recall. In terms of staffing and the number of judges, well, I don't know if you can answer this one, the number of judges, do you have the full complement of judges now?

We don't, that would not be.

That's not under the department. They're coming up next. And I know I see them. That's why I'm throwing it out there. So be prepared to answer that question. Right. I guess my other question is really, I guess, more towards. Well, no, I don't. I'm good. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Next department.

So we're going to do the courts next and then we'll come back to the other agencies.

This is the court. Thank you.

Council President, Council Members, good evening.