Borough Council - Regular Meeting

The following is the agenda for the regular Borough Council meeting of the Borough of Clemson Lakes Mayor and Council on Municipal Cooperation in the County of Passaic. The meeting will begin at 7 p.m. on June 10, 2026 in the Municipal Building 25, Lenox Avenue, Clemson Lakes, consisting with the open public meetings after the meeting will be open for public comment and shall be in accordance with the terms and conditions of the Borough's Municipal Code and Biosphere.

Please bless this merit, councilors, and deliberate on the best of Pompton Lakes.

In accordance with the New Jersey Open Public Meeting Act, adequate notice of this meeting has been provided. The time, date, location, purpose of this meeting and agenda was posted on the municipal building. Bolton boards transmitted to individuals requested notice and published electronically on the official website of the Borough of Pompton Lakes. Roll call, please.

Mayor Serr.

Here.

Council President Kent. here councilman excuse councilman hinton uh councilman this year it's a little long we understand but uh councilman sentences here councilman here because this evening was over returning march 7 rail our minister

Okay, thank you. I have no presentation, so can I have a motion to open the meeting for public comments? Motion. Councilman Hinton, Councilman... Second. Was it Bennett? Bennett, all in favor? Aye. Anyone from the public would like to address? Please step up.

Hi, Kathy Shortway, Pine Street. I'm back here about the garbage. Anyway, I brought some pictures, and as you can see, the garbage is, I mean, it's gotten 100% better since Michael's come on board, but it is starting to creep back up again, and I really think a lot of it has to do with the garbage cans that we have. because I feel like it almost promotes dumping because they can get the garbage right in the top of it. I did the last two pages. There's our garbage cans and then garbage cans in Denville. And I think the picture speaks for itself. I mean, as a town, I think we're kind of being not really... we're not doing the right thing by letting all the recycling go in with the garbage because I know as a, you know, living in a house, if I put half bottles in my garbage bag and garbage the other half, they're not taking it because there's too much recycling in it. So I think we're letting the recycling get in with the garbage, and I don't think that's right. Also, again, I think that the town needs to be, you know, clean. The sidewalks are dirty. We have graffiti. We're starting to get graffiti. There's a picture of graffiti on the stop sign coming out of the one pothole, which should be, you know, taken care of. And again, four years ago, I brought up maybe hiring a part-time retiree to work a couple days a week, no benefits, just a nice hourly rate to clean the curb line. The curb lines constantly have bottles in it. There's little liquor bottles. I've seen diapers in the curb line. I mean, it needs to be cleaned up. And the other thing, Katie Cole Park I know Maria Kent had it on a nice schedule and it was looking good, but now it seems to be getting a little neglected. But I do have to say, kudos to whoever, there was a big tree that had fallen and the tree's gone. So thank you, Randy, for making sure that the deer, you know, you, you know. Yes, it looks good. It really does. The last thing, I just have a question. We have a property maintenance inspector. who lives in brick township. That's about an hour and a half away. I know that because my daughter lives in brick. I know he relies on people reporting incidents, but I'm just trying to, wouldn't it be better to have someone that lived in town or closer? The two, three hour commute that he's doing, he could use that time to ride around and and look for violations rather than to rely on someone. I just don't think a property maintenance inspector should live in brick. But that's just my opinion. Anyway, yeah, it's just I think the pictures speak for themselves. I really think we should invest in new garbage cans. There's only 10. I counted them. There's only 10 through the whole town. I don't know how much that would cost, but I can't see it costing that much. But the garbage cans in Benville are really nice. They have a spot for trash, a small spot for recycling, and no one can stick their bag of garbage on it. Okay?

Thank you.

Thank you.

Anyone else with a public lecture?

Hello, Lauren Bennett for Sunset Road. Really nice to see the Civic Center. OK, that's great. I'm so glad it's finished. Girl Scouts will be happy to know it's finished, too, because I'm sure some some troops could use meeting space. But what I wanted to flag and I wanted to say this in the public, I'm so happy that you used redevelopment as a tool to get that done. This is how it should be. I've been working with redevelopment as the bulk of my professional work for the second half of my career, so like the last 13 years. And this is how everyone is doing it. This is what works. It's good for the developer, because when they do these givebacks, when they invest in the community, they're bettering the community, which leads to better rents and a more desirable, easier to rent out the building, helps their pro forma, helps their bottom line, makes it more desirable. But it's the way that redevelopment becomes a tool, not just to stabilize taxes, but also very much is a tool to get improvements for the community and improve the quality of life. It's a standard issue in almost every redevelopment plan that I work with. The developers have to do something. whether it's something like this fixing up a civic center fixing up uh you know the corner for a public park giving back a little bit for better sidewalk widths whether there's requirements for you know green roofs for reducing heat impacts from impervious surface all of these little things are ways that we leverage the redevelopment downtown to get a better community for our residents. So I'm really happy to see that we're embracing that. Hopefully having this first piece finished with something that's so visible, so useful to the community, helps get people a little more comfortable with it and see that this really is a benefit. So, really glad to see that. I really wish the walkable downtown, the walkable Wannakew Ave, my apologies, it's been a long day. I really wish that that had been not from 9 to 12 on a Tuesday. Would have been awesome if it had even just been from like 4 to 6 to let people who are Working have a little better chance of being there. I had every intention of being there, but I could not take the three hours out of the office for this Tuesday. Just didn't work out and I'm sure there's a lot of people who would love to have been there. I hope that some of the summary of discussion points of something from that is shared around. It would be awesome to see that pop up on our social media. Some kind of summary of it. I don't know. if any of the committees or boards were particularly involved or would have a report of that at their meetings. I don't really know. The RDA meeting is the same night as the high school graduation this year, so if they're going to talk about it then, I'm certainly not going to know. But it would be great to allow for a little bit more inclusion you know, people who have regular jobs in some of that conversation too, because I would love to see what we're doing with that. It's a big part of making redevelopment work, making our community more desirable. So, thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else from the public would like to address? Seeing no one, can I have a motion to close the public session? Motion. Councilman Hinch? Second. Councilman Sanchez, all in favor? Aye.

Against?

Kathy, thank you for giving us the pictures. I'm going to start backwards. Where an employee lives has no bearing on what they do here. They have a certain amount of hours they have to be here to work. We have many employees that do not live in town. They could live in Pennsylvania. As long as they're here working their hours and doing what they're supposed to do, that's what we go by. It's not that there's extra hours he would have. He has a certain amount of hours that he does his job. It's not like if he was here, he would have an extra two hours to do more. He's set with his time. And as you've mentioned, he's responsive to what we have to do. None of our inspectors are full time. None of them are out looking for what has to be worked. If someone comes in and says the grass is too high, there's garbage in the street, then they're going to react to that. So that's about that. Let's talk about the garbage and the graffiti. The chief has been made aware of the graffiti by Councilman Vennen, and they're working on that. Unfortunately, we have some cameras that we're trying to, I don't know, let you speak about that a little bit. But we have to stay on top of that. I agree 100% that that's something we wanna stay on top of. Let's talk the garbage itself. As you're aware, and I usually don't post on social media, but I did because that was a separate situation where an individual business was not paying their carding bill of garbage and that's why the garbage built up. And we called the carter of the garbage and he said they haven't paid their bill in six months. I'm not coming to pick it up. So we instructed the town to go in and clean it up. It's on private property, which makes a big difference there because we have to go on private property to do that. And we're still determining what we're gonna do with the dumpster so there is no illegal dumping. That was a problem with an individual business. The garbage cans that you showed, they are good garbage cans. I've looked at them. We've looked at them in the past. The problem with those cans though is you can pile garbage on top of the can. We had those cans initially and people were putting full sewing machines and things right on top of the can. I did have a conversation with the bid director recently he's making us aware of some compacting cans that have a compactor built in that run by solar power. So once it reaches a certain level, it compacts the garbage, and then it reaches another level and identifies a message to whoever we identify to come and empty that can. We're going to look at some of those cans because, like you mentioned, there's not a lot of garbage cans. I think the thing the public has to understand the most, though, and it's unfortunate, but when you have a public garbage can, we cannot restrict anyone from putting garbage in it. You could come from another town and dump your garbage in that can, and that's perfectly legal because it's a public can. And that is what's happening. We have people on camera getting out of their car with household garbage and dumping it in their cans. And that's how they get filled up so quickly. Same with the businesses, same with the apartments upstairs. We're hoping the cans are used by the kids traveling for lunch and all those other things, but it's not. It's actually people coming in and dumping garbage. And it's a problem. And, you know, we're trying to address that, but it's a very difficult thing to address. Going back to what you mentioned about hiring someone to do the streets, the problem with that is we have representatives of the union of the DPW that wouldn't okay that because it's their job to do that. So we can't just hire a part-time person to do something within that realm. Saying that, though, the bid, because they're separate and independent of us, does hire a landscaper that's supposed to come once a week and clean just those things you mentioned, the streets, the sidewalks, all those things. I will speak to them again to make sure they're coming and doing what they're supposed to do. And I'm going to let Michael and the chief jump in at the end. At the end of the day, though, you know, the pictures you're showing here, It's people just dumping garbage. It's just unfortunate that they planned. I personally have seen people drop wood, get out of the car, take it out of the trunk, and pile it right on top of the can and drive away. And I can't even call the police on that because it's a public can. They're allowed to do that. I'm just going through some of these cans. But I will mention it to the bid about changing the cans also. I mean, it's something we have to look into. And I'm going to let the chief just talk about the graffiti a little bit.

Yeah, so... We have definitely noticed the increase of graffiti on our own. Also, we have reports from Councilman Bennett. We are definitely looking into it, seriously looking into it. And that's really all, you know, open investigations, that's all I can really say on that right now. But we're definitely looking into it and we're taking it seriously. I agree with the Councilman's sentiments as, you know, we want to, we want to, We take these type of things seriously. We don't want to let it continue. And I would just, for the residents of town, if they do see a person putting graffiti up anywhere, I would definitely implore them to please contact the police department and report that so that we can take immediate action on this issue.

Mike, do you have anything to say about the garbage cans in general? No, you pretty much covered it. Thank you. Thank you. Lauren, thank you for those compliments about the redevelopment. That is one of the goals. And let's remember, this was the first project we did. So we probably went a little light on what we're asking from them, right? If this was the fifth project, who knows what we could have been getting out of them. But we were new to the whole ballgame. We didn't know if they were going to actually build the project. You know, they were humming and hawing about what they were going to do. And I got to give credit to the redevelopment agency and the planning board, because the fix of the Civic Center wasn't supposed to be as nice as it came out. It was supposed to be just some windows, new doors, and some new siding. Well, with a little pushing from our administrator and all these other groups that we talked to, We got them to do with the whole building, which is a big improvement to the town. And, you know, we're already looking at groups calling us now saying, hey, can I use that building for this or can I use that building for that? So it's a big improvement for everything we've done moving forward. You know, as we move forward with this and we get other projects, we're going to ask for more. You're right. We are definitely going to ask. And it's part of the plan of redevelopment. That is the tradeoff. When you do redevelopment, you're giving back to this community somehow. So that will happen. Your second comment about the meeting. Unfortunately, it's the county. The county works between 9 and 4.30, so they're having every meeting they have between 9 and 4.30. They're not going to set a meeting up where they have to come after their hour. So it's unfortunate. I know a lot of people have reached out to me and said I would like to be part of that. But at the end of the day, this is the beginning of many meetings that will happen with this. This is just the early stages of the ideas. And I think, Mike, we will be putting up something on it or not.

Yeah, if I may. We're going to post a report on social media. And part of the program is also a demonstration project. So we're looking at having a demonstration, probably with some sort of parklet, which you see in communities like Ridgewood or Westwood, where you have outdoor dining in the street. Whether it's outdoor dining or stormwater infrastructure in the street, you're gonna see some sort of demonstration that is going to be funded by Rutgers and the NJTPA for this project. So we're looking to do that at some point over the summer.

And that's with the county, right? Yes. Okay. Okay, thank you. Okay, motion to approve the following minutes.

Regular meeting minutes, May 27th, 2026. Closed session meeting minutes, May 27th, 2026.

Motion. Councilman Bay, Councilman Sanchez, all in favor? Aye. Against? Aye. Authorizing of bills and wires as listed below. Can I have a motion? Motion. Councilman Bennett? Aye. Councilman Hinton, all in favor? Aye. Consent agenda, anybody need anything removed?

One second, 248.

248.

Okay, anybody else? Okay, it's just 248.

Where is the Mayor and Borough Council of the Borough of Compton Lake to conclude its consent agenda consisting of various proposed resolutions? where the Mayor of the Council of Borough of Compton Lakes does desire to remove resolutions for individual action from that agenda now there. Therefore, be it resolved that the following resolutions on the consent agenda are hereby approved. Resolution 26247, through 26-265, we're gonna move 26-248. Can I have a motion?

Motion. Councilman Hinton? Second. Councilman Vanden, all in favor? Aye. Against? Okay, 26-248.

Authorizing a non-bonding referendum regarding health benefit contribution levels for the employees of the borough of Compton Lakes.

Question? The question is, I'm just thinking that it really wasn't necessary. I mean, this is a situation that we all understand that health benefits have increased, and through the years, I've been a mayor and a councilman a long time. Councilman Bennett and Councilwoman Kent have been here a long time. There have been no increases, really, to the employees to pay their health benefits. And it's our job as elected officials to deal with this situation. I just really don't see the necessity of putting it on the ballot, asking the voters what their opinion is. I mean, they elected us to make our opinions known and to deal with these issues. Why we really need to ask the voters their opinion, I never really saw a point in it.

And I can understand what you're saying there, but I think the reason we're putting it on is because we want to put the state and the county on notice that the benefits are out of control. For the most part, you're in the know, you understand what's going on. For the most part, residents don't understand the policy on how that works. They don't understand that when we make an increase or a decrease in that, it's affecting their tax dollar at the end of So we want the residents just to understand, because I agree with you, the number that we picked, 1.5, that's a non-negotiable price. We're going to be higher than that for both sides. I think it's just more to identify the fact that there's an issue statewide, countywide, with health care benefits. And just to be aware, some of your increases are coming from that increase from the state of the county. And I'm going to let Mike jump in if you want to add anything.

My only comment would be that if there's further discussion, it would be more appropriate in closed session. And as a reminder, there was a prior discussion on the matter, and direction was given to prepare this. So if there are further questions or concerns, I would recommend that it be discussed in closed session. No, I'm going to call for a vote. I would defer to Mark.

That would be appropriate. I agree.

So I'm going to do a roll call vote.

Chair?

Yes?

I just want to remind Council in cases that that is a non-finding referendum and it's a six-foot question to the residents. That's it. Non-finding.

In what respect?

It just means there's no right or wrong or yes or no on it. They're just going to say, just informing them that this is what's going on. Yeah. Well put, please.

I don't know that there was a motion in the second.

I don't think there was. Oh, I'm sorry.

Could I have a motion on ordinance 26-248? I'll make a motion. Second. Councilman Benning, Councilman Big. Roll call, please.

Councilman Hitt.

Oh, I'm first? I just don't feel right about it, so I'm going to vote no.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Okay, ordinances.

Ordinance 2621, an ordinance amending Chapter 5 licenses permitted. Regulations Section 20, solicitors and counselors. Subsection five, time of operation in section 21. Soliciting charitable subsection four, time of operation of the municipal code in the Borough of Austin.

Motion to approve ordinance 26-21 for introduction. Motion. Councilman Hinton? Second. Councilman Sanchez. I'm going to just have the attorney just quickly say what we're thinking about doing there.

Sure, Mayor. So this ordinance is just an adjustment of time with respect to door-to-door canvassing. We reduced the time to 7 o'clock, and 7 o'clock at this point places us right in the middle of some of our neighbors. We have a neighbor at 6 o'clock, we have other neighbors at 8 o'clock, and that was the ultimate decision that the governing body opted to to change it to, and this ordinance obviously balances First Amendment rights of individuals wishing to go door-to-door with the desires of our residents for privacy.

Okay. Roll call, please.

Councilman Hinton.

Yes.

Yes.

Councilman Bennett?

Yes. Councilman Fitts? Yes. 2618, bond loan disappropriation number 438,726, and authorizing the issuance of 1,667,300 bonds or notes of the borough for various reasons that purposefully go unrighteous to be untaken by the borough of Compton Lakes and the County of Mississauga Church.

Motion to open the meeting for public comments on Ordinance 26-18. Motion.

Councilman Sanders?

Aye. Councilman Hinton, all in favor? Aye. Against? Anyone like to address just this ordinance? Seeing no one, motion to close the public session on Ordinance 26-18. Motion. Councilman Vanden?

Second.

Councilman Sanders, all in favor? Aye. Against? Aye. Motion to approve Ordinance 26-18 for final adoption. Motion. Councilman Benning, Councilman Hinton, roll call, please.

Councilman Hinton?

Yes.

Council President Hinton? Yes. Councilman Sanders?

Yes.

Councilman Benning? Yes. Councilman Bay? Yes. 20 Adornments Amendment Chapter 7, Traffic Section 21, Bargaining of Boat Railways and Tow Vehicles Protecting our Town for of the revised general ordinances of the borough of Thompson Lake.

Motion to open the meeting for public comments on Ordinance 26-20. Motion. Councilman Hinton. Who's that? Councilman Begg. All in favor? Aye. Against? Anyone like to address just this one? Seeing no one, motion to close the meeting for public comments on Ordinance 26-20. Motion.

Second.

Councilman Sanchez. Councilman Bennett. All in favor? Aye. Motion to approve Ordinance 26-20 for final adoption. motion second uh what was the motion councilman bennett and councilman hinton roll colton's councilman yes okay thank you Okay, under my report, myself and a bunch of council people here attended the plea tree planting for Carl Padula, a well-deserved honor for him. He was very involved in this community in town for many, many years. You know, I called him a friend even though he ran against me twice for mayor. And, you know, he did a lot for this community. So it was a well-deserved honor by the Board of Ed. He was involved with the Board of Ed for a very long time. I had a meeting with Mike and Senator Panaccio once again to talk about our funding for the DPW garage. We're making some progress. Hopefully we can have more information to talk about that soon. I mean the dates are coming up soon so we should know more. We also had a meeting with the DEP to talk about stream permits. It was a good conversation. We had the permitting vice chair of the DEP on the calls and Senator Panaccio. We're basically asking to make it a permit by rule to work on our rivers, which means a permit by rule basically says we decide when we have to clean up and when we do it. We don't have to pay for a permit to do it. Right now, the way it works, if we want to clean one of our rivers, a tree falls into our river, a huge tree, we have to get it out. We have to pay for a permit to remove the tree. And these permits can be expensive sometimes. And as Senator Panaccio mentioned, We're paying a permit to the state to clean their river. The state owns the river. We don't own the river. But yet we're paying to do that. On top of the fact that it's time consuming and it's not easy to make it happen. Sometimes we have to get that tree out of the way quickly because there are storms approaching. They all understood what we were saying. They did explain to us a verbal agreement and Mike tell me if I'm saying this wrong that we can call DEP and say we have an emergency, we need an emergency set up to get this tree out of the thing. And they said they would entertain that idea. So we haven't tried it yet, but that's something we will do moving forward. I appreciate the fact that at least we had the meeting. They know this is a problem, not just from our town, but for all communities. A large tree falls, we're three rivers. A large tree is blocking one river. That's a problem if a storm's coming. So we have to get those trees out of the way. And believe it or not, again, we were cleaning one of their rivers of a large tree that fell. We maybe put one of our tires, touched the water, and we got fined $50,000 from the DEP for cleaning their river, which they, after arguing, we did get the permit reduced greatly. But it shouldn't work that way. We should be working on the same team with the state and the towns to make the rivers clean. So I'm glad we had the meeting. It was a good conversation. I attended a very nice award ceremony put on by the chief last night for the police department, everybody up here also, well-deserved by all our honorees. And like I said last night, yes, a lot of them got awards, but all those police officers on that staff care about our town at the end of the day. You know, that's what we can ask for as residents. We want our police to care about what's going on, not just coming in and doing a job and leaving. So I thank all our police officers for what they have done and what they do do. Tended a great ceremony at our Civic Center that Ms. Fennin mentioned today. You know, we have a new building out there in the back. If you haven't taken a look, it looks great. We're going to actually start having our meetings again like we used to do there. We'll also be renting out the building for small parties. If you're interested in renting out the building, contact the Borough Hall. It holds up to about 60 people. And we will allow food. So if you have any questions about that, call the Borough Hall. We also got some storage put upstairs, which is greatly needed because when we put the storage upstairs, we're not paying for storage somewhere else. Again, I have to remind everybody that this, as Ms. Fennin mentioned, this was part of a project from the redevelopment project put in town. So we did not pay any cost to have that building redone. And so it's one of the trade-offs of doing business for redevelopment and it'll only get more from there. But this was a good one for us because that building was down closed for more than two years with mold issues and water damage. So to have this building back in line is a big deal. So I thank everybody involved with that. I thank Meridian for taking care of that and making it work. I attended a PBA 5K run, which I did not run. I walked. I didn't even walk all. But, you know, it's great to see the PBA put together an event for themselves, to raise some money for all the great programs they run. It was well, a lot of people there, and it's the first annual, and I think they'll be moving forward with more events coming forward with that. And I think that is my report. Council President, you're not giving a report, correct? Okay, no problems.

Councilman Bennett. Thank you, Mayor. As mentioned before, as I've mentioned a few times during past council meetings, the graffiti issue, in addition to reporting if you see someone do it, also report it if you notice graffiti that wasn't there the day before, because that'll shorten the window that the police can need to look for that perpetrator. As mentioned, it was the little library at Lakeside Park that was vandalized. My younger daughter and her troop, when they were in fourth grade, I want to say, put that up as one of their projects. And it was heartbreaking to have my younger daughter text me that image. Not only because they put it together. The kids actually assembled that little library. But the troop ran a reading program and did a lot of things. A lot of work went into that. I'm looking forward to that person getting caught. Thank you to the PLPD for the quick response and follow up. Quick reminder that tomorrow night's stroll is postponed. And looking forward to the next one. Mr. Shortway, I agree with you with the graffiti. The stop sign that you caught your leader. The stop sign in the picture, Mayor, I think that's on private property.

I don't think that's... Well, it can't be a stop sign. It can't be on private property.

Well, I mean, it's part of that driveway that goes up to the train tracks behind Wannakewab on the riverside of Wannakewab.

Yeah. Can a stop sign be on private property? So that sign, you're talking about the sign that's the one-way sign?

It's part of that, yeah, the no left turn.

It's part of the driveway, but the sign is in the borough, right? Yeah, it's in the borough, right.

Oh, okay. I wasn't sure how that was. It is pretty faded, so it should be replaced either way. Randy, if you, Councilman Hinton, if you reach out to DPW, right, Dan can take care of that. uh and and the garbage cans i actually spoke down at the league uh spoke with uh uh superintendent o'rourke of our dpw and got him connected with abel down uh back in november and the garbage cans are looking at called big belly uh garbage cans they have their solar power they compact they're they're they're pricey but i think they'll they'll last and it'll um the way they're designed will prevent folks from just putting garbage bags on top Yes, they can still place it on the side, but it stepped up surveillance, not surveillance, enforcement could probably help with that as well. Civic Center, as Mayor mentioned, it was a pleasant surprise to see the beautiful plaque with all the names of the folks and groups that were involved in making that come to fruition. I want to congratulate the Pompton Lakes Police Award recipients. Very well deserved. And thank you to the chief for acknowledging our officers because day to day you thank them, but to be acknowledged in a formal setting like that is very nice. Appreciate that. And I support it fully. Last night was also the Girl Scouts Court of Awards. That's why I was late to the awards. I was bouncing back and forth. Luckily, it was well within walking distance. Congratulations to all who bridged, and thank you to the volunteers who helped serve and work with the Girl Scouts. Lastly, the Pompton Lakes High School Music Department had their dinner last night. So that was my third event after I left you guys to go back there and join them. So congratulations on another successful year. Congratulations to the seniors and next year's leadership for the marching band. Lakeside Middle School had their High Note Music Festival, Dorney Park trip a couple weeks, couple Fridays ago. It was my last time chaperoning. Kind of sad about that. It was a lot of fun. It was a long day, but it was a lot of fun. And then last week, congratulations to the 8th grade dance. The Pompton Lakes High School prom was on the same night. Bouncing back and forth between those two. And then the Pompton Lakes senior trip to Virginia was very successful. Saw the pictures in the post. And that is my report. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Bay.

Thank you, Mayor. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to attend this month's bid meeting. I was completing my civic responsibility for charity duty. Very fun and exciting. They did want me to announce that there was a stroll supposed to be tomorrow night. Unfortunately, it has been postponed or rescheduled to August 13th. I attended trail maintenance on Sunday, May 31st. We had a good turnout. The red, yellow, and blue trails got cleared. On another note, and I know it's been discussed before, and I told you I was going to bring it up, is just we need to talk about the maintenance of the Morris Canal Greenway. The Trails Committee doesn't have enough manpower or equipment to maintain the trail, and I know the DPW has the same kind of issue. The DPW is going to assist and do a one-time maintenance. However, I don't think that will be enough. And we do have the new Eagle Scout project going in. I know he wanted to do some upgrades to the trail as well as the kiosk. I just hate to see that trail become impassable in the future and nobody really be able to use it. And there are a number of, like, dead trees that could come down and be an issue for anybody hiking, you know, through there. So, you know, I don't know if there's a way for us to come up with a solution for it. I do know the DPW, at least hopefully with 11 more guys getting hired, could maybe come through. even once a month would help just to keep the trail open for people to use.

Yeah, so Mike has spoken, and I'll let him talk a minute. Unfortunately, the arrangement that was worked out by previous councils was when that was asked to be put in, that that would be the responsibility of the trail committee, and the DPW was pretty adamant that they cannot do it. They just can't. They don't have the manpower. And I think Michael spoke to the DPW already. I don't know if you want to...

I mean, my only comment would be that the claim has been made that you need some sort of certain type of mower that would be maybe a more efficient way of doing the mowing or maintenance of the trail. But we do have a Public Works Committee meeting for next week with Councilman Hinton and Venon and the Mayor, so we will talk about that as an agenda topic. But right now, I don't know how feasible it is, but we are going to talk about it.

I think the other issue is because it's so wet back there, you know, we don't have that kind of equipment, you know, carry that kind of equipment to make that work.

And if I may, I'm sorry, I forgot something. We are doing our best. I know today I was very pleased to see that the DPW cut the field on Elm. that's backed by one of the entrances to the trails. So they are trying and that field's been neglected for years. So, you know, they're doing their best that they can. So we'll talk about it.

I think we appreciate any effort, you know, moving forward just to try to see if we can maintain it.

Can I add that any agreement that was made previously when the trail went in, the trail committee said they couldn't really do it. The trail committee does the best that they can with the people they have, but they don't always have enough volunteers, and times have changed. I know we had an agreement back when the trail went in, but we need to change that agreement possibly.

Yeah, but the agreement was with the DPW, and DPW back then told us there's no way they're going to do it. It wasn't a signed contract. It was just an agreement. No, but I'm saying they're not changing their stance.

Well, they may not change their stance, but... We are their boss, and if we need to have that trail maintained, then they have to maintain it.

That would be more manpower and more equipment. Whatever we need to do, Mayor, it's open up to the public. But that's a major cost. That's something we'll tell you.

It's not a major cost. Running the mower down one side.

It's not running the mower. They need someone to run the mower.

One person to run the mower.

They run down one side, they run back the other. It's not that simple.

I was hoping with the 11 extra people hired that when they come back, I could spend a half hour. I don't think it would be more than a half hour, honestly, of time. A half hour a month to go down. That's all you really need.

You come down with a weed whacker to go by the bench. If you have benches, you can't sit in.

We don't tell any of our supervisors how to run their department. So you are not elected to tell a supervisor how to run his department.

You've made that clear numerous times with me, and I understand that. But we have a trail open to the public. such a trail committee for all that they do. They do a lot. They do. They do a great job. But they can't maintain this trail also.

Then we shouldn't have opened that trail.

Well, it doesn't matter what we should or shouldn't have done.

It is open and we need to maintain it. Because at the time when this was brought up, this was all discussed over in length. There wasn't just a quick meeting. There was a lot of discussion on this about the fact that we shouldn't do this. This is not something we can do. We can't afford to do this. And that was all taken into consideration.

And then it was voted and passed by the council and a lot of money was spent installing the ship.

And now it's not in control. I'm not saying it's not in control. Look, if the DPW steps up and says we can do it, I'm not fighting that. That's great.

I'm not going to argue that. But we'll have that conversation with the DPWs. And I just hit with the Eagle Scout project going in. If he does it and then a year later, It's kind of gone to waste. I just don't want to see that happen. I'm just putting the effort and time into doing that, and I think we just need to find a solution to figure out how we can do this. It's a problem that needs to be addressed.

Or addressed.

It could be meaning we don't need this trail. We can't take care of it.

That could be the other side. It can't just be kept putting off, putting off, putting off.

Right, I think this is why we made a trail committee liaison. This is where this all came from, this meeting. Liaison's doing its job. Yes, no question, no question about that.

Anything else? Yeah, a couple of good things. So last Tuesday I attended also the ceremony in honor of Carl Padula at the Board of Education meeting. They planted a beautiful cherry blossom tree in honor of Carl in front of the board office. Jared Luciani, Dr. Amoroso gave really nice speeches describing a very accurate depiction of who Carl was. Carl was a great man and he will be missed. This past Monday, I attended the grand opening of our brand-new Civic Center as well. The building looks great. Thank you to Meridia for constructing the building at no cost to our taxpayers. And then last night, I also attended the police award ceremony held at the Carnival Center. It was an awesome ceremony to honor our police officers. Thank you, Chief Rodriguez, for creating a great program that will acknowledge the great work our officers do for the interstate. So thank you for that.

Thank you.

Thank you. That's it. That's my report.

uh councilman hidden yes thank you ma'am um we had a recent seniors meeting but i couldn't attend it i was down the shore waiting on the beach so wow sometimes you just can't have all the meetings and um they had el palazo came by and had a nice lunches so uh I attended the tree planting for Carl Padula. It was a great little ceremony. I want to thank Mr. Sanchez and his company for donating the tree, if I'm correct. And it's an honor. We planted a tree in the back for Carl's late wife, Barbara. And they were both instrumental to this community. And it was a good honor. I attended the ribbon-cutting ceremony at the second site. Beautiful job that they did. I've already had people call me up, wanted to know if they could rent it for a birthday party. So that's a good thing. We had a shade tree commission meeting. I just wanted to ask our administrator, we had the community forest management plan done by Mr. Winston. Did he submit that or was that after the shade tree commission?

No, we we we meaning my office submitted it to the DEP. Oh, yeah, it's in for approval right now.

Oh, yeah And we're applying for the grant Yes For the remove the removal So we're a tree Commission is busy on that Let's see what's of the presentation

If you want to prune one of the large trees in front of your house, do you need to go to town to let them know that?

If the tree is on their property? No, it's in the wetland. No, they don't prune them. They're not allowed to prune the trees and a lot of times if there's a branch or something.

So if branches are hanging on some of these house roots, what should they do? You know, from the tree that's, you know, in their right of way.

It's in the burrow right of way? Yeah. It's hanging on their house? Between the sidewalk and the curb, yes. That's a pretty big tree. Well, there's some big ones there. Pretty close. to the borough right away, the house manager. We can stop by there, just give us the address.

All right. And then if they have to approve, so I think the resident's asking me, you know, he'll pay for it, but he just wants to make sure he doesn't need a permit to do that. Liz?

They have to fill out an application and be submitted to the shade tree for their review. If there's one branch that they have to take down, like you said, if it's falling on them, Sometimes people do that, but technically they're supposed to get permission.

Technically they are.

Okay, that's right.

And the aspect of it is from the borough right of way straight up onto their property, right to the good Lord. You know what I'm saying? If it hangs over from the borough right of way, onto the property. Yeah, which it is, right. Right. Well, they can prune straight up, you know, but like Liz says, they should put an application in.

All right, so that's what I'm asking. So in other words, if it's hanging on their property side. Over on their property. On their property side. They can hire a company to come and prune it up from the right away. Right, just like Lisa.

I've never given permission to that.

That's because the best practice is that the tree be pruned at the

At the stalk.

At the stalk, which is in the right of way. So it really, if you're going to do it the right way, it does require a permit.

Okay, so some of the, and I'll use even my tree, for example. I have a very large tree. You know, these are limbs that are this big. We're not asking, I don't think they're asking to cut those limbs at the tree, but is that what you're suggesting they should do?

It really needs to be looked at by the Shade Tree Commission, and if we're not sure what to do, then we'll have John Linson, our New Jersey Certified Tree Expert, Michael, send him out. And look, we just need the address. All right, I'll tell him. And we'll take care of it.

Yeah, I think he's saying it's hitting the windows in this one. Oh, that's...

Yeah. And we don't want that problem, especially from a borough trip. Okay. So if you get us the address, we'll go out tomorrow. Okay.

We'll see.

Attended to police awards. A very honorable thing that the chief did for his men. They risked their lives in certain situations and was well-deserved. Thank you. The officers have gone. The PBA 5K. I was so looking forward to running against the mayor. And then I heard from people there that you guys weren't running. And we just need to, I was out looking at trees today spent a lot of hours checking tree guards that need to be expanded as the tree grows and I was on Riverettes Drive in the south end of town and just south of Katy Falls Park and there was nothing but corn cobs laying around. So I just want to remind the public that we just passed an ordinance about not feeding the deer and the deer don't need to be fed. but obviously somebody is. And then I spent Monday and Tuesday with my little Havahart trap, trapping feral kittens in my backyard. So this is the kitten time of year, and I would suggest if other residents have that issue, trap them and then bring them to Bloomingdale Animal Patrol, and they'll put them up for adoption.

Do you have an addle the cat program?

Addle the kitten program. Well, we addle the geese. Okay, I'm just asking.

Okay, thank you. Councilman Santers. Thank you, Mayor.

I also attend the Civic Center in Reuben County. The building looks great. It's going to be nice for the organizations to get to hold meetings there again. They have been lost for space in the last couple of years, so it's going to be great for organizations to be able to use it and also be available for residents to rent for small occasions. My 10th police award ceremony, congratulations to all the officers who were honored last night. Our officers, dispatchers, and administrative chief are very dedicated to our town. I attended both Board of Ed meetings. I attended the tree dedication for Carl. It's a cherry blossom. Carl got me involved in getting involved with Pompton. When I first moved into the garden, Carl came up and he goes, oh, we were looking for a block captain. Back then, the block captain was when the rivers flooded block captain would call the neighbors and say hey we're getting floods you know do we need anything so he got me involved uh i served on the board of ed with him so he was very dedicated to the town so it was nice to do that for carl uh the Curriculum report for the individualized student learning was presented last week. This is a program where seniors get to do an internship or volunteer in the workplace and get ready for college or the workplace. This is a program, I'm sorry, two seniors spoke about this program. They both did an internship. One did an internship as a physical therapist, and that's what she wanted to pursue. After doing her internship, she decided that's not what she was going to do in her college, so it was good for her not to... spend any money in college for something that she didn't want to do. Another student, he served his internship at a vet, and his first day at the vet, They were doing a surgery on an animal, and he was like, oh, this is definitely what I want to do. So he didn't do the surgery, but he was involved. So it's a good program for our high school seniors to get involved in and see opportunities what they might want to do in the future. So in 2025 and 2026 school year, they had 23 students, and they already have for the 20th 26, 2027 student school year. They have 47 students signed up already. Congratulations to the boys baseball team. They're moving on to the state finals at Rutgers this weekend. And also congratulations to Karen Hennessy, who is named NJIC Meadowlands Coach of the Year and Passaic County Coach of the Year for softball. And Dr. Amoroso's last board meeting will be held August 11th And that will be his last meeting. And that is my report.

You know, I'll tell you a funny story real quick. You know, as a scientist, I was doing surgery, and we had high school kids come in. And one kid wanted to be a vet and was very interested in it. So I was doing the surgery. I turned around to ask him, how do you think the surgery went? He passed out. He was laying on the floor. I said, maybe you should be a florist and not be a scientist.

One was the state county open space. It was in the papers, about a grant for us for $229,000 for a park down at the field. I just wanted to bring that up. And also there was an article talking to residents This is not only kitten time, it's baby deer time. And if you find a fawn, just leave it alone. When I was bringing the kittens to the animal control, they were going out on calls for fawns, people finding fawns. So just let the public know, if you see a baby deer in your yard, just leave it alone. It's not abandoned. And by picking it up or trying to bring it to animal control, you're actually harming the fawn. Okay, thank you. Attorney?

Good evening, Mayor. We're just following up on the railroad. I contacted or tried to contact Mr. Petrie on a couple of occasions. No answer on that phone number that were provided. We did finally get a pulse from the railroad, although we didn't establish contact with the attorney. There's been some back and forth. So we're still trying to connect. So we're still working on that. And with respect to the day-to-day stuff, I'm in touch with Mike and plug him along.

Okay. Thank you. I just want to thank you, Tony, for this work on Scott and Cross.

Appreciate it. My pleasure.

Thank you, Mayor. So Councilman Hinton stole my thunder, but again, we were awarded a grant of $229,000 for a new playground at Willow Field, so that's a new initiative that the Pompton Lakes Riverdale Little League and I are working on, and we're hoping for an installation next year for that project.

That's a small playground.

Yeah, that's a common price. Wow, that's a lot of money for that. That's a cheap price, actually. In addition, I'm working with the borough engineer on the remaining punch list items for the Willow Field Improvements Project. We are working with the DPW for pricing to install a new split rail fence along the right hand entrance to the complex to further prevent vehicles from parking on the new grass areas as part of our NJDEP permanent plan. And also the new dugout benches have been installed by Downs Tree Service as of last week. The contractor also did remove the large stump, which was connected to the guy wire, which was also removed thanks to Shade Tree Commissioner Pete Bottieri's connections with Verizon. So I'd like to thank Pete for his help with that. and then the little league will be using the new t-ball fields this coming weekend for their first and only practice on the fields at which point the fields will then rest for the remainder of the summer and season so we thank the little league for their cooperation with that the bear engineer and i are working on the fy 2027 njdot municipal aid application which again consists of the resurfacing of albany ave from Riverview Road to Arcadia Road and Riverview Road from Ramapo Ave to Albany Ave. We are also moving forward with our FY 2025 municipal aid project for the resurfacing of Lakeside Ave from Van Ave to Chainland Court, including Chainland Court to the dead end. This is a shift from our prior plan as several individuals have approached us with the idea to install sidewalks from Jefferson Ave to Chalin Court to further connect students to Lakeside Middle School and beyond. Due to this development, the borough engineer is recommending applying for supplemental grant funding through what's called the NJDOT's Discretionary Funding Program. for both the resurfacing of lakeside from Chalin Court to Jefferson as well as the sidewalks in that stretch. We are going to talk to the Open Space Committee because it is unclear whether or not we will remove the Muller property fence and guide rail as part of the first or second phase. In talking to the engineer, it is logistically difficult to include the fence removal in the first phase because it's beyond the project limits. It's outside of Van to Chalin. It's beyond. So it becomes a little costly.

Can we just cut it out or down?

The DPW could remove it, but the problem is we would have to pay to put in some sort of guide rail, and it's in between two other sections of guide rail which are currently not compliant with DOT standards. So it opens up a can of worms to then replace the whole guide rail, and you could be looking at a $100,000 project to do that.

Well, Steve, you can bring this to the open space.

I know Maria might not be... Yeah, I'm sure it'll be... Well, yeah, she might not be there tomorrow.

So the recommendation, unfortunately, is to move the guy rail for next year. So it has to wait. That's the recommendation, but we're going to talk about that again. So thank you for that. I want to thank the DPW and Shade Tree, especially Randy and Pete, who met with me today to talk about some imminent threat tree removals at both, excuse me, Hirshfield Park and Willow Field. We did have some limbs come down at Willow Field, so thank you to the DPW for their efforts as part of this weekend's thunderstorm event. We are in communication with the Borough of Oakland for the shared service agreement for solid waste recycling and vegetative waste collection services. All nine of our new hires started on Monday, June 8th and are in the process of being trained for route familiarization and logistics for the new shared service agreement. In addition, the borough started a shared service agreement with the Borough of Riverdale for fire official services last week. Our fire inspector, Jimmy Titus, has met with the borough of Riverdale and it appears to be a smooth transition and we are excited to see a potential successful arrangement with Riverdale. And lastly, I wanted to thank the borough clerk, Liz, Kathy, and Barbara for their hard work on putting together the calendar for another year, which is set to be released sometime before July 1st. And again, congratulations to the police department on their awards. Thank you.

All right, so one thing I have is the street sweeper did go past my house. It had no water coming out of it at all. So my first question is, where do they get the water to put it in the street sweeper when it comes from Bloomingdale? They go back to Bloomingdale? They do it here? They probably go back and refill it.

How far do they get before they have to refill it? I don't know. I know some towns, what they'll do is they'll tap into a fire hydrant.

Well, that's what I'm asking. I don't know if they do that.

I don't know if Bloomingdale does, but I know a lot of other towns that they'll tap into the... Fire hydrants fill up from the fire.

I would say it comes so infrequently in all the neighborhoods that if they're at least coming, there should be water coming. Okay. You know, so that's something we need to work on.

Mayor?

Mayor?

What's that?

Mayor?

Yes?

Mayor, I called Mike Carelli 7 o'clock in the morning. The street sweeper was on Glencoe and some of that, and it was dry as a bone. They came here without water.

Yeah, I would assume that, yeah.

So they didn't show up before they came. It was just beyond belief.

Yep, I agree.

And I called Michael, and I said, Michael, they can't clean a road without having water. So that happened at 7 o'clock in the morning, because I walk in the morning. So they would drive from day one. So that's changed. We pay a lot of money for that sweeper coming.

So I'm going to have Michael reach out. And then I talked to a partner of our stormwater...

permit requirements, so that's very important that we follow that and that they follow that.

Do you have something else? Yeah, let's hope that Michael was awake at 7.

I very much was.

Over on, I live on Moncler Avenue, Broad Street comes into Tilcon. And Tilcon runs the sweeper up and down Broad Street all the time. And they tap the fire hydrant right there. They do. So, yes, they do. And I see the water on that one. I do see the water. Right, they do. And they don't do it all the time. Sometimes they run dry. I don't know why. But they must have an arrangement at Tilcon with the MUA. There's no meter on there. They just fill up the sweeper, and I'm sure that there's no reason why Womondale would have to go back to Womondale. That's ridiculous. They should be able to use one of our fire hydrants to fill it, and so that's something you can .

I'll call the BOA administrator tomorrow.

And then just a side note, I saw two, I'd say eight to ten-year-olds walking back from on Lakeside walking, you know, they have to walk in the street there. So I think this is a big deal that we can get sidewalks somewhere there because, you know, they're young and they're walking on the street. There's kids running, driving from high school through there. So if we can make that work and get sidewalks there, that's a big improvement to that area. And if we have to wait a year to get the fence down to make the sidewalks work, I'm okay with that.

We are looking to put the sidewalk on the residential side as opposed to the lake side. It opens up the issues with DEP and cost to put it on the lake side. So we're looking at logistics for the residential side. However, there is a driveway for the apartment complex, which causes some issues about connectivity of the sidewalk. So we are going to look at it.

Okay.

Any questions to the minister?

Yes. I just had a question on, a resident asked me about the Lampert Street bridge over the acid road.

Are we doing anything with that?

Yeah, that's the one we're buying. Are we going to replace that? No, that's the little footbridge.

Oh, the footbridge, the little footbridge over the acid road. It was brought to the DPW's attention maybe within the last month or two to start looking at that and maybe coming up with a material list to maybe replace it with some sort of trex or some sort of vinyl railing system or whatnot. So we are looking at that. But I'll remind them about that.

Also, I was talking to the chief. What's going on with the PBA as far as their monument in front of the medicinal buildings? Is there any more?

The hedges were supposed to be removed. Yeah, I think we're waiting on the cost for the monument, right? Is this something to do with the monument?

Yes. So as far as I know, I don't want to speak to them totally. I don't have all the specifics, but from what I understand in some of the conversations that were relayed to me, is that they did get a total cost from total cost of the project. And the project came in very, very expensive. So they are looking to see if there's other options and or to maybe scale some stuff back. And then I don't know if they were going to enter into some talks with the VPW in regard to what the material was going to be on the other side. So I just think there's some discussion that still needs to be had. with the union and I'll reach out to the department.

Yeah. And another resident called me about a hole on Riverview Road by George's Market. As soon as you turn off of Hamburg, there's a hole there. Now I brought it up. I sent pictures to Michael. Michael's working on it. We thought it was the MUA and the MUA and it was not. And

I think it's a gas, like a little gas manhole. A curb box. Yeah.

And when I talked to Eli, I said, can you just put a riser on it? And the risers that they have with their work doesn't match that. So Michael's working on it, and I want to thank him for being on top of it.

Any other questions?

Just one question for Mike currently. Mike, we talked about putting the side box on the opposite side of the lake. Now, if we put the side box on the interior side, not on the lake side, will that affect the removal and the construction of the guard rail?

No, it would be one project. Yeah, we would put back compliant guide rails. at the current locations and in addition to removing the chain link fence and putting in guide rail to continue.

Right, because that's a god awful place and it's dangerous and it's not good.

So Mayor, I think what it is is the guard rail that's there now.

I don't want to wait another year, Mayor. It's another year of looking at a horrible fence.

Yeah, but we can't get it in the funding because it's not part of the initial project. That's the problem. So we either have to replace the whole guardrail all at once because it's not compliant, the one that's there now. So that's the issue. So I think there'll be some conversation between Michael and the open space, and we'll talk about it. But it might have to wait a year to get the fence down. That's the way I'm looking at it. I can't swear to that, but that's what it might be. I'll reach out to you later.

I'm hoping not. I'm hoping not. On the interior side, which I know the open space um people were very excited about doing so but what i mean i just get to put them off another year another year another ugly year okay and danger okay

And the last thing I forgot to mention, we did have a power outage when that storm came through. It did affect about 500 residents in town. It actually was a main power split in Montville that put out 1,500 residents. But the reason I bring it up is because it's very important that if your power goes out in your home that you contact Jersey Central to tell them your power is out. because they go by the number of calls they get in on how they respond back. So if only two people respond and there's 500 people out, we're going to go on the bottom of the list. If 500 people call in, we go up on the list. Now, you know, when I called my contact in Jersey Central, he only had four reported outings from Pond. So, you know, we knew we had much more than four, but that's all that reported it. So I'm just reminding everybody to report the outing. No matter if your neighbor did it or not, everyone has to count to put it in. Chief, your report.

So I have a summary for last month. So May was another productive month. for the department. We continued balancing our day-to-day responsibilities. Along with that, we had several long-term initiatives that are designed to improve service to the community, so we were able to continue those. In addition to all of that, we responded and or handled over 2,000 incidents over the month. I've got to say our officers continue to remain focused on proactive enforcement, criminal investigations, traffic safety, and community engagement. Our detective bureau continued to work on several active investigations during the month, including a long-term missing persons case that dates back to 1976. that is being conducted in partnership with both the New Jersey State Police and the New York State Police. Our community engagement remained a priority throughout the month. As I'm sure you guys all remember, the department participated in the ARRIVE program rollout, the Walk for Hope. We had our lead graduation picnic at Hurstville Park. Memorial Day event, and then we had our first spring summer stroll that we were involved in with traffic control. The department also continued to make progress on several important projects, including our accreditation preparation for reaccreditation, communications upgrade, and preparations for the next gen 911 transition that has been mandated by the state. We are also currently in the background investigation phase of hiring an additional police officer as we continue to work to address staffing needs in the department. And that will be the replacement of one of our officers that retired, Chief Clark. I would also like to thank the members of our department. for their continued professionalism and dedication. You know, their efforts every day help keep Pompton Lakes safe and reflect positively on the department and the borough as a whole. And that is my report. Do you have any questions?

Any questions for the Chief?

Yeah, I have a question. When we went Tuesday for the little walk through town with Rutgers, It was brought to my attention, and then it's obvious, that the new building, the parking garage underneath, is there a left turn coming out of that garage? Or is there no left turn?

Coming out of the garage onto Wanaka? Onto Wanaka Avenue. You can make a left, you can't make a right.

Well, if you made it right, you'd be going with traffic. If you make a left. Exiting. Exiting.

Oh, exit. Exit. Yes, I think there is an left turn, yes.

All right, now the other question that came up. No left turn. Sorry. No left turn. No left turn. Is that? Yeah, correct. Right turn zone.

I think that's a right in right out only. I don't want to queue out. Right. Right.

Right. Well, there is an arrow on the right and there's another hour going straight. So it needs to be looked at. And the other thing that really came up evangelist that we were talking about it also is. When we close the road... Yeah, we've worked with that, yeah. You know, somehow there's 100 cars that park under there, and we close the road for the car show or something. What are we going to do with that?

Yeah, I've been in discussion with them. You know, they're going to have to let their residents know that day that they can only park outside in either the pond hole or their outside lot for these amount of hours, and you can't use the inside garage for that time. For that day? Well, those hours, whatever those hours are.

Well, the car show lasts pretty much all day.

Yeah, it'll be whatever it is, 8 to 5. So if you need to take your car out, we're going to open our pond hole up, take a park in the pond hole. Well, 100 cars? We have 236 spots.

Or possibly that one lane, make it right out and then down Babcock?

No, you could still go out from the garage. I forgot that. Thank you. You could still come out on Babcock and go out past the high school, but the problem is the two buildings don't connect garage-wise. So the back garage, yes, you can still use that garage and go out. The front garage, you can't. You'd be locked out.

So you wouldn't open up the lane going towards... No, we're not going to open up Wanneke at all.

Just to clarify some of this. So there's two levels of garages. The top level garage does not connect to the bottom level garage. So anybody that goes into the garage on Wanneke Ave can only come out on Wanneke Ave. And the second garage, which is considered the bottom floor, they can only go in through the pothole.

between the buildings and they can get access to both sides of the of the garage through there and they would have to come out through the bottom well we'll see what the issue is only with the with the top one right so it's about half the vehicles that are starting there yeah because for our winter stroll yeah close the whole road for the car show we closed the road it's an oversight by all the boards they didn't think of that um and it wasn't brought up by any of the groups but it will have to address it because we're not going to not have them so

observation we made when we were walking through town. Yep.

Any other questions for the chief? No? Okay. Workshop.

Is that work? Yes, workshop. Thank you, Mayor. So for tonight's discussion, as part of our ordinance committee discussions, this is one of the final recommendations that the ordinance committee had talked about. We are going to be talking about amendments to our chicken ordinance at some point, but this is a Hopefully easier subject to talk about tonight. So we have from our animal control officer from the borough of Bloomingdale who has recommended for ordinance chapter 10-6 for the care and control of dogs. The current code 10-6.1 noise nuisances currently reads that no person shall keep, harbor, or maintain a dog which habitually barks or cries between the hours of 9 PM and 8 AM. and the animal control officer is recommending in conjunction with the ordinance committee to further amend that section to indicate several changes including that vocalizing which includes howling, yelping, barking, squawking, etc. for five minutes without interruption would be a violation of the current code. However, the existing verbiage reads that excessive barking is prohibited between the hours of 9 p.m. and 8 a.m., where the recommendation would be that this would be applicable for any time throughout the day or night. So that's the first change.

Well, let's just go back to that, because part of that conversation, too, was by the time somebody gets there to check it, but it can be done by a video also, correct? If somebody's videoing this dog barking for more than five minutes.

Yeah, the animal control officer would take that into account.

That's a big part of this. We call animal control, by the time you get there, the dog would be brought inside. Theoretically, if you have a video and then you present that to the animal control person, they can accept that as evidence.

Yes. So Mark's office did review this ordinance, and the topic that came up for discussion is it appeared that, at least in their review, that the five minutes The five minute threshold seemed to be unreasonable. So the discussion tonight is what would be reasonable. And furthermore, would the governing body be amendable to amending the ordinance to not restrict it to 9 p.m. to 8 a.m. and rather make it a night and day situation?

I get a lot of calls from residents on that one. I'm sure the police does too. So I think it's something we have to address. The time, I'll leave that up to you guys. Five minutes, it seems a little short. It does seem short.

Five minutes straight is a long time for a dog to be barking there.

No, you'd be surprised.

Also, all day, what if you're at work and your dog's barking in the house? Not in the house. It has to be outside. It didn't say outside on the ordinance. I thought it said outside. No. Well, it shouldn't say outside if it doesn't. So it does not say outside.

It says here that it should be unlawful for any property owner to allow any domesticated or caged animal to create a sound across a real property line. So it could be inside. It could be inside, I guess.

I would say, and I'll leave it up to you again, but if it's inside, I don't think we're going to. Call someone out on that. It's summer, and the windows are open, and there's a market. We've got to talk about that.

And also, I look at it like, what if somebody's having a big barbecue, and they're playing their music all day? What's the difference between that disturbance and an adult?

I think the current noise ordinance doesn't discriminate time. whatever's a nuisance to the property owner they can call and then we respond there um and then we can you know we can take an operations report things of that nature if we don't if we don't hear it um then we're telling the resident that they would you know they could file their own complaints uh which would be an ordinance i would assume would be similar to that we heard it Obviously, we would follow up with animal control or knock on the door of that residence to find out what's going on.

The problem is we're getting a lot of complaints during the day, and the ordinance right now expressly states that the enforcement mechanisms from 9 p.m. to 8 a.m. So the animal control officer wants to open that up for during the day.

What's the definition of what the disturbance is currently? Just habitual barking without a time.

No, I think it's four or more, like, noises within a minute for five minutes straight.

That's the recommendation now, I believe. All it states right now is that no person shall keep, harbor, or maintain a dog which habitually barks or cries between 9 p.m. and 8 a.m. So we're looking to open that up to make it enforceable during the day and also define what is habitually barking. And we're saying that that is howling, yelping, barking, or squawking for five minutes without interruption.

And that's four events within the 60-second period for five consecutive minutes?

Right, which is defined as an average of four or more vocalizations per minute in that five-minute period.

That is awfully short.

And then it's two or more noises per minute for 20 minutes, right? That's what should be stated in there as well.

So we let our dogs out, and the deer are in the backyard, and the dog's barking at the deer, and you have to call the dog in. Or if a neighbor's kid is teasing it.

Well, it did say that it can't be provoked.

Here's the issue we're having. It's not those kind of calls. It's the people that have a dog and never bring it inside, and it stays out in the backyard all night and is howling all night.

I'll be honest. I've been called on twice, and my dog doesn't stay out all night.

Right, but I think that's what we're trying to get at. It's not what you just said is a perfect example of what could happen. You know, the calls I get is this dog just howls and howls all night. Three in the morning it's doing it. So we have to address that somehow. I just don't know how. Mark can help us with that.

To Councilman Bates' point, just to confirm, so the recommendation is either five minutes with four or more vocalizations per minute in that five minutes or vocalizing for 20 minutes intermittently, which is an average of two vocalizations per minute. So this is the recommendation. One bar?

That would be two barks per minute within 20 minutes.

In all seriousness, these are valid complaints that we're getting, and I think the recommendation is trying to maybe tighten the code a little bit.

I don't think that anyone is going off the rails for hearing it go bark for five minutes. I think it's probably more like a 15-minute... or more, you know, 15 to 20 minutes, I think is, that's pretty much what it gets to me. My neighbor's dog does this all the time.

So here's the other issue. If a dog is doing this and it's one o'clock in the afternoon, are we concerned about that? Or are we just saying it's at night? We have folks that sleep during the day.

Or work from home.

Right.

Yeah. i have a question this doesn't conflict with our current noise ordinance because from my understanding our regular noise ordinance is that if there's any noise or any nuisance it doesn't matter what time of day it is a resident can call and file a complaint and then it doesn't discriminate what that noise is so if it's loud music or if somebody's out there playing the drums They can call anytime.

That's what I'm saying. Where are we splitting the hairs here?

This is in the animal control section of the code, so this specifically has to do with dogs.

That's what my question is. We still have the regular noise ordinance, so if it's not applicable because of the times, I would tend to think the resident would still be able to call in the noise ordinance under the regular noise ordinance as opposed to... But that's through the police. Yeah, but we're getting the same call.

No, but I'm saying if we're calling about a dog barking, they're calling animal control.

No, they call police. Do they call police? Do you call animal control? Sometimes, depending on the call, yes. So we're taking the call and we're responding.

So this will give additional enforcement power to the animal control. Yes, correct.

the nine times out of ten my officers are the one responding and then i'm i'm uh a lot of times if it becomes a nuisance or sometimes it turns into like other other issues too where the dog's left outside and then i have to have my uh officer that handles the animal related issues respond there and go back but i would tend to think i don't have the ordinance in front of me but if the regular ordinance covers the noise But my officers are just going to apply to the fallback, which a resident can file a complaint for this at any time. And then if we hear it, we would address it or we would follow up with telling that resident that they would file a complaint.

So why don't we start with a time first? And then we think it's the amount of time for the animal control officer to respond to. And I agree five minutes is probably too short. Come up with time. So what do you think, 10 minutes, 15 minutes?

Well, AJ, real quick, too. Is that inside, outside with that noise ordinance?

Yeah, so the way the current ordinance reads, yeah, it doesn't matter whether it's inside, outside. It doesn't matter if it's 7 o'clock in the morning, 10 o'clock. If there's no days of the week, it's whenever I feel that it's too much as a resident, I can place a call and if I feel it's too much, I can file that complaint.

What happens? Say that happens. They get you and you get there and it will say it's a dog and the dog is barking. What is the next step? What happens?

So usually what the officer would do is that we would talk to the resident and we would go to where that noise is coming from. We would knock on the door and be like, hey, listen, we just received a complaint. Is there any way you can help us? quiet down we would take an incident before and then usually that's where it ends it's the first time but if it's an ongoing issue then we keep documenting it and then we would depending on the situation we would most likely nine times out of ten we would tell the residents that they would file a complaint on that there are have been times where it's become such an issue where we would have to take action if it was like an out-of-control party or something that's that's not not usual or they're not complying let's say we go there and it's uh 10 o'clock at night we tell them to quiet down and then we get a call five minutes later we get there it's it's still loud tell them hey quiet down they go and then we so like something along the lines where we're responding two three times in the night then at that point in time then we would take the action all right so say you get to a house and the dog is barking and nobody's home then what happens So, you know, we would either try to make contact with the residents if it was something so obnoxious that they couldn't wait.

Say this is at 2 o'clock in the morning.

Yeah, if no one's answering the door, then, you know, we would have to, you know, I would say we would try to get in touch with that. that person that lives there the best we can. At that point, if it's not stopping or something going on, we would probably follow up with animal control to see if they can respond out, to maybe see if there's something wrong with the dog, something happened, maybe the dog's malnourished or hungry. We would follow up with animal control to take the appropriate action at that point. and probably defer to their expertise if they feel like, you know, because I would say if a dog's barking over and over again at 2 o'clock in the morning and it's an outside dog, Maybe there's something wrong. Maybe it's a medical emergency for the dog. I don't know.

I can tell you just from experience on Ramapo, there was a house that was known to have parties. I got calls from this one resident next door all the time, but the noise when the police would go there wasn't crazy loud. It was a pool party going on in the backyard. Now, these people go to bed at 7 o'clock and maybe that was affecting them, but how far can we go with that? If it was 2 o'clock in the morning and it's blasting music, that's one thing. But a pool party with a bunch of teenage kids making noise, they're going to make noise. And I know the police went numerous times, right? And I finally had to tell them, look, guys, if it gets out of control, they'll do something. But this is just a backyard party at the end of the day.

I'm pretty sure we advised them if they felt that they needed to file complaints on their own. You know, that's every citizen's right to do that.

All right. So what do you guys want to do? We're back.

I agree with the chief. I think that five-minute time is just way too short.

I agree. I'm not disagreeing. That's way too short. So come up with times. 15 minutes? I think 20 minutes. I think the 20 minutes was fine. 20 minutes, four events. So we have to talk about what that means. What was suggested?

So is it still 20 minutes, which would be two or more noises per minute?

There's two issues. There's without interruption. or intermittently. So what are the recommendations?

Without interruption, I'm thinking a dog barking for 15 minutes straight is more than enough for someone to hear at 2 o'clock in the morning.

I'm agreeing with that.

Straight. I'm not talking about bark here and bark there, just yelping for 15 minutes straight. I would say 15 minutes for that.

I would say 10 minutes for that. If it's nonstop, 10 minutes.

Well, it could be chasing a rabbit or something, too.

10 minutes straight?

I'll leave it up to you. I don't care.

I know the deer stand in our backyard and don't bark at the deer.

I would think the homeowner would intervene in that. No, that's the problem. They don't.

In my neighborhood, there's a dog that barks a block away, and then my dog will bark at that dog. It's a chain reaction.

We have a dog across the river who barks all day long.

This is an opinion from Lisa Perry, our animal control. She works on a lot of different stuff. She's been doing this stuff 25 years. I think that we should go by her recommendation.

And I have no issue with that. I would just say sometimes she wants to follow the letter of the law exactly as it is. And sometimes the crowds want a little leniency. So maybe we compromise with her. She wants five minutes, right? Maybe we do 10 minutes. I'll just say that. If you want to do five, I'm OK with that too. I don't care. I have cats. They don't make any noise.

I just want to say this doesn't stop a resident from still filing their complaint. and possibly filing charges under the normal noise ordinance that we have. There's no times when there's nothing. If the dog barks once, and it annoys them, they still have the right to call us. We could respond there, and we could do the same action, whether it was five minutes, 10 minutes, or the dog's barking or not.

Well, let me just say you say that. But if you go there, and it's a band playing in the backyard, that's a different circumstance than a dog barking every couple times in 20 minutes, right? That's two different things.

Mark, do you think it would make sense to maybe further define within the regular noise ordinance this? to have it in two sections? I mean, what, you know, what would be the thought on that or something?

The noise ordinance is a big issue to draft a noise ordinance. Enforcement is an issue. I'm sure this police department doesn't have decibel readings, you know, and then you start to discuss, you know, If I'm going to end up drafting a revision to that ordinance, I have to consider void for vagueness issues, which I know that both of you are familiar with. If a piece of legislation is vague, then there's a possibility of it not being enforceable. And then, you know, do we... I hate to say it this way, but, you know... You draft ordinances both to inhibit action and then also to create enforcement ability. And those two in this area aren't necessarily the same thing. You could have an ordinance that may inhibit certain conduct, which would be desirable to do. Uh, and that same ordinance may not be something that's going to, if push comes to shove in court, be the most enforceable ordinance there is. Um, so if we're going to start looking at the noise ordinance, I'm perfectly willing to do that. Um, it's, it's a fairly entailed thing. I've done it relatively recently, so I'm not going to be creating, uh, which other towns. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, uh, in Kenilworth, I did, did this this year involve animals or just noise? Uh, it, Its catalyst was noise in general, like a party type scenario, but it was an all encompassing ordinance. And there's a whole series of cases out there that discussed enforceability because you have to articulate it. Right. And so it can't be just that it's heard across the property line. It's whether or not. It's plainly articulable is the language that I recall being involved in that ordinance. I could do it. I would just have to sit down with the chief or his designee and start to look at it. this may be as good of a time to do it as ever.

Well, I think there's two issues. I think what Lisa is bringing, and this is going back to Randy's point, this is to give her some more enforcement power. Plainly audible, by the way. Sorry, not articulate. Because she doesn't have any enforceable power, and she has to rely on the police doing most of the work. So that's the one issue. I think we should be giving enforcement power to Lisa. I agree with you. How that ties into your enforcement power, I guess, is the question. And I guess the question that Mark is saying is, do we just make one ordinance that encompasses both? Is that what you're saying? Or do we have to have separate?

Well, she has enforcement power in there. She just wants her enforcement, she wants to narrow that enforcement power. Yeah, no, she wants to get a little better.

Your code is allocating the enforceability in two different sections of the code. Yes. in the sense that they should be mirroring each other without a doubt because then someone can make an argument that if it's not a violation of the other section, then maybe it's arbitrary.

All right, so then maybe that's what we need to do. I don't think anybody's in disagreement in giving her more... Am I right about saying that? Correct. Lisa, more enforcement... prerogative to do what she has to do. I think it's just mirroring it to yours so it's the same. And I think if we're going to give her structure and Mark's going to work on it, we should throw out some ideas and numbers that we want to work into this. So is everybody good with a constant barking for 10 minutes? Is that okay with everybody? Constant barking. Could I make a recommendation?

And with the chief here, I think that the chief should weigh in on this as well. I don't think you want to create a scenario where people are going to be calling the police every time they hear a parking door. No. Right? And you're not going to make everybody 100% happy. My gut is telling me 15 to 20 minutes is a reasonable time period. That doesn't mean we all have a mouth, right? So we all have an opinion. That's what my opinion is. It's not worth anything more than anyone else's. Uh, but I just would hate to overrun the police department with a bunch of phone calls.

Look, I can tell you what's going to happen. And he's probably has this already. A dog barks twice, you know, loud in this close house and they're kind of, you got to stop that dog from barking. Right. You know, I get, I get those calls sometimes and I tell him, well, how bad is it? Well, it barks every once in a while. Well, that's not really doing anything. It's a dog. It's outside. It's barking. Same thing with these parties. If it's just a bunch of 10-year-olds having a swimming party, how far are we going with this?

I would definitely agree with the time frame that what you're saying. A lot of times, we have a good relationship with Bloomingdale. They have on-call personnel that we do call for certain situations, but a lot of times, what they do is they follow up. I think that's what you looking for the video so that if it's something that we are responding to and we are not taking immediate action or it's not rising to the level where we have to do something right now she can then follow up with that individual and says it keeps occurring i would assume that she can then issue then her summons as opposed to ours but i do agree that it shouldn't be or like you're saying uh if it's a nuisance it's a nuisance exactly and i agree that i think

Getting Lisa to come out, you know, it's not going to happen on the spur of the moment. So that video part of that, and, you know, that dog is actually barking for 10 minutes straight, and they show that to Lisa. Lisa is going to go over to the house and probably talk to them first and say, look, your dog is barking. Here's the evidence that it's going on. If it doesn't stop, you're going to get some assistance.

Yes, and mind you, if my officers are responding and that dog is barking, our All our officers are equipped with body-worn cameras. There is a process for her to get that video, but we would make that body-worn camera video available to her to help her with her investigation.

All right, so let's go 10 minutes constant, or 10 or 15 minutes, whatever you want. I don't care. What do you guys think?

I think 15. 15. Okay, 15. 15. I'm a 15 guy myself.

All right, let's do 15. Just so we work this into when you guys are doing the work. 15, and then what's this? The one that's bothering me is this twice every 20 minutes routine. That's very hard to enforce. What are we doing there? Four times.

That seems like craziness.

I mean, explain to me why that piece is in there. So what is the argument? She's trying to define what is habitually barking. So, you know, just to your point, as you just mentioned, oh, my neighbor, you know, the dog barks every now and again. Well, what is that? She's recommending that is vocalizing for 20 minutes intermittently defined as two vocalizations or more per minute in that period. So she's trying to define this vagueness of intermittent barking.

I would say we move that up to three. A dog goes out, it's not going to bark just once. It's not going to bark twice. It barks in concession, in spurts. Yeah, but it won't bark just once when it goes out.

When it barks 30 seconds between barks, is that really... Let me ask you this, reinforcement-wise, how do you reinforce that?

Yeah, I... You know, how would you...

Don't you call Lisa Perry when you think there's either neglect or abuse on an animal? Isn't that when she gets involved?

Yeah, it depends. Well, she can do her own thing, too, yeah. Yeah, we have officers, too, that they took a lot of their enforcement abilities away, so we have officers that handle neglect, but we do... That's my understanding. We do work...

So we can handle that, and you only call her in when it's...

Yeah, well, it depends on the situation. I think they call her for advice. She's got a lot of years on the job, and she's been doing it, so I think they look for her for a little bit of expertise if they have, like, a hard question with abuse. But I think this, with the noise... What I was going to suggest, maybe there's a mechanism where they're issued a written warning, and then they're issued a written warning twice, and then on the third time, maybe then that's when there's a monetary fine that's associated. I don't know. And then maybe you can define that as opposed to the bargain.

Well, going to Maria's point, Maria, don't... the public is allowed to call the animal control themselves and report the issue because she has the ability to write those tickets. So it doesn't have to go through the police. They can make their own call to them and she could come out separately from not having the police involved at all. So it goes both ways. Sure. All right, so we'll stop that. We'll start with that. Mark will work on the noise ordinance in general to match the two, and then we'll circle around about the second part of that. I mean, it seems hard to endorse. I mean, what are you going to stand there for 20 minutes and count how many times they've worked?

Yeah, I mean, yeah. These are difficult things, so really. The more you think about it, You start getting exceptions and it's not... Because everything is different to everybody.

We've done calls where, you know, a kid's in high school and he's practicing his drums down in the, you know, in DuPont area. And, you know, those houses are close together. So it annoys them. But, you know, by me, you know... I don't care if the guy next door is practicing his drum and I just, so it's very, I think, you know, subjective to who's hearing the noise and what they're hearing to as well. So I, you know, by me, I'm surrounded by dogs. I have a dog myself. So, you know, like you said, they hear the dog down the block, they're all barking and then... Oh yeah, it's like a chain reaction. Yeah, it's...

And I think when we go back to that party situation we had in Ramapo, what we basically told her was, as long as the party's staying on the yard and they're not trespassing on your property or other people's property, then there's really no issue with them having a time party with young kids doing it. If they're running around your backyard, that's a different circumstance.

Correct, correct. But then the other side of that, too, is that... We tried to deescalate the situation there, but if that individual wanted to keep pressing, they could come in and do their own complaints, and then they're set up with mediation and things like that.

He actually had his own meter, right? Yes. He had his own meter and was measuring.

That's the other problem, too, with the meter. They have this meter and this thing that you're supposed to have, but there's no training for the meter, and there's no...

it doesn't it doesn't exist all right so we all go with anybody have any other suggestion you want to add to before they work on it no okay I'll give you a quote okay um motion to open the meeting for public comment motion councilman Venn and councilman Vague all in favor aye against I see two people

back to your meeting about flood permitting. You probably are aware, but DEP's changes to the flood hazard rules, the final adoption enforcement of those was pushed back a year. So there is now an additional year period where the flood hazard rule changes may still be under review and there will be more opportunity for comment and expression of desire for changes to be made before final enforcement, we'll say, because the rules went into effect January 2026. There was a grace period until July 20th, 2026, but there was so much pushback about those rules. They're highly impactful for the coastal flood zone. very impactful for coastal urban areas, and there was a lot of pushback from both developers, New Jersey DOT, as well as many municipalities and our state legislators. So DEP just, I want to say a week and a half ago, maybe a week ago, announced that they are not closing out the grace period in July of 2026, they are giving until July of 2027. So if you are having conversations and other municipalities are having conversations with our state level representatives about the burden on municipalities for permitting and about how, you know, if the new rules permit by rule is going away, now there are more exceptions. There's permit by registration. Some of the changes in the new rules are good for us. We were talking about this at the flood board meeting, the May flood board meeting. Some of those changes are good for us. They take things that we used to have to have some paperwork about, and now they were just exceptions. But there's an opportunity here where things are going to be under review for another year. So the timing is really good to stay on that. If those conversations are happening, this is not a time to let months slip by without a follow up. You're in the right window to push that issue. and to try to advance any changes that we can get through. Sometimes things actually align in our favor, and this might be one of those. So thank you. Keep on that. I wanted to make sure that that was flagged. I know it'll probably be discussed at the June Flood Board meeting also. And one other thing, I just wanted to offer one point of clarification. Navarro's can now agree to what you knew I was going to do back up here when you were talking about that. Thank you, Councilman Bigg. Thank you, Councilman Hinton. um when that greenway was put in trails committee was already in existence trails committee did not come into existence because of the greenway we we were formed we formed ourselves because the initial south end trails were installed in 2014 to 2015, and that first summer they got so overgrown so fast. So, trails committee was formed by a group of concerned residents as a subcommittee of open space, because we did not want to see the first real investment in the south end, in recreation infrastructure in the south end post Irene, We did not want to see that become something unmaintainable. We wanted to see that last. So we set up trails committee and the standard of care that Ed Merrill, because he was still a borough employee at that point, he helped us draft a standard of care. It was three feet wide, natural arms reach overhead. That was the standard. dimensions of what we are maintaining and keeping clear on the south end trails when the mars canal greenway went in i was very vocal to our liaison at the time that this is more than we can handle this is beyond what we can do especially because it was not paved when the when the pervious asphalt was value engineered out of the project and they went to the gravel and then weeds come right up through the gravel that first summer that it was in existence. This is a park. this is not a trail the way that the south end trails are this is not a primitive footpath this is something more and it needs a higher level of maintenance this is beyond what we can do and we've tried we acquired a piece of equipment uh volunteers paid for repairs to that piece of equipment to try to to there was a like a We'd whack around steroids to try to maintain it, but it was too much. So that's kind of, I know the timer's off. I'll be just, just a second. It's just more than we can really handle. And, you know, we get complaints about it and we've been trying on it, but from the beginning, this was always a park more than a trail.

So thank you. Thank you.

Paul Balby, 120 Romaine Ave. A couple of council meetings ago, I came before you asking if there was something that could be done about the $2,000 fee that the town is charging the Elks for the installation of the electric sign. And I know Gene Snape from the Elks has been in touch with the building department. Has it made it way to you guys yet?

No.

Okay. So it's still between Gene and the building department then?

No.

Because Gene told me that he submitted a couple of things back and forth, back and forth.

Okay.

I see no one else. Motion to close the public session.

Motion.

Second.

Councilman Sanchez, Councilman Bennett.

All in favor? Aye. Lauren, I agree with you 100%. I got to say, Senator Panaccio has been on top of this with us. He keeps these meetings moving along. He contacts the DEP constantly and says, we need to have another meeting on this. You didn't really give us the answers we needed to hear. And yes, some of those changes are beneficial to us. But the problem is, They're very vague on how they respond back to you when you ask, how should we do this? They say, oh, just give us a call. Well, then a new guy comes in a year later, and he says, what do you mean just give a call? We're not going to do it that way. You need to fill out 17 pages of paperwork and pay a permit fee. So Joe is pushing for... standard practice that we use that when we go to the to the DEP with these questions so they can't change their answers you know a year from now so what we do it with this is what I think our third meeting on this right so we've had a couple meetings on so that's good you know going back to that conversation with the park park trail And you were part of those conversations. The county came in with this great idea, but they didn't come in with any help with the idea. And we are losing part of the trail, as you're well aware. And the DEP has now said, you can't fix that part of the trail. They said there's... They don't want us having a trail there. So that was completely different from what was said initially. So we're going to have to give up that whole section along the river because they're not going to allow us to put rock back in. They said, if anything, we could put dirt back there. You and myself know what happens. As soon as we put the dirt in there, a flood comes through, washes all the dirt away, and we go with nothing. Unfortunately, we're losing yardage of space over there. We'll have a meeting with the DP, I mean with our own department and see what they can do and we'll have that conversation and we'll get back to you. Paul, yes, I spoke to them about the permitting and I told them what to do and I spoke to Sal. There are certain things we can waive and there are certain things we can't. Some of them are state regulated fees that we can't waive. The part that we can waive, we will look at that and then it will come to us, but I don't think they've gotten all the paperwork in yet that they need to, okay? Okay. Proposition 4. Anybody have a Proposition 4? No? Are we in closed session? Quick. Quick. I've always heard that. Motion to go into closed session. Motion. Second. Councilman Begg. Councilman Vandenberg. All in favor? Aye.

Yes.

Thank you, everybody. Vandenberg. We can close session. We'll discuss the negotiation. Motion to adjourn. Motion. Councilman Vanden, Councilman Hinton, all in favor? Aye.