Town Council Notifications - Regular Meeting

At a quick notice on this meeting, required by the Open Public Meetings Act, provided for posting, mailing, and filing of the annual notice of a regularly scheduled meeting on December 10th, 2025. The notice was on that date. The old board from the district building, provided for by the leader and the star ledger, and filed with the clerk of the town of Armasco, Ms. Lausche. May I have a roll call, please? Mayor Berman?

Here. Council Members Gilman? Here.

Domogalo? Here.

Becker? Here. Thank you, Taramin.

I trust that the service will cease to work on the liberation of our efforts for the sake of the United States of America. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Good evening and thank you to everyone who joined us today. As always, we'll be available on Facebook, YouTube, and TV36. Public comment will be accepted in person only. At our last town council meeting, we provided an update on our ongoing communication with SACS Global and their imminent exit from bankruptcy. Now that the company has officially merged as a newly formed entity, we are announcing a definitive shift in the direction of the one-westward place redevelopment plans. The owners of the former Loretto properties have made it clear that their intention is to sell those properties. with the former Lord & Taylor building itself and the two parcels across the street of North Avenue. They expect to begin marketing the site as early as next week and we understand there are already significant interest from several local experienced developers. Given the new realities of the bankruptcy proceedings and the upcoming sale of the properties, One Westwood Place will not be moving forward in its current form. I have indicated to the current property owners And I will reinforce this to anybody that the only acceptable path forward for this administration is the redevelopment of the privately-owned Gordon Taylor properties and the related public improvements to that part of it, which is the reimagining of the Northside Plaza, as well as important safety and traffic improvements at the three intersections of North Avenue and Elm, Draw, and Florida. The North and South Avenue Municipal Park lots have and will remain under town ownership. There is no interest from this town council in pursuing the sale or development of this land. It is also important to reiterate that although Lord & Teller property is privately owned, the existing redevelopment plan leaves the town an important role in shaping the ultimate moves forward as a site that is zoned for commercial and residential use. As a new private partner emerges from the sales process, we will maintain rigorous oversight and ensure that any future proposal reflects current market conditions while delivering a product that serves Westfield's long-term interests. We will continue to keep you informed as significant developments occur. Moving on to the final street-side auction, so get ready to place your bids For our second and final auction, as you will recall, in 2025, the town had an online auction for many of the street signs that were replaced by our DBW. This second and final auction will include the following signs. Signs that are county roads, signs that remain unsold in the first auction, and all remaining signs previously not included due to the auction limit of 1,000 minutes. Beginning to get it at 5 o'clock on Wednesday, July 15th. Full information is on the homepage of the town's website. E-bike safety moving on. I'm accused of being an important concern, especially with increased ridership in the summer months. As a reminder, the updated state regulation for e-bikes takes effect on July 19th. Riders must be at least 15 years old, e-bikes must be registered for the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission, and plastic riders must wear helmets and follow all typical traffic laws. The New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission is offering appointments for licenses and registrations to operate e-bikes on their website along with specific requirements and detailed instructions. In addition, the Westfield Police Department will continue their efforts to educate riders and enforce new requirements to help keep our roads, sidewalks, and pedestrians safe. So for tonight's legislative agenda, we have a fairly brief one, with the key items being resolutions to award contracts for the exciting improvements to SID FED and land fields, followed by the last one's agenda's votes to approve related funding. Upon approval of these resolutions, we can finalize the construction timeframes for this summer in order to minimize the impact on the fall athletics schedules. The first phase of this project will be the installation of two replacement synthetic turf fields, which is expected to begin on or around July 20th, with an anticipated completion by the end of August. During this time, the recreation department will work with all of our town athletic leagues to relocate any scheduled field time to alternate locations. The second phase will be the parking lot expansion and construction of the restroom and storage facility. During this phase, the fields are not expected to be available during active construction hours. We also anticipate that the parking lot will be closed for this phase, which means that participants must access the pools through the gates along Landers Grove Road. We are in the process of finalizing alternative temporary parking arrangements and will communicate those details as we approach that timeframe. While this project will create some short-term inconvenience, we are very enthusiastic about the end result, a modern, upgraded recreational complex with improved parking and safety measures that will better serve the Westbrook community for years to come. And so now, before we begin the actual agenda and voting, I'm going to let the town administrators and the legislature provide some updates on the storm delivery pickup, road paving, and then our MS support watershed and community work.

Thank you, Mayor. Two quick updates. Paving, the council awarded the paving contract last meeting and expected next week. The ADA compliant work and concrete work for all the roads that are on our roads list for the year will begin. Our engineers here tonight for a couple reasons, but We expect that to take about two weeks. And then when that's finished, the milling and paving operations for all the roads. Remember, there are 40 roads or sections of road that the town will be addressing this year all throughout town. And basically, that will be expected to begin the milling and paving portion of that on August 3rd. We have about 10 of the 40 roads on the list that basically are either adjacent to or close to schools. So they'll be first on the list to be done. So before school opens and then the rest will follow. Um, and if it's any indication, the contractor we've hired, uh, through the bidding process has been very helpful to us over the years and usually weather permitting works very quickly. So we expect to get a lot of this done well before the end of August. Uh, so that will be starting. And again, just lastly, if you haven't subscribed to Nixle, please do. We'll be giving out road alerts as, as, uh, As necessary. Other thing about organic storm debris. So we had our obviously storm that knocked a lot of power out, had a lot of tree limbs down on July 3rd and July 4th. We authorized a organic storm debris pickup, which started this past Monday, July 6th. More debris out there than we expected, so it's taking a little longer. But we, as of the end of business today for Public Works, we are in Zone 5 on the north side, which is the last zone on the north side. We're following the lead collection zones. And on the south side, we are in zone 9 out of the 10 zones. We expect to finish that this week. We are waiting to see if the county was going to address their roads within Westfield. We don't believe they're going to. So as soon as we finish the zone pickup for town roads, we will go to the county roads and pick up county debris, organic debris on county roads from homes. that are in Westfield. So a little longer to take, but again, thank you to the residents for complying and patience as we go forward there. So those are two updates, Mayor. As you mentioned, we do tonight have a public comment period about our MS4 watershed inventory report. So let me just read a little comment. This is our second public hearing tonight. And so Westfield, like all municipalities in New Jersey, are permitted to manage and treat municipal stormwater under the NJMS4, which is known as the Municipal Separate Stormwater System, MS4, municipal permits, including but not limited to stormwater design, collection, treatment, infrastructure, and maintenance activities as required by its permit. To meet its permit obligations, Westfield and all municipalities in the state were required to prepare and file an MS4 watershed inventory report to the NJDEP, which we did. That was done by January of this year. That report has been on our website since that time and can be viewed there. The current draft report will be modified to include additional stormwater infrastructure data, which is currently being completed by town staff and as well as a third-party consultant. And then those comments and input will be sent to DEP after that happens. So we are required to conduct two public hearings. Tonight will be a second one. Obviously, we have public comment tonight, we hope. about this and get more information which we'll use to help formulate our report, which is the final report is due at the end of 2027. So this first part is really water quality related and gathering information. All of 2027 will be spent with the engineering staff and the consultants looking at flash flooding areas, flood mitigation efforts, and doing analysis of areas, cost estimates, et cetera, to be included in our plan at the end of 27 for implementation of some or all areas after that as well. So again, we have Phase 1 report was done. Phase 2 report is due by January 2027. And the Phase 3 watershed report is due by December 31st, 2027. So what I'd like to do, Mayor, is as part of this requirement, see if anyone in the public here, physically here, would like to add any comments at the microphone here to the council. And then we will take that information and our engineers here to hear it directly as well. And then that will be part of this public hearing. I'll open it up to the public now. If anyone in the public wants to come up and give information about the MS4 plan or any information or experiences they've had in their neighborhoods, we'd like to hear that at this point.

Great.

Great.

So, again, the cameras apparently cannot hear me.

No. So, I mean...

How about no? Okay, so we'll do public comment, and then I think, should I read my remarks again? Okay, so public comment on the watershed reform.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. My name is Rob Lombard. I live at 267 Seneca Place in Westview. I'm here tonight along with my neighbors from Forest Avenue and Seneca Place to ask you to take affirmative action beyond the mandates of the MS4 system requirements to address the persistent flooding that we've experienced at Forest Avenue and Seneca Place. We're aware that the public hearing this evening only pertains to phase one, of the MS4 process and that second and third phases will be ongoing through the next year. What I'm here is to ask you to make sure that we start the process of actually addressing the flooding locations that are within the township so that we are ready to go as that process concludes. The storm that affected us last July, I think many of you are personally aware of. I've talked to a number of council members about what happened. For those of you who may not be familiar, there were at least six vehicles that were stranded in the intersection. There was a fast water rescue done by our emergency service personnel to rescue two people from cars that were trapped at the intersection. The intersection also serves 130 apartments at the end of Forest Avenue, and the only way in or out for any emergency vehicles is through this intersection. So it is important not just for the personnel that need to get back and forth through the town, but certainly for any of the residents that live within the apartments. For those of us who have lived on Seneca or Forest for the last 40 years, this is not a new event that happened last year. Over my 43 years of living here, we've experienced floods probably on the scale of one every 10 years. However, in the past five years, we've experienced three floods and none with the conditions that we experienced last July. And I think the frequency and the intensity of these storms merit the serious consideration of the council and the resources of the town to do what it can to mitigate this problem. I do also want to stress that most of this flooding has come from not hurricanes, not nor'easters, but just from thunderstorms. And that's what is frightening all of us, as we had the same threats this past week that we did experience last July. So there's no telling when this next storm is going to cause the same conditions that we had last July. one thing that i do note is that in the capital ordinance the town adopted this year it did include provisions along with the street paving to make improvements in stormwater system so i'm hoping that that is also an indication that the council is willing is ready to start spending some of our capital resources on this effort i certainly want to commend jim gilday and the town for the paving work that has been done in the last 20 years, and that this is essentially the last year needed to pave every street in the town, which is a remarkable achievement. And I'm also hoping that some of that money can now be made available for these other purposes. The one thing that is unique to me about the Seneca flooding unlike the other 10 locations that I think were reported last year in July that were also experiencing significant flooding, is that I've been asking the town to look at the fact that the stormwater system that is downstream from that intersection has pipe sections that are smaller in diameter than the pipes that come into the intersection. So we actually have 33-inch pipes that come in from the apartment complex to the intersection. We have four intersections that collect 16 acres of flood water. It goes out on a 33-inch diameter storm sewer, and when it goes two blocks down, it goes into a 30-inch diameter pipe. So it's simple common sense to say that That's not right. That's not how storm sewers should be designed. And so I'm hopeful that we already have a reason and a cause to highlight that we just need to replace a pipe, and we might solve the problems that my neighbors and I have been experiencing. Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Mr. Warren.

My name is Jacqueline Legate. I live at 268 Seneca Place. Been there almost 50 years in the same house. My husband, Tom, is also here tonight. We're here to urge you to not wait 15 months for the assessment and the resolution. We need immediate attention to this matter. We have had personal damage to our cars and our property because of this enormous flooding. the water level rises so high that cars cannot get through and are left abandoned in the intersection. One car was sort of floating near the apartment's entrance, a part of Forest Avenue. That's how deep it is. The last flooding we had, five cars, six cars abandoned, and one car where an elderly gentleman He was stranded in his car because his brakes failed. As you know, the water floods the car, the brakes failed, and the engine ceased. He had to be rescued by the fire department. They came with a boat. That's how deep it was, and they waded through and took him out. Lastly, and I know this is repeating something Rob said, but please keep in mind that at 800 Forest Avenue, we have several unit apartment building back in Forest Avenue at 800. where that intersection is the only way they can go in and out. So the cars are abandoned blocking it, but also consider the fact if there was an emergency, such as a medical emergency perhaps, or a wire down over in the apartment complex, there'd be no way to get an emergency vehicle through there or even a repair vehicle for the electrical line. We implore you to take up the matter immediately Uh, I thank you for listening and I also want to offer a video that I have of the fire department rescue of that. Eligibly gentlemen, should you would, should you request it? I'd be happy to provide that. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Hello, council mayor. Thank you for having us tonight. My name is Matt Myers. I live at 277. Seneca Place directly on the corner of Seneca and Forest. I've been here now for six years in total. And in those six years, I've experienced three floods, two of which where I personally lost vehicles. My neighbor here, Rajiv, has also lost a vehicle. A neighbor that's not here today lost his own vehicle. My children are honestly scarred from this experience. They've watched out the window as neighbors and other cars were being rescued in the middle of the intersection because of the flooding. Anytime that it rains now, my children ask me, are you going to move the cars, daddy? We don't want to lose the cars. So it's just really stressful to continue to worry every time there's a storm that property is going to be damaged. I'm going to lose vehicles that I'm going to have to take a work off of week to then just go through my entire house to get rid of carpeting, to get rid of everything in the basement. And I know all my neighbors are experiencing that. similar feelings and sentiment, and it's just really difficult to continue to do the same thing over and over again when there is a good fix available to help enlarge the piping to ensure that this storm sewage does not get backed up anymore. Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Good evening, Mayor, Councilman. I'm Rajiv Sethamadavan. I live at 740 Forest Avenue. My house neighbors, both Rob and Matt, And without being repetitive, I'd like to emphasize the same problems. I've been here five years, and in five years I've seen three intense storms. It's almost like every alternate year we have the event, and the intensity keeps going up. In terms of damage, I've lost vehicles, I've had to go through two basement remediations, you know and financial cost aside and going through the insurance claim aside it's just the the toll it takes you know in you know going through the process you know you worry about mold you worry about you know things that you have in the basement you worry about should i furnish my basement again because it's going to be repeat you make sure you have you know a sump pump that works and you have a backup and maybe another backup for that so all of these investments you know if it goes towards go to goes to fruition and you know that this is once and done you know you put an investment you want from that but this seems to be a repetitive event And last year, the intensity was, I think, you know, I can't even emphasize it. We had a car that floated and got onto our lawn. And to the extent that then they had to be, you know, bailed out, the elderly people. So my request, again, is, I did speak with, you know, I think Todd and Reshma last year as well, and thank you for the efforts where we have some additional cash basins, I think, installed now, which is a good, you know, first step already. But I urge you all to look into, you know, the research and the findings that Rob has already shared, that if that stretch of pipe is the root cause and can solely eliminate this issue, I don't think we need to wait 18 months for that to happen. So thank you for your time, and I'm hopefully here for you. Thank you.

good evening everybody my name is kirk fleming i live at 272 seneca place i really don't have anything to add as far as details go in addition to what my neighbors have already said so i just want to be on the record that i did come down here to speak my wife and i both came down because we think this is important and we hope you can do something thank you

Okay, seeing no others, we are going to start our agenda. If people want to stick around for the agenda, full agenda in May, or leave, there's no pressure to stay.

I just want to thank those who came out. I happen to live not more than a block away from everybody who was here. So I know this intersection very well. And this is exactly the kind of input that we're looking for. And as I mentioned to Mr. Fleming today in his email to the council, that we need to hear this information, but also This area is already one of the areas that is identified among many others in Westfield as well that need to have further analysis. And, of course, we hear the comments very loud and clear about not waiting if we can do that. So I just want to thank everybody for coming out. We appreciate it. So thank you, Mayor.

Okay. I think because all of my comments will be out on social media later this evening, and on the town website, I'm not going to go through them. We'll just start our agenda for this evening. So may I please have a motion to approve the minutes from the Town Council Conference Executive and Regular Meetings of June 23rd, 2026. Councilman Adler. Councilwoman Adler. Second. Second. Councilman Nandala. Any discussion? Opposed? The motion is carried. It is now time for a discussion by citizens. Anyone may come up to the microphone and speak to the council on any subject on which the council has jurisdiction. Please state your name and address for the record, and we'll leave your comments to five minutes. Seeing none, I close this portion of the meeting with the bills and claims. Council members may adjourn.

Any discussion? All in favor? Opposed? The motion is carried.

Next, I'll leave the report to the committees, beginning with the Finance Policy Committee. Councilman Ventura.

Thank you, Mayor. I have 12 resolutions that I would like submitted as a package. One, resolution authorizing Chief Financial Officer to refund recreation department fees. Two, resolution authorizing Chief Financial Officer to refund dumpster security payment. Three, resolution authorizing Chief Financial Officer to draw a warrant for unused parking permit fee. Four, resolution authorizing Chief Financial Officer to draw a warrant for dollar licenses for June 2026. Five, resolution to authorize the treatment to draw a warrant to treasurers in New Jersey for marriage, civil union, license, and disputes. Six, resolution authorizing the Chief Financial Officer to draw a warrant. Treasurer is given the majority for the burial permit fee. Seven, resolution authorizing the Chief Financial Officer to draw a warrant for board adjustment escrow monies. Eight, resolution authorizing the Chief Financial Officer to draw a warrant to refund street opening cash bond. Nine, resolution authorizing the award of contract for improvements at Houlihan and St. Dave Field Complex. Ten, resolution authorizing the award of contract to replace fields at Houlihan and St. Dave Field Complex. 11. Resolution authorizes the participation in the direct install program for HVAC equipment. And 12. Resolution to approve the insertion of the special item of revenue, recycling tons.

May I have a second? Council Member Memento. Any discussion? All in favor? Opposed? The motion is carried. Councilwoman Gilman, please move the bill for public safety and transportation.

Thank you, Mayor. I would like to move a resolution authorizing an award of contract for the purchase of security equipment for the West Hill Police Department.

May I have a second? Second. That comes in its own words. All in favor?

Yes. Opposed? The motion is carried. I would also like to move General Ordinance No. 2026-14 on reading, an ordinance to amend the Code of the Town of West Hill, Chapter 13. May I have a second?

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Yes. Yes.

Yes.

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Yes.

Yes.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. May I have a second? Second. Councilman Saunders, any discussion? Please call the roll.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.