Commissioner’s Meeting 6/23

Unfortunately I was not able to attend so Tom has put some information together.

Just a note which I’m sure most of you have heard. Gary Papa, Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson have passed away.

 

Commissioner Dougherty was not at the meeting.  All votes were made by Mayor Teague and Commissioner Foley.

 

At the meeting, there were 5 ordinances up for vote.

 

1235 – Water shut off fees.  This was tabled and will be reintroduced at the next meeting

 

1238 – Overnight parking – The Retrospect wrote a comprehensive article about this. http://tinyurl.com/nhw5wp

  

1239 – Alcoholic Beverages – Hours of operation – They extended the hours on Sundays for allow for our liquor stores to compete with the neighboring towns.

 

1240/1 – Capital improvement authorizations – The authorized $3,000,000 in capital improvements including new bonds to be issued

 

1242 – Salary ordinance – They gave 3.5% raises to the non union employees.  I stood up and well as another citizen stating that in this current environment, we should not be provided raises unless they are merit based

 

All of these ordinances passed unanimously. 

 

Two new ordinances were introduced

 

1243 – Special emergency appropriation – Property Revaluation Project – this is an ordinance to appropriate $530,000 to pay for a complete revaluation of the town’s real estate tax assessed values.  

 

1244 – Amending Chapter 111 – Fees – Water and Sewer Connections – They are proposing yet another increase in fees.  The increases look like they are generally about 10% except that they have over doubled the fees for new construction water and sewer connections. 

 

Relating to resolutions they hired 3 new township employees.  Interestingly, two of these people are people close to the commissioners.  One is the son of one of their contributors and supporters.  The other was a person who worked heavily on their campaign.  That person is going to work for DPW.  This was done even after George Purkins stood up last week and asked why they had bypassed a Military Veteran with a plumbing certification who has all the skills required to work in the Water and Sewer Department and that certification takes substantial effort to obtain.

 

There were a number of other contract related items also approved. 

 

Relating to the contracts for Edison Woods Drainage Improvements, the solicitor read a statement which stated that the bidding process could be construed as flawed and they will be rejecting all bids and asking for new ones.  This occurred after the 2nd lowest bidder challenged the lowest bidder. 

 

They also talked about liquor licences.  They renewed all of the licences except one.  Also Rexy’s will be transferring its license to a new owner and there is a special meeting on July 7th at 4PM to discuss that.  They also stated that there are 3 “pocket” or inactive licences including the one owned by Joanna Pang.

 

I brought up a couple of issues during the public portion.  One related to the Bird Sanctuary situation.  They removed the deed restriction on it but didn’t vote on any of the other related transactions including the land donation.  They clarified that this lifting of the deed restriction would only be signed in connection with the remainder of the transaction.

 

I also brought up the fact that NJ OPMA law required that the minutes of their meetings be release prior to the next meeting.  I agreed to send them the case law on this and asked if they would look into it.  They agreed.  Currently, minute meeting are not made available until 2 meetings after the meeting.  This is clearly a violation of the law.  Here is the link I sent them.  http://njopengovt.blogspot.com/2009/06/new-jersey-cases-regarding-prompt.html

 

Mary Burko asked about when we would see construction at Dydee and the Mayor said it was still a while off because of the environmental clean up.  I asked whether they could get Fieldstone to put all their new plans up on the web which they had promised to do at the last planning board meeting.