Transcript for Piscataway Council meeting on March 27 2018

Note: Transcripts are generated by rev.ai and may not be fully accurate. Please listen to the recording (below) if you feel any text is inaccurate.

Speaker 0     00:00:00    $831,268 and 96 cents. General appropriations within CAPS operations, including contingent 42,000,900, $14,722 and 22 cents, deferred charges and statutory expenditures. Municipal $5,041,183 and 91 cents. Operations Total operations excluded from caps $5,736,021. Capital improvements, $2,400,000. Municipal debt service, $9,207,780. Deferred municipal charges $1,567,785 and 14 cents reserved for uncollected taxes. $1,963,776 and 69 cents. Total appropriations $68,841,268 and 96 cents. Thank you. Do I have the motion? Motion? Second.  
Speaker 1     00:01:03    Second.  
Speaker 0     00:01:03    A seat. Can you please the roll? Mr. Buller? Yes. Mrs. King? Yes. Mrs. Lombardi? Yes. Mr. Shah? Yes. Mr. rn? Yes. Mrs. mcCal? Yes. Item number nine. Are there any announcements and comments from officials at this time? Mr. Bullard?  
Speaker 2     00:01:18    Yes. I have a short one. As most of you know, this is the year of the dog for the Chinese, they call it the lonely, lonely year. And tomorrow we are having, well, two weeks ago I should realize we had a snowstorm. So tomorrow we had to change the date of the senior center. And we're looking forward to having quite a crowd there tomorrow. I just wanted to let you know that in case you didn't know before.  
Speaker 0     00:01:46    Thank you, Ms. Council, you be okay? None at this time. Council not. Thank you. Councilman Kacha. No thanks. Councilman Franker.  
Speaker 1     00:01:58    Yes we do. Thank you. Council President. As many of you know, the care of children always has always been my top priority. I love youth sports. I love for, I look forward to the baseball season and I look forward to the football seasons. Kids should too. The biggest concern of child life should be school, work. And next, the ballgame. Sally, sadly, today have other concerns. Too many people, especially kids, live in fear of gun violence. Why shouldn't they? And national news is filled with heartbreaking stories. It seems that week after week, there was another family, another school, another place of worship neared by gun violence This past weekend. Now we, we saw something different this time in the news where teenagers, children and adults marching to stop gun violence in small towns of big cities throughout the country. There was an outpour of grief, strength, and vision.  
Speaker 1     00:02:52    I was moved and I know all of you were too. Our younger generations are looking for a change. They're looking for safety and they're looking for sanity. We are elected officials. We, we get approached by residents with PS of concerns. We know that gun control is largely a federal state, a federal and a state issue. We know that federal gun laws are, are lax now, as are the laws of the several states. While gun laws in New Jersey are considered more far reaching in light of what we witnessed this past weekend, I think that a strong look at our state laws is warrantied. It is my understanding that New Jersey Assembly has passed a package of bills that are geared towards streaming the tide of gun violence. These bills are now headed to the Senate Council President. With your permission and council collaboration, I would like us to take a look at what the assembly has passed and vocalize support to our legislators for these measures and, and make our community safer.  
Speaker 0     00:03:52    Thanks, Councilman Baker. Council President. I'll say here. Here, here. Thank you Council. Thank you.  
Speaker 0     00:04:04    I'll save my comment. Totally agree. Mayor Tim business. No problem. Thank For the record, I just wanna acknowledge that our Councilman, Steve Cahn has walked in and I too wanna acknowledge that our young people here in our, in this country on Saturday, we saw something that we've not ever seen. I don't think, at least in my leadership, my lifetime or our young people went out and demonstrated in the March for Our Lives and here locally in Piscataway, without mentioning any last names, because of the age of some of the, the children in our school, they actually held a breakfast to support gun violence and the ban of guns. When I tell you it was, it was really fantastic. It was a young lady by the name of Zoe, first name and another young lady by the name of Pat who organized this. And it was a really, really nice turnout. So I just wanna acknowledge them for their leadership in, you know, organizing this breakfast. Okay. I don't have anything else at this time, so I would like to open the floor to the public. Are there any comments or questions from the public at this time? If so, please come to the podium. State your name and address and  
Speaker 4     00:05:29    Good evening. Evan River Road Rescue 1 0 1 Shirley Parkway.  
Speaker 4     00:05:36    Seven dd. I just wanted to say thank you. I read that my mother actually suffers from Parkinson's, so it is something that is important to me and I, I really do appreciate the effort you put in Mr. Mayor. I really do appreciate it too. I, I've actually seen you at some of the summits or that they hold, I know you said on the board, I'm actually River Road Rescues actually working closely with them over at RJ Fitness or the name of the lady who I've been in contact with. There are lunch. They put together some information for first responders so that they can understand Parkinson's versus some other things. They have some issues where people come up and they think they might be drunk or some other stuff 'cause they can't express themselves properly. Yeah. And we're working together to turn that into a CEU class to be required.  
Speaker 4     00:06:20    The same with disability awareness is across the state, at least with EMS, they are trying to roll that out to purchase all first responders, Leos included, along with firefighters. Are those CU classes free? This one would be, would be free. And once it's set up with the state, it's something that we could work with Rutgers to, to put out there through the recertification program so that every time someone has to come up for a new card or recert, they'd actually be required to take that. Is it just for Rescue Squad or is it for health? Other health doctors. So they want, they wanna do it for all first responders, but I mean we can obviously have more input as EMS 'cause that's our specialty. So, you know, we're working with the state. I talked to the Department of Health, OEMS director and you know, they're on board with that, along with the gentleman or the ladies and gentlemen that the Mayor works with.  
Speaker 4     00:07:10    So we're, we're definitely looking forward to that. So this did mean a lot to me, so thank you. Yes, you please. In reference to other things that we've come here and we presented about us and Arbor and whatnot, I did sit down, I talked to Mr.. Dacey yesterday. Ms. Lumbar, you're absolutely right. There's a little bit more to this that he explained to me in private that I was woefully unaware of. In the future, if there's anything that doesn't seem right, it probably isn't right, please definitely let us know. We could have mitigated a lot of some of these issues. I provided Mr. Dacey today with a letter to help mitigate hopefully a lot of those issues. He's also provided in writing and like kind what we need to do to move ahead. I do know that Chief of North Stone's gonna be out of the area for about a week and then when he comes back, I'm gonna be out of state for about a week.  
Speaker 4     00:07:57    So once we all come back, reconvene, we'll meet with Joey as well from Arbor Rescue and we'll get everything in writing. So it's, it's more actionable and understood and we can move past all of our barriers. So this time I really just want to thank everyone now that we all have each other's attention, you know, move in a better, more complete agreeable direction. If you guys would, and I, I've provided counsel some of the documentation to help fill in the blanks as you know that we've gone through a lot of leadership changes. The lieutenant we used to work with, he's retired. We didn't have a chief at one point. The captain that was filling in for the chief is now retired. We have a new chief, we have a new captain and new lieutenant. We have a new ba, we have a new PIO who I had the pleasure of meeting today. I met Mr. GG Wil. Fantastic. He explained the vision that the mayor's office is trying to go with in terms of helping us. And now that we've met and had that five minute conversation, that makes a lot more sense too. So overall,  
Speaker 0     00:08:54    Please, where we come from in the last few weeks, I just wanted to say thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you, thank you. We'll also sit down when everybody is available and have that meeting still so that everybody can be on the same page. I think once we get everything in writing, it'll, you know, help us really put together a meaningful agenda for that meeting. Okay, thank you so much. Sure. Are there any other comments or questions from the public at this time? Please come to the podium, state your name and address and you have three minutes to reach to speak. Sure. Mr. Akens. Hi Mr. Akens.  
Speaker 5     00:09:25    Good evening counsel. Good  
Speaker 0     00:09:26    Evening. State,  
Speaker 5     00:09:27    David Akens, AMS Valley Lane. Just for clarification, item S Sierra, can you explain that, elaborate on that a little? The $92,482 in change.  
Speaker 0     00:09:44    So do you wanna know what the truck is gonna be used for? Yes. So this, I mean, just looking at the truck in addition to, I'm not, it will be also used for snowplowing. I did read that. So it looks like it could be used to carry other items as well. But I do know that it's, it is, we will use it for snow.  
Speaker 5     00:10:04    That's strictly for Township, but it is chair or strictly for Township.  
Speaker 2     00:10:08    That's for the Township Department of Public Works. It's a single axle truck chassis, which we use for snow operation as well as public work operations. Okay.  
Speaker 0     00:10:20    Yes.  
Speaker 5     00:10:21    Item number one, Yankee elaborate on the change order number two.  
Speaker 0     00:10:30    So you want to know what's,  
Speaker 5     00:10:31    What's was a change order one now change order two.  
Speaker 0     00:10:35    Do you have it now?  
Speaker 2     00:10:36    I I, so due to the description of the contract changes due to the way of the bathroom vanity, the stronger support is needed and floor drain is needed. The ladies public restroom, both handicapped toilets seem to be lowered to meet code and would need to insulate A PVC valve over ceiling tiles due to fire code. This additional items add up to 14,000 electric $54 and 68 cents. The increase is 5.73% with the previous change order increase could be added to the existing purchase order of funds available in the capital budget.  
Speaker 5     00:11:12    Would you happen to remember what the initial cost of that was? The initial cost now the change order 1 380  
Speaker 2     00:11:19    $4,000.  
Speaker 5     00:11:21    384,000?  
Speaker 0     00:11:23    Yes. Okay.  
Speaker 5     00:11:28    Thank you. That's all I have.  
Speaker 0     00:11:30    Thank you sir. Thanks. Are there any other comments or questions in the public at this time? I'd like a motion to adjourn, please. Motion. Second. Second. All in favor adjourned. And we'll move on to the agenda meeting.