Mt. Olive Township Council Minutes
September 12 , 2006

The Regular Public Meeting of the Mount Olive Township Council was called to Order at 7:31 pm by Council President Greenbaum with the Pledge of Allegiance.
PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE & MOMENT OF REFLECTION in recognition of the men and women fighting terrorism and those who have lost their lives defending the freedom we all enjoy

OPEN PUBLIC MEETINGS ACT ANNOUNCEMENT
According to the Open Public Meetings Act, adequate notice of this meeting has been given to the Mount Olive Chronicle. Notice has been posted at the Municipal Building, 204 Flanders-Drakestown Road, Mount Olive Township, New Jersey and notices were sent to those requesting the same.

ROLL CALL: Present: Mr. Buell, Mr. Tepper, Mr. Biondi, Mr. Perkins, Mr. Greenbaum

Absent: Mrs. Labow, Mr. Rattner

Also Present: John Dorsey, Township Attorney; Rick Prill, Business Administrator;
Sherry Jenkins, CFO; Lisa Lashway, Township Clerk

President Greenbaum: Let the record reflect that Mr. Rattner is out on personal family health issues and Mrs. Labow is on vacation. The first issue which is the resolution of the Township Council, we are going to put on hold presently and we are going to start with the Eagle Scout Presentation.

Eagle Scout Presentation

Mr. Kevin Cosman: Good evening everyone. I have lived in Flanders for 12 years. I am a Boy Scout from Troop 249 of Budd Lake and I am currently working on obtaining the rank of Eagle Scout, the highest award to be bestowed upon a Boy Scout. One of the requirements is to complete a service project to benefit the community. For my Eagle project I have chose to confront the problem of water pollution as an ever increasing threat to our health. Materials such as oil, paint, gasoline and other harmful substances illegally dumped into our storm drains pollute the waterways throughout our town and beyond. To help prevent such acts, with the cooperation of the Town’s Road Department, I have been placing small metal medallions on each storm drain in my neighborhood and other developments in Flanders. These medallions read, “No Dumping - Drains to Waterway.” With the help from my friends, neighbors and scouts, I have to do my small part in preventing water pollution. For further information, a flyer explaining my project is available. Thank you for your time and remember nature cannot be replaced, so promptly dispose of your waste.

President Greenbaum: Thank you very much. On behalf of the Township, and I am sure I am speaking on behalf of all the Council members here, we are always very proud of our youth who attempt to and actually obtain the rank of Eagle Scout and the equivalent in the Girl Scouts. Your efforts on behalf of the community are greatly appreciated.

Mr. Perkins: Kevin, the medallions, do you have any of them with you?

Mr. Cosman: Yes, I have a picture on the flyer. I will give one to each one of you.

Mr. Biondi: I have one in front of my house. Thank you very much. It is wonderful.

Mr. Cosman: They will eventually be out throughout the entire Town. I have just focused on my neighborhood and surrounding developments.

Mr. Perkins: I think that is an excellent project that you have chosen to undertake, keeping our waterways pristine as well as to help keeping the pollution, as you know, that seeps into the aquifer and most of it is heavier than water and it gets down and ends up mixing in and we all wind up ingesting it, excellent choice.

Mr. Prill: I just wanted to point out to Council in case you weren’t aware, Kevin has requested, he has created a website where he has a description of his project on the website and he has asked if we could provide a link on our website to his website and we have given him that approval. I don’t know if you were aware of that?

Mr. Cosman: I haven’t received anything but thank you.

President Greenbaum: Thank you very much.

Mr. Tepper: Thank you.

President Greenbaum: Okay, we are going to deviate a little from the Agenda slightly. Mr. Sluka, do you want to come up to the microphone please? Do you want to state your name and position with the Board of Education?

Steve Sluka: Yes. I am the Supervisor for the Buildings and Grounds for the Mount Olive School District.

President Greenbaum: Okay, we had a chance to speak before the meeting with respect to the request of the School to waive the noise ordinance. As you know, as we discussed, the Council has not in the past waived the noise ordinance with respect to work on Sundays except with respect to interior work but because of the circumstances related to the construction of the school and the opening of the school on the 20th, I am going to put forth and have Mr. Dorsey prepare on the fly, a resolution which will waive the noise ordinance for work by the School Board for this Sunday from 9:00 to 5:00 pm. on Sunday and that would include outside work, and then to continue the waiver of the noise ordinance for inside work for an additional two weeks and then if additional time is needed for interior work, then we would deal with it on a case by case basis after that timeframe. Would that be acceptable to the School Board?

Mr. Suluka: Yes, it would.

RESOLUTION OF THE TOWNSHIP COUNCIL OF THE
TOWNSHIP OF MOUNT OLIVE WAIVING THE IMPOSITION
AND ENFORCEMENT OF THE NOISE ORDINANCE RELATIVE
TO THE BOARD OF EDUCATION CONSTRUCTION OF THE
HIGH SCHOOL

WHEREAS, the Board of Education and their contractors are racing the clock to complete the construction of the new High School or the addition to the High School in order that same may be occupied on or about September 20, 2006; and

WHEREAS, in order to accommodate the work that must be done and to be consistent with the Township’s ordinances, the Board of Education has requested the waiver of the enforcement of the Noise ordinance as to certain dates; and

WHEREAS, the Township Council believes that this is most appropriate in order to assist the Board of Education to complete the work so that the school may be occupied on September 20, 2006.

NOW, THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED by the Township Council of the Township of Mount Olive as follows:
1. It does hereby waive the requirements of the noise ordinance on Sunday, September 17, 2006 to permit outside work at the high school between the hours 9:00 to 5:00 pm; and 2. It does further waive the imposition and enforcement of the noise ordinance to provide for inside work on Sundays mainly
September 24, 2006 and September 31, 2006 between the hours of 9:00 and 5:00 pm. Any subsequently needed waivers of the noise enforcement ordinance may be applied for on a case by case basis.

President Greenbaum: The 31st is actually October 1st. With that amendment, Mr. Tepper do you want to move that?

Mr. Tepper: I will move said amendment as proposed by Mr. Dorsey.

President Greenbaum: Mr. Biondi, are you going to second that?

Mr. Biondi: Second.

President Greenbaum: Is there anyone from the public who wishes to be heard?

COUNCIL COMMENTS ON INDIVIDUAL RESOLUTIONS

President Greenbaum: Anyone on Council? Roll Call please.

ROLL CALL: Passed Unanimously

President Greenbaum: Thank you very much.

Mr. Sluka: The students of Mount Olive thank you very much.

President Greenbaum: Please state your name and address for the record.

Larry McEntee, 22 Aldersgate Circle, Budd Lake, Board of Education: Thank you for the Ordinance. Also at this time, I would like to extend an invitation for the Council to view the school and I could talk to Rob and set up a date with you, possibly the 25th, if you would like to do a walkthrough, we could set it up. We are going to open on the 20th with 31 new class rooms, eight months ahead of schedule. The building looks good. It still needs a lot of little touch ups and it is going to be a rough opening but we will be ready and be able to bring our students back on campus the first day. They are going to issue permits this week to 80 to 100 students, which is as many as we had the beginning of school last year and we will be able to bring them back on campus the beginning of the school year. Through a lot of efforts of PIKE Construction, they worked many manhours and did about $14 million worth of work in July and August to get this ready for the kids, to get it eight months early. The science labs are fantastic and they are all functional and up and running. We would like you to see it....

President Greenbaum: When is this?

Mr. McEntee: The final opening will be in April when we have the common area, the cafeteria and the auditorium up front. We have had several inspections this week with the help of the Township and we are getting there. We will be ready for the 20th. I am looking at Monday the 25th, if it is alright.....

President Greenbaum: What time?

Mr. McEntee: I was looking at night, like about 5:00 or 6:00 at night because I mean, it would make it easy for everybody.

Mr. Biondi: Works for me.

Mr. McEntee: Six O’clock on the 25th?

President Greenbaum: Done.

Mr. McEntee: Okay, we will do it then. We can meet you at the high school and Kevin will be there and Mr. Scott Bowman from Turner...

Mr. Biondi: As long as you have the coffee on, we will be there.

Mr. McEntee: Well, you are going to need a road map. If you have ever been in the building, it is a lot more confusing and the numbering....even looking out the windows sometimes you can’t figure out where you are at and I have been in the building for 35 years and I still get lost in it now. It will be exciting to see the kids on Wednesday. They will be very excited I think when they see the new classrooms. We had some of the Student Council go through this week and the kids were flabbergasted at it. We are very happy to be able to open it and we appreciate the help. I can’t emphasize enough the inspections have been on the mark and when we need them, they are there. If we were waiting for the State, we would be hurting. So we appreciate the help from the Administration and the Town for helping us to get where we needed to get. Thank you.

Questions on Bill List?

President Greenbaum: Thank you. Moving on, questions on the Bill List. Does anyone have any questions?

Mr. Buell: My questions have been asked and answered but I would just like to note at this point in time that I would like to remove payment #0886-7 and #06059904. I will discuss it at the end of the meeting. I just wanted to let you know I will make that motion at that point.

President Greenbaum: Okay.

APPROVAL OF MINUTES OF PREVIOUS MEETINGS

August 22, 2006
Present: Mr. Buell, Mr. Tepper, Mr. Biondi, Mr. Perkins, Mr. Rattner, Mrs. Labow
Absent: Mr. Greenbaum

September 5, 2006 CS
Present: Mr. Buell, Mr. Tepper, Mr. Biondi, Mr. Perkins, Mr. Rattner, Mrs. Labow, Mr. Greenbaum

President Greenbaum: Mr. Tepper, do you want to move the Minutes?

Mr. Tepper: Surely, I will move that we approve the Minutes of the meeting of August 22, 2006 and September 5, 2006 CS.

Mr. Perkins: Second.

President Greenbaum: Moved and seconded. Any discussion, deletions, changes? Seeing none, Roll Call.

ROLL CALL: Passed Unanimously with the exception, Mr. Greenbaum abstained on August 22, 2006.

CORRESPONDENCE

LETTERS FROM RESIDENTS / ORGANIZATIONS

1. Letter received August 21, 2006, from the Mount Olive Public Library regarding appointment of John Fishinger.

2. Letter received August 31, 2006, from the Mount Olive Township School District regarding access to Route 46.

MUA / HMUA / MSA

3. Minutes received September 8, 2006, from the Musconetcong Sewerage Authority regarding the August 2, 2006 meeting.

RESOLUTIONS / ORDINANCES / CORRESPONDENCE OTHER TOWNS

4. Resolution received August 22, 2006, from the Borough of Mantoloking regarding opposition to a Statewide Equalized School Tax.

5. Resolution received August 24, 2006, from the Township of Boonton regarding NJ Senior Tax Freeze Protection Act.

6. Ordinance received August 25, 2006, from Washington Township regarding Land Use.

7. Resolution received August 31, 2006, from the Township of Montville regarding Providing Defense and Indemnification of Municipal Police Officers and Police Departments Voluntarily Serving on State and County Law Enforcement Task Forces.

8. Letter received September 1, 2006, from the Township of East Hanover regarding the Second Annual Morris County Columbus Day Parade.

LEAGUE OF MUNICIPALITIES

9. Letter received August 21, 2006, from the New Jersey State League of Municipalities regarding League Seminar “Pay to Play, Ethics and where we are One Year Later.”

10. Letter received August 31, 2006, from the New Jersey State League of Municipalities regarding registration for Women in Government Breakfast.

11. Letter received August 31, 2006, from the New Jersey State League of Municipalities regarding League Seminar “Gang Intervention and Prevention.”

12. Letter received August 31, 2006, from the Morris County League of Municipalities addressing Drug Issues in Morris County.

13. Letter received September 5, 2006, from the New Jersey State League of Municipalities regarding League Delegates Luncheon.

DOT / DEP / LOI / HIGHLANDS

14. Copy of Highlands Applicability Determination Application received August 21, 2006, from Larry Kron, Esq. regarding Farooq Subdivision (4 Thirty First Street, Budd Lake)

15. Letter received August 24, 2006, from the State of New Jersey, Department of Environmental Protection, Division of Parks and Forestry regarding 81st Annual New Jersey Shade Tree Federation meeting.

16. Letter received August 28, 2006, from the State of New Jersey, Department of Environmental Protection, Division of Water Quality regarding a Notice of Public Hearing.

17. Letter received September 1, 2006, from Chester, Ploussas, Lisowsky Partnership, LLP regarding ITC South Retaining Wall Stabilization, International Drive South.

LETTERS FROM LEGISLATIVE REPRESENTATIVES

18. Letter received August 25, 2006, from the State of New Jersey, Office of the Governor regarding receipt of Resolution.

MISCELLANEOUS

19. Fall 2006 Course Schedule received August 21, 2006, from Rutgers, Center for Local Government Services.

20. Minutes received August 23, 2006, from the Morris County Planning Board regarding June 15, 2006 meeting.

21. Letter received August 28, 2006, from Rachel Manor Properties, LLC regarding Request for 12-month extension of the Developer’s Agreement Block 7702, Lot 32 (11 Old Wolfe Road)

22. Summer 2006 Publication received August 28, 2006, from Arc of Morris regarding Recognizing Excellence, From the Executive Director, Veteran Staffer Recognized, Wine Tasting and Fine Arts Sale, Long time Volunteer Honored and Golf Outing / Walk 06.

23. Letter received September 1, 2006, from Rutgers Center for Government Services regarding Municipal government law class schedule.

24. Letter received September 5, 2006, from Caldwell Banker regarding the Auction Division of Caldwell Banker.

25. Letter received September 5, 2006, from Waterloo Road Development Company, LLC regarding Renting Storage Space.

26. Information received September 5, 2006, from NJ DEP / Historic Preservation office regarding The NJ HPO presents Cultural Resources Best Practices Workshop.

COAH

27. Letter received August 23, 2006, from the Council on Affordable Housing regarding Report Requesting additional information regarding your municipality’s petition for third round substantive certification.

UTILITIES

28. Fax received August 22, 2006, from Comcast regarding Channel Changes.

29. Letter received August 25, 2006, from Comcast regarding Universal HD and NBC 4.4.

30. Fax received August 29, 2006, from Comcast regarding NBC 4.4 Launch date correction.

President Greenbaum: There are 30 pieces of Correspondence on the Amended Agenda. Does anyone wish to discuss any particular piece of Correspondence?

Mr. Buell: I would like to discuss a piece of Correspondence that is not on this, that we just received today. That is, the memo from Mr. Prill about the detention basin and the meeting you had with the Library Board. Was there any response back from the Library Board as to whether this meets their needs?

Mr. Prill: My understanding is that once Mr. Sheard received our response, he was going to take that back to the Board at their upcoming meeting which I believe was scheduled for tomorrow night. I saw a memo that they have postponed that until the end of the month. I believe that we won’t get a response back until they’ve had a chance to review it with the full Board.

Mr. Buell: So we won’t know what the Library’s position is? That was my next question. With them canceling the meeting we are probably not going to hear from them until the 27th..........

Mr. Prill: That is my understanding. That is what Mr. Sheard had indicated when we had met, that he needed to take that back to the Board for review.

Mr. Buell: Does this delay us in anyway in terms of the DPW construction or....

Mr. Prill: No, we are moving forward with the project.

Mr. Buell: Okay.

President Greenbaum: Any other discussion on any particular piece of Correspondence? Seeing none, we will move on.

ORDINANCES FOR PUBLIC HEARING

Ord. #24-2006 An Ordinance of the Township of Mount Olive Establishing Fees to be charged by the Recreation Department for Fall/Winter 2006 Through Spring 2007 Programs.

President Greenbaum: At this point in time I will open it up to the public for anyone who wishes to discuss
Ordinance #24-2006. Is there anyone from the audience? Seeing none, I close it to the public. Mr. Buell, do you
want to move Ordinance #24-2006 for approval?

Mr. Buell: Yes, thank you. I move Ordinance #24-2006.

President Greenbaum: Is there a second?

Mr. Biondi: Second.

President Greenbaum: Moved and seconded, is there any discussion? Roll Call please.

ROLL CALL: Passed Unanimously

President Greenbaum: Ordinance # 24-2006 has passed on second reading and I hereby direct the Clerk to forward a copy of same to the Mayor and publish the notice of adoption as required by law.

ORDINANCES FOR FIRST READING (2nd Reading October 10, 2006)

Ord. #29-2006 Bond Ordinance of the Township of Mount Olive, in the county of Morris, New Jersey Amending Bond Ordinance Numbered 11-2001 Finally Adopted May 8, 2001, as Previously Amended and Supplemented, in Order to Further Amend the Description of the Project Authorized Therein.

President Greenbaum: Mr. Biondi, do you want to move that please?

Mr. Biondi: Yes, Mr. President. I move that Ordinance #29-2006 be introduced by title, and passed on first reading, and that a meeting be held on October 10, 2006 at 7:30 p.m. at the Municipal Building, 204 Flanders-Drakestown Road, Mount Olive, New Jersey, for public hearing, consideration of second reading and passage of said Ordinance, and that the Clerk be directed to publish, post and make available said Ordinance in accordance with the requirements of the law.

President Greenbaum: Is there a second?

Mr. Buell: Second.

President Greenbaum: It has been moved and seconded. Is there any discussion? Roll Call.

ROLL CALL: Passed Unanimously

CONSENT RESOLUTIONS AGENDA:

Resolutions on the Consent Agenda List are considered to be routine and non-controversial by the Township Council and will be approved by one motion (one vote). There will be no separate discussion or debate on each of these resolutions except for the possibility of brief clarifying statements that may be offered. If one or more Council member requests, any individual resolution on the Consent Agenda may be removed from the Consent Agenda List and acted on separately.

CONSENT RESOLUTIONS

1. Resolution of the Township Council of the Township of Mount Olive Granting Bond Reduction No. 2 to Gen III – Fox Chase Section II.

2. Resolution of the Township Council of the Township of Mount Olive Authorizing the Sale of Certain Vehicles and Equipment No Longer Needed for Public Use by the Township.

3. Resolution of the Township Council of the Township of Mount Olive Authorizing the Acceptance of a Deed of Dedication of a 25 Foot Wide Right-of-Way for Road Purposes.

4. Resolution of the Township Council of the Township of Mount Olive Authorizing the Cancellation of Various General Capital Ordinance Balances.* amended

5. Resolution of the Township of Mount Olive Authorizing the Use of a Purchasing Contract.

6. Resolution of the Township Council of the Township of Mount Olive Rejecting the Second-Round Bid for the Turkey Brook Park Well No. 2 Conversion Project.

7. Resolution of the Township Council of the Township of Mount Olive Awarding a Contract to CFM Construction, Inc. for the Turkey Brook Park Well No. 2 Conversion Project.

8. Resolution of the Township Council of the Township of Mount Olive Awarding a Contract to Storr Tractor for the Purchase of One Wide Area Rotary Mower.

9. Resolution of the Township Council of the Township of Mount Olive Denying the Release of Performance Guarantees to Custom Living in Connection with the Development Known as Bennington Woods.*

10. Resolution of the Township Council of the Township of Mount Olive Authorizing the Return of $14,400 in Mandatory Development Fees to Paragon Village.*

11. Resolution of the Township Council of the Township of Mount Olive Granting an Extension of Time to Rachel Manor Properties, LLC.*

12. Resolution of the Township Council of the Township of Mount Olive Authorizing the Execution of a Developer’s Agreement Based on Preliminary and Final Site Plan Approval Between the Township of Mount Olive and Manuel Fonesca, Application PB 03-05.*

13. Resolution of the Township Council of the Township of Mount Olive Authorizing a Developer’s Agreement Based Upon Final Subdivision Approval Between the Township and Toll Brothers, LLC, Morris Hunt Phase III.*

President Greenbaum: There are 13 Resolutions on the Consent Resolutions Agenda. Does anyone wish to have any of the resolutions on the Consent Resolutions Agenda pulled?

Mr. Dorsey: I would like you to take #13 off. It is Morris Hunt Phase III. We still need a letter from Gene Buczynski that he is satisfied with the status of the water system.

President Greenbaum: Okay, we will remove #13 and we won’t even put it on Non Consent. We will simply remove that from the Resolutions for this evening.

Mr. Dorsey: That’s right.

Mr. Perkins: Thank you, Mr. President. Resolution #7.

President Greenbaum: Resolution #7 will be removed to the Non Consent Resolutions Agenda. Any others? Mr. Perkins, do you want to move the Consent Resolutions Agenda please?

Mr. Perkins: Yes, Mr. President. I move for adoption of Consent Resolutions #1 – 6 and # 8 – 12.

President Greenbaum: Is there a second?

Mr. Buell: Second.

PUBLIC PORTION ON CONSENT RESOLUTIONS

President Greenbaum: Is there anyone from the public who wishes to be heard on any particular resolution on the Consent Resolutions Agenda? Seeing none, I close it to the public. Does anyone have any brief clarifying statements? Seeing none, Roll Call.

ROLL CALL: Passed Unanimously with the exception Mr. Perkins voted no on #10.

7. Resolution of the Township Council of the Township of Mount Olive Awarding a Contract to CFM Construction, Inc. for the Turkey Brook Park Well No. 2 Conversion Project.

President Greenbaum: Mr. Perkins, do you want to move Resolution #7?

Mr. Perkins: Yes, Mr. President. I move for adoption of Resolution #7.

President Greenbaum: Is there a second?

Mr. Buell: Second.

President Greenbaum: Is there anyone from the public who wishes to be heard on Resolution #7? Seeing none, I close it to the public.

COUNCIL COMMENTS ON CONSENT RESOLUTIONS

Mr. Perkins: Thank you Mr. President. Mr. Prill, did you get a report from Mr. Lata, the licensed operator, about the appropriateness of the reduction and sizing of the chlorination room, as well as the secondary containment units that would be used, that they were acceptable to DEP?

Mr. Prill: I did review that with Mr. Quinn. Mr. Quinn indicated that between himself and the consulting engineer and the water and sewer supervisor, that he felt very comfortable that the reduction in size was not going to cause any problems whatsoever for the operation of the well.

Mr. Perkins: Okay, so we didn’t get the licensed operator’s input?

Mr. Prill: Mr. Quinn indicated that..........

Mr. Perkins: Did Mr. Quinn speak to him and also confirm that is what.....

Mr. Prill: I don’t know whether Mr. Quinn had a direct discussion with that particular individual. He just simply indicated that between himself and the consulting engineer and Mr. Spaldi, who is also a licensed operator, that they have reviewed the reduction in size and were very comfortable with that reduction and that it is not going to present any adverse effects.

Mr. Perkins: For the sake of not belaboring you, Mr. Prill, I don’t know that Mr. Spaldi is down with the DEP as the licensed operator of the facilities. He may hold a license and I believe it is only a W-1 License, which would not entitle him to be the licensed operator. Be that as it may, I had specifically asked two weeks ago
if you would get back to them and ask Mr. Quinn to speak to the licensed operator to get his concurrence as the one that holds direct responsible charge for the operation of the water systems within the Township of Mount Olive and that was the basis of my question. That’s why I am back and asked you again today and is why I pulled it off the Consent and got it on Non Consent, was because I just needed that answer. What you are prepared to tell me is that did not happen. Am I correct in that?

Mr. Prill: Again, Mr. Quinn did not indicate to me that he had a direct conversation with the individual that you are talking about.

Mr. Perkins: Mr. Prill, given that the Township Engineer and the Director of the Department have concurred that the Township Engineer is a licensed Professional Engineer and I will defer that his judgment was sufficient. However, I am disappointed that we did not include our licensed operator in this task and I would like to go down on record on that.

President Greenbaum: I am gathering that you don’t wish to pull this resolution. You are prepared to move it forward but not satisfied that all the I’s have been dotted and the T’s have been crossed.

Mr. Perkins: That is correct Mr. President.

President Greenbaum: Any other discussion? Let’s put it to a vote then, Roll Call.

ROLL CALL: Mr. Tepper, Mr. Biondi, voted no.
Mr. Buell, Mr. Perkins, Mr. Greenbaum, voted yes.

Mr. Dorsey: It passed.

President Greenbaum: Yes, it does.

MOTIONS

1. Approval of Raffle Application #2154 & #2155 for St. James Episcopal Church; Raffle Application #2156 the Mt. Olive PTA and Raffle Application #2157 & #2158 for the Parents Club Mt. Olive High School.

President Greenbaum: Mr. Tepper, do you want to move the Raffle Applications please?

Mr. Tepper: Yes, Mr. President. I move for approval of Raffle Applications #2154 & #2155 for St. James Episcopal Church; Raffle Application #2156 the Mt. Olive PTA.

Mr. Dorsey: Keep going.

President Greenbaum: You have to keep going

Mr. Biondi: You have two more.

Mr. Tepper: Oh, we do here, #2157 & #2158 for the Parents Club Mt. Olive High School as well.

Mr. Perkins: Second.

President Greenbaum: It has been moved and seconded. Any discussion? Roll Call.

ROLL CALL: Passed Unanimously

Mr. Tepper: That is what I get for reading the first one and not the second one.

Mr. Biondi: That’s right.

2. Bill List.

President Greenbaum: Mr. Buell, you are going to move the Bill List this evening, so you are going to make a motion to move the Bill List absent the invoices.

Mr. Buell: Yes.

President Greenbaum: Could you please, for the record, reread the Bills that you wish to have removed from the Bill List?

Mr. Buell: Yes. I move the Bill List, with the removal of invoice #060886-7.

President Greenbaum: Go slow, #06..... What page is that on?

Mr. Buell: #060886-7.

President Greenbaum: Identify the nature of the bill if you would.

Mr. Buell: It is $19,731.00 to our Planning Board Attorney for the appeal to the Supreme Court of the Morris Chase law suit.

President Greenbaum: Okay, what is the next bill that you are looking to remove?

Mr. Buell: The second one is #06-0599-04 for $1,800.08 for Joseph O’Neill’s legal bills related to the Ruggierio vs. Lisa Lashway et al. This is the second time we have removed this one from the Bill List. There is a note attached to this one indicating that the Mayor wants it paid because the work was preformed before we passed the resolution.

President Greenbaum: Is there a second to Mr. Buell’s motion?

Mr. Tepper: Second.

President Greenbaum: It has been moved and seconded. Is there any discussion with respect to the Bill List? I am not inclined to remove the Bill related to the Planning Board litigation.

Mr. Buell: The reason for it, Mr. President, is quite frankly I looked at the Bill and I looked at the items on the Bill. Ninety percent of it, the best I can determine, when you go through the invoice, it is for replicate work, meeting with Buzak to understand the case reviewing what has been done previously. With all the discussion about our great Planning Board and how much money they were saving us in legal fees when they changed from Buzak to Thomas, I just think that I would like to have our comments reflected to the Planning Board and then have them review this before we pay it.

President Greenbaum: I assume the Bill was already approved by the Planning Board and to the extent that you have a problem with the manor in which that litigation was handled, either by Mr. Thomas or by the Planning Board in making the determination that Mr. Thomas was better suited to handle it than Mr. Buzak, could actually save the Town money, but in fact didn’t, it is an issue that you have with the Planning Board more so then with Mr. Thomas. I am sure that Mr. Thomas did what he thought necessary to be able to pursue that litigation. From that perspective, while I don’t disagree with you from the perspective of whether or not that litigation was handled in the best fashion from the Township’s prospective, that litigation was a Planning Board matter rather than a Council matter and I think that your points are very valid but I think from a payment perspective we are obligated to push this through because the Planning Board was within its rights to retain Mr. Thomas and to have him handle that matter. If you want to raise the issue with the Planning Board, in terms of all of the comments that you’ve had, I think that the appropriate avenue to do that is at the Planning Board meeting or to send a letter to the Planning Board with respect to your concerns but I believe that Bill should be paid. I am going to vote against the Motion unless it is amended to include that Bill. In fact, I will make a motion to amend your motion to include that Bill for payment. I don’t know if there is a second to my amendment? There is no second, it dies. So the motion is on the table as Mr. Buell... does anyone else have any comments?

Mr. Tepper: I will state that it was not reviewed as a Bill to be paid as professional bills in front of the Planning Board are paid on presentation to the Board. It was discussed that he would be taking over. However, the discussion that I had was that it wasn’t anticipated to increase cost. I will refer this on Thursday at that meeting and bring that up and I welcome Jim or anyone else to that point. I think it contradicts the entire logic of replacing Mr. Buzak.

President Greenbaum: Is there any further discussion?

ROLL CALL: Mr. Tepper, Mr. Buell, Mr. Biondi, Mr. Perkins, yes as amended.
Mr. Greenbaum voted no.

ADMINISTRATIVE MATTERS

Library Board Report

President Greenbaum: Mr. Buell, does the Mayor have the Library Report this evening?

Mr. Buell: Mr. Buell?

President Greenbaum: I am sorry. Mr. Prill, I get you two mixed up. You’re at the end of the table.

Mr. Prill: The Library Board has not had a meeting since we last met.

President Greenbaum: Do you know when the next Library Board meeting is?

Mr. Prill: They were scheduled to meet tomorrow night but that has been postponed to the end of the month.

OLD BUSINESS

Status of Library Grant Monies to be Turned Over to Twp.

President Greenbaum: Has anything happened with the Library grant monies to be turned over to the Township?

Mr. Prill: We have not received any further word back from the Library’s attorney following Sherry Jenkins discussion with her.

President Greenbaum: Just so the record is clear, I agreed to sit down with the Library Board’s attorney and a member of the Administration preferably....or two, preferably with Sherry Jenkins who I involved in the meeting because she is obviously aware of the accounting aspects, at any point in time to resolve this issue and I have not had any contact with the Library Board’s attorney since that time.

Mr. Tepper: I would like to ask Mrs. Jenkins if we have had any other financial issues regarding payroll and/or pension, or has that now been resolved?

Mrs. Jenkins: Things are moving along. The only issue that we still have is relative to the pension and as I indicated to you before, they basically can’t fix that at this point in time. We are still reconciling their pension for them to make sure that legally it gets remitted the way that it needs to be.

Mr. Tepper: Is there a timeframe for resolving that?

Mrs. Jenkins: I mean really, once they knew it was a problem, it should have been resolved. I think the problem is that they bought a program from a payroll company that was not as advanced as it should have been and therefore it cannot do the calculations that it needs to do, is my understanding.

Mr. Biondi: Mr. President.

President Greenbaum: Yes.

Mr. Biondi: Do we have no other recourse with these people than to just sit here and week after week, month after month and ask them to give us information that we don’t get?

President Greenbaum: No.

Mr. Biondi: What do you mean no?

President Greenbaum: We don’t have any other recourse.

Mr. Tepper: Not at this time.

Mr. Biondi: Why not?

President Greenbaum: It is a statutory issue.

Mr. Biondi: Can we hold their money?

President Greenbaum: No.

Mr. Biondi: This is ridiculous.

President Greenbaum: We have held their money. We have to be very careful in terms of what we do.

Mr. Buell: No, the recourse is for the Board of the Library to become more responsible.

President Greenbaum: Yes.

Mr. Buell: There are currently four openings on that Library Board and hopefully shortly after November there will be some changes.

President Greenbaum: Okay, let’s move the meeting along.

Status of Kings Village Issues

Mr. Buell: My contact has kind of disappeared. I have called her twice. I think Lisa sent her a letter. I know there are existing problems. I will continue to try to contact her.

President Greenbaum: I am going to remove this from the Old Business tickler. If for some reason they should contact you, we will put it back on. Mr. Prill, did you have something to add?

Mr. Prill: No, I was just getting ready for the next item.

President Greenbaum: I was going to skip the next item. No, I am just kidding.

Status of Charters Farm

Mr. Prill: We have received two proposals back from two of the contractors that we have been talking to. The prices have come down, not as much as we had hoped that they might. We have reached out to two other local contractors, one who has expressed an interest in sitting down with us to better understand the project. He thinks he might be able to give us a good price on it. The second contractor I don’t know whether we made contact with that individual yet. We will at least try to get one or two more contractors to give us proposals before we bring it back to Council.

President Greenbaum: Okay. I will put it on for discussion in two weeks. Hopefully you will have something by that time.

DPW Project – timeline, % of completion, % paid, etc.

President Greenbaum: I am sure this is the one that you were gearing up to discuss.

Mr. Prill: Well, I have provided Council with some background information in terms of the financials as well as the....actually the second payment request from APS which was on the Bill List tonight. Attached to the payment request from APS was the standard AIA form that provides a breakdown of the component pieces of the work and the current status in terms of work completed, what is yet to be done, payments made to date and outstanding payments and retainage which is the information which I think, what was being looked for?

President Greenbaum: Mr. Tepper. Did you have a chance to review the documentation? Do you have anything to report to Council on this issue?

Mr. Tepper: I did have a chance. Rick did provide what was requested. The only additional thing that I believe we have asked for and just discussed this morning was the timeline detailing expected expenditures and amount for completion but he has provided everything that was asked for. The only other comment, I would like to understand a little better is, are we going to impute the dollar value of services provided by the local DPW Department in this number?

President Greenbaum: I would be more interested to know manpower hours rather than dollars. Anyone else have anything on this issue?

B. L. F. A. R. S. Old Capital*

Mr. Buell: It turns out it is not old capital. I talked to Phyllis Gentile. The Budd Lake Rescue Squad has no more pagers to issue. They are down several pagers and they have in the 2006 capital, they have $3,225.00 allocated to buy pagers and radios. She requested that, that money be released.....

President Greenbaum: No one has a problem with it. Unless you speak up now, no one has a problem with it.

Mr. Biondi: None at all.

Mr. Tepper: None.

Mr. Perkins: Nope.

Mr. Tepper: That’s fine.

President Greenbaum: Is that it?

Mr. Buell: That’s it.

President Greenbaum: Any other Old Business?

Mr. Buell: You forgot the Speed tables.

Speed tables on Sunset Dr.

President Greenbaum: Oh, yes I did. Speed tables on Sunset Drive, thank you.

Mr. Biondi: Where is the Chief? Oh, there he is.

Mr. Buell: Actually, this....Mr. Prill and the DPW department did a very rapid job. I got an email the next day from Mr. Prill indicating that the tables were being measured and sited. I don’t know whether they have been put in place. I reported that to the individual who lives on Sunset Drive. She had reported that yes, she had seen the people out there measuring and they were very happy that they were going to have the speed bumps in before school begins.

President Greenbaum: Okay, very good. Anything further on that Mr. Prill, or that pretty much sums it up?

Mr. Prill: That pretty much sums it up. I think Tim needs to get passed the road resurfacing work in the next few days to be able for them to focus on some of the smaller work.

President Greenbaum: I assume that you have something to impart, Sherry Jenkins.

Mrs. Jenkins: Can we just back up a minute? The Budd Lake Rescue, are we going to do a bond ordinance for only $3,200?

President Greenbaum: It wasn’t included in the bond ordinance?

Mrs. Jenkins: No, we did not put any of the volunteer fire or rescue squad capital in the ordinance that we did because the discussion that was had is that that would be discussed at a later point and time. The only thing that was put in was Flanders fire, replacement truck, so I just want to be clear.

President Greenbaum: We are not going to do a bond ordinance for $3,200.00....

Mr. Jenkins: That is what I am saying.

President Greenbaum: They do have old capital ordinances that they could use instead.

Mrs. Jenkins: Yes. Assuming the wording fits into what they are looking to buy, I will have to look at that.

President Greenbaum: Why don’t you look at that and we will do it in that fashion. We are not going to do a bond ordinance for $3,200.00.

Mr. Biondi: There is an older one for pagers Sherry.

Mrs. Jenkins: I will take a look.

Mr. Biondi: Phyllis made us aware of that last week.

Mrs. Jenkins: So she is really just looking to use money that she already has at this point?

Mr. Biondi: Right.

Mr. Buell: Yes, she’s only....... and again my comments were relative to the 2006 capital, in releasing it. Not to the relative....

President Greenbaum: We can’t release...that’s exactly what we are saying to you can’t release it because....

Mrs. Jenkins: That is why I am not clear. I just want to make sure. So right now, again for 2006 they have not gotten anything. The only department is Flanders Fire for the truck. So are you entertaining that or are you just entertaining them being able to use prior balances?

President Greenbaum: Prior balances.

Mr. Tepper: Prior amounts.

Mr. Buell: I still think this Council needs to review all of those things........

President Greenbaum: There is no question about it and by moving on the prior balance, we are not saying that there 2006 capital allocation is not going to be honored. It simply is not going to be drawn upon at this point until we have an omnibus bond for other expenditures for 2006 that have not yet been bonded for.

Mrs. Jenkins: What about their other capital?

President Greenbaum: Which other capital?

Mrs. Jenkins: They have plenty of other capital that’s out there, besides just.....

Mr. Biondi: That is all held in abeyance.

Mrs. Jenkins: Okay, I just want to be clear so that when we get phone calls, we know. The only thing we are looking at now is the pagers, is that correct?

Mr. Biondi: That’s it.

President Greenbaum: That’s all that was brought to us.

Mr. Biondi: Everything else is on for cancellation at some point.

Mrs. Jenkins: Okay, thank you.

NEW BUSINESS

President Greenbaum: Thank you, any other Old Business? Any New Business?

LEGAL MATTERS

Mr. Dorsey: I think it is worth mentioning. It was about three months ago that Mr. Greenbaum brought to me the well established, well experienced developer of so called Brownfields and on the basis of that you all adopted a resolution about a month ago which authorized us to go to bid. As part of the notice of bidding we scheduled a bidders informational session last Friday at 1:00 and Council President was there, Councilman Rattner was there, Rick Prill was there as the Township Administrator and Michelle, Deputy Clerk was there to tape the meeting. Actually, it has become a very, very interesting situation. I had thought originally we had one perspective buyer/ developer. There were 10 real people here and I say real people. They signed on a list so that you know what companies that they are with and they were real people in the sense that they had spent some time to at least familiarize themselves as to what the process was and the tract of land. Today I had a phone call. It was very interesting and it was someone who pretty much correctly stated that what we bid, we bid for the right to do due diligence on this site and that happens to be true. This bidding process has been set up, I would say, in a very intelligent way. Almost the way as if it was purely a private deal, the seller would be forced to enter into a buyer to permit the due diligence to be done before actually anybody is going to buy.
Mr. Dorsey (Cont’d): Now you all know that the real payday for the Township is when this property is developed and creates a tax ratable that I would have to think it would be in the neighborhood of $30 or $40 million dollars, current value. It is interesting today that one of the bidders that were here on Friday, Vornado Realty and Trust, which was originally Two Guys from Harrison and is now a massive real estate trust and they now wanted a phone conference in the morning to what’s going to happen. Now, at this informational meeting, we essentially made a presentation but we also listened to what they had to say and it became quite clear to me that there were certain aspects of the bid specs as we had put them together that need to be tweaked because it was impossible, I think, to foresee everything that might arise. Two weeks from tonight, I will have a new resolution for you with a new set of specs that will deal with some of the issues. Rob, I think you agree, it was impressive, the number of people that showed up and they were interested people.

President Greenbaum: It wasn’t just the number, it was the quality. It was the quality of the people that were here. I think that ultimately the Township may end up seeing a benefit both on the front end, in the middle and on the back end.

Mr. Dorsey: That’s it.

President Greenbaum: I think that you did an excellent job in terms of your presentation and answering the questions, which were difficult questions, a lot dealing with D E P issues. Does that conclude your Legal Matters report?

Mr. Dorsey: Yes, thank you.

COUNCIL REPORTS

Recreation Liaison Report

Mr. Biondi: Yes, thank you Mr. President. We had a meeting last week finally after about two months of no meetings. We reviewed the Mount Olive Day program which ultimately was considered basically a success even though it was a lot of bad weather. It pretty much broke even which is not bad considering the weather aspect of the situation. We are definitely planning on going forward with that next year. We are now planning the winter carnival. Hopefully, we will get that off the ground this year. That is going to be in late January. It will be one of two days depending on the weather. That was very well received by everybody at the meeting. There is some concern with field availability this year for all the teams. It is going to be a problem but they are going to have to work through it. Jim Lynch and the rest of his folks are working very hard to get it done properly. The beach year was a success even though it was short. It stopped pretty quickly at the end of August that was about it because she lost all her people. They had to go back to school and our kids didn’t have to go back to school so we had to cut it short by a couple of weeks. All in all Jill thought it was a very good year. I thought it was a good year and I look forward to some good things in the future.

Board of Health Report - None

Planning Board Report

Mr. Tepper: Planning Board meets this Thursday.

Board of Adjustment Liaison Report

Mr. Perkins: Yes, Mr. President. One Special Public Meeting last night for the Jehovah Witnesses Hackettstown Congregation. It was approved to construct a new Kingdom Hall facility on Stephens Park Road.

Open Space Committee Report - None

Legislative Committee Report

Mr. Biondi: No report at this time.

Pride Committee Liaison Report

Mr. Perkins: Yes, Mr. President. They are finalizing the designs on the new billboard, getting together for purchasing of the mums to put those around as the beautification projects and that’s it.

Board of Education Liaison Report

Mr. Buell: Yes, they met last night. Basically, Mr. McEntee discussed the major issue and that is, that the school will be open on the 20th and it is ready. Basically, the parking lots will be ready for at least the 80 kids. The only other matter that I think was pertinent to us is the fact that Mr. McEntee did discuss the applicability of the service road to the school administration building at the meeting.

Lake/Environment Issues Committee - None

Safety Committee Liaison

Mr. Perkins: Have a meeting coming up on the 19th Mr. President.

Finance Committee Report - None

Economic Committee Report - None

Solid Waste Advisory Committee Report

Mr. Tepper: A meeting is not currently scheduled. We are looking for a replacement member for the secretary that has resigned but one is scheduled hopefully, before the end of the month.

PUBLIC PORTION

President Greenbaum: Thank you, at this point I will open it up to the public for anyone who wishes to be heard? We had one resolution that I skipped over. Which I was hoping that the Lyon’s family would be here but I think we will do it at this point, even thought there is no one here.

1. Resolution of the Township Council of the Township of Mount Olive Naming the Basketball Courts at Turkey Brook Park “Stephens Lyons Basketball Courts.”

WHEREAS, the Township has developed significant basketball facilities at Turkey Brook Park; and

WHEREAS, Stephen A. Lyons was a resident of Mount Olive Township for over 30 years and served the community as a dedicated and caring coach in both the junior basketball and basketball associations; and

WHEREAS, the Township Council believes that it would be appropriate to name the basketball courts after Stephen Lyons inasmuch as he was a dedicated citizen of the Township and deeply involved in connection with the fostering of basketball as a recreational activity.

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED by the Township Council of the Township of Mount Olive that it does hereby name the basketball courts at Turkey Brook Park as the “Stephen Lyons Basketball Courts.”

President Greenbaum: Can I have that moved please?

Mr. Perkins: So moved.

Mr. Biondi: Second.

President Greenbaum: Moved and seconded any discussion? Is there anyone from the public who wishes to be heard? Any discussion at the Council level? Roll Call, please.

ROLL CALL: Passed Unanimously

8:00 pm Reval Company Proposals (3 companies @ 15 min. each)

President Greenbaum: Jack, do you know if the companies are all here? Okay, how do you want to handle this? Do you want to bring them in one at a time? Actually, you know what, bring them all in. As you know, the Township has been ordered by the County to do a revaluation of our properties and we are in the process of retaining a company to aid the Township in the revaluation process. It is my understanding from speaking to Council that the retention of a company to do the revaluation for the Township is actually a professional services contract which means it doesn’t necessarily need to go out to bid and it doesn’t necessarily mean the Township will choose the lowest bidder with respect to whoever gets retained.
President Greenbaum (Cont’d): I thought that this would be a good opportunity to speak to each of the companies, find out a little bit about the company, the approach and whatever you want to tell us at this point in time rather than us tell you and to sell your company with respect to obtaining the work for the Township which, obviously, each of you want to do. I suppose what will happen after this meeting, the Township will contact each of the companies to address whatever concerns or issues that we have with respect to either your proposals or your presentation and we will make the decision after that point in time in terms of who we are going to retain. Jack, I don’t know which companies are here and I don’t have any of their materials. At this point if you just want to start in alphabetical order if you want with the first company. I would like to limit the discussion with each company to no more than 15 minutes and if you take less time than that, that is fine too. If you could, come up to the microphone and state your name and the company that you work for.

Inaudible

President Greenbaum: No, I don’t care if everyone is here. At this point, I expect you to tell me what it is that you are intending to do. I don’t care that everyone is in the room. Unless you all feel that it would be unfair?

Inaudible

President Greenbaum: You would prefer to have everyone leave the room so that you would have our undivided attention. That’s fine too. Let’s start with Appraisal and everyone else would just wait outside.

Ernie Del Guercio Sr., Appraisal Systems: Did I miss a time limit?

President Greenbaum: Yes, the time limit is 15 minutes or less.

Ernie Del Guercio Sr.: I usually do 15 minutes on hello how are you.

President Greenbaum: Then you are lucky that Mr. Rattner isn’t here, he does 30 minutes on hello how are you. Okay, the floor is yours.

Ernie Del Guercio Sr.: Let me introduce members of the staff. This is Mr. Del Guercio who is the Executive Vice President and this is Glen Sherman who is our Vice President and Brett Trout who is one of our Senior Appraisers. These are the gentleman, along with myself who will be responsible for the work.

Mr. Biondi: And you are?

Mr. Tepper: That would be Ernie Del Guercio.

President Greenbaum: And you are?

Ernie Del Guercio Sr.: My name is Ernie Del Guercio, Sr., and I am President of the company and I have been involved in revaluation work in the State of New Jersey since 1956. I have experienced all kinds of appraisal problems. I have worked in a varied arena of municipalities. The experience that the Appraisal Systems bring to the Municipality is in the form of the people that work for us. I would just point out in our brochure that there are four major areas that I would like to bring to your attention. The staff starts on page 48 and we have represented the resumes of every person critical to the revaluation process who is currently on staff as I speak to you this evening. We are very proud of the staff. I will point out to you that they are almost all university trained and when they work for Appraisal Systems, they are required to take courses at Rutgers University in the extension division in the appraisal and assessing field and we encourage them to go further with their training and we pay for that. As a result, we have a lot of individuals with long initials after their name. They are certified general appraisers. We are very proud of their accomplishments in that regard. Key to any revaluation is the staff and the people that will be performing the revaluation. So I would have you look at their resumes. They are all extremely qualified individuals. The brochure starts out on page 2 with all of the municipalities that we have served in the revaluation effort starting in 1981 when I incorporated Appraisal Systems. I had worked with Revaluation and Appraisal Systems from Cedar Grove as partner and president of that firm prior to that. On page 4, however, is probably the most important page in the brochure. These are all of the revaluations that we have completed in the most recent past and when I say all I mean 100%. We have provided references, people to call so that you can if you are so inclined, find out about the professionalism and the quality of the work preformed by Appraisal Systems. Important to further note that there is no cherry picking here. They are all from the revaluations preformed in the last 4 years. It is our job this evening to present ourselves to you in the best possible light, to convince you how great we are but in the final analysis it’s people that we have served that are going to make the most recommendations in that regard. The rest of the brochure that follows speaks to our methodology and you can look at that at your leisure if you are so inclined. I would like to bring your attention to page 36 and that starts the public relations effort.

Mr. Guercio Sr. (Cont’d): Public relations in a revaluation is key, particularly in this climate in the State of New Jersey where the reliance on real property to support the government is excessive. So it becomes even more critical that the public relations program be started at the outset of the program and be given the utmost attention throughout the entire process. Public relations is more than just giving talks before interested taxpayer groups. We will do that. Its more than press releases. We will do that. Examples of those press releases are on the following pages. Public relations is more than brochures, although we include a four page two color brochure with our initial mailing and we will send a brochure much like the one we did for Wyckoff and for Perth Amboy, where we went beyond what is typical for revaluation public relations documents. Public relations take place when a field person knocks on the door. Do they treat the tax person courteously, do they answer their questions, and do they not answer a question where they are ill qualified to respond. That is key, referring that question to someone in the office that knows. When a taxpayer calls the office to make an appointment, are we flexible? Do we show courtesy and flexibility in dealing with members in the tax paying public throughout all the phases of the program? This you will know when you call those references. We make every effort, I think this is our strength, we make every effort to achieve an A in this aspect of the program. Only people for whom we have worked for in the past can attest to that. I would have you call them. Public relations also takes place when taxpayers know that the process is transparent. Is everything open to them? Are all the documents that we prepare going to be made available to the public? Not only that, are they going to be presented in such a way that they are easily understood, and to that end and what is unique to Appraisal Systems, I would point out page 34, is a form that we use at all of our taxpayer hearings. We send a first class letter advising property owners of the value of their home or business. When they come in for an informal hearing with a representative of the firm, we have for every sale one of these documents categorized by neighborhood with a picture, with a sketch of the sale price and the date and all the key components that contribute to value. That is made available to taxpayers in such a way so that they can go right to their neighborhood right to a picture of a house similar and they can make critical judgments about whether we have accurately valued their property. This is just one aspect of how we make the process transparent and take public relations beyond the traditional thinking in regards to this very, very critical aspect of the program. I think those are the key areas in this brochure that I would have you focus on. I would now have you ask us any questions and have Victor Glen fill in anything that I overlooked, time allowing.

President Greenbaum: Does anyone on Council have any questions for Ernie? How familiar is your company with Mount Olive in terms of our ratio, in terms of how we stack up to other communities that you have revaled recently?

Mr. Del Guercio Sr.: If you look on page #2, you can see all of the municipalities that we have revalued in Morris County. Currently, are they all on the list and the ones that we are actively working on now? We were just awarded a contract for Washington Township and we are very, very familiar with Morris County. We have an office in Ridgewood that is run by Rick and we have an office in Morristown that is run by Glen, so we are very, very familiar. We are the most prevalent firm in Morris County.

President Greenbaum: In terms of what, the number of towns that have retained you for revals?

Mr. Del Guercio Sr.: Yes, and I will also point out Councilman, that the Township of Washington, we have done the revaluation in 1997, and they reappointed us to do this one for 2008. So clearly they were pleased with the revaluation six – seven years ago. They have asked us back.

Mr. Biondi: I see you have done that same thing in Boonton Township.

Mr. Del Guercio Sr.: Correct, Boonton Township has asked us back as well. We have a very good record in terms of doing towns and doing those towns again when ordered six – seven- eight years. Mountain Lakes Borough is another town which we did in 1994 and I, as the assessor in Mountain Lakes, I just did a reassessment for them last year. So we do have repeat towns in Morris County as well.

President Greenbaum: What is the timeframe that one could anticipate for doing all of the field inspections necessary to do the reval?

Mr. Del Guercio Sr.: In a town like Mount Olive, probably like about six to eight months. The more people you put on the further you remove yourself from uniformity of method in full. So fewer people you can use the better and the more time you have for that purpose, the better.

President Greenbaum: How many people would you assume that would be doing the field inspections in Mount Olive?

Mr. Del Guercio Sr.: About four to five.

Mr. Biondi: Forty-five?
Mr. Del Guercio Sr.: Four to five.

Mr. Biondi: Four to five, I thought he said 45.

Mr. Del Guercio Sr.: As long as we are talking about personnel in the field, the thing I am the most proud of at Appraisal Systems is the staff. When I started in the reval business about 15 years ago it was common for field personnel to come on board for six months to a year, put their work in and then move on to other things. We have taken a different philosophy over the past 10 years, in that we develop personnel to keep personnel. We don’t just hire field personnel as we get work. That is why we have included each and every field person in this brochure. We have 30 to 35 employees right now, field personnel that would potentially be working here who have experience. They have done towns before, they have measured thousands of homes and it is important that the field personnel that would be out in the field knocking on doors interacting with the public is not somebody that was just hired a month, two months or even six months prior, personnel that has been with us for years having done thousands of properties and we really feel that our staff is the best that is out there.

President Greenbaum: So you think your staff is what makes your company better than the other choices that we may have.

Mr. Del Guercio Sr.: I believe so.

President Greenbaum: I understand that many of the factors related to a reval, obviously, are not within the control of the appraisal company and often times a revaluation leads to a public relations problem for municipalities because people’s taxes generally have a tendency to go up significantly in certain respects. Such was the case recently in Florham Park. Are you familiar with the Florham Park reval?

Mr. Del Guercio Sr.: Yes, we did it.

President Greenbaum: You guys did the most recent Florham Park reval?

Mr. Del Guercio Sr.: Yes.

President Greenbaum: I note that there are a lot of public relations issues with Florham Park. Why don’t you describe your perspective with respect to what is going on in Florham Park.

Mr. Del Guercio Sr.: When we did Florham Park, it was for the second time. We valued all of the properties and we held hearings. Five percent of the respondents came in for a public hearing. You would automatically assume that 95% were happy with the value. We had a tax appeal rate of less than 1 ½ %. We were successful in defending all of those appeals. The State in evaluating the success of a revaluation looks at the sales that take place after the revaluation and they run what is called a coefficient of deviation. That measures how close the assessments are to the sales....not the sales that we knew about but the sales that take place after the fact. We had a coefficient of deviation of less than four and I know Glen was upset because there was only one municipality in the State of New Jersey in that year that had a better coefficient of deviation. So if you take the three major means of evaluating the success of a revaluation, the number of appeals, the success rate of the appeals and the coefficient deviation, we look very, very good. The problem came when the tax bills went out and the tax bills went out at the time when Florham Park, that has about 60% of their ratable base in either commercial and industrial field, and they experiencing tax appeals. They had to make major concessions on those tax appeals for commercial and industrial properties long before we started the revaluation. So they knew that there was a problem with the shift from commercial to residential.

President Greenbaum: We too, have been dealing with that issue on a yearly basis in terms of tax appeals. I am sure that you have been reading in the newspaper what has been happening with BASF. We have gone basically from $180 million assessed property value to somewhere in $70 to 80 million range over a three or four year period. The loss in the tax dollars has already been felt by our taxpayers, increased property values.....increased property taxes. That has happened not only with BASF but with a number of our other large commercial taxpayers. In the fact that we have been dealing with these tax appeals over a number of different years, is that going to, in your opinion, lessen the blow that we will feel though the revaluation process specifically with regard to what you have described as the shift? I look at it as a pizza pie, where part of the pizza pie is picked up by the commercial and the rest is picked up by residential, as the commercial shrinks the residential picks up more.

Mr. Del Guercio Sr.: You have been experiencing a reassessment of your properties through the appeals process over the last four years and through that litigated process, you have been arriving at the true market value. You have solved major problems by settling these appeals and correcting it through the appeals process.

President Greenbaum: Is that something that wasn’t done in Florham Park and that’s why........
Mr. Del Guercio Sr.: It wasn’t done, not because they didn’t want to do it. It just happened. They were all out there and they weren’t settled, major properties. There was major concern with the old Exxon property. They paid a large percentage of the taxes and that was a problem that was in the process.....and so when it blew up, the timing of that was unfortunate for the process.

President Greenbaum: Does anyone else have any questions? I think we have gone through the allotted timeframe. Do you have any final closing words briefly? If you don’t, that’s fine too.

Mr. Del Guercio Sr.: I think we have covered it all. I would just like to thank you for the opportunity to present ourselves to you and with that, we will close the cover.

President Greenbaum: We will get back in touch with you, thank you very much. The floor is yours, if you want to go to the microphone because we have to record everything. You need to speak into the microphone, I apologize. We did get your letter as well, and certainly will be the subject of further discussion in terms of comparing apples to apples, when the time comes.

Charlie Feminella, Certified Valuations: Yes, I think that the basis for the proposal that we put in was the specifications, the requested proposal. I think we followed it thoroughly and we are higher than the low bidder, substantially. The cost of a revaluation or the bare bones revaluation states specifications without a lot of the frills that were put into this contract. I don’t call them frills, they are things that an assessor and I, as an assessor, would consider necessary but the State doesn’t put them in there. That type of a contract would be more like below the bidder’s number, I just don’t think they read it. I will tell you what I would say to the general public, should we be given the opportunity to perform this revaluation and I would start off by saying the reason for this reevaluation is that we have as assessors, one opportunity, one challenge and that is to be fair. Fairness is our game. It is what we do for a living. Fairness doesn’t mean what I was taught when I was growing up by my religion or by my parents. Fairness is dedicated and dictated by the Constitution of the State of New Jersey. That is fairness, the only criteria for fairness is the market value of the property, 100% of the market value of the property, notwithstanding the fact that some poor person or some rich person owns it. That’s the criteria for fairness that we have to face. Even though we have a heart and we see people who probably can’t afford to pay the taxes based on the value that we put on it, we have to be immune to that and let the legislators take care of that. The reason we are having a revaluation, and you have been ordered to do so, so the Mayor and Council and the Administration and the Assessor, really have nothing to do with this order. It happens because of the buyers and the sellers in the market place cause the value of properties to rise, and to rise varying rates in different parts of the town. For instance, the current ratio of assessed evaluation, the true value in this community is 65.7%. I mean 59.7%. That’s based on an average of all the sales that have taken place compared to the assessed valuation of those sales. Each year the State gets a copy of every deed that’s filed, and they are analyzed. These are useable sales, not sales between father to son or cousins, or relatives or corporations, stockholders. There are about 27 different reasons why they would not use a sale in this study. As a result of that study and the study encompassed over 300 sales from the last year and those sales had ratios of assessed value to a true value ranging from a low of about 12% but only a couple in that neighborhood. It was about 25%, is where most of them started on this curve to about 99% of true value. So some properties are selling at the approximate assessed valuation and others are selling at three times and four times the assessed valuation. In the middle where most of the sales occurred in this municipality, right now we have sales coming in at 30% to 40% of true value. I mean the assessed valuation is 30 to 40% of true value, so your ratio of 60% is probably not a good ratio. It is based on sales that occurred last year and average of sales that have occurred before that but you know what has happened in the last year or so. Everything went and now it is going to take effect. I expect that the ratio for this community will drop down substantially next year and you know what that means is tax appeals. Tax appeals by commercial property owners, not by the residential because their properties have gone up in value and are not going to win the appeal. Rents have gone up and not gone up, cap rates have gone up which causes values to go down. Expenses have gone up which causes value to go down, so we are in a position now where we have got to do something because class four properties, that is your commercial, your industrial and your apartments are going to have an effect on the shift of the tax burden just by virtue of the fact that there are going to be a lot of appeals. Doing the revaluation, there are certain safeguards we can watch the market and not rely on that ratio and those appeals will rule on a curve at the end of the evaluation, it will be at 100%, and if we see it dropping, which everybody thinks it is going to happen, we can make adjustments for next year and put it on the books. Or if it looks like a drastic situation, discuss whether or not a study should be held, really to find out exactly where we really are. I did a curse restudy, Mount Olive has 7,569 taxable properties of which 892 are vacant land, 6,158 are houses, and there are 123 farms, 328 commercial buildings, 62 industrial buildings, and 6 apartment complexes. The homes pay 60% of the taxes in this town and your income producing properties and your class four properties which are commercial, industrial, and apartments pay about 35%, land pays about 3 ¾%. Last year’s tax rate, this year’s tax rate is $3.89 for residential properties because of the sewers, and based on a 59% ratio, the effective tax rate is 2.32%. So 2.32% of the value of your property. If it is assessed at the ratio, it is going to increase taxes in the municipality. As a result of the revaluation, if your assessed valuation goes up about 1.7 times, your taxes should stay about the same. If it goes up higher than that, your taxes should be increased.
Mr. Feminella (Cont’d): If it goes lower than that, you may be decreased depending on two things: One, the budget in the town but more importantly, is that 59% ratio correct? As I said before it probably isn’t, so we can probably look at property values increasing almost three times and yet the actual taxes might stay the same. As I said, 60% of the taxes are being paid by homeowners. Any ideas, what do we do about it? I would love to stand here and say, I will raise all the non residents’ assessed valuations way up and we will come in really low on the houses and there won’t be any shift to the burden. There might be a shift to the burden, I don’t know. I haven’t analyzed that. I haven’t been here for quite a while so I don’t know where we stand except that I saw the ratio of some of the sales and they are about 50% on your clear score properties, which are the income producing properties, the non residential. It requires a good study to find out what is going to happen and should it happen? It shouldn’t happen at all. If the taxpayers are dissatisfied as a result of the revaluations, there is always the appeals process. I don’t know if the other firm has gone through that? If they did, I won’t go through it but the first line of appeals is the assessor, the second line of appeals if you don’t have satisfaction there, is to go to the tax board which is an informal hearing held by Commissioner down in Morristown and the third line of appeal would be if you’re not happy with that, to go directly to the Tax Court of New Jersey, which is really a Superior Court level. If your property is assessed at over $750,000.00, you can go directly to the tax court after you talk to the assessor to see if it is okay because the assessor might agree with you and they might lower it. We might agree during the appeals process and after reevaluation letters go out. I think that the last firm may have, and I am sure they did, I saw the brochure explaining to you what a revaluation is all about. I won’t bore you with that situation. I just want to say one thing about the quality of work that we do. We actually worked for the municipality in the past. We did the sewer assessment in 1998, and it went over well. We had a hearing, people showed up here, people showed up at the high school, a lot of people showed up at the high school but we didn’t have one tax appeal, not one appeal on the sewer assessment after that that I know about because I would have been involved in it. We are experts in your class four properties, commercial, industrial, and apartments. We just revalued the City of Newark which was a challenge. It hadn’t been revalued in 40 years. We were starting from scratch. We did it in two years. It was a three year job. We are currently in the process, just beginning to revalue the City of Atlantic City and the casinos. We have 100 people working for us. When I put the proposal in we had 77. We just cleared 100. Is that right Ted because we just put on a crew down at Atlantic City? I have three offices, one in Randolph, one in Newark - the Rubber Tree Hotel, where we have been for five years and I just bought an office building down in Toms River, New Jersey, which is half way between here and Atlantic City. We are doing Tom’s River by the way, Berkley Township, Seaside Heights, Barnegat, and Point Pleasant. We have a lot of work and we have a lot of people, a lot of mouths to feed and we encourage you, if you saw my brochure, you would see that this is all I have ever done for a living. I was in no other field. I graduated college with a degree in real estate. I tried to sell real estate for a year, failed at it, went to work for the State and learned about property taxation. I went to school and became an appraiser and I have been an appraiser ever since. I was the assessor in Randolph Township for about three or four years. I was a part-time assessor for many years but I started this revaluation firm in 1976 and that has been my full-time endeavor ever since. I have trained a lot of assessors that have gone on for bigger and better things and so who didn’t? We worked with your town attorney in the past in many municipalities where we worked in Morris County, Boonton, Rockaway Township, Parsippany, here and Hanover Township. If you compare our firm with the other Morris County firm, take a look at East Hanover and a few places like that. You will see that we have good public relations. We expeditiously respond to the concerns of taxpayers. Having been an assessor in Morris County, I have lived in Morris County all of my life. I realize that people need to be taken care of. When they ask a question, you have to answer it. You don’t want people festering, you don’t want them to think they can’t fight city hall. There is no fight. All we are trying to do is be fair and we have to convince them that we are being fair. What I consider an essential evaluation is competent assessing; that is, using all our skills to perform appraisals and these appraisals should be publicly accepted. Of course, a great revaluation from the point of the Mayor and Council would be no shift in the taxes, no shift in the rate from class to another and we are conscious of that and there are no political casualties and we haven’t had any of them. The only time we ever had a political casualty is when the Mayor and Council got involved in the revaluation. I am the guy that is doing it, Jack is the guy that is doing it. If there is anything wrong with it, let us take the blame and you will be better off to stay out of the frey because some times people do get excited. We haven’t had that in a long, long time. Another good marker in a revaluation is to sustain the values you put on when they go to tax appeals, when they go to court. We do not work for attorneys who handle tax appeals against municipalities. I don’t owe them one thing. I don’t care if they like me or they dislike me. When we are convinced that the valuation that we place on a property is correct, we will, with the municipal attorney, go to court and try to sustain it. If they prove to us that we are wrong, we will be the first one to admit it because we have no axe to grind except for fairness as I said. Ted here runs the jobs for us. He did a real good job in the City of Newark. We had 8,000 commercial properties. Over 40,000 total within the municipality hadn’t been revalued in many, many years and he is handling the tax appeals right now with several attorneys who are assigned to us. We are working in Parsippany right now, we are working in Rockaway Township and we are working in Fort Lee doing tax appeals and sometimes we are doing tax appeals for municipalities where other firms had gone in and done the revaluation because that is our expertise.

President Greenbaum: Are you familiar with the revaluation that was just completed in Florham Park?

Mr. Feminella: I have lived in Madison my whole life and I know Florham Park and I know Appraisal Systems did it but I am not familiar with it.

President Greenbaum: Okay, have you followed any of the public relations aspects of that appraisal in terms of what’s happening in that township?

Mr. Feminella: No, I haven’t.

President Greenbaum: Okay, fair enough. What makes your company unique, different than the rest of the companies?

Mr. Feminella: We try to work closely with the assessor and keep you folks apprised of what is going on at all times. We will not back away. We will be available. We are right around the corner down on Rt. 10. My education and background is what it is. It’s professional. I have taken all the courses. I am a certified general real estate appraiser unlike the president of the company that just left here, is not a licensed appraiser in the state of New Jersey although it looks like he is in the Brochure and he’s not. I don’t know how they can get away with it, but he’s not. I am a licensed certified general real estate appraiser. I have been doing it for years. Ted is also a licensed general real estate appraiser and most of my people are on their way, if they haven’t gotten their dissertation yet, are getting their dissertations. That is how we are different.

President Greenbaum: Does anyone else have any questions?

Mr. Biondi: I notice in your brochure you said that you did the town of Boonton in 1996. That same date and township is in the brochure from the previous....Appraisal Systems, how is that possible? How can you both do the same...........?

Mr. Feminella: I think they did the Township, we did the Borough.

Mr. Dorsey: Inaudible.

President Greenbaum: Okay, that’ fine.

Mr. Biondi: It wasn’t explicit here. How many people would you need to do this appraisal?

President Greenbaum: You have to state your name and please speak at the microphone.

Ted Lamicella: I will be the Project Manager for the revaluation project. We probably have a total of 10 people in the field about seven to eight residential inspectors and probably two commercial inspectors. In addition to that, we have four administrative staff taking phone calls and making appointments and entering the data into an accounting system.

Mr. Biondi: It would take how long? Ball Park, I will not hold you to that.

Mr. Lamicella: We would be completed for the October 1st valuation date and have the book printed for the January 10, 2008, book.

Mr. Feminella: If I may point out, as far as completion dates are concerned, the completion date for revaluation has to be January 10th, although they do give extensions. I realize that sometimes there is an election going on in the community and so therefore, we hold off on sending out letters of valuations. We don’t want to get involved in any political fights until after the November elections are over. We stay out of it. If there is any fault, it is not yours. You shouldn’t be involved in it.

President Greenbaum: It’s smart.

Mr. Feminella: I don’t want to get involved in it. All we want to be involved in is the value of property.

President Greenbaum: We don’t have political fights in Mount Olive.

Mr. Feminella: I didn’t read about Florham Park but I did read about Mount Olive a little bit.