August 4th Meeting Summary

The following is a summary of decisions the Council made at our meeting on August 4th.

We approved most of the resolutions on the Consent agenda. Our most substantial conversation involved the resolution to approve a pilot for "adult swim" for this upcoming Friday and Saturday, August 15th and 16th, at the Verona Community Pool. This pilot was at the request of dozens of pool members who signed a petition to bring adult swim back. At my request, I asked the administration to have a survey ready to go at the pool, available by both QR code and in paper form, to gather feedback at the time of the pilot. Adult swim means the pool will be cleared of all children for a 15 minute period to allow adults the pool to themselves. Based on the observations and feedback on this pilot, we will discuss for next pool season if adult swim should be incorporated into the Verona Community Pool rules, which the Council approves.

At our meeting we also ratified our collective bargaining agreement with the OPEIU that will be in effect from January 2025 through the end of 2027. As with all of our agreements, you can find the details of what was approved here: https://www.veronanj.org/departments/townshipmanager/employmentagreements. The full agreement and all pay tables will be posted for the public to see.

We closed out the pickleball construction contract, which came in 6% under the contracted amount, for a total construction cost of $470K. The emergency contract to fix our sewer system on Derwent was approved for $41K. We approved the engineering of the Franklin Street Bridge. The work will be done by Boswell. A grant of $10K was accepted for pedestrian safety and $22K for our municipal alliance grant.

We had several resolutions for "extraordinary trees" that were requested to be removed. We pulled one request from the agenda as I pointed out that the tree was already removed from the property.

Several contracts were approved: Baker and Taylor for $80K in library supplies, $75K for Lyons Environmental for support of our water and sewer plant, Martin Contracting for water and sewer line work not to exceed $52K, MJG Services for operator services for the sewer plant for up to $100K, Montana Construction for water and sewer line maintenance for up to $44K, Nino's Machinery Repair for DPW services for up to $37K, Paul Miller Enterprises for police vehicle parts and repair for no more than $52K, and Steril-Koni USA for a new heavy-duty hydraulic lift for no more than $93K.

Under New Business, I asked the Mayor for us to move forward with making appointments to our Boards and Commissions for open seats. We have seats available on several volunteer boards, including the Planning Board, and we have applicants we can be appointing. Some of this appointments have been outstanding for a few months. There was a debate on how best to proceed, with us finally agreeing to discuss applications at our meeting on Monday in closed session, with votes for appointments on our meeting on September 8th.

We have a special meeting tonight, August 13th at 5:30 pm to discuss the new police and fire department building. Our next regularly scheduled meeting will be on Monday, August 18th at 7 pm. You can find agendas and participation information for both meetings here.

As always, please send your comments to the entire Town Council by emailing us all here: https://www.veronanj.org/councilcontactform.