December 1st Meeting Summary

On Monday the Verona Town Council met and had a robust agenda. The following are the highlights of what happened.

We introduced a suite of ordinances for the 2026 pool season and passed the 2026 pool rules in our resolutions. I know many residents are passionate about the pool and concerned about it's financial future. Over the last few months, the Administration has received lots of feedback on the pool's rate structure and ideas to generate more revenue and reduce costs from the public, staff, the Town Council, and the Recreation Advisory Committee.

The Administration accumulated all of that feedback and decided what changes were going to be implemented for the 2026 season. They are asking the Town Council to support the following changes:

• Allowing up to 100 out of town family memberships. The out of town family rate will be set at $1,000 per family for the season.

• Out of town members will be accepted from towns that are 1.25 miles from the Verona boarder. These towns are Caldwell, North Caldwell, West Caldwell, Cedar Grove, Fairfield, Essex Fells, Roseland, Montclair and West Orange.

• Family and friends of existing members can also join the pool (with a family membership) and will get a 4 week "first chance" to do so next year. Family members are not subject to the geographic limitation. There will be a process that Recreation will set up on how they can enroll with the referral from existing Verona pool members.

• The rate increases for memberships will be 2% next year.

• We are establishing a policy that allows for residents to pay for their memberships over the course of several months. Membership will open up in January this year, the earliest ever, to allow residents to start paying over time.

• We are establishing various sponsorship levels for local businesses to help generate revenue.

• The recreation tent will be available for rental next year along with the gazabo.

• Fees associated with the pool are going up varying amounts, with 2% being a minimum increase.

• We are formalizing that the cost of the free first responder memberships will be paid for out of the general tax levy and transferred to the pool utility.

• Salaries for pool staff are also being set. Note that NJ seasonal minimum wage is going up $0.70 in 2026 to $15.23 per hour (4.8%).

I encourage residents to review all of the details here: https://www.veronanj.org/media/Council%20Docs/2025/120125%20PUBLIC.pdf

Please send any feedback to the entire Council prior to our next meeting on Monday, December 15th by using the form here: https://www.veronanj.org/councilcontactform. There will also be several public hearings before the vote of each one of these ordinances at our meeting on December 15th.

We approved all of our ordinances. This includes an additional $325K for work being done at Everett Field, new traffic and parking rules at the Community Center and associated fields, and the addition of approved flags under our ordinances.

In addition to the pool ordinances above, we introduced a new ordinance to change a paragraph in our zoning code that relates to doing projects on structures that are already non-conforming. If you have planning on expanding your home any time soon, you should review this ordinance proposal as it may impact your project. We also are making some changes to our Flood Advisory Control Board ordinance so that we can include Little Falls and Woodland Park. Both of these ordinances will have public hearings at our next meeting.

We did not introduce two ordinances to make changes to our filming ordinance and associated fees to conform with best practices in New Jersey. We have a process to discuss these in new business, and we will at an upcoming meeting.

We passed a lot of resolutions. The following are some highlights. We had two resolutions relating to the sale of Annin Lofts to a new owner. We awarded contracts to Boswell to work on connecting our water system to Montclair, a new Water System Asset Management Plan, and Phase II of our project to prevent water infiltration of our sewer system. We are allowing the owners of Verona Flats to enforce parking rules on their property. We passed a resolution opposing S-4736, a bill relating to zoning rules and affordable housing development on non-profit properties that is being proposed in the NJ State Senate. We also had various other contracts that we approved, grants accepted, and extraordinary tree removals that we authorized.

Our next meeting will be Monday December 15th at 7 pm. Please note, that due to statutory guidelines set by the State, the Town Council may be taking some actions regarding our affordable housing obligations. We will likely be announcing a special meeting so that we can start at 6 pm to go into closed session to discuss some legal matters. I encourage residents to plan on attending this meeting.

As always, please send feedback on any matters to the entire Council here: https://www.veronanj.org/councilcontactform.