20160216 - Village Council Special Public Budget Meeting Minutes

VILLAGE OF RIDGEWOOD VILLAGE COUNCIL SPECIAL PUBLIC BUDGET MEETING 
February 16, 2016 
Village Hall 131 North Maple Avenue
Ridgewood, New Jersey 07451 

APPEARANCES 
ROBERTA SONENFELD, Village Manager | ROBERT ROONEY, Chief Financial Officer | DAWN CETRULO, Supervisor of Health Department | MARIA DOERR, Municipal Court Administrator | JAMES VAN GOOR, Chief of Fire Department | BLAIS BRACHEAU, Village Planner | DYLAN HANSEN, System Administrator 
HEARING BODY 
ALBERT PUCCIARELLI, Deputy Mayor | GWENN HAUCK, Councilwoman | SUSAN KNUDSEN, Councilwoman | MICHAEL SEDON, Councilman 
HEATHER A. MAILANDER, Village Clerk | MATTHEW ROGERS, ESQ., Village Attorney 
Jessica Robinson, AOC #581King Transcription Services3 South Corporate Dr., Suite 203Riverdale, N.J. 07457 
Audio Recorded By: Unknown 
I N D E X PROCEEDING PAGE 
1. Call to order, Open Public Meetings Act, 3 Roll call, Flag Salute & Moment of silence 
2. Public Comments (none) 4 
3. Discussion Items 
a. Review of Departmental Budgets
1. Health Department 6 
2. Village Clerk 17 
3. Municipal Court 30 
4. Fire Department 44 
5. Planning Department 56 6. MIS/Technology 73 
7. Finance/Tax Collector 94 
b. Wrap-up and Next Steps 109 
4. Public Comments (none) 111 
5. Adjournment 111 
**Transcriber notes: Those items bolded are not of the verbatim record and are merely inputted intothe transcript for index purposes. 

A SPECIAL PUBLIC BUDGET MEETING OF THE VILLAGE 
COUNCIL OF THE VILLAGE OF RIDGEWOOD HELD IN THE PATRICK 
A. MANCUSO SENIOR CENTER OF THE RIDGEWOOD VILLAGE HALL, 131 NORTH MAPLE AVENUE, RIDGEWOOD, NEW JERSEY, ON WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2016, AT 5:00 P.M. 
1. CALL TO ORDER - OPEN PUBLIC MEETINGS ACT - ROLL CALL - FLAG SALUTE - MOMENT OF SILENCE 
Deputy Mayor Pucciarelli called the meeting to order at 5:05 P.M., and read the Statement of Compliance with the Open Public Meetings Act. At roll call, the following were present: Councilmembers Hauck, Knudsen, Pucciarelli, and Sedon. Also present were Roberta Sonenfeld, Village Manager; Heather Mailander, Village Clerk; and Matthew Rogers, Village Attorney. 
Deputy Mayor Pucciarelli led those in attendance in the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag and asked for a moment of silence in Honor of the American men and women serving in our Armed Forces, as well as those who serve as first responders in Ridgewood and throughout the United States. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Thank you. Before we turn to public comment I'd like to note that this is 
a special occasion and I'd ask everyone to join me in signing one verse of Happy Birthday to our village manager. 
(Happy Birthday signing) 
MS. SONENFELD: Thank you. 
COUNCILWOMAN HAUCK: Thanks everybody. That was fun, she has been working all day. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Okay, and this is the time of our meeting for public comment. Would anybody like to make a public comment? 
2. Public Comment (None) 
COUNCILWOMAN HAUCK: Chris feel free to sit among the table. And -- and Tim you too. You're part of the -- this is leadership team, Tim, Janet. There's seats. 
MR. CRONIN: Here? 
COUNCILWOMAN HAUCK: Yeah. Yeah. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Seeing no one present for public comment, I'd like to thank the members of the staff who are here once again for the budget meetings. You have given up your time in preparing for these meetings and attending the meetings and thank you very much for that. 
So Roberta I turn it over to you to continue with the budget hearings for our 2016 budget. 
MS. SONENFELD: Okay, thanks. Can you hear me? Is this on? Is this on? 
VILLAGE CLERK: Yes. 
MS. SONENFELD: Yeah, okay. Okay, so tonight is one of our shorter meetings this week, it's 5 to 7. We're going to be doing -- Dawn's going to be going first with Health and Animal Control. We're going to spend some time on the village clerk and elections, municipal Court, as well as fire, planning and technology. The fire package that you should have gotten a replacement fire package for today's meeting. There were a couple of changes. So I'm hoping everybody replaced it in their number 12 tab for fire. 
You also received a change in engineering so you should dispose of what is in your book for engineering goals and objectives and accomplishments and replace that one. And did we send out any others? 
MR. ROONEY: No. 
MS. SONENFELD: That was it. Okay. Okay. We prefaced this the last time we met, so rather than do that and spend some time let's just get pragmatically to the details and the presentations. The rest of the week, you know Wednesdays are challenging, very challenging day because it's the four hours and there's some topics there that merit some discussion. 
Thursday is when we really go through things like surplus, what the revenues look like, what capital looks like and those are important topics as well. Right now we're holding Friday as a place holder. If we can get through Thursday then we can give ourselves Friday off. Yes. 
Okay, so with that -- Maria please sit, sit next to Dawn. Maria has --
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: That's good incentive to be efficient. 
MS. SONENFELD: Or sit over here, wherever you like. Okay. Good, I'm glad that's there. Okay, so with that I'm going to hand this off to Dawn to do health and animal control. And that would be tab nine in your --okay, go ahead Dawn, you're on. 
3. Discussion Items 
a. Review of Departmental Budgets 
1. Health Department/Animal Control. 
MS. CETRULO: Hello everybody. I feel like we just did this not too long ago. Can you hear me okay? 
MS. SONENFELD: Yeah. 
MS. CETRULO: Okay, so I just want to say that 2015 was a great year for the health department. We had an exciting year, we had a lot of changes and some fun stuff that we did. We had the Ebola crisis which I 
think we went off really well. We were the first town in this area that was monitoring a case, which was pretty exciting and I think we did really well with it. And now we don't really have to worry about that anymore, fortunately. Now on to Zika virus for this year. 
I've been working with the State Health Department and Fairlawn Health Department and working on accreditation with work force development and quality assurance. Gone to a couple of meetings and basically it's just organizing the department to try to be in the line with the state health department. So that's something that takes years to do. But I just wanted to mention that because I think I've ever mentioned that before. 
We implemented our second annual village wide weight loss challenge program. We had 228 participants, 837 pound lost, a little less than last time. I think we did great. And a lot of people actually came back and kept the weight off so it was very successful. 
We, again, used the local pharmacy for employee flu shots and we had 25 employees attend, it saved the village $675 from the way that we were doing it in the past. 
We continued our dog -- dog friendly pet committee with the village and which resulted in the free microchipping along with our rabies clinic. We had 118 rabies vaccines given and 32 microchips at no cost to the residents. 
We started the new cycle with the three year dog license which was very successful just with the staff time alone. And now we actually have the three year cat license this year. 
Revenues for 2015 reflected a 3 percent increase over the previous year. The village share was 343,808.25. 
Birth certificates, death certificates and marriage certificates we sold 11,271 for the year and dog and cat licenses 1670. We actually sell less now because we sell them in the three year increments. 171 retail license, 27 one-day special event license. 88 ice licenses, 46 vending machines. 
We successfully transitioned to the electronic birth system in May. There's still some glitches with it, it's a state run program, it's called VIP, but it's actually going to be better in the long run because we don't have to keep the paper births, which we're actually running out of room in the health department. 
So, we did 261 routine sanitary inspections,
 126 resident complaints, 34 animal bites and quarantines, 3 lead poisoning cases and we had 42 people attend the food safety class. Just to give you an idea of some of the numbers that we do. 
Child health conferences. We had 28 children that were seen, 46 immunizations, and adult health clinics we had 145 patients seen and influenza clinics about the same. And for health education, which is run out of Valley Hospital, there is a thousand plus attendees that attend. 
And then we hired Margie Downs (phonetic), she started in April of this year and she's been wonderful. She really is a great addition to our apartment. She's got a great relationship with the community, which helps us excel with our relationship with the community. So it's been really great, I just wanted to point that. 
So, for 2016 our goals are to continue to improve outreach projects in the community, such as monthly press releases and the local paper. January was Radon month. This month we're focusing on heart health. And we actually have a wall now -- well, it's a door, but in our department that we're focusing on like a monthly health positive. 
So I took some leadership in a stigma free
 initiative working with the community relations advisory board and some Ridgewood High School students and we're going to be working on a stigma free program with them, which I'm really excited about. That's -­the stigma free, for those of you that aren't familiar with it. It started in a lady in Paramus that had an idea to do this and now it went county wide. I was at a meeting that had like 300 people. So it's been really -- really great. 
What else? Let's see. We want to continue our leadership role in the village's annual health and wellness festival. That was very successful. I forgot to say the numbers. We had 72 vendors and 800 attendees, very successful. We look forward to do it again this year. 
We streamline our -- this year we're going to hopefully streamline our food establishment licensing combining the ice and the restaurant licenses into one, just to make the processing easier and to also raise the fees slightly so we haven't raised them in about ten years, so. 
And we want to continue our weight loss challenge that's actually May 14th. I'm going to send an email out to all the employees that are invited to attend. Valley Hospital does free blood work for the
 first 75 attendees. And again a very successful program. 
If we are going to be able to continue the use of the crossing guards, we are going to continue the canvas, which is not -- no longer required by the state, but is still recommended by the state. Especially since if you guys read in the newspaper we did have a rabid dog in Monmouth County. So, rabies is definitely around. And the reason why we don't really see it in dogs because we have such a strong program for rabies control. 
We are continuing to improve our relationships with businesses, and owners and employees in an effort to maintain a safe and healthy environment. I've been out for the past six weeks. I don't have an inspector so I've been actually out doing inspections and it's been -- I'm actually really enjoying it and reconnecting with a lot of the restaurants. I was there today. We had a place that had no hot water and I worked with him for 10 years, so it was really nice to see -- see him, get back out in the field. 
The Zika virus, basically we're talking points. I haven't gotten any calls. They're just basically educating us. There is a case in Bergen County, the first one in New Jersey, once again. 
I
 don't know what it is with Bergen County, but and then I'm also working again this year with Jeff Ball (phonetic) on the pet friendly committee and we're going to do -- in the spring we're going to do another behavior class for animals, I thought that was really successful. 
Strategies for 2016 we hired, or in the process of hiring a full-time REHS to replace the two part-time inspectors that we had. Hopefully by the end of this month he starts. And we’re --
COUNCILWOMAN HAUCK: Could you repeat that? 
MS. CETRULO: Sure. 
COUNCILWOMAN HAUCK: You're currently, what? 
MS. CETRULO: So the part-time that we had Satia (phonetic) he left for a full-time position somewhere else and then the other inspector who we contracted out for her services she retired. So we're hiring a full-time inspector to replace the two part-time inspectors. 
COUNCILWOMAN HAUCK: Thanks. 
MS. SONENFELD: So, I think it's important to point out here that we've done work around this where we've looked at totally outsourcing this, using the county. We've looked at insourcing it. We've had a hybrid condition over the last year. One of the things 
we're finding is that we can't really get professionals in this area that stay with us for just part-time. 
So you'll see us in Dawn's numbers that this costs us actually a little less than the other way. So it is a little change --
MS. CETRULO: Yeah. 
MS. SONENFELD: -- in the staffing paradigm in health. 
MS. CETRULO: Hopefully then we can train somebody and they'll stay and not move on, which is what's -- what's happening. Is they're moving on for benefits for a full-time position. And these -- these inspectors, just so you know, that they are -- they have a college degree and they a state license that they sit for, so they are well trained. 
And then next -- this year, hopefully with the space -- special data logic, Dylan we're going to have that up and running for the health department. So that's our strategy for this year. It'll streamline our inspections and our licensing. 
So and that's really it for my presentation. 
MS. SONENFELD: To the numbers. 
MS. CETRULO: To the numbers. Any questions about the numbers? 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Well, maybe you can
 just highlight for us what's happening, line -- was it 
29, hang on. 
MS. CETRULO: Yes. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Line 29. 
MS. CETRULO: So on line 29 that's where we had the part-time inspector. That was the contracted service. So that has significantly been reduced, however it's now brought up to the full-time salary. But you can also see under part-time salary that's been reduced as well, because that was the part-time inspector. And that's also in the full-time salary. 
So, it actually -- working the numbers it actually was less. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Thank you. 
MS. SONENFELD: Yeah, so I think if you look at overall 2016 budget requests and compare it to both actuals last year and budget last year, we're 3 and -­3 percent down respectively on both. So that's a good news story. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Any questions from my colleagues? 
MS. SONENFELD: And I'll also point out though, because sometimes we always look at top level head count, this will cause a one person increase in headcount in the village. 
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN: Okay. 
MS. SONENFELD: Okay, so I just want to point that out. 
MS. CETRULO: Okay. 
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN: Thank you, thank you Dawn. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Good job. 
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN: Great -- great presentation thank you. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Michael? Gwenn? 
COUNCILMAN SEDON: No I'm good, thank you Dawn. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: As you know I had the pleasure of experiencing your department twice today, early in the morning and late in the afternoon for routine document and -- that we needed and -- and service was fabulous. 
MS. CETRULO: Thank you. Thank you. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Thank you and everyone was really very gracious and very efficient. 
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN: It had nothing with him doing the deputy mayor. 
MS. CETRULO: They didn't know. Believe it or not they had no idea when he came in to do his marriage. I'm like, do you know what was? They're
 like who is it? No idea. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: They treat everybody very well, I know that -- that's his proof. 
MS. CETRULO: Yeah, they -- they really -- I'm very lucky. We're a good team. And especially like I said with Margie she's such a perfect addition to our team. It's like we all get along and we help each other. It's not -- it's not my job, we don't have any of that, which I really like. So --
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Thank you. 
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN: Thank you. 
COUNCILWOMAN HAUCK: Gracias. 
MS. CETRULO: More questions about public health? 
COUNCILMAN SEDON: No, thank you. 
MS. CETRULO: No. Okay, how about animal control? 
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN: No you seem to have everything under control. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Except my animal. 
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN: Everything is under control. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: My animal is a frequent visitor with them, so I don't have the animal under control. 
MS. CETRULO: Thank you. COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN: The department runs 
very well. DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Thank you Dawn. MS. SONENFELD: Okay, so we are up to Heather 
talking about both village clerk -- I'm sorry -- and elections. 
2. Village Clerk/Elections 
VILLAGE CLERK:  So some new initiatives,  
highlights and -- 
MS. SONENFELD:  -- use -- 
VILLAGE CLERK:  Are you ready or no?  

DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Yeah -- yeah ready, sorry. 
VILLAGE CLERK: Okay, in 2015 were new -­procedures were established for worker's compensation claims, whereby the injured employee is interviewed by their department director to the extent possible the injured employee comes to our office and drops off their slip indicating how long they're going to be out of work. We follow up with the employee to see, you know, how well we're doing with physical therapy, things like that. And this was to curtail the claims of workers compensation injury where there were no witnesses and also so that we can help the employee to
 get back to work, recovered, which is our goal obviously. 
State department handing records management, did a training session for us on Artimus (phonetic) which is the records management system and destruction system. And several departments have now been training on it and we are waiting for our shred date in April in order to get rid of a lot of the records that the state has approved can be destroyed. 
We initiated a meeting with our current insurance administrators for the village, because of the fact we had some concern in the way they were handling it. They were not being as proactive as we would have liked, perhaps or followed up on claims as much as we would have liked. And in doing so we have set up monthly meetings over conference call. And actually we've been very pleased with the results and they are being more proactive. They're going back to the doctors, asking the employee can come back on light duty if they're out on worker's compensation. So again the goal is to get the employee back to work and to have them be as healed as possible, as quickly as possible. So it's working out really well. 
And then also we created an online folder for resolutions and ordinances. What we used to do after a 
meeting is copy all of the ordinances and resolutions and then give them to the departments they pertain to. Now we have an online folder, thanks to Dylan's help and we're able to let the departments just go in an print out the different resolutions or ordinances that they need and they are able to see them. 
We -- village clerk's office by the numbers, we process 31 worker's comp claims, 12 minor injuries, 4 general liability, 35 auto claims. We processed 36 raffle licenses, we responded to 325 OPRA request with averages approximately 6 request per week. 
Our OPRA request are actually up tremendously this year, at least 25 percent if not more. There are times we get six request a day, sometime. 
We published 67 ordinances, issued 5 parking permits, which were 2 new permits and 3 changes in valet parking companies. We processed, signed and sealed 18 one-day social affair permits. We reviewed and processed two localized transferees. We issued an average of 80 CDB parking permits per months, 410 RPPs to residents over the year, 18 to non-residents, 26 overnight parking permits, we issued 268 garage sale permits, 513 landscaper permits, 322 senior citizen tax-free coupon books, issued over 80 CDB parking permits and 49 letters of request for use of the train
 trestle. 
We ran the primary and general elections, which included the -- getting the referendum question to the county clerk for it to be on the November ballot. Prepared layoff plans for two different layoffs in different -- different departments. Also we explained on a daily basis the change in our parking, because you know, we added the hours of Cottage Place, we changed where we were going to have parking. So that was one of the goals for 2016. Includes coordinating and training session in Ridgewood for liquor license holders. It was hope that it could -­could have been done last year. Unfortunately it didn't happen. But the goal is to do it before the renewals in June and I'm hoping also, possibly to open it up to maybe Hohokus and/or Glen Rock. 
Implementation of Municipality in a Box for both OPRA requests as well as boards and committees, so we can keep a better track of our boards and committees and when the terms expire. Continue the training of our part-time employee so that she may take on additional duties with hopefully her increased hours and also administer -- the municipal election process which as you all know is coming up in May. 
MS. SONENFELD: So, can I just interrupt you
 for a second. Chris do we have an update. We sent the council an email saying don't park at this lower level because of potential flooding. Is there -- because I just got word that the west side -- part of the west side power went out. So, I'm just -- is any --
MR. RUTISHAUSER: -- stopped raining. 
MS. SONENFELD: Okay, all right. 
MR. RUTISHAUSER: The brook is going down. For those who don't recall, the brook here floods very quickly, it also drains very quickly. So -- literally it stops raining, that's a good thing. It's not going to crest much more than that. 
MS. SONENFELD: Yeah, okay. So we gave you a warning ahead of time, we sent out an email. You got it right? 
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN: You know what I've been so busy -- emails and I have a few. 
COUNCILMAN SEDON: I parked up there, so --
MS. SONENFELD: You're parked up there. 
COUNCILMAN SEDON: Yeah, I don't need my car floating down the river. 
MS. SONENFELD: No I -- no I think he's saying it's okay -- I think what Chris is saying --
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN: So I'm okay. I usually don't park back there but I'm okay, I think,. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: I've been warned in 
any event. 
MS. SONENFELD: I just don't know how pervasive this power outage is, so. 
MR. RUTISHAUSER: I don't know anything about the power outage, it might be localized, I haven't gotten anything PS, but the flooding was when --
MS. SONENFELD: It's localized at my house. 
MR. RUTISHAUSER: -- when we -- discussed and was serious enough to warrant the concern. Nobody likes losing a car. 
MS. SONENFELD: Sorry. 
VILLAGE CLERK: So -- so the big news here obviously is the increase due to the municipal election. Because of the fact that this cost us additional money because we run everything. The county, for the primary and general elections. They bill us for primary election and then the general election they do not bill us for. But this one we have to do everything from paying for the printing for the ballots, to the machine strips to the translation of everything to Korean and Spanish. So we pay the rental of the voting machines, the poll workers, we pay for all of that. 
MS. SONENFELD: So that would be the second 
page that you have so -- I mean there's a 282 percent increase over actual 189 increase over budget. So this is something we have to figure out how to offset in other places. But it doesn't -- I don't see anything that can be done about this, other than changing the election to November. 
VILLAGE CLERK: Right, which is an option. Not this year, but we can certainly discuss it for the future. And I know some municipalities have done so and it's just whether or not -- I -- I still -- my personal opinion is the ballot still looks like people are in party lines and -- but you know -- decision and we can look at it again if you wish to do so. 
MS. SONENFELD: And then I guess on the village clerk budget the big -- the big difference is the conversion of a part-time position to a full-time position. 
VILLAGE CLERK: Correct. That's in my request because of the fact that -- just OPRA in itself has become almost a full-time job. The general liability, workers comp claims and auto accident claims could in itself be a full-time job. And Eileen is currently working 27 and a half hours, I believe, a week. And -­so this would bring it up to 35 with benefits. 
The thought process is that we do get some
 routine OPRA requests and right now Eileen is doing all the workers comp, general liability and auto claims. She also does raffle licensing and she helps with putting together packets. But her time in the office is limited. She also covers for the reception desk if either of our two part-time reception people are out. 
So what the thought is, is that she can help with the more routine OPRA request and kind of help Donna who is the deputy, obviously and take over, basically handling the OPRA requests. 
So, it would be very beneficial. We could get things done more efficiently and certainly more timely, which is on hold. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Do the payments for the OPRA requests are they credited to your --
VILLAGE CLERK: We -- we get very few that are paid. Because it has to be in excess of 200 pages, or in excess of 3 hours. So most of them, actually, because they are emailed we don't even get a copying cost, which is only 5 cents a page. But we don't even get that because we email it so it's free. And most people who request things they are smart and they ask for it to be emailed so they don't have to incur a charge. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Oh, so there's no 
revenue to speak of? 
VILLAGE CLERK: It is very minimal. 
MS. SONENFELD: And so do we want to talk about, Heather, the 28 line in the clerk budget why it's up as high as it is? 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: The other professional services. 
VILLAGE CLERK: All right, those are the minutes. It's because we have had for several years we had somebody doing our minutes. It was $3 a page, it's now up at 8.50 a page. And you know we -- we were lucky when we had it at $3 a page, our average over the years and we've been doing it for 23 years, this year, you know outsourcing the minute preparation has been between 9 and $11. So we're still paying a little under the average so it's more than two and a half times, you know, what we were paying for. So that's why it's up so high. And, you know, obviously we've had additional meetings and long meetings. 
COUNCILWOMAN HAUCK: And they've gone longer. 
VILLAGE CLERK: And long meetings, so that takes more time to prepare and more pages. It's based on price per page, so but it's more pages. 
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN: And I think we saw that coming because we approved that so it's --
VILLAGE CLERK: Correct. 
MS. SONENFELD: -- it's just something --
VILLAGE CLERK: Yeah, it just is what the situation is, and -- and unfortunately the person who was doing the minutes is unable to continue, so. 
MS. SONENFELD: Yeah, so between the -­between the two budgets -- I mean there's -- you know one has a 12 percent increase and the other has a 282 percent increase, which is far -- it's a stretch from 2 percent. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Right. 
MS. SONENFELD: Okay. 
COUNCILMAN SEDON: I did have something about the OPRA request. Is there any particular reason why they seem to be going up and is it just something -­just something that's last year and -- or is it going to be a continuing trend? Is it like a blip, an outlier or are they going to be increasing or staying at this level going forward? 
VILLAGE CLERK: Yeah, last year a lot of them were commercial. We still get a lot of commercial, but now what we're seeing more and more are people buying houses. And what they want to know is about underground storage tanks, they want to know about additions and if permits were obtained. So we have to
 go out to several departments. If there were any health concerns, you know, whether; asbestos, mold, radon, whatever might be there. And so we have to go out to multiple departments for this, and what happens is people -- multiple people come in for the same address, but they come in weeks apart so we don't realize it's the same address right away. And otherwise we could just provide them with what we provided them before. Sometimes it's months apart, even, because the house hasn't sold. 
So we're seeing a huge increase in that. We also have found that the real estate professionals are going into the building department and asking these questions and then sending their clients in. So, you know, if we could do it once it may save us on some of our OPRA requests. I don't see it reducing. I think more and more people are becoming savvy to OPRA. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Uh huh. 
VILLAGE CLERK: And I think that they're asking for -- and sometimes we don't even know. You know we can't ask why and we sometimes we wonder why they're asking for things, you know. And -- but the main increase we see, currently, is this buying of houses and wanting to know what kinds of things may be in the ground or in the house that would be 
detrimental. 
COUNCILWOMAN HAUCK: So, just out of curiosity is that something where there's duplication of requests that could be months apart. Is it something like on OPRA requests where you create little files online so you can --
VILLAGE CLERK: We have --
COUNCILWOMAN HAUCK: -- just go back instead of having to redo the whole OPRA request. Maybe just go and --
VILLAGE CLERK: We do. We -- we actually have a log as well as keeping the information. Now the only issue is if we have like building plans and things like that, they go back to the building department. 
COUNCILWOMAN HAUCK: Right. 
VILLAGE CLERK: Because most of the time what they want to do is they want to look at them. You know, if -- if we have actual documents like thing -­closing an oil tank or something, then that's a document. But for the most part, you know -- and then sometimes we find people ask for the same things, six months, eight months apart. We -- we -- we haven't figured that one out yet. 
COUNCILWOMAN HAUCK: So a special date -- I'm sorry special data logic might, in fact, help us a 
little bit here. 
VILLAGE CLERK: I'm hoping. 
COUNCILWOMAN HAUCK: -- automatic -- uh huh. 
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN: Just, is that something new, because I know in the past maybe someone would pick up the phone, call the building department say, do you have any -- what's the story on this -- the back story on this particular house or property. Is that something that's --
VILLAGE CLERK: Well the only -- the only reason why -- if -- if we require research or if it's going to take us time. Like sometimes I know the building department has to go downstairs into files to find things, documents, then we ask them to do an OPRA request. 
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN: Okay, all right. 
VILLAGE CLERK: Because this way we can document it. If it's something easy that they can just say, oh yeah it's been closed out. You know that permit was closed out, then they really don't need an OPRA request. We -- we try to not encourage OPRA unless it's absolutely necessary. But I have to say most of the ones we get are necessary. 
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN: Okay. 
VILLAGE CLERK: So --
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN: Thanks Heather. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Okay, Gwenn? No? 
COUNCILWOMAN HAUCK: NO, thank you. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Okay. 
VILLAGE CLERK: Thanks. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Great, Heather thank you very much. 
MS. SONENFELD: So next up is Maria Doerr Municipal Court. I asked -- I asked her this last year I covered her stuff and I said it would be really good for you guys to hear directly from her. So this is the next section. Section 11. 

3. Municipal Court. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Maria welcome. 
MS. DOERR: Hey everyone. 
COUNCILMAN SEDON: Hello. 
MS. DOERR: So we did have a retirement in the municipal court of an employee, 31 year Village employee. So you'll see a significant difference in our salary and wage. Fortunately, we were able to -­with a rehire of that position, we were able to change that position and we now finally have a deputy court administrator, which we have not had for years. So that was a huge benefit. Actually Glenda (Phonetic) came to us from the Dumont Municipal Court, so she came 
with eight years of experience. So she has been an asset instantly from day one. So that was a big part of our goal, that was already met. 
We have implemented the E-ticketing system, which we are current -- primarily using just for parking violations. That's worked incredibly well for us. The benefit of that system is a recipient of a parking ticket can essentially go online and pay it real time. So we are seeing parking tickets that are issued and paid in the same day. And of course that involves no data entry on our part. Everything is automated, even the payment is automated, because that -- they're able to go through the state website to do that. 
So in 2015 the Court processed over 18,000 -­almost 18-5 in filings. Again, primarily parking tickets were, in 2014, went from 11,900 up to over 15,000 in 2015. We took in $7700 in the Parking Offense Adjudication Act fund. That we are able to use a portion of that to offset salary for someone in my office who does do data entry, so that's always helpful. 
So primarily if you look at the money side of the report that has been provided to you, where still 51 percent of our income does go to the village, a 
hundred percent of it goes to the Village. 
The one item that I did ask for an increase in, and it's a modest increase but none the less an increase, is in conferences and meetings. And that is due in part to hiring a deputy court administrator who now has education she has to maintain. So that's what that represents. 
There was a little bit in the decrease in the printing and binding, because we went to electronic ticketing so we anticipate that we will not have to print paper tickets at the rate that we were before, so that went down. 
And the only other item would be just -- and it kind of comes up every year, so I'm bringing it up before you raise it, is -- is our interpreter expenses. And all -- we need to have that in our budget. We don't usually spend it, but it is a mandatory item in our budget. We're seeing even based on the census from 1999 to the 2000 census we have -- it went from 7 -­993,000 people reported in 1999 that they are not English primarily speaking individuals up to 1.7 million. So we can see that. That's where the demand comes from. 
We do have the benefit of Language Line, which is a telephonic interpreting service that we are able
 to utilize probably over 90 percent. So we're looking at 17 cents a minute as opposed to over $125 an hour. So we're really seen a huge savings in that. Obviously the only area we can't -- can't use that for is when I need to get a sign language interpreter. And that's it. 
COUNCILWOMAN HAUCK: So, Maria the E-tickets when they're pay on line, how much -- how much of that is paid out in fees to the --
MS. DOERR: It doesn't change as -- it doesn't change because they're going through a state financial website. 
COUNCILWOMAN HAUCK: Okay. 
MS. DOERR: The merchant fee is tacked on by the state and that's an agreement between the state and the credit card holder, the village doesn't get involved in that. 
COUNCILWOMAN HAUCK: Okay. 
MS. DOERR: So if it costs somebody $20 to pay what normally would be a $19 ticket we're still getting the same percentage. 
COUNCILWOMAN HAUCK: Right, because that's the fee is being --
MS. DOERR: Yeah, the same thing. 
COUNCILWOMAN HAUCK: Okay, all right. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: The security that's provided when the court's in session is that our -- is that an expense that our police departments allocates to you? How is -- how does that work? 
MS. DOERR: Yeah, the court isn't -- just because of the role and the separation of powers we wouldn't be responsible to provide budgeting. That comes from the police department. We do have some measures in place to obviously keep that a minimum. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Uh huh. 
MS. DOERR: So -- for instance if an officer is subpoenaed to testify in a case, I'll communicate that to the sergeant who sets up the security. They'll make sure that's one of the officers on security because we have to pay him to be here anyway. 
So we do have a coordination of efforts between the court and police department to try and keep a handle on that. We have an officer who is a court and police liaison. He will also serve in the security role when needed. And you know we do have some interesting things that happen at the security gate. We just had one last month where we had an arrest. So that -- you know all of a sudden then you need six officers. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Right. 
MS. DOERR: So we keep it at three. We're able to most of the time, you know sometimes we go down to two, because things just happen. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Uh huh. 
MS. DOERR: But we do have a combined effort between the court and the police department to keep that at a minimum. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Okay, and note that -- I mean it's a substantial net positive revenue contribution from -- you know from the court to the village. So the extent there is an expense to the village for police personnel that are able to appear, that it's more than covered -- covered that. 
MS. DOERR: Yeah, and actually 15 over 14 we're up about $64,000 to the village in their portion. 
MS. SONENFELD: Yeah. 
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN: Maria I just have a -­are you done? 
MS. DOERR: Yes I am, uh huh. 
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN: Just another question. I know property maintenance issues, I know that's going to be perhaps a big number --
MS. DOERR: Yes. 
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN: -- coming up. 
MS. DOERR: Yes. 
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN: So is that a -- would 
that -- will we see that next year on this also? Is it another column? 
MS. DOERR: It won't be a separate column because the -- we're actually prohibited from doing that because the court is not in a revenue business, we're in a business to deliver justice and resolve disputes. 
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN: Okay. 
MS. DOERR: So -- but that will be reflected in the village total of next year. 
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN: Okay. So all right, I understand. 
MS. SONENFELD: And -- and unfortunately because of the way the laws work we can't budget an increase over this year without going through hoops and be able to kind of justify it to the local boards. So right now we're going to budget her rev -- the revenue 
MS. DOERR: The revenue. 
MS. SONENFELD: -- as flat. But -- an so just thinking ahead to Thursday there's certain revenues that might look like they're -- we're stretching it a little bit and we're being a little aggressive, but we know we have other revenues that we're being 
conservative on. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Uh huh. 
COUNCILWOMAN HAUCK: Right. 
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN: Understood. 
MS. SONENFELD: But yeah, 360 to 425, year over year. And yeah, fortunately the leaves did cause us to --
MS. DOERR: They did but keep in mind that imitative that really didn't begin until November. So this amount is very little contributed to that initiative --
MS. SONENFELD: Absolutely, right. 
MS. DOERR: -- that enforcement initiative. Part of this is due in part that some of the fines went up. They went up from $24 to $30. I think E-ticketing has a lot to do with that because we went from sorry we don't have that ticket yet, you can't pay it yet, we have to turn that revenue away to someone going on their phone and it's immediate. 
So our collection percentage, if you will, I think improved with that as well. 
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN: Got it. 
MS. DOERR: Yeah, so. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Okay, Michael? 
MS. DOERR: Any questions? 
COUNCILMAN SEDON: Yeah, I -- I know, I guess in years past there was some back log of some court cases. Have -- have you worked through that back log, does it still exist or --
MS. DOERR: Yes. 
COUNCILMAN SEDON: -- is there --
MS. DOERR: No, it does not exist at all. 
COUNCILMAN SEDON: Oh, good. 
MS. DOERR: We actually, also we really should mention, we participate with the springboard program, where we have -- someone sent to us, who is actually helping us do record destruction. So we are -- we have 99 percent of our files have been removed from our storage facility down in the basement, which is -- you know storage is at a premium here to all upstairs in our office. And a lot of that we have a student that comes in and she helps us with that effort and we're teaching her job skills in -- in exchange for that. 
So there's no backlog on that aspect and there's no backlog on cases that are waiting to be heard. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Wow. 
MS. DOERR: Which -- which is -- that was a real focus for us a number of years ago. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: I didn't even think 
to ask that, because it's such a long standing 
tradition to have a back log. 
MS. DOERR: Right. Right. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Another tradition gone. 
MS. DOERR: The tradition is gone, which is a good one. Which is a good one, yeah. No our clearance rate is -- is super. 
COUNCILWOMAN HAUCK: -- doing a great job. 
MS. DOERR: Super. 
COUNCILMAN SEDON: Has -- has E-ticket helped? Is -- is that helping, I guess, clear out some of these -- some of the cases --
MS. DOERR: Not so much --
COUNCILMAN SEDON: Or that doesn't work with parking ticket --
MS. DOERR: Yeah, not -- not so much that we have actually changed the manner in which we hear contested parking tickets, because we've come across some legislation that allows us to eliminate the role of the prosecutor. 
So, sometimes when they're in a courtroom under oath we can just dispose of it a little quicker than sitting across the table, someone just wanting to tell their story to the prosecutor. So we've actually
 expedited. We can hear -- seven parking trial inside of a half an hour. But that seven people that are not going in and tying the prosecutor up and keeping her from adjudicating things that might be a little bit more serious than that. 
COUNCILMAN SEDON: Okay, great thank you. 
MS. DOERR: Yeah, sure. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Gwenn? No? 
COUNCILWOMAN HAUCK: No -- no not really. mean it's not budgetary. I'm just curious. The wheel of complaints filed, does it move around from time to time. So there's zero DWIs and now there's 82 percent parking. You know, how does that change from year to year? 
MS. DOERR: Well it should --
COUNCILWOMAN HAUCK: Just curious. 
MS. DOERR: For instance in '15 we had 24 DWIs in '14 we had 42. So, that number will change ever so slightly. It isn't -- the -- you will never really see a big shift in that wheel. 
COUNCILWOMAN HAUCK: Uh huh. 
MS. DOERR: Because we, have such a high parking volume. 
COUNCILWOMAN HAUCK: And we tried to sort of write more tickets for a while, this is just anecdotal. 
I thought parking enforcement downtown was going to be more strict in order to make people comply with the hourly rates and not double parking in the same spot and everything. 
MS. DOERR: Which it has been. Part of that -- part of that curve, I think, is -- they went through a transition period where they were learning how to use this device. You know, when you're first learning the e-tickets it seems like it's faster for them to handwrite a ticket and it probably is, until we get all of that out -- you know, all of that ironed out and they become use to the devices and the software and, we haven't -- this company that we're working with has been so responsive. We -- we tweak it and build it. We like to see this, we like to see that. They've been very, very responsive. 
MS. SONENFELD: And the other issue is that we have dedicated PEOs now, and we're at staff with PEOs, which we weren't with at staff the year before. I think moving violations have actually gone the other way. 
MS. DOERR: Yes. 
MS. SONENFELD: We've issued less moving violations, because the PEOs don't issue moving violations they issue --
MS. DOERR: Right. 
MS. SONENFELD: -- parking tickets, you know. 
MS. DOERR: And part of that is due -- there was a full traffic bureau in March, April and May. As retirements took place and -- and staffing needs shifted in the police department some of those officers have been transferred out. So you'll see that reflected in the moving violations as well. 
MS. SONENFELD: Yeah. 
MS. DOERR: There's really, I think we just have a sergeant. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Yeah, all of them got transferred out. 
MS. DOERR: All of them got transferred out. So that's a big impact. 
MS. SONENFELD: Exactly. 
MS. DOERR: That's a big impact because their focus is not -- they're not able to do campaigns as much, and just -- they're out answering calls. 
MS. SONENFELD: Uh huh. 
MS. DOERR: So, you're going to see that drop. 
MS. SONENFELD: Yeah, there's a big pressure -- I think as you heard with the police presentation there's a big pressure on staffing and this has --
MS. DOERR: Yeah. 
MS. SONENFELD: -- kind of taken second seat to some of the other stuff that's been going on. So --
MS. DOERR: And -- and history the numbers have always shown that when the traffic bureau is not at full -- or there were times where I think we had none, you'll see tickets drop immediately. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Maria, I think the details about what I'm about to ask, and probably best kept for an offline conversation. But can you just tell us in summary, has Park Mobile presented unique problems from the parking enforcement perspective? 
MS. DOERR: Not from the enforcement perspective. Again, the system was new to us. The system was not new. So I think whatever they were experiencing -- again, just going through a transition, retrieving their information other ways. We have not had any problems at all, with -- with Park Mobil. We've had -- and as a matter of fact the feedback that we get from the public is very positive. They love it. They love the convenience. 
As far as goals, one of our biggest goal is -­and Dylan is helping us out with this, is to get a flat screen TV installed in the courtroom so that we can play in-car video as evidence. You know data now is all coming on DVDs so Dylan's helping us out with 
researching what the best solution and hopefully we'll see that happen this year. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Great, well thank you very much. 
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN: Thanks Maria. 
COUNCILWOMAN HAUCK: Thanks Maria. 
MS. SONENFELD: Okay, so I think next up -­we're running ahead of schedule. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Uh huh. 
MS. SONENFELD: We do have a couple that we could try to get done tonight that are ready. So, you know, Jim's up with fire. 

4. Fire Department 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Welcome Chief. 
CHIEF VAN GOOR: Good evening. All right, why don't we just go right in. In 2015 we responded to 3,504 emergency calls and conducted 2,932 fire prevention inspections. The responses range from minor calls to life threatening situations. 
In 2015 we also hired four firefighters to fill positions that were created from retirements in 2014. We held off on hiring until the contract was done -- was completed at the end of 2014, which gave us a huge savings to the town by waiting. We still have one more to hire, we were short five. So, we're going
 to hire one more this year. 
We purchased a -- or no we applied to FEMA for a grant for a wellness and fitness program, which was -- we received $41,510 and that's to buy new equipment, set up a program, do some alterations to our gym, which we're in the process of doing right now. 
We purchased a new Chevy Tahoe with capital -­2015 capital, which replaced a 1989 Tahoe, which is used for the Captain's car to respond every day. We made improvements and updates to fire headquarters. The last time anything was done was 1992. So we needed the outside of the building painted and fire prevention, and the hallways we had repainted. 
Community -- as far as community outreach we hosted open house during fire prevention month in October. We held fire safety education classes, Sunday School drills and we participated in Touch A Truck last year. 
Let's see we also -- we hosted classes in leadership, responding to railroad emergencies firefighting, emergency medical technician courses, and also -- training safety classes, held last year. And we implemented the new Right to Know online service for Village departments. 
The goals -- 2016 goals, I'm in the process of
 completing the goals that were set for last year, I'm working on developing a customer survey, community outreach programs, hosting educational classes on leadership and like I said we're going to hire one more -- one more firefighter to fill a vacancy that we still have. And we're also researching the requirement specifications for the new pumper, which hopefully we'll be replacing. It's a 1989 fire pumper. 
And I'll go right into the budget. This year's budget -- well last -- last year the revenue for fire prevention came in at $196,805 which was an increase over 2014 and that was due to more inspections, house sales and building. We're not recommending any increase in fees. They were increased, I think it was 2012, so we're just going to remain flat. 
The operating budget, the salary and wages increased 5 percent over last year's actual. The increase is from contracted step raises and because we hired the four last year and that carries over to this year. 
COUNCILWOMAN HAUCK: Right. 
CHIEF VAN GOOR: So that -- that's what the increase is from. But also on a good note it's still less than the salary and wages that was in 2009. So we 
haven't seen any --
MS. SONENFELD: I think that's an important point. 
CHIEF VAN GOOR: Right, we haven't seen an increase in over six years. So we're still below, and that's due to the contract -- the new contract we had and we've had about -- over 20 retirements over the last five years. So --
COUNCILWOMAN HAUCK: So it's kind of not fair to compare it to last year, because you had 11 retirements. 
CHIEF VAN GOOR: Right, yeah last year we had five --
MS. SONENFELD: But we had --
CHIEF VAN GOOR: In 2014 we had five retirements. 
MS. SONENFELD: Yeah. 
CHIEF VAN GOOR: So it went down -- 2015's budget went way down. And then with the new contract, hiring the new people it didn't go up as much as we lost. 
This year capital's budget, we're looking to replace a 1989 Pierce Fire Pumper. We conducted a risk analysis of our fleet and determined that that was our most pressing problem that needs to be replaced. The
 existing fire engine is 27 years old. It's unreliable and it's hard to get parts for it. And all the recommendations we had, we had a Technical Fire Service did a study of the fire department and they recommended that it was replaced after 25 years. And then all -­we had another study done by Matrix Consulting Company and they -- they agreed with National Fire Prevention Association, that fire apparatus should be replaced after 20 years. So we're -- we're just trying to look to do -- you know be proactive and -- and make sure our stuff is up to date and -- safety wise and able to do what it needs to be done. 
We're also looking to replace a Ford Explorer that's used by the fire inspection bureau. The Explorer is a 2003. And we want to replace the roof and carpeting at fire headquarters. The roof is 26 years old and it's 20 year shingle. So it's 6 years past its life and we're starting to see leaks in the roof and -- so we need to get that replaced. 
And also on the side of the fire house at 311 West Glen Ave, it's been leaking through -- every time it rains it leaks through the side of the building and it's starting to create a problem. So we want to put a drain in there and resurface the parking lot to keep the water away from the building. 
That's pretty much it. That's what we're looking to do next year, or this year. So any questions? 
MS. SONENFELD: Did you want to just highlight the numbers Jim, first or --
CHIEF VAN GOOR: The -- oh. 
MS. SONENFELD: See where we are, year over year. 
CHIEF VAN GOOR: Which -- which numbers you want to --
MS. SONENFELD: I guess you can go to bottom line -- you can go to, you know, bottom line, where we're up on both salary and wages and, I guess, also on -- and we're down on OE. 
CHIEF VAN GOOR:  OE's down 1 percent from last  
year.  
MS. SONENFELD:  Right.  
CHIEF VAN GOOR:  Salary and wages is up 5  

percent from last year. And it's basically the -- the salaries and full-time salaries are up because we hired the four people and we're looking to hire one more this year. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: This -- on salaries and wages on the separate sheet that's attached, that's a fairly substantial increase in the third line, and
 without mentioning names, what's the -- what accounts for that large difference in -- in the -- in the third line from the time. 
CHIEF VAN GOOR: Oh, we changed that. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: The 701 versus the 847. 
CHIEF VAN GOOR: I'm not sure I'm looking at the third -- the third line --
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: The third line down, the 701 versus 847. 
CHIEF VAN GOOR: Number 18? 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Yeah, no I'm sorry, on the separate -- on the attachment. The salaries and wages summary. 
CHIEF VAN GOOR: Oh, I don't have that. 
COUNCILWOMAN HAUCK: That's the old one isn't it? 
MS. SONENFELD: Yeah, I guess it wasn't in --
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN: Did you get that in the new package. 
MS. SONENFELD: It was in the old package. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: If it's dated --
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN: Should it have been in both? 
COUNCILWOMAN HAUCK: Well yeah, because I
 threw -- like for example I threw out the whole fire 
thing, so. 
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN: Okay. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: So make sure it's not a mistake. 
COUNCILWOMAN HAUCK: So what were you looking at? 
CHIEF VAN GOOR: Actually I'm not sure, I'd have to look into that. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Yeah, okay, that's 
COUNCILWOMAN HAUCK: Where's that? 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: It's the 701,000 on one -- on in '15 and 847,000 -- I just want to make sure it's not a mistake or --
CHIEF VAN GOOR: That's -- I mean there was no -- no promotions last year. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Yeah. 
CHIEF VAN GOOR: There was no big increases last year. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: From what you said it seems like the number may not be accurate. 
CHIEF VAN GOOR: Yeah, it seems like a high number. We'll have to look at that. 
COUNCILWOMAN HAUCK: Well maybe Steve, can you
 UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I just asked him for promotions from last year. He said there's none. Maybe I have a bad head count, or --
CHIEF VAN GOOR: Yeah, because even promotions only -- we get an increase of 6,000. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Right. 
MS. SONENFELD: Well this could be a combination of steps and longevity. There may be some longevity raises in here and steps. I don't know. 
CHIEF VAN GOOR: Yeah, but even that -- even that would be --
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: It's only six people. 
CHIEF VAN GOOR: Yeah, six people it would be the most -- you know maybe two of them went up 6,000. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: All right, well I asked because it just jumps out at you, but it may -­it may not be an accurate number. 
MS. SONENFELD: Yeah --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah, it might be off a little. 
MS. SONENFELD: And you know something there could be a flip between that and the 30 firefighters, because that doesn't look necessarily like the right
 number either; $70,000 for 30 guys in raises. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Oh, yeah that could be. 
MS. SONENFELD: So there could be a flip between those two line items. We'll look into that, good point. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Okay, thank you. 
COUNCILWOMAN HAUCK: So maybe it's just an error. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Any -- any other questions for our chief? 
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN: Yeah, Jim I actually had a question, on the 3504 emergency calls what -­does that include mutual aid? Is that in that? 
CHIEF VAN GOOR: Yeah, last year we didn't do much in mutual aid, but that includes mutual aid calls. 
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN: So the greater percent of it it's --
CHIEF VAN GOOR: It's in Ridgewood, right. think if we had five or six last year. 
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN: So that means the pumper truck doesn't go out all that often for mutual aid. 
CHIEF VAN GOOR: No. 
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN: If you guys don't go
 the truck doesn't go. 
CHIEF VAN GOOR: It doesn't go yeah. 
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN: Okay. Okay, that was my only question. 
COUNCILWOMAN HAUCK: So 3,504 calls in 365 days. 
CHIEF VAN GOOR: Yeah. 
COUNCILWOMAN HAUCK: That's pretty crazy, you know if you think about it, yeah. 
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN: Can I just --
COUNCILWOMAN HAUCK: Impressive. 
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN: Does that include -­because you get called out -- you go on all the ambulance calls, right? 
CHIEF VAN GOOR: Yeah, that includes about 700 ambulance calls. 
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN: Okay, so those -- so when we look at that number, that's 700 of them are emergency -- medical emergency calls. 
CHIEF VAN GOOR: Medical -- yeah, medical emergency too, right. Yeah. 
COUNCILWOMAN HAUCK: You guys have one of those routine numbers, right? What does it cost a day for the -- to support the fire budget. Is it like $4 a day? 
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah, a cup of coffee. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: A cup of Starbucks coffee. 
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Starbucks of course. 
COUNCILMAN SEDON: That high end stuff, right. Late. 
COUNCILWOMAN HAUCK: Thank you. 
COUNCILMAN SEDON: Yeah, thank you, I don't have any questions Jim. Thank you. 
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN: So just could we get a corrected sheet that --
CHIEF VAN GOOR: Yeah. 
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN: Okay, that would be helpful. 
MS. SONENFELD: Good point out, I didn't -­actually I didn't see that sheet. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Okay, Chief thank you. Thank you very much. 
MS. SONENFELD: Thanks Jim. Okay, so in Tab 13, we have planning -- planning board. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Uh huh. Planning Board and what else? Just planning board, right? 
MS. SONENFELD: Just planning board. I want to -- well no, I'll let the Blais go first before I preface it, I'll un-preface it. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Okay. 

5. Planning Board 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Blais welcome. 
MR. BRANCHEAU: Thank you. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Over to you. 
MR. BRANCHEAU: The planning board, as you know, has been active in a number of controversial matters in the past year and we continue to invite controversy in the coming year. 
We completed about four years of discussion, study and debate over multifamily housing, as you know. And we also, just recently, two weeks ago completed a re-examination of the Village's master plan and development regulations. Re-examined, not being an amendment just looking at what needs to be amended. 
In addition, we've been working on an update to the housing element of the master plan, which is the controversy to which I was alluding to future based controversy. You're all, I assume familiar with the Supreme Court's legislature and executive branch of the government's complete follow up on the affordable housing situation and what the situation has put us in. 
So at the moment we are working with the court to come up with a new housing plan. We still haven't determined what our obligation is yet, but whatever
 it's likely to be more likely to not be able to meet that obligation due to the lack of developable property. 
The debate will likely be over how much of that property is developable for affordable housing and how -- and what densities in zoning regulations should apply to that. There are an array of housing advocates and developers who are going to argue for more and more and more. So, we anticipate that that will involve a good part of the board's time and to some extent the council's time as well in the coming year and maybe beyond. It all depends on ultimately what the obligation is, further court appeal and so forth. 
All that is prefaced to say that probably the main item of the planning board's budget is the legal aspect -- legal fees. I mean we have, obviously salary, myself and Michael Cafarelli (phonetic) are the next big portion, but that's really stable, it doesn't vary much from year to year. And the other expense is we work largely with volunteers occasionally. We hire an outside consultant for something, but that's relatively rare and usually it's paid for by developers money. 
There's nothing in the budget, I'll note, that would allow us to retain an additional consultant for 
any special studies or any master plan amendments or any other things like that. If that were to be done it would require a special appropriation by the Village Council, but we're not anticipating that for the coming year. 
Other litigation that we anticipate impacting the budget in the way of legal fees relates to the hospital litigation that you're familiar with and potentially the -- related to the affordable housing litigation. They're technically different, depending on the councils’ action relating to the five ordinances currently pending. 
It's possible that developers could challenge -- or objectors could challenge, either way, depending upon how those go. So that would possibly incur legal fees from the planning Board as well as the township attorney's legal fees as well. 
Those are the big -- big items. The rest of the items in the budget are fairly straight forward. We do anticipate moving forward on the next step on the re-examination and that is working on studies, doing possible amendments to the master plan, recommending possible amendments to the ordinance, that of course the council would take action on, but those are not budget items. They're already in the budget in 
salaries and in legal as -- as well. So, they're not really affecting the budget in any major way. 
I will note -- I don't know what the council has as far as the budget spreadsheet. The one that I had in this -- in my folder is not -- apparently not the latest. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: It's dated February 9, 2016. 
MR. BRANCHEAU: February 9th, I think the -- I think the salary item is low in that. 
MS. SONENFELD: No, I think we verified it twice. 
MR. BRANCHEAU: Well then I don't understand the discrepancy myself. Because it says in -- there's a 90,000 something figure. 
MS. SONENFELD: 98,000 it's a net --
MR. BRANCHEAU: But if you look on the net -­next page it's 116. 
MS. SONENFELD: Yeah, and the difference is the amount that's being paid out of escrow to you. It's a net number. 
MR. BRANCHEAU: Oh, it's an estimate okay. 
MS. SONENFELD: It's a net number that takes 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: No net number. 
MS. SONENFELD: Right, you know what I'm saying the escrow --
MR. BRANCHEAU: I understand and that's an estimate, just so you understand. 
MS. SONENFELD: Yeah, that's an estimate. 
MR. BRANCHEAU: Because the amount that I billed to developer's escrow is necessarily dependent upon how many applications are filed --
MS. SONENFELD: Right. 
MR. BRANCHEAU: -- and how complex they are. If we don't get any applications I can't bill. If we get a lot of them I bill a lot. But that's based upon an average over prior years. 
MS. SONENFELD: Right, that's correct, so it's credits from escrow for work that Blais has done. So that's why -- that's why you see the difference between the two. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Yeah. 
MS. SONENFELD: The other thing I would say is Susan asked us to think through and she was going to do some research on her own. What's not included here is any re-write of the entire master plan. And so we figured that that would be at least $100,000 if we were to go outside. That's not here. So it's something that needs to get discussed as to whether or not we
 want to add it. So we'll start making a list of things 
that are kind of extra. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Right. 
MS. SONENFELD: So, $100,000 I would just point out is about a third of a percent of increase on taxes. 
COUNCILMAN SEDON: I would -- you know my own recommendation on that is, you know, focus based studies, there is certainly much that needs to be amended. Much of this I can do myself. I don't need an outside consultant to do. There are certain aspects, however, where I think it would be appropriate. For example, if we were to do a new -- a circulation plan, probably need to hire a traffic consultant to do that. 
MS. SONENFELD: And we know we removed that because it was so outdated and not -- never implemented. Or parts of it were just --
COUNCILMAN SEDON: Yeah, it's -- it's extremely out of date and it needs to be either eliminated entirely or if it's going to be updated it's going to take a lot of work to do and you will need a traffic consultant. 
MS. SONENFELD: But I think on the other hand we sat down with the -- with the -- we sit down every
 week with the people that are doing the multifamily housing studies just to make sure that we're on schedule. And I think -- we'll see what comes out of the traffic one because I think he did an awful lot of intersections. 
MR. BRANCHEAU: Right. 
MS. SONENFELD: And although that doesn't make a total traffic plan it may in fact help us devising a traffic plan. That's the sense I get. 
MR. BRANCHEAU: There is -- you know circulation wise there's not a lot of that. I anticipate happening but there are areas where we could do improvements such as -- we don't really have much in the way of a multimodal plan, only vehicular plan. We don't have much for pedestrian routes or back paths or anything like that, that we can spend some time dealing with. 
There are some, obviously vehicular areas that need attention, certain intersections that need signalization upgrades, turning restrictions or dedicated turning lanes, things like that that a traffic -- a circulation plan would help us with. Obviously engineering could do some of that as well. But I do anticipate if -- if we were to do a comprehensive circulation plan you would definitely
 need a traffic consultant to assist. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Well for now can we just put a place marker down. It's -- put an item in, whether it's in brackets or however you can put -- you know, a question mark around it. So that it's -- maybe one of the final decisions we make as the budget is -­is approved, you know at the end of the day. 
MS. SONENFELD: You know we'll list it -­we'll list it for Thursday, that's discussion. All the things of this nature. 
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN: Uh huh, yeah. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: And whether it's 100,000 as Councilwoman Knudsen has suggested, or 50,000 or 300,000 I don't know what -- I don't know what number is appropriate. 
MR. BRANCHEAU: It all depends on the scope. That's the problem to -- to really get a good number with this you need to break down the scope and the time frame. But to do a comprehensive full master plan at a high level of detail, I doubt you would do in one year. It would take multiple years and probably well over $100,000. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: But it could be spread over two years. 
MR. BRANCHEAU: If -- if you do --
MS. SONENFELD: Well, that was, I think, the -- what is -- you would be spreading that --
MR. BRANCHEAU: That's what I'm saying, you would do focused, prioritized, what's most important now. Do that, and then as you go through work on it year by year. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: And obviously the other sensitive number in this budget is outside counsel fees, which have gone from 49,000 in 2014 to an actual of 98,000 -- 97,6 in 2015, versus a budget of 
136. But I think it was a good idea to budget that, and that's what you're looking for this year. Budget 
136. Hopefully it'll come in less, but you have to -­we have to be prepared for --MR. BRANCHEAU: Yeah, it's hard because you 
never know --
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: -- the full amount. 
MR. BRANCHEAU: -- where litigation is going to go, whether appeals are taken and all sorts of things. 
MS. SONENFELD: This could be a big -- this is a big risk item. I mean as we've heard in various quarters. And I think the though process here was, that if in fact we wind up doubled -- for argument sake, doubling this we'll go into emergency spending
 mode. We'll have to figure out how to handle it at that point. Rather than assume a number now and as a result have a potential impact on taxes. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Uh huh, right. 
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN: That makes sense. 
MR. BRANCHEAU: This number is not necessarily going to cover it, but I think it's a reasonable estimate. It gives you a reasonable cushion. 
COUNCILWOMAN HAUCK: Right, it's -- direction we're going in at this point so it makes a lot of sense at this point. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Okay, Michael? 
COUNCILMAN SEDON: I don't have anything, thank you Blais. 
MS. SONENFELD: Wow, we're really running ahead of schedule. 
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We'll have time for a potty break. 
MS. SONENFELD: Bio break. 
COUNCILWOMAN HAUCK: Could you just show me where -- where the escrow account is reckoned here? Is it item 01Z. 
MR. BRANCHEAU: I'm sorry. 
COUNCILWOMAN HAUCK: The credit, the 27,5? 
MR. BRANCHEAU: Yes, the 27,5. 
COUNCILWOMAN HAUCK: Okay, so that's -- that -- those are those developers fees, it pays for --
MR. BRANCHEAU: That's an average of what I would bill that gets reimbursed by the developers' escrow money. 
COUNCILWOMAN HAUCK: And -- and I'm going to ask a sensitive question, even though there's the other angel and devil on both of my shoulders. 
MR. BRANCHEAU: Right. 
COUNCILWOMAN HAUCK: This is the thing that everybody keeps challenging. They say, you know, throw out that, you know, internal advice because it's tainted and so let's get outside consultants and then we have to go out and hire consultants to reinforce what our planner says. So I'm -- I'm sensitive to that. Is there -- is some --
MR. BRANCHEAU: Either way it would be billed against the developer's escrow, whether you hired an outside --
COUNCILWOMAN HAUCK: Right, and that was an issue that people had, that if the developer was paying for it then it was tainted and so on and so forth. 
So I really want to bring it up at a budget meeting and say do we accept this -- this kind of advice or do we reject it? Because if it's costing
 27,5 a year and then we go out and duplicated it through outside consultants then why do we have it our 
budget?  
MR. BRANCHEAU:  Well the developer doesn't pay  
me.  
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN:  No.  
COUNCILWOMAN HAUCK:  I know that.  
MR. BRANCHEAU:  He pays the village.  
COUNCILWOMAN HAUCK:  I know that.  But you -­ 

we all know that a lot of people say that it -- it's not -- that it is -- it is ruined by the taint of the -- you know who had the escrow account of the developer. 
MR. BRANCHEAU: -- they would pay me. 
COUNCILWOMAN HAUCK: I'm just putting it out there, because --
MS. SONENFELD: I'm not sure though -- I'm not sure that this is the same exact thing, because this is a longstanding -- this may not even be developers, this could be residential people, right that we're -- that 
MR. BRANCHEAU: It could be. I don't review a lot of the Board of Adjustment residential cases, only in certain situations. Typically these are commercial developers. These are both the special re-zoning 
appeals that have been filed, such as multifamily housing and the hospital. But it's also site plans, subdivisions, things like that that come before planning board and board of adjustment. 
COUNCILWOMAN HAUCK: Okay. 
MR. BRANCHEAU: So, whether it would be me or be an outside consultant the same mechanism is there, that -- and the same criticism could be leveled is that, oh since the village is being reimbursed by the developer the consultant might feel --
COUNCILWOMAN HAUCK: Yeah -- yeah, sure. 
MR. BRANCHEAU: -- feel obligated to please the developer. And most developer don't accuse me of that. But --
MS. SONENFELD: And I think Chris does the same thing. I mean when engineering gets involved and does some consulting on certain on projects and stuff we charge -- we charge against the escrow too. 
COUNCILMAN SEDON: Yeah, Chris bills to -­too. 
MS. SONENFELD: We charge -- we charge against the escrow too. 
MR. RUTISHAUSER: Yeah, I bill against any escrow account, possible for any review that's been requested by either the zoning board, or the planning
 board. 
Also one thing to -- the councilwoman's query, we found that we -- when we issued an RFP for a traffic consultant a number of years ago, we put a number of stipulations in it, particularly regarding Valley Hospital, you cannot work for Valley Hospital or had any conflicts related to Valley Hospital. 
We ended up selecting two traffic consultants. One was Maser (phonetic) that is familiar to many of the folks here. But they could not do anything regarding Valley Hospital. They had a conflict because one of their principles had worked, several firms ago, for a firm that had done work for Valley. And so he was conflict -- that firm was conflicted so we ended up with a different firm RBA, Gordon Meth (phonetic) which now the council has selected to review other aspects of traffic. 
So what I'm getting as if you're looking for a consultant to review an application, you would certainly want to vet that consultant to see if they had any conflicts with that potential developer. Because when I worked for the consulting engineering firms -- well the firm I worked for 23 years ago we worked for developers. We primarily worked for developers. And that's how you can also see the 
engineer's --
COUNCILWOMAN HAUCK: But that's the process that we always do go through that so every -- every outside consultant is thoroughly vetted and is independent. 
MR. RUTISHAUSER: Yes, it cuts out a lot --
COUNCILWOMAN HAUCK: So, I just like to reiterate that as often as possible, because there's a lot of public perception that, you know, that all our consultants aren't independent. That they are -- that they are somehow --
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN: Right. 
MS. SONENFELD: -- influenced --
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN: That's true. 
MS. SONENFELD: -- or influencable and they're really not. Anything that we pay for is -- has been vetted, that's all. 
MR. RUTISHAUSER: Yeah, with the traffic with Maser we asked a lot of very pointed questions. I believe they presented to the planning board before we selected them. 
Is it a perfect system? I don't think so, but it's about pretty good as we can get it. 
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN: So, I just wanted to add, to put this into perspective, because Blais 
brought up a great point. It doesn't really much matter whether it's residential or commercial, planning board or board of adjustment, an applicant puts money into escrow because those fees and consultants should never be shouldered by the tax payers. In lieu of that escrow amount we would paying for an applicant's cost. So we wouldn't want that. 
So whether it's residential, I think commercial we've had consultants speak to any number of applications in any of those scenarios. So in fairness it's -- it's just the way the system is set up. 
MR. BRANCHEAU: And that's all in accordance with the Municipal Land Use, even the board attorney is billing, I guess, the escrow applicants to prepare the resolution to -- you know, the review documents and review notice and stuff like that. 
So, it's -- it's all done. But my own personal feeling is that as a staff person who doesn't do work outside you're more likely to get an independent review than somebody who does work outside working for developers and then also work for the municipality. Because his -- his affecting of those developers could affect future work. Whereas if you have a staff person doing that review, they're not going outside and looking for future work. They're
 working only for you, so they're not likely to be swayed by the fear of losing a potential future client. You're not going to have that. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Okay, any other questions for Blais? 
MS. SONENFELD: I would point out again, so when you're looking at tax impact, although we've been emphasizing that we're looking at actuals from the year before, and we've done that for the last two years, we'll note here that the actuals are higher and the reason they're higher is because of the legal issue. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Right. 
MS. SONENFELD: But budget to budget is right on target and so that's the determination of tax need more than budget over actual. So just budget to budget this budget's in good shape. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Okay. All right, thank you Blais. 
MS. SONENFELD: Okay, so --
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Okay, let's proceed to MIS technology. 
MS. SONENFELD: And so I think, you know, Bob and I had talked about this earlier. You know we set some guidelines here, because we thought maybe we're too broad. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Uh huh. 
MS. SONENFELD: So what we'll probably wind up doing is, if we have some time therefore maybe taking some stuff off of the Wednesday/Thursday's plate. We'll probably do finance of the tax collector, which would have been a Thursday event. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Okay. 
MS. SONENFELD: As well as, you know the Council's budget which is much higher this year than last year. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: But with -- but with a break after this presentation and prior to those. 
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN: Yeah. 

6. MIS/Technology 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Dylan welcome. 
MR. HANSEN: Hello, all right we'll jump right in. All right, 2015 we deployed a new antivirus package, it's been going pretty well. We also launched Municipality in a Box, as you've heard from a couple of other groups in the building and assessor's office. A couple of little bugs, but we've worked out pretty much most things. So we're moving forward next with the health and clerk's office and engineering. So that's our goal for the beginning of this year. 
We launched the Village website on January 1st, really early in the morning and it was followed right by a newspaper article at the same time. So, that went very well. 
The expansion of the fiber loop has been going great. I can't thank Jim and his team enough for the amount of work that they do from signal department. It's been great. Also the Board of Ed has been very helpful with their part of the fiber loop as well. I'm able now to remote into the PCs at the other locations, instead of traveling to the sites to repair things. It's been a great time saver. And we've also been able to share documents between the offices. I mean and any time you call signal they're there to help out, instantaneously, they've been great. 
E-ticket launch has, as you heard from Maria, has been going very well. So we're going to be talking about expanding that even more this year. We're going to look at buying some more equipment this current year, to implement it more into the police department. And then we're also going to look at it as a shared service. 
And also we hired a part-time employee that has been great. She's been taking over a lot of the day to day tedious work so I'm able to focus more on
 projects and everything. So that's been great as well. 
MS. SONENFELD: So we spent -- Dylan and I spent -- Dylan in particularly spent a lot of time in this decision. Again, we looked at potential outsourcing. We brought people in. The price tag was astronomical. So this is our first step towards, at least bringing some support into an area that is very, very stressed and stretched. And you could look around the table, you'll see people nodding because everybody has issues with technology and they're not really Dylan's fault. It's the -- it's the fact that there was only one Dylan. And one Dylan was taking care of everybody and the network and everything else. 
So, we're hoping that this part-time position does a lot for us, and then you know as I go to conferences and talk to people I think, you know, technology is the area where municipalities is going to see some expense growth in the next couple of years. 
MR. ROONEY: I just want to add to that. My observation is, Ridgewood is so far advanced in technology compared to other communities it's unbelievable. And I give you credit for all the work you're doing and I wish there -- we had four or five of you, but he's far ahead of what we'll see in other -­other municipalities. 
MR. HANSEN: I can budget a cloning matching. MR. ROONEY: That's a good idea. COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN: We can get a 3D printer 
MR. HANSEN: 3D printing. 
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN: We could 3D print you. 
MR. HANSEN: That would be a little scary. All right so the 2016 goals is we're going to look more to expand more of the fiber loop, both in the water department and the Village departments, the emergency services. We're looking to implement more security protocols with the fiber loop. Adding in security in some of our other facilities, our satellite facilities throughout the village and then Glen Rock. 
We also are going to be focusing on redundancy, accessibility and consolidation, and more information sharing with utilizing Municipality in a Box, as well as fire sharing amongst the departments. 
Jim at the fire department has given use of one of the rooms to expand into as a backup server room, which has been great -- it's a perfect location. So we're going to be looking at that as a disaster recovery type of scenario as well. So, that's working out very well. 
I covered the Municipality in a Box, we're
 going to be expanding that more. 
MS. SONENFELD: And importantly out to residents -- out to residents. And we have to determine --
MR. HANSEN: Yeah, we're going to be meeting on that. 
MS. SONENFELD: -- what the -- yeah, what the rules are behind that and how much we want to engage, at least in the beginning. But --
MR. HANSEN: Yeah, and --
MS. SONENFELD: -- transparency. 
MR. HANSEN: We're able to implement some of the portal now -- the portal that comes with the software. So now we're just looking at the functionality of it and what we can make available to the residents. 
Oh, with the -- we're going to be getting the IPads for the inspectors. That resolution just went through at the past meeting, so those will be on order. So the inspectors will be able to go out in the field, all paperless, do their inspection, submit it, instantaneously, print out, send them an email, be done with it. And they'll be able to get a better tracking of when inspections are going on and what are outstanding. So that will be a nice feature. 
We'll be -- that's the portal. Oh, also one of the big projects this year will be upgrading the firewalls. The current firewalls are the same firewalls that I started here with. So those will protect the network and everything. They are up to date on software and everything, we are protected. They're just reaching their end of life and I want to get -- swap them out before that happens. 
The Municipality Box inspector devices, the resident portal. Oh, we're going to be upgrading the portal switches, which we funded for last year. The company I want to stick with just came out with their new line, so I'm going to be ordering those. You'll be coming -- you'll be seeing a resolution for those very shortly. 
We also be looking at VPN access for employees to remotely access their files and work from home. So if you have those snow days and so on and so forth, we'll be able to give them the ability. 
MS. SONENFELD: Yeah, this is -- this is important. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Yeah, we do that in our firm. 
MS. SONENFELD: Yeah, we do --
MR. HANSEN: So, there's a lot of rules and 
stuff. Like there's some networks that we can't make 
VPN accessible versus others. Like we can't make the SCADA networks accessible remotely. But we can make manager's office, clerk's office, so on and so forth accessible, health office -- some stuff in health 
office.  But there -- we have to follow all the rules,  
so.  
We're going to be doing security upgrades  

throughout Village Hall and other satellite locations. We're going to be -- file structures, we're actually migrating. We've actually -- since I've started here we have increased the file structure a lot. I mean we went from a couple of gigs worth of data to over -­we’re over a couple of terabytes worth of data that we store now, that is accessed every day and it's -- it's actually been getting really well. 
MS. SONENFELD: It's --
MR. HANSEN: It's amazing, yeah. Department involvement. Since we launched the new website I will say the department heads have been great, patient. They've been supplying the information on updates to their pages. I've been sitting down with many of them. They're eager to learn, which has been great, to learn how to access their site and update it themselves. So they've been putting a lot of good involvement into the 
-- into the site as well. 
We're going to also be upgrading the public access channel equipment. Some of the stuff we can no longer upgrade, such as the cameras. We are recording the DVDs. We got rid of the VHS tapes, right Tony? 
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah. 
MR. HANSEN: We found it was very hard to -­to purchase VHS tapes now these days, not many people sell them. We also are streaming now. We switched over to the YouTube, we've had really minimal issues with it so far. The Board of Ed is using the -­utilizing the same features, so it's been great. 
We'll also be expanding in Village Hall one of the things is like right now we can't put this current meeting on television. I will have it up tonight and I will have it on YouTube after the meeting is over, but we're going to look at making it so we can stream from many more locations and access -- and also public access TV. So if we wanted to do a meeting down here we can make it live on the TV, so we're going to look at upgrading the facilities to do so. 
And we also -- we just implemented a new recording system in the -- in the council chambers/courtroom. That was in the efforts of Maria and Heather. They did a lot of research and 
involvement in that and I think they're happy. And also Michael Cafarelli is using it for the planning board. It's been a nice system so far. And we also have a redundant backup which we've never had before. So that's a plus. 
This year we're going to look at doing some soundproofing so we can increase the sound in there make it better. Add additional speakers, upgrade the amplifiers, add visual such as the TVs on walls, so and so forth. So we can do presentations and no more pop of screen. And then they also can utilize that stuff for court to do their video reviews. 
Also, I'm very proud of this. The communications on our e-notices. We have broken the 4,000 marker of subscribers. And since that -- since we broke that, it's been like that one little hurdle we're now at 4180 subscribers. 
MS. SONENFELD: And how many were we at like a year and a half ago? 
MR. HANSEN: Year and a half ago we were in the 2000 range. So it's increased drastically. We get more and more each day. Every time there's an event more people subscribe. We have more people also subscribing to our reverse 9-1-1 system as well. So that's been very well taken by the residents. That's
 been very well spreading the words to say hey sign up for this. 
MS. SONENFELD: Yes, and thank you to the Ridgewood News for putting it in an editorial that it was, you know, it was important to sign up so --
MR. HANSEN: Yeah, it's been great. 
MS. SONENFELD: -- it's working, yeah. 
MR. HANSEN: Also -- oh, with the additional part-time assistant, increase in efficiency our ability to handle daily maintenance and task. She has -- if you get a chance to meet her, her name is Misha Dao (phonetic). She's currently sitting in the finance department. She's been very -- I mean she's been handling surplus. You'll be seeing a resolution for that. She's been helping me with inventory, daily fixes on computer issues. She's been going around and meeting with all the -- all the employees that have like your Microsoft Office issues. And she's been very great with everybody. I haven't had a single complaint. So that's been very well taken. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Okay. 
MR. HANSEN: I'm very happy. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Great Dylan thank you. Roberta anything you want to highlight. 
MS. SONENFELD: I guess to the numbers. You
 want to just take a few top level numbers. 
MR. HANSEN: All right, if you -- you'll see a large decrease in other professional services, on 28. That was when we were currently looking at outsourcing -- no actually we were doing 28 and 29. 
MS. SONENFELD: That's correct. 
MR. HANSEN: Because we were looking to outsourcing it to a company, some of the daily issues and we found the prices to be a lot higher than what we expected. So we then upped the part-time salary, which is still lower than those two numbers of what we lost -- I mean what we -- what it decreased. Otherwise everything else is for parts, books. We kept some money in there for professional services and contractual services to cover telephone equipment repair and other software. Nothing --
MS. SONENFELD: So again on a budget to budget comparison --
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: That's down 10 percent. 
MS. SONENFELD: -- we're lower -- yeah, so it's down 10 percent on actually. It's up for -- for -- the main reason is the part-timer. And then there are ancillary things that we kept, because we think that we're going to have to have other professional and 
consulting services throughout the year as we --
MR. HANSEN: Progress. 
MS. SONENFELD: Yeah, and as we look at, you know how this is working and what we think, you know, we may need going forward. I mean originally this budget we had changed the part-timer to full-timer towards the end of the year. But we're going to hold on that and see how this works --
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Right. 
MS. SONENFELD: -- first. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Yup. Yeah, those are the only lines of any -- worthy -- worthy of any discussion, 28 and 29 they're -- you know they're substantially below last year's budget, but they're also substantially above last year's actual. But the total amount -- A, is not a lot and B, I can see how with the expansion of your services you may have to go outside. So it's a $20,000 combination and you've never spent that in the past, you've spent $8,000 in the past. They're relatively minor. 
MR. HANSEN: I try to utilize any leftover equipment and stuff to --
MS. SONENFELD: So you'll see again, the head count is going up, right, from 2015 to 2016. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Uh huh, we see 
that. 
MS. SONENFELD: Because of Misha. 
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN: I mean it's -- it's kind of like a lifeline for everybody. Like this is what we need to communicate. It becomes such an incredible part of our daily business operations. You can't -- cannot do this without having this department running efficiently and you're doing a great job, I have to say. Thank you, thanks Dylan. Thank you. 
COUNCILMAN SEDON: Thanks Dylan I just want to know how the website going, rolling out -- rolling out the new website? Different things that maybe you've found -- you found is challenging, or different things that maybe changed since you initially rolled it out? 
MR. HANSEN: For the most part I have -- I do have residents coming in questions and how to's and where do I find this. But for the most part I've received a lot of positive feedback and it is a change. It's different from our previous website and there's different features and stuff. So it's more of a learning curve for where is this and where is that. But once they've found it I really haven't had many issues. 
MS. SONENFELD: I guess the agenda and minutes were a sticky point. But I think -- I think we're 
almost there. 
MR. HANSEN: Yeah, we actually -- we actually have the part-timer taking all the minutes and agendas from previous website and manually transferring them into the new website. 
MS. SONENFELD: Moving them over. 
MR. HANSEN: So now they'll all be searchable. So you'll be able to go on and search through all the minutes and all the agendas for the past -- I think we have ten years on there. 
MS. SONENFELD: And the format is better now than it was on December 30 -- January 1st at 1:01 in the morning. So that's been a change. 
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN: Oh, no it's progressively, it's just kind of been morphing into better and better. I did have a quick question which reminded me when Mike asked that. 
There's this little box underneath the agendas, I think, and it says "add an event." 
MR. HANSEN: Oh. 
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN: And I'm afraid -- I want to -- keep wanting to add an event. But just kind of curious if you could --
MR. HANSEN: I have to take that out. It's -­it's -- we have now an ability for -- if you're a local 
organization that wants to submit something to put onto our calendar they can just input it in. So for some reason it's showing up on there I will get that off. 
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN: I was going to add my birthday and Roberta's but --
MS. SONENFELD: That's fine. 
MR. HANSEN: Janet will have to approve it. 
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN: Going to add that event. 
MS. SONENFELD: And then, I mean, we had that little issue that I -- I actually have. That you know we have that box that shows the top four things that are going on, whether it be --
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN: Yeah. 
MS. SONENFELD: And you have to really -- and you have to do this too. You have -
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN: Click it in the right place. 
MS. SONENFELD: You have to click it in the right place, but we've changed that and that's fixed now too. So I think you --
MR. HANSEN: It's all the little tiny things. 
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN: Yeah, that's --
MR. HANSEN: But we're getting there. 
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN: -- so it's fine. 
MR. HANSEN: Tweaking it. 
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN: See now when it takes that feedback to make it -- because you can't possibly, yourself see all those little things going on there, so it helps to have the feedback. 
MS. SONENFELD: Yeah, this was -- I mean this was a lot of work and one could argue that we should have -- I hate to say this -- but outsource the whole development of that website two or three years ago, because -- you know because Dylan has become a website designer, you know. And there are different skill sets on this and their -- so -- but it came out great. 
So, it just took us -- it took us a while to get there. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: But it really is an improvement. 
COUNCILWOMAN HAUCK: We -- we had estimates for over $25,000 to do that. So in a sense Dylan fitting it into our schedule was 25 grand. 
MS. SONENFELD: Our latest estimate, I think was 40. 
MR. HANSEN: It was like 45 almost 50. 
MS. SONENFELD: Because Dylan and I were looking at --
COUNCILWOMAN HAUCK: Yeah. 
MR. HANSEN: Yeah. 
MS. SONENFELD: But Dylan and I were looking at various ways to kind of add on to what he was doing and we just -- it was not that affordable at that point. 
MR. HANSEN: Yeah, like we have one unique application, which is My Village Services, which I haven't seen on another website from anybody. So to get somebody to develop that from scratch was costly. 
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN: You know Dylan just wanted to ask a quick question, because Heather's comments Village By the Numbers or your department by the numbers and your OPRA requests. How does that impact your department, those OPRA requests? 
MR. HANSEN: OPRA requests? 
VILLAGE CLERK: Well they're impacting Dylan right now as we speak. 
MR. HANSEN: Yeah, there's -- it depends on the OPRA request. But if it's an email search. Such as if somebody says I know I had this email, could you find it in the archives? Because we do archive all our emails. So if I have to look through all those emails I had a previous search that was almost a return of 7100 items. So I had to go through those, I got them done and so on and so forth. But I think there's two 
more down the pike. 
MS. SONENFELD: It's actually, I have to say, not a great use of Dylan's time. 
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN: Right, that's why I was asking, because I agree --
MR. HANSEN: Yeah, I have to get them done. 
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN: Yeah, okay. It's time -- it's a lot of time for you as well. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Gwenn? 
COUNCILWOMAN HAUCK: Just that I recall last year's budget, this was the year of technology. 
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN: Yes. 
COUNCILWOMAN HAUCK: So here we are and now we're entering into the year of water. So it kind of 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: See we got our share --
COUNCILWOMAN HAUCK: -- I wanted to look -- I wanted to look backwards and say how was the year of technology? You know I thought we were going to see big flat screen TVs in the courtroom and we were going to have a better sound system. And I know finally the IPads came in. That was so -- took forever. But the Municipality in a Box thing is going to change everything for everyone, employees and residents alike. 
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN: Yeah. 
COUNCILWOMAN HAUCK: And that is halfway there, but you know the other half is -- it's all just the implementation. So the budget is set aside, the sort of work is done, but it's just putting a period at the end of the sentence. 
MR. HANSEN: Yeah, it's whenever you release a project there's a couple of technicalities -­unexpected issues that arise that takes a couple of weeks here, a couple of weeks there and before you know it you're three months past. 
COUNCILWOMAN HAUCK: A year goes by so quickly. 
MS. SONENFELD: You know think about this. think about the whole cycle time it took us with Municipality in a Box. We started that last year, probably February/March. We went, we looked at vendors, we evaluated them. We picked a vendor and we implement it in the same year. Which, you know, is not -- not bad. 
MR. HANSEN: And that was the biggest department to implement to, with all the data conversion and everything. 
MS. SONENFELD: And building is -- the data conversion was not small. 
MR. HANSEN: And then the outside training. 
COUNCILWOMAN HAUCK: So I mean it was going to impact the building department so profoundly and the health department and the engineering department. But the OPRAs to me are -- are the cruelest thing of all. Because it is just becoming such a drain on our budget and so time consuming and so sort of menial -- such a menial task. If it only could be done electronically. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Okay. 
COUNCILWOMAN HAUCK: Thank you. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Dylan thank you very much. Roberta it's 6:35 and before we decide to take a break and come back I just want to confirm with Heather since --
MS. SONENFELD: I'm not sure we should take a break. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Well, I'm not sure we can come back. The agenda did not notice anything other than what we've heard. Can we -- are we free to 
VILLAGE CLERK: No, it's okay because all of them were noticed for budget. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: We can add to the agenda? 
VILLAGE CLERK: The 2016 budget. 
MS. SONENFELD: Oh, I never thought about that. 
VILLAGE CLERK: So it doesn't matter we -- we can add things to the agenda. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: We can, we're free to do that? 
VILLAGE CLERK: Because of the facts is general notice just indicated 2016 budget. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Okay. 
VILLAGE CLERK: I don't see a problem with it. There are times when we don't get through all the budget items, you know all through the items on the agenda for a budget meeting and that's okay too. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Okay, okay let's just two minutes and come back and --
MS. SONENFELD: You want to do a two minute? 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Yeah, a two minute break. Come back at 6:38, three minutes. 
MS. SONENFELD: 6:38. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Just we can stretch 
if nothing else. MS. SONENFELD: Okay. (Off The Record, On The Record) MS. SONENFELD: What we'll do is we'll jump ahead. Thursday Bob and Steve are going to finance and 
tax collector, which is why they didn't provide the updated copies to you for tonight, but you all have them now. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: We have them now. 
MS. SONENFELD: So, you do -- he gave you one, right. 

7. Finance/Tax Collector 
MR. ROONEY: So just work with these, because I think there might be one or two pages in what I originally sent out to you that may be missing. So work with these tonight and then you can always. 
MS. SONENFELD: I need to put this in your book, in tab -- in tab 7. 
COUNCILWOMAN KNUDSEN: Are we doing -- are we doing this tonight? 
MS. SONENFELD: Yes. 
MR. ROONEY: Yes, we're going to do it right now. 
MS. SONENFELD: That just gives us some time on Thursday --
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Right. 
MS. SONENFELD: -- to have more of a textured discussion around top level. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Okay, so let us proceed. 
MR. ROONEY: 2015 highlights. You know some of these occurred before I was here, but it was still part of our department so I'll focus on them anyway. Redesign --
MS. SONENFELD: Thank you. 
MR. ROONEY: I'm trying to give you credit here. 
MS. SONENFELD: And Steve. 
MR. ROONEY: And Steve. Redesigned that led to 2015 budget preparations that mixed operational detail with important strategic discussions. Utilize budgetary comparisons, prior year actual expenditures and presented both operating and capital requests. Established a realistic parking utility budget. Monitor debt requirements and market for short and long term debt as needed. Attended FAC meetings, responded to inquiries and provided updates on financial issues. 
We worked with the FAC for the second year to create a new budget newsletter for residents. Produced an RFP, evaluate responses and recommended the hiring of a new audit firm, which resulted in much more comprehensive audit than we've seen in several years. 
Provide the cross training to department employees that we can back up all functions within the finance area and tax collector. We provided counsel
 and the FAC with quarterly revenue and expense reports for the current water and parking utility. We enhanced controls on the collection of coins. We prepared and submitted the village's first user friendly budget, prepared a corrective action plan addressing the finance of a 2014 annual audit and presented such to council and reconciled and documented support for the village's capital assets. 
For 2016 we'll coordinate the issuance of refunding bonds for the general award of the utility funds to minimize annual debt service cost. We're analyzing projected capital expenditures and scheduled debt issuance to finance capital costs. This would involve also reviewing the capital items that we no longer need to decrease our net debt for authorized non-issue. 
And if you don't know it we have a new QPA, Steve Sanzari. Steve just passed the test for qualified purchasing agent. This allows the village to increase the minimum for going out to bid on various items from 17,6 to 40,000. Without that being said we will be presenting resolution to council in the next couple of weeks for your approval on that limit. At the same time we'll be presenting to you controls that will be established to insure that we comply with the
 larger minimum being set. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: All right, congratulations Steven. 
MS. SONENFELD: Yeah, this was a -- this was a big -- biggie. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: It was a big one. 
COUNCILWOMAN HAUCK: It is. 
MS. SONENFELD: We knew he'd pass his first time, but we didn't say anything to -- we didn't want put pressure on him. But he did pass right away. 
MR. ROONEY: Yes. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: Well done. 
MR. ROONEY: And it wasn't easy. We will enhance the use of departmental encumbrance. Enhance the quarterly reporting process to include balance sheet and capital asset reports an coordinate departmental audits without external audit firm. 
DEPUTY MAYOR PUCCIARELLI: What are the departmental encumbrances? 
MR. ROONEY: Each department has the ability to use our accounting system Edmunds (phonetic). With that we encourage them to -- when they post requisitions or reserve money knowing that they have -­they'll spending that money during the year, we encourage them to encumber those funds so we can