You're gonna need an issue. Yeah. Okay. You're good. Okay, you're good. Good evening. The March 26, 2025 Council meeting of the Long Branch City Council will now come to order. Roll call. Mr. Dengler. Here. Mr. Rises. Here. Mrs. Woodens' absent. Dr. Votus absent. Mr. Vera. I'm here. Please stand for a pledge allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the five United States of America, to withdraw. I would like to extend one nation and a God in visible liberty to assess this for all. I will now read the mission statement of the City Council, the Long Branch Mayor, the City Council, and administration are committed to cultivating an environmental, mutual trust, and respect our values, the diversity of our community. We will strive to enhance the quality of for life, for all who live here, by making long-branch a desirable place in which to live prospering. We will treat all members of the public with respect and expect the same in return. Certification, please? I hereby certify that this meeting has been published in the newspaper in accordance with the Open Public Meeting Act and post it as required by law. Thank you. Reading of the approve of the previous minutes, I need a motion to approve the minutes of March 12, 2025. So moved. Second. Coral call. Mr. Dengler. Yes. Mr. Rassus. Yes. Mrs. Wittis is absent. Dr. Votus absent. Mr. Vieras. Yes. Motion passed. consideration of ordinance of public hearing and final consideration, they're none. Ornus for inter-direction, ordinance 05-25. This is the first reading of ordinance 05-25 entitlement. A norther's authorizing amendment of restatement under the deed of the dedication and the parental storm damage reduction. Easement for block 298, lots 4.03 and 1.02 summary. The beach of Long Branch is subject to constant erosion and derrigation. The city of Long Branch will, with the state of New Jersey and the United States Army Corps, of the engineers are working together to contact and maintain the beach erosion, control project as part of the project. The City of Long Branch needs to grant an easement to the State of the New Jersey. I need a motion to introduce on the first reading, advertise and post-apporting to law, and set the public hearing for April 9th, 2025. To move. Second. Road call. Mr. Dangler. Yes. Mr. Rassus. Yes. Mrs. Woodis is absent. Dr. Voters absent. Mr. Vierre. Yes. Motion passed. public participation for resolutions in all general comments. I need a motion to open the public portion of the meeting for all comments. You need a motion? So move second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? If there's anyone in the audience that has a comment to make, please step to the podium and stay your name. Cleary for the record. And you only have five minutes and may only speak once. Then, Senator LePore, 33-Ocean Taurus Long Branch. Council President Villera, concerning fire officials in Long Branch. As far as the Long Branch Firemen's Relief Association governed under the New Jersey State Firemen's Relief Association, why is someone who's been arrested for forging fire department documents still involved as an officer that distributes relief money to fireman. Councilman Vieira? Councilman Vieira, the lack of government knowledge and ignorance of it just allows this corruption to continue. In case you don't know, Mr. Vierre, this individual had separation of employment from long branch because of Mom of County Prosecutors' Office. Nice to see better, long branch corruption continues. Your incompetence continued at the last council meeting. After the public portion, you added several resolutions that were never added on to the agenda, online or on the board outside. And then you went and voted on denying the public portion you added several resolutions that were never added on to the agenda online or on the board outside. And then you went and voted on them, denying the public to speak on them. You're incompetent. Yeah, I'm glad you agreed, the era. I'm glad you agree on you're incompetent. Taxes, taxes, taxes. I and others have stood before this Council for years discussing the burdensome and extortionist taxes of the Paloma government The city saw one billion worth of redevelopments since 2005 Mostly enabled by tax abatement a redevelopment that was to eliminate a $23 million city debt in 2005 But instead the city's debt that has worsened over the past 20 years by quadrupling. What's worse is that these tax abatements by getting out of the Board of Education contribution put an extra burden on the rest of the city tax payers to support the Board of Ed. And let's make it very clear the Board of Ed was never going to act to control these tax abatements because by doing so, the full tax revenue from the city's redevelopment would have forfeited the state funding to the Board of Ed. The city taxpayers got burned both by the Board of Ed and the city of Long Branch. Even to this day the Board of Ed is losing 1,300,000 per year in revenue due to Kushner's peer village three and other developer tax impatements. Team Palombe considers it a privilege for long-range homeowners to exist in their homes with ever increasing price tags in taxes. This Southern Palombe paid a play gravy train, can stuff their slush funds with the tax payers' hard earned money and the continued displacement of generational residents as well as law and middle income residents. Long branch residents have literally been suckered punched by the Paloan team in this city's continued redevelopment. The county tax assessors' office has parted a problem as well, allowing brutal undercessments, particularly at peer village 3. It has come to the point now where long-range homeowners are actually paying rent to the municipal government via extortionist taxes to live on their property. Tonight, emerging long-range residents to rise up against the Pallon team's extortion racket and follow the lead of Florida's governor Ron DeSantis and other representatives from Pennsylvania, Idaho, Michigan, and elsewhere throughout the country to abolish property taxes as they are known in New Jersey. Governor DeSantis said it best, quote, if you have to pay annual taxes to keep your home, then you don't really own. End quote, just like the 1776 tax revolt. Let next year, 2020- One minute. Notification. Let next year, 2026, 250th anniversary of this country's founding, be the year of America's second tax revolt, moving forward with the patriots' spread and purpose of abolishing property taxes, particularly in New Jersey. Now is the time to act. It can be done. Thank you, Governor DeSanis and others, for your pioneering leadership and coming up with solutions in abolishing property taxes and moving this country forward again. Again, thank you, Governor DeSanis, for ending junk government as it's known in New Jersey and Long Branch, junk government. Thank you. Good evening Councilmembers, Mayor Polone. My name is Brian Thompson. I am not a resident of Long Branch. I am next door in Mometh Beach. However, I feel like this is my second home. Both my step-sons were Bar Mitzvah at the Peer House restaurant. I walk in your beautiful Jackson Woods and I congratulate you all on the support you gave to, excuse me, your green team members and others who made that Jackson Woods just a gem of a park. It is fantastic. My dog loves it too. And I pick up after my dog as well I might add so please. But in my previous life many of you know may know me as a reporter for NBC New York and I covered much here here in Long Branch as much as I possibly could and sell it to my bosses in New York as usually, usually a shining example on the Jersey Shore. Your redevelopment, for example, your school system, for example. There are many things that I've done here. I remember doing a story or two on your DPW and there's snow removal efforts for a snow storm that we probably didn't get but that's a whole another story. All I can say is go green wave, go. That's how I feel about Long Branch. In my first home, Momoth Beach right next door. in past years we have been, and I'm proud to say this, on the cutting edge of environmental action to protect ourselves, especially against toxic plastic pollution, which unfortunately now is everywhere. We have passed a skip the stuff ordinance. I think that's a prime example of what we've done, where, for example, if you're not familiar with skip the stuff, all you have to do is a customer is ask for it. A business, a restaurant where you go to get your takeout food would be prohibited from automatically putting it in, but they could have a sign saying, just ask for it. Ask for your plastic utensils. That's all they have to do. It's a very simple ordinance. And clean water action, which is a major backer of this effort, did a survey in Redbank where they passed it about a year ago. The survey just came out in the past couple of weeks. The showed restaurants there have reduced their handing out of plastic utensils by 94% which makes sense. In other words, only about 6% of their customers actually asked for it. They're not finding a revolt from customers who say, where are my plastic spoons? By the way, if anybody wants plastic spoon, I have an extra one here. Many of you probably have many extra ones in your kitchen drawer, just ask your spouses if they can find them and I'm sure they'll do that for you. So this is something that saves businesses money and I'm sure you feel the heat from time to time from some of your businesses about taxes or something else and you can go out to them with an ordinance like this and say we're going to save you money. Red Bank they saved 94% of their plastic utensil purchases. It may be only a few thousand dollars, but for a restaurant, a few thousand dollars is a lot of money, always has been. Are you aware that we already have that order? You do have skipped the stuff. Sure, section 111-6. I was not aware, and I congratulate you. That's right, you can only provide a single use plastic straw, the one expressed in requested by a customer and it applies to utensils too. Excellent. Then I applaud you for that and I apologize for my ignorance on that. We'll think we'll look at it and see if we can make it better. Thank you. ours also includes condiments for example. Oh, that's interesting. catch up packets, soy sauce packets. And by the way, I frequent a lot of the restaurants for take out here as well. I have to say, I think Mingying is one of the, if not the best Chinese restaurant, at least the best Chinese restaurant that I've encountered on the Jersey Shore. Speaking of plastic spoons, you know that the equivalent of a plastic spoon is in your brain. That's the latest research now, just like that. It's inside me. So this is something else we've done that I would encourage you to look at. And matter of fact, I'm going to meet with a couple of people here in Longbranch later this week to talk about it. And that is a construction, containment, dust ordinance. When you table saw PVC piping, five minutes or four. Five minutes. Yeah, five minutes of what you do. I would encourage you to look at that. And one other thing I would also say is look at supporting EPR or packaging reduction ordinances. You will save money with that from tipping fees and the packaging industry having to send money to you to hallway your trash. So I would encourage you on all that. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Thompson. Okay. Good evening, Councilmembers. My name is Nick Ziegler, a sports writer for a sports illustrated, covering MLB, a full-time resident here in Long Branch. We have on 52, Steve and your avenue, east of Ocean Boulevard, a section of the road that dead ends on the beach, where seven are present in the Park and Long Branch beach meet. Here to raise a concern, it's been growing amongst our neighbors in the section of Long Branch. While we understand that the parking permit regulations that were introduced a couple years ago do not guarantee any party parking spot, the limited parking availability on our block has become a concern. Currently there are 14 parking spots for 15 houses with two houses currently being in development. As you can expect these are large family homes, four or five bedrooms each, a lot of people share. And most people have two to four vehicles with that amount of people there. The ratio of spots that vehicles is creating a daily struggle in the months where the parking permit regulations are in effect, which is currently from May to September 30th. However, the issue kind of goes beyond the shores of parking that we have. Many non-residents, particularly those visiting the beach, frequently parked legally in these spots further making the problem exaggerated. Unfortunately many of these non-paramet, non-permanent holding vehicles are not ticketed due to consistent police patrolling, which is understandable considering other priorities that we have in the long branch here. For those drivers that do receive tickets, it seems to just shrug it off and just keep that vehicle parked there for the rest of the day. Furthermore, when we're hanging out on the deck, we see people rip up the tickets and just throw them on the ground So you know this disregard for the rules not only frustrates us homeowners But also contributes to the already strained parking situation Our street has increasingly become a place where people park without consequence making it difficult for residents to find parking at any time of the day At the time of the purchase of our home these parking restrictions in place. The regulations have really negatively impacted both me and our immediate neighbor to our left at 54-seview. We are in the unique circumstance we share driveway. We don't have a private driveway or garage for either one of our houses. Furthermore, you know, with the taxes being at about $25,000 a year, having paid for a parking permit It's kind of a little bit of an insult, I think I urge the board to consider some solutions that would address this issue came up with a few here Increased penalties for non permit parking towing vehicles that don't have a permit Exploring some options for permit holders to access the other side of the road, which is currently muted parking I think that would be really the best solution for us to kind of you know free up more spots There's more spots on muted parking than there is on resident parking for our side of the road You just want to ensure that our you know tax paying residents have a fair fair access to parking spots They need currently renters on the block are also allowed to have permits which really doesn't seem fair to full-time residents with households being limited to two permits per household currently. Also, just from a safety perspective that we've noticed, especially last year, it's been a lot more speeding and reckless driving on our block. It's kind of dead ends right at the end with a roundabout. You know, a ton of people walk there, bicycle riders, families, kids, dogs, kids whipping their cars around isn't necessarily the safest thing. I think everybody would welcome some sort of, you know, speed bumps to kind of adhere to that. I really appreciate the time. Thank you for letting me speak and address the matter. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. Good evening, Mayor. Council members and members of the public. My name is Susan McIaths and I live in Atlanta, Kylands, but I'm here representing food and water watch. On behalf of Food and Water Watch, I'm here to ask for your support. Food and Water Watch has brought together thousands of volunteers and more than two million supporters to fight the sustainable food, clean water, and a livable climate for all of us. The New Jersey Legislature will be considering the Superfund Act, S-3545 and A-4696, a bill that would force polluters to pay for the damage they caused for our environment. The bill has already been passed by the New Jersey State Senate Environment Committee and the New Jersey Assembly Environment Committee. It is similar to bills that have already been passed by the states of New York and Vermont. As a coastal community, you know better than most that Long Branch is vulnerable to the effects of climate change. If the Superfund Act is passed, any municipality in need of climate change adaptation and resilience projects would be able to apply for the funds raised by the Act. This is a great opportunity for Long Branch to support a bill that could provide funding at no cost to taxpayers. Will you please support this bill by resolution at your next council meeting? I have provided a summary document and a sample resolution. It's either in your packet or a man to has it. One or the other. They have it. Many thanks in advance for your anticipated support and I'm available to answer any questions now or at a later time. Thank you very much. Well definitely look into it and thank you by the way for sending that in advance because even just what you're saying helps us Understand it by having by having this so thank you to riffing. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you Good evening mayor council and additional members My name is Nick D'Ggo-Yelmo, 580 Pat Nav and a Long Ranch. I'm here with two concerns, two issues. The first one is the unrelenting and I'll never give up on it. And it's been voiced by a couple of people tonight regarding the ongoing issue with taxes. And if this poor man is paying $25,000 a year in taxes, God help him. The thing that irritates me is that I don't see any initiative. I don't see any plans. Anything to come forward to show what impact, what kind of provisions we might be making to try and look into reducing taxes. I know everything's going up, you've got to pay more for the police, you've got to pay more for education. I realize that and we're waiting for the budget, which hopefully will be done in the next month or two. But then when that comes out, it's gonna be after the fact. And then, well, we've got to pay for this, we've got to pay for 17% more electricity. Well, can't we still make some kind of provision, some kind of thought? What can we wind up doing? In my household, we've got a budget and we know exactly what we can spend. We don't wait till April 30th to say, hey, we've got that much money. So we'll have to increase the pay or taxes. It doesn't work. So please, all of you, your brand new on the council, the rest of you have been around. What kind of f***ing f***ing f***ing f***ing f***ing f's the case, well then perhaps, you know, there may be the need for budgetary cuts. Bad work, bad work, but it's gotta be done. The second issue is something that's of greatest concern. It's sad that long-grantches made the headlines. It, the thing that we're all clamoring for as we pay such high taxes or for safe streets. This month has been horrendous in this town. Everything from the murders to the stabings, I would like to know what is the council doing to address this. Let's have some transparency. I'd love to see what we can do to make our streets safe because they're not safe. And if you're going to get all these out of towners coming to these multi-million dollar places, they're not going to venture into Broadway. They're not going to go into the businesses. And for the group of you that are up on the panel that do not live in Long Ranch, I'd love to see you guys walk on Broadway because with the exception of Mr. Vera, none of you have the audacity or the courage to walk there. So it's of great concern, great, great, great concern. You know, we put out the welcome mat to people from out of state, from people from all over out of town. And what do they do? They buy these houses, the section 8 housing, and they don't even do a criminal background in putting them up into different places. I beg of all of you, please address this because what what's making the headlines is not attractive for long-range. It's not going to help us, and it doesn't do anything to improve the safety. And as we're looking for prosperity, that's not prosperity. That's fear. If people are living in fear, Mr. Rimonie, that's no way to live. You don't live in Long Branch, sir, do you? You don't live in Long Branch, do you? No, sorry, I don't. I live in Middle-Camp. Yes. I would love to have you walk with me on Broadway late at night. You won't do it. You're afraid. I'm actually not, but that's okay. I beg the differ, sir. Thank you. I'm not afraid either. Neither am I. What's that? I'm not afraid to walk. But I have... I have an exception, sir. I'm never accepting. I grew up here. How many murders were there this month? Two. I know there were two. And there were stabbings and there were other other related events that we don't have to go through the whole thing. No, it's just true. We don't. But you and I are not in the general realm. 5 minutes. Thanks, Nick. It's frightening. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, council members, Mayor, public. I'm Ennis Bangu. I live in Long Branch on Lippincote Avenue. I'm here to express my support for food and water watches proposal of passing a resolution about the superfund bill. This will really help New Jersey to address the problems that will be facing with respect to the climate crisis. I'm sure even if you're paying a fleeting attention to the news, you have seen the news at 14,000 houses just burned in California. Ashville in North Carolina was just trashed totally by by a hurricane, which you know, one would think it's a safe place because it's inland. And then after that there were all these tornadoes that killed, I don't know, 14 people or 27 people. I'm losing count of all these climate disasters. We really need to address this. And up the entities that cause these are these fossil fuel companies like Exxon, Shell, BP. So we need to get this money from them so that we can mitigate the risks of this climate crisis and protect our town. So I would urge you to take this seriously into consideration for doing this. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else? I need a motion to close the public participation portion of this meeting. We'll move. Second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? I will ask. But I'm clerk if there's any changes to the list of resolutions. No changes have been made. Thank you. We can take the list of resolutions and consent agenda. In a motion. So moved. Second. Roll call. Mr. Angler. Yes, Mr. Razzis. Yes, Mrs. Votis absent. I mean Mrs. Wittis absent Mr. Vera. Yes motion passed. Thank you. I need a motion to prove the list of applications. A pool of transfer of taxi medallion, number 27 from Muhammad Khan to Muhammad Ashmalua. We need a motion to move. Second. Roll call. Mr. Dangler. Yes. Mr. Rasses. Yes. Mrs. Wood is absent. Dr. Vot is absent. Mr. Vera. Yes. Motion passed. Miss Elayne is good at award him. Councilman Dangeron. I just want to thank everyone for coming out this evening. And please get home safely. God bless. Thank you. Councilman Rases. Thank you, President Vera. I'd like to thank everyone for coming out this evening. It's always nice to hear everyone's concerns. Please stay safe and have a nice evening. Thank you, Councilman Rases. May it belong? Thank you, Councilman President. I'd like to thank everybody for being here this evening. Thank you for your comments. There's three upcoming events. I just want to mention we have the Burla Project is our next exhibit at the Long Branch Arts and Cultural Center It's the exhibit takes Burla Pag's which are being donated by Rook Coffee And then they're transformed into art by many of our local artists in the community so the reception night is April 8 Please go on to our website to find out more information about that. I also want to mention that their senior center of classical evening of opera songs and piano will be happening at the center on April 22nd. That's at 6 p.m. This is a free event and all are welcome to attend. And finally, please save the date. The disability or third annual disability resource fail is set for May 3rd from 12 to 2 p.m. Also at the new senior center. Join us for resources, music, games and more. Thank you and have a great week. Thank you, Mayor Palon. I also want to say good evening and thank you for showing up. Thank you for coming tonight and Nick going back to the safety. We take safety seriously in Longbranch. We have our public safety director here, Mr. Brown. And now you can talk to him after the meeting. You're welcome to talk to him. Safety is a big thing here. And we know things happen. We know a lot of times you don't have control. We have plenty of police officers out there. You know I walk the streets a a lot. And I know, so we do take safety seriously here. And Mr. Brown will tell you that. And thanks for coming down and supporting us. And we'll take a look at that and looking to it. With that, I want to say good night. Thank you. I need a motion to close. Second. All in favor? Aye. The close. Thank you. We can come.