Happy New Year Bradley Beach! I have taken a much-needed refresh from Bradley Beach politics. After last night's meeting, I wanted to recap, as I continue learning my way through municipal government. Is the New Year when we pass Go and collect $200?
Last night the council meeting began at 6 pm, earlier than normal because we had a postponed meeting from earlier in the month for not being noticed to the public on time. (48-hour notice) There are statutes and ordinances which protect the public and give us time to plan accordingly. It is beneficial, especially for last night's meeting because it was doubled up, but it helps to have time to go through the agenda. If you visit the borough website and click on the council meeting date, you can then review everything that will be discussed and or voted on. The paper agenda we are given at the actual council meeting is only a simplified list of topics. However, the clickable area on the website is where all the information is so you can read through and prepare for such topics.
Upon arriving at last night's meeting, all of the seats had a piece of paper laying on them. This paper was a commitment statement announcement that our council is willing to work together. Given the intensity of 2022, it was refreshing, although a bit elementary in my opinion, to see this statement handed to the public as if I don't already expect my elected officials to act like respectful adults. Nonetheless, it was constructive and the Mayor did tell me last March during my personal meeting with him that his daughter told him to be more positive and maybe he should try it. So seeing this type of announcement is very generous to the public and I do look forward to the effort...
A few topics I would like to touch on from the meeting, are the budget, green spot charging stations, the bills list, the Biase center roof repair, and the professionals.
Last year, the budget situation is what led me to become way more involved with the administrative happenings of Bradley Beach. I was not happy to hear that our council does not have a complete budget to begin reviewing yet. They were supposed to have it earlier this month. This is starting as an exact repeat of last year. They did however all agree to dates of completion and discussion and so forth and it sounded like the preliminary workings of the budget were just given to the council this week. (Although we don't know if those are even accurate numbers since it is incomplete). Hopefully, we won't be dealing with another $300,000 game of Clue.
Next are the Greenspot charging stations. Last month we were presented with some information about these charging stations. I will simplify to say the majority of the public is very much against these for several reasons.
they will be taking up parking spots.
there will be advertisements on them.
they are slow chargers so they require a car there for 8-10 hours for a full charge.
no commitment to upgrade to new technology.
This meeting's agenda included a resolution AND a contract to be voted on for this company!! What in the what!! It's as if we had a Minute to Win it! December offered a presentation. Last night the public spoke out against them and why would we have a contract ready to be voted on??? There were plenty of questions to be addressed here. Some questions from December also included if they could be fast-charge stations. How much money would we make from it, if any? Is this more for visitors versus residents? And would these visitors be parked in that spot all day charging? (Makes very little sense to me). If I owned an electric vehicle and was headed to the beach from somewhere else, I would be sure to have my car charged up. This plan seems very rushed and poorly thought out. The online reviews from Asbury Park are not good regarding these charging stations. In addition, we are a totally different demographic than Asbury park. Let's not become too many people in high buildings, blocking sunlight, with very few parking spaces. (Thank goodness for no hotels and motels) 🙂.
The bills list. This is always interesting because unless you keep on top of it you really don't understand it. We do have a resident in town who does bring it up often and it really has begun to raise an eyebrow for me. Even if we are talking $100 for a line item, over time, if you follow along, you begin to question how many little things start to add up and also a lot of WHYS AND HOWS? I implore other residents to begin skimming through the bills list. Sometimes you may think you see a double charge you've seen already or wonder why something that you would have paid about $80 for just happens to cost our taxes $600?? Many things make sense of course for the day-to-day functions of running a town but many others really do make you wonder if it is smart spending. Not much different than the game of LIFE. Councilman Weber brought up an example of a finance charge for something maybe not having been paid on time. Another example is that it cost $240.25 to overnight (very lightweight) beach badges. Was this because they didn't get them done on time for when they were about to be available for sale? Was the designer behind on work? Was it just forgotten? Will we just be told that the Price is Right?
Next, we move to the Lincoln Logs discussion of the Biase Center roof repair of approximately $163,000. There were many questions on this one from the public and the council as well. Why only this option with a warranty less than other options? Can we construct it to a peaked roof and even put solar panels on it? Can we create more space altogether for the seniors to get their space back? If a flat roof is such an issue and so expensive, why don't we change that?
One of the Mayor's consistent statements was that "we want to manage our assets". He also mentioned we would want to treat a leaky roof the way we would our home. So hmmmmm, the Lareine church (although I am over that conversation) was a huge asset and was left to be very much destroyed by its leaking roof. Many residents were ignored regarding tarping or temporarily fixing that roof to protect an asset. So again, regardless of the property I am mentioning, that is quite a contradiction. Here is a small clip below regarding this topic from last night's meeting.
Lastly, the professionals' list. I have recently begun understanding how this goes. Every new year the council votes on our list of professionals. (Not employees) These are people like lawyers we hire, engineers, etc. For some tidbits that helped me understand how this works; we had to hire an additional OPRA attorney besides our most common Borough attorney because we were inundated with the Lyin' Larry debacle of emails that we had to pay an additional person to accomplish that very expensive task. Therefore, our council gets to decide if we want to rehire this professional or not.
Another tidbit of information; we had the canceled meeting earlier this month, so our council had an additional two weeks to discuss professionals. Now, we know they aren't going to agree on every professional 100%, of course, so they have to work together for the BEST FOR BRADLEY BEACH right? I must say I was disappointed to have a good handful of this list tabled (postponed till the next meeting). With an extra two weeks for the Mayor and council to work on this and the extra time the residents sat through last night, this sounds like Let's Make a Deal or NO DEAL at all according to the Mayor. What this screams to me is that just maybe it appears as though they want to work together for the betterment of our town, but what is really happening when they aren't sitting in front of the public?? After hearing the Mayor's response to a resident which I have shared below in a clip, I think we all know what is going on here. I am not impressed with playing pretend out in the public, when perhaps behind closed doors is Donkey Kong. King Me, or I Dare You could lead us right into Jeopardy.
May I phone a friend, because this government is NOT THE GAME of LIFE. I am ready for the taxpayers to be the millionaires. Can we the Bradley Beach residents please stand up to become American Gladiators, and together ride the Wheel of Fortune? I Double Dare everyone to explore this Physical Challenge with me.
See you in the Sand...Bradley Beach Survivor!
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