Borough Council

COUNCIL MEETING MINUTES OF THE SHARON HILL BOROUGH COUNCIL JULY 11, 2019 @ 7:00PM Meeting called to order President Oliver Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag Roll Call: Roll call was answer as follows: Present: Mrs. Booker, Mrs. Bedford-Dean, President Oliver, Mayor Dunfee (absent), Messrs., Green (absent), Finnegan, Felder (absent), Mr. Martinez and Mr. Smith. Mrs. Dean Mr. Felder said that he was coming so he might be running late. Mr. Smith yes I think Hykeem is running late to. President Oliver has anyone read the minutes? Mr. Martinez I have. Mr. Finnegan I haven’t had time to read them. President Oliver with that being seen I’m going to table the minutes until next month. Everyone please review the minutes so they can be approved next month. With that being seen we will move onto public comments. PUBLIC COMMENTS-3 minute limit Kate Smith 1019 Coates St. The 4th of July was a really enjoyable day. Thank you to everybody for what they did. President Oliver thank you. I wish that the weather could have been a little more cooperative. Kate Smith 1019 Coates St. We still had a good time. President Oliver some of us belly flopped and realized we couldn’t flop so we will see what happens next year. Kate Smith 1019 Coates St. We still had a good time. President Oliver anyone else? No other public comments being seen we will move on to committee reports. Councilperson Finnegan. Mr. Finnegan I don’t actually have a library report this month because the librarian is on an assignment. I do have one question. I have a concern about the deck. Not the deck itself but it looks like a trip hazard to me. Are we putting a rail around that or something because I mean we have had people trip on the steps here and we have been sued so. Mrs. Dean we are not finished but it has been raining so… Mr., Finnegan I mean there is more to it then? Mrs. Dean it’s more to it. Mr. Finnegan ok thank you that would be my question. I also have something under other business so… President Oliver ok. That is not related to your reports? Mr. Finnegan no it’s not related to my report. President Oliver. Councilperson Martinez… Mr. Martinez unfortunately I don’t have a fire report or a police chief report but I do have the training report that was mentioned at last month’s meeting about the in house safety training that the fire fighters… Thank you Councilwoman Booker for this information. I’m going to go ahead and read it. See attached: President Oliver any questions for Mr. Martinez? I would like the record to reflect that Councilperson Felder has made it. With that being seen Vice President Dean do you have anything you want to report? Mrs. Dean Personnel? President Oliver ok. Councilperson Felder are you ready to o your report or should we come back? Mrs. Booker gave the SHACC report. Mona can you get some of the flyers for me please, Ms. Petty sure. Mrs. Booker thank you. I am happy to give my report. I’d like to give an update to the things that the Sharon Hill Art and Culture Commission has done to date here at our halfway point because this is July so up to July we had our vision board in January. Dancercise, we had midweek palates, we had cinema night where we showed a double feature of African American films that were made between the 1920’s and the 1950’s. We had a rain stick making class where we made rain sticks. We had a spring forward paint night which is equivalent to the paint with a twist and of course we had our annual make and takes for the children where we make Mother’s Day and Father’s Day gifts for our parents. All of these events are absolutely free for Sharon Hill residents and we want to continue to provide art and cultural events to enhance the art and culture for our community. Our big event is in September and I am happy to say that we have been picked up by the Delaware County Art Consortium who is going to help us with the advertising and also help us to promote the event and that is our 4th annual afternoon of free Jazz and Art in the Park and that is going to be Saturday September the 21st. We will have vendors, live jazz, fine art, a youth pavilion, face painters and again all of these things are absolutely free for our Sharon Hill residents and we hope you will join us. This is a save the date and there will be more information on who the jazz band will be and anyone who is interested in being a vendor please let someone from the Art and Culture Commission know. That is the end of my report and I just encourage anyone who is interested in joining the Art and Culture Commission or anyone who has ideas about some things that you would like to do concerning art and culture please let us know because we are always open for suggestions because again this is for our community. President Oliver asked if there were any questions for Councilperson Booker. Thank you. Councilperson Felder? Mr. Felder read the highway/sanitation and code report see attached: President Oliver read the treasurers report see attached: Motion to accept the treasurers report made by Mrs. Booker second by Mr. Martinez. Any questions on the treasurers report? All in favor? Opposed? Motion carries 6-0. President Oliver asked for a motion to approve the bills totaling $195,843.83. See attached: Motion made by Mrs. Dean second by Mr. Finnegan. Any questions on the motion? Mrs. Booker asked a question on page 4. What is Toshiba Financial Services? Mr. Smith that is our copy machines. Mrs. Booker can you put that in the references next time. Mr. Smith it is. Mrs. Booker Grand Turk Equipment? Mr. Smith that is parts for the street sweeper. Mrs. Booker for the new sweeper? Mr. Smith yes. Mrs. Booker for the new sweeper? Mr. Smith yes it needed to get an inspection done and we needed another small attachment. Mr. Turner I couldn’t hear. She said something about a sweeper? Resident Oliver yes. Mr. Turner that little thing that we just bought? Mr. Smith yes it needed an inspection and make sure that the diagnostics were running to make sure the computerization on board was synced correctly. After it gets here we run it for a day or 2 and then they come back. The company that does this work is not the company that sold it to us so that is why we had to pay this. Mrs. Booker the lock for the bathroom was $284?? Mrs. Dean Yes. President Oliver what page? Mrs. Booker page 1. Mrs. Dean the library lock. Mr. Smith I think that is a misprint. We actually had work done on a key fob on the back door that was not working correctly. Mrs. Booker that is not for a bathroom… Mr. Smith no we had to have work done on the back door of the library. Mrs. Booker what is the $11k for the Delaware County Solid Waste? Mr. Smith that is our tipping fees dump charge. Mrs. Booker ok. Page 3 municipal supplies? It says sign channels? Mr. Smith yes they are the stands that we put the sign on that say no parking and do not enter… Mrs. Booker oh ok. DCIU? Mr. Smith that is the health insurance trust. Mrs. Smith ok. Mrs. Booker that’s all thank you. Mr. Felder I have a question. President Oliver page please. Mr. Felder it’s about the sweeper. If it is brand new and it’s supposed to be under warranty why are we paying for extra services? Mr. Smith we needed to get the computer… It has an on board computer and the suggest that we bring it out here and we run it for a couple of days and we had Grand Turk come out and make sure that all of that is synched up correctly and with the mechanism. President Oliver so he is saying that the computer software that we purchased the sweeper from if I am hearing right the company doesn’t update the software. We had to have a software company run a diagnostic to update the software. Mr. Felder ok now I understand. Mr. Smith we ran it for 3-4 days. We had these guys come out and make sure it was ok. The company that we purchased it from also came out and gave it the once over as well. Mrs. Booker so who maintains that computer. Mr. Smith Grand Turk. Mrs. Booker is that the company that sold it to us or is that a vendor? I just want to be clear. Mr. Smith if anything goes wrong with it, it is under warranty but the company that sells it does not do the work on the computer. Mrs. Booker so we have to outsource to get the computer work done. Mr. Smith just the initial inspection. If anything goes down on the machine it is under warranty. Mrs. Booker ok. Mr. Smith this initial piece needed to be done when we got the software. Hopefully it will be a onetime deal. President Oliver any other questions? Mr. Felder I have a question but it don’t pertain to an agenda item but it does pertain to the fire that took place at the Sonoco refinery. President Oliver ok so we will put that under other business. Mr. Felder ok. President Oliver all those in favor of paying the bills totaling $195,843.83 say I. Opposed? Motion carries 6-0. That is all I have. Does anyone have the police chief’s report? Borough Managers report. Mr. Smith We had a request for a block party last month and I know that the police chief has done some leg work on that and the application has been re-submitted and some of you have responded via email. I don’t know if you want to approve that tonight. I don’t have any issue with it. It seems like from the police chief’s email that he didn’t have an issue with it. Mrs. Booker I make a motion that we approve the block party on the 200 block of Laurel Rd. Mrs. Dean second. President Oliver we have a motion and a second. Any questions on the motion? All in favor? Opposed? Motion carries 6-0. Mrs. Booker what is the date of that? Mr. Smith the 27th. Mrs. Booker and is there a rain date? Mrs. Turner 200 Laurel. No if it rains we are not having it. This is the rain date. Mr. Smith the 27th from 2-7pm. Mrs. Booker is it just for the people on the block? Mr. Turner if you want to come bring money. Laughter President Oliver you have another motion? Mr. Smith yes the one item that was left over from last month’s meeting was the SPCA agreement. I don’t know if we want to try and re-visit that. Mrs. Booker I think we should re-visit that. President Oliver I need a motion to approve the SPCA contract. Mrs. Booker I make a motion that we approve the SPCA contract. President Oliver do we have a second? Mr. Finnegan second. President Oliver we have a motion and a second. Questions on the contract for the SPCA? Mr. Oliver explained the contract to the public. Mrs. Dean so my question is… Mrs. Booker can you speak up people can’t hear you. Mrs. Dean my question was if we do this contract you are telling me that it end and then we are going to pick it up or kill the dog or… President Oliver they could come out at a rate a set rate to take the animal. Mrs. Dean just take the animal and not do… President Oliver just take the animal. If we have foxes running around right now we call the SPCA they can’t do anything with the foxes. Our police department can’t do anything. Under the contract that we have you call the police and they come and they take all the animals. Mr. Martinez from my understanding if there is a stray animal and it’s micro-chipped they have the apparatus to see if it is micro chipped and get the animal back to its rightful owner. It’s also a safety issue with the residence if you have a rabid dog running around attacking people that is another issue. If you don’t have that in place then there is no way to get rid of it physically yourself other than putting yourself in danger so I think it’s something that we need to look into. Mr. Smith they do make an effort to return animals if they are micro chipped. They do make an effort to do that. President Oliver with no further questions. All in favor? Opposed? Motion carries 6-0. Mr. Smith a couple of quick items. We had submitted a couple of applications for a CDGB funding. We did not get any of those applications approved. We can take another shot at that in the 2020 round. WE have also gotten as I’ve mentioned I believe at the May meeting we had a gentleman come to the meeting wanting to have a Gospel concert at Memorial Park. He has come back with all the requisite paperwork and the fee involved and I know a conversation that I had with Mr. Oliver earlier I’m going to discuss it with Chief Herron to see if there are any security concerns to see if there is anything that he has so we can discuss it with the gentleman and his church. The concert is scheduled for August 24th so I think if we approve it at our August 8th meeting it will be ok but in the interim I will contact all via email of what the chief says and the conversation with the gentleman. The August 24th date will not interfere with the SHACC event which is the 3rd Saturday. Mrs. Booker I have some concerns because this is… I thought we were going to stay away from religious kinds of… President Oliver How? How can you do that? Mrs. Booker how can you do that? Mrs. Dean it’s a permit to use it right? President Oliver yes. Mrs. Dean ok it’s a permit to use the park so anyone who puts in a permit to use the park has to state what it is but we can’t say because it’s religious you can’t have it. Mrs. Booker no… no… no… I’m not saying that so we are actually just renting the space out. President Oliver yes. Mrs. Booker ok I just wanted to be clear. I wasn’t clear on that. Mr. Smith we are just letting them use the park. President Oliver and the park will still be open to the kids. They can’t close the park because it’s a public park. Mr. Smith I’ll revisit that and I’ll bring it back to you all in the next week or so and a couple of other things to keep in mind going forward. At next month’s meeting I would put it out there that we can approve the 2019 sewer relining program and we should also start thinking about the 2020 budget because we are in the middle of July now so we should begin discussing that in August so what I would like to do is have department heads get back to us by the end of August with budget requests so we can start putting that together the beginning of September. President Oliver you can send that out now because that will give them a little bit more time to prepare and get it done. I was thinking of getting it out the end of July and give them a month to get back. President Oliver the department heads that are here now you heard so you can start working on it. Mr. Smith that is my report. President Oliver before I go to the solicitor I just want to remind everybody that we had an executive session last week to discuss a personnel matter and we will have one next Tuesday for the same reason to discuss a personnel matter. Mr. Schleigh I do not have an official report tonight Mr. President but I so have good welfare. I picked up a copy of the Delco Times last month and there was a story that featured your own officer Vinny Port and some charitable causes that he was involved in I’m not sure if you knew about that so I just wanted to make sure that everyone was aware. That’s the only thing I have to say. Mrs. Dean for the executive session we met Monday or Tuesday? Mr. Finnegan it was Tuesday. Mrs. Dean I thought it was Tuesday at 7pm right? Mr. Finnegan yes. Mrs. Dean it was the 18th right? Mr. Finnegan yes. Mr. Smith it was July 2nd and the next meeting is the 16th. President Oliver ok so to set the record straight we had an executive meeting on July 2nd at 7pm to discuss a personnel issue and then we will have another executive meeting on the 16th for the same reason. Mrs. Dean a personnel matter. President Oliver a personnel matter. Does anyone have any questions for the solicitor? None being seen. OTHER BUSINESS Mr. Felder I had sent out information of my concern of the ARCO refinery fire to all members of council and the solicitor and everyone else that sits here. My concern is that even though they reported the wind direction was going in the area of Philadelphia Southeast. When I know you have those type of implosions and chemicals go up in the air when it lands it saturates the earth and it could be weeks later and the water movement can come in our direction at any time. We have been having a lot of rain. We have been having all types of things with the weather and my concern is those pollutants and chemicals and carcinogenic and I would like to see more water testing and air testing for our residents because I don’t want nothing to happen 10-20 years from now and we all got cancer and we are trying to trace it back. I would at least like to have our records set that we did our due diligence and did some testing of our living area so that we can ward things off and that if a company has to be sued for what they did to our environment we will have something to prove it. Mrs. Booker may I comment on that? President Oliver yes. Mrs. Booker the Environmental Protection Agency does that and that would be under remediation. You can certainly contact them. I use to work in remediation and that’s why I know that. You can definitely contact the EPA. They will send somebody out to do the sampling and we do not have to pay based on the fact that it was done at an area that is near here and they would be able to make a determination and a public finding and certainly if there was any wrong doing they would create a superfund where they would have to pay and none of that would be on the burden of the tax payers that would be on the state. Mr. Felder well I would like to see something done on a periodic basis because I know the long term effects of things being in the military. I put 20 years in. I know things crop up later on down the line. President Oliver ok so Mr. Smith can you reach out to the EPA and see what testing they are doing and also there has to be meetings involving Delaware County regarding that refinery. Can we see what those meeting are? Mrs. Booker probably with the county. President Oliver yes there has to be. Mr. Smith I think most of the activity is happening within the city of Philadelphia. President Oliver I read that but still it’s a valid point. Mr. Smith no I’ll contact the EPA. Mrs. Dean but you did send a report out. It was sent to you about the findings. It was sent to all of us right? Mr. Smith and there is also in the Phila Inquirer the last couple of weeks there has been extensive reporting done on that fire and it’s not just that fire. That refinery has literally been an environmental disaster for a number of years. The city of Philadelphia… Mrs. Booker they have 18 findings. Mr. Smith exactly the city of Philadelphia has been asking the refinery to shut down for the last 30-35 years. Sonoco actually sold it 10 years ago because they did not want to pay for the remediation. Mrs. Booker and they have a superfund for millions of dollars. Mr. Smith I will reach out to both the state and the EPA. President Oliver it’s one of those catch 22. There are people in the area that don’t want it and now that they are closing down you have the ones fighting against the closing because of the people that work there. Mr., Smith I will look into it and get back to you. President Oliver thank you. Mr. Finnegan tendered his resignation effective August 1, 2019. See attached: President Oliver asked for a motion to accept Mr. Finnegan’s resignation. Motion made by Mrs. Booker with regret second by Mr. Martinez also with regrets. President Oliver any questions on the resignation? All in favor? Opposed? Motion passes 6-0. Applause President Oliver thank you Mr. Finnegan for all your service to council over the years that you served as well as other rolls that you served in the community. Mr. Finnegan. Thank you so much. Mrs. Booker I make a motion that we fill… I’m making a motion… President Oliver ok. Mrs. Booker that we immediately fill the position that has been vacated. President Oliver it will not be vacated until August 1, 2019. Mrs. Booker on the date that it is vacated August the 1st. with Tanya Cavaliere. Mrs. Dean the incoming councilperson. Mr. Schleigh you can’t fill it until it’s vacant. I know what you are saying. Mrs. Booker I’m just trying to be proactive so we can… President Oliver we can’t swear anyone in until August so what I’m going to do is charge council with thinking about selecting the next councilperson to fill the seat until January sign and date councilperson elect. We as council have 45 days to fill the position. In the mean time we can talk about amongst council and select that person and then come the August 8th meeting we can swear in the new council member. Do I have to call a meeting? Mr. Schleigh you can call a special meeting if you want to. I’m not sure you can appoint until it’s actually vacant. You can definitely call a meeting on the 2nd for appointment and swearing in. President Oliver I am polling council right now. Do you want to have a special meeting on the 2nd to swear in the new…? To appoint the new council… Mrs. Booker on a Friday? Mr. Schleigh if you are worried about a quorum you open the meeting and then do the appointment before you conduct business. Mrs. Dean ok. Mr. Schleigh once the vacancy id effective your quorum number shrinks. Mr. Smith the next meeting is on the 8th. If you want to do it on the 2nd that’s fine. Mrs. Booker we can’t do it on the 2nd can we? Mr. Schleigh you can hold a special meeting. Mrs. Booker ok so why don’t we do it that Monday. Because Friday is just… President Oliver well if we are going to do it Monday we might as well just wait until the meeting. The meeting is 3 days later. Mrs. Booker ok because if this… That Friday I don’t think I can make it. President Oliver that’s fine we can just do the appointment at the meeting. I don’t see anything… Unless something urgent happens that we have to sit here within that 5 days. Other business anyone else? Mr. Martinez read the Fire Chief’s report see attached: President Oliver any questions for Councilperson Martinez? Councilperson Finnegan can you and your family be here at the August 8th council meeting? M. Finnegan yes. President Oliver with no other business we will move to public comments. PUBLIC COMMENTS -3 minute limit Chuck Burk 211 High St speaking as the Fire Chief. I heard your comments about that fire. I got up as soon as that fire call came in and heard it go from a 2nd alarm to a 3rd alarm but talking about problems. I don’t know if you are aware of it but we got a major problem right here with Heller’s Dump. It’s a superfund site. It has been there for years and years and years and you want to talk about a major problem just go look at the history. Google Heller’s Dump and find out the reports on that. There are drums of dead monkeys and everything else back in there. It’s interesting. We use to fight tons of fires back there it use to be a typical land fill site many years ago and there is anything and everything back there. If you want to talk about something to worry about that’s something to worry about right in our back yard but you talk about that incident in Philadelphia if that would have been a major release of hydrochloric acid which is what they were sweating out that would have been a whole different ball game because anywhere from 5-7 miles as the crow flies that would have been a problem. A major incident. What we saw mostly burning and that flame was butane. That’s what you see in that tank. It burns off the product but if it would have gotten into the hydrosulfide which is their process of what they do we would have had a major… major issue. Thank God that didn’t happen so at this point I just want to let you know about the problem we have right here in our back yard. The EPA is down there all the time and the last I hears it was actually the rubber membrane that is down in that system is actually starting to fail but they could probably tell you a lot more about it than me but that mound down there if you ever go down there it’s 5-6 stories high it’s all trash. Back in those days anything got buried and believe me there was stuff from a lot of local businesses in the area and I’m not even going to mention names but I know that’s down there. Just google Heller’s Dump Landfill site in Darby Twp. you will find it very interesting. We had a fire down there a couple of years ago and I was down at my house in Cape May and I was listening to some of the guys and I’m hearing reports of them seeing yellow smoke, blue smoke. That ain’t a good thing. That’s not normal. Fire is a combustion the guys know what’s burning. There was a lot of history all back by 84th St. I guess it’s called Eastwick the cancer rate back in the older news with newborns was through the roof. Kids being born missing fingers and stuff like that. It’s a major site and I always thought back about a lot of guys I fought fires with down there in Darby Twp. and stuff that probably died of cancer and nobody ever linked it to that place. That was before when we did a lot of that stuff but that was something major right in our back yard. Mr. Felder can you spell the name of that company for me. Chief Burk its Heller’s Dump. Just google it you will find a lot of information about it. It has been closed for quite a few years. Every once in a while you will see the EPA go back in there. They are doing ground water testing and other testing. Mr. Felder the residue is still there and they closed? Chief Burk excuse me Sir. Mr. Felder the residue from those catastrophes are still there? President Oliver it was a dump yes. Chief Burk I’m sure. That stuff usually doesn’t go away. There was a lot of pesticides, herbicides even what we use around our home. That stuff doesn’t dissipate. Especially places that have a lot of problems with incest and stuff. Whether we spray it on baseboards it’s a pesticide. It’s ok when it’s sitting there by itself but when you have a fire like a house fore we go in there and we do what we call an overhaul and we are not wearing our masks and that stuff heats up now it becomes a vapor state and we are inhaling all that stuff. Also I’m not sure if you are aware we had a fire at 64 Clifton Ave last week also. Thank God everyone got out it was about 3:15am. I have been dealing with them and the fire investigation. That’s all I have. I want to thank Vice President of Council and Mr. Martinez for being up at the bad accident we had today. You got to see the guys working. Thank you. President Oliver any other public comments? Pat Rumaker 335 Greenwood Rd. This may have been discussed last month I wasn’t here. Why was 4th of July changed to Saturday? President Oliver we changed 4th of July like 5 years ago now because when we started the fireworks it was an additional $10k more to have the fireworks on the 4th of July so we move it to where it was more affordable. Pat Rumaker 335 Greenwood Rd. I know she said it was very nice where I was sitting at in the parade if it weren’t for the fire trucks the parade wouldn’t have lasted 5 minutes. President Oliver it wouldn’t have. This year everybody dropped out of it. Pat Rumaker 335 Greenwood Rd. and the only council people I saw was Keith and Mike Finnegan and I don’t know now maybe others were there but I did not see them. President Oliver I don’t know where I was at then. Mr. Martinez said Mr. Felder was there as well. Pat Rumaker 335 Greenwood Rd. The Mayor wasn’t there and he is not here tonight. President Oliver ok. Pat Rumaker 335 Greenwood Rd. That’s not saying much. President Oliver ok but that’s why we moved the fireworks and when we had gotten here that morning based on the outlook of the rain there was a lot of no shows that were supposed to be in the parade due to various reasons concerned about the rain. Mrs. Booker I couldn’t be in the parade because my convertible wouldn’t go down and I normally drive my car in the parade but because it was not functioning properly that is why I wasn’t there. President Oliver we are not talking about that. We are talking about the people that we contracted. Mrs. Booker ok I thought she was talking about council. Kate Smith 1019 Coates St. The kids had a good time up there. President Oliver any other questions? Janet Holmes 124 Reese St. You are our president. President Oliver of council correct. Janet Holmes 124 Reese St. And anybody up here is supposed to respect you. President Oliver yes that is correct. Janet Holmes 124 Reese St. We have a recording secretary over there and nobody should come up sit down say present and get up and leave. Mrs. Dean. Who does that? Janet Holmes 124 Reese St. No one should be on the phone while the meeting is going on. She is hollering through the phone. President Oliver ok. Janet Holmes 124 Reese St. #3 I live at 124. I have a problem with the lady next door. You already know they cut the hole in there. It’s so much weeds on my fence it’s disgusting. Chris does something to them they don’t care. They don’t believe in authority. It’s their way or no way so I have been taking the fence down because the fence fell in my yard like this so I put cinder blocks. They put cinder blocks on my fence and now my fence is laying back so I’m trying to get that at about 95 inches out already so that is what I’m doing trying to clean my yard up. All of their stuff blows in my yard. Chris can tell you the grass was this high in my yard from next door? I have plastic on the ground so I don’t have grass in my yard. Another thing I don’t like is if someone back here is talking give them that respect. If one of y’all need to talk to each other write a note and pass a note around that is very ignorant when somebody is back here talking and you guys are talking up there. President Oliver. Up here? Are you done because your 3 minutes are up? Janet Holmes 124 Reese St. Ok President Oliver so now we are going to address some of the questions. According to what… Mrs. Dean let’s start with #1 was getting up. Who did that? President Oliver getting up. Mr. Turner can’t hear you. Mrs. Dean we are addressing her by 1, 2 and 3. I’m trying to figure out who got up and left after roll call. Janet Holmes 124 Reese St. YOU DID! Mrs. Dean no I didn’t! Never have! Janet Holmes 124 Reese St. I can see with my own two eyes as big as you are. Mrs. Dean Well you must need some glasses. Janet Holmes 124 Reese St. Yeah right. President Oliver as far as different council people getting up if the need happens where somebody has to come in… Mrs. Dean it never happened. President Oliver and give their report and leave because they have a conflict we would have already talked about that and we would have already knew and that person would have been excused. Now… Janet Holmes 124 Reese St. Well the audience should know what’s going on and we don’t. Mrs. Dean it never happened. President Oliver as for the phone people call… Pat Rumaker she went over there and got water. Mrs. Dean no… no SHE SAID LEAVE! Pat Rumaker she didn’t leave the room. She went and got water. President Oliver ok everybody about the phone… Mrs. Dean she said I left. I know I never did. President Oliver Council Vice President… About the phones people are allowed to call in for meetings to be ion the phone. That’s why we have our system set up that way with the poly com so if we are not available for whatever reason we can still call in and be a part of the meeting. Janet Holmes 124 Reese St. and holler through the phone? Mrs. Booker let me answer that. President Oliver the phone system may need to be upgraded from what y’all year because you are hearing it from this little speaker. You are not hearing from all the other speakers because it’s not connected into it so we can possibly look at getting an audio system that is more equipped for teleconferencing. Janet Holmes 124 Reese St. I have been to a million meetings in this placed and I ain’t never seen nobody put the phone down and talk. I never seen that as long as I have been here. Mrs. Dean ok you can address that and let her know that it is by law that I can call in so just so we can be transparent as to why I call in is because I was diagnosed with stage 3 and stage 4 cancer so I do Chemo treatments every 6 months. So I call from the hospital so I don’t where all this noise in the background and noise and yelling so I don’t know what she is talking about because I’m in the room it’s on mute. I hear what’s being said. I take it off mute because I am a dedicated person that is in this office even though I am going through what I am going through I still call in because I can by law. President Oliver as far as the weeds and stuff. Code is out there. Why didn’t we have it cut down and then it’s final and lien them like we do everything. Mr. McSween we have fined them President Oliver so we had it cut down and everything? Mr. McSween we have to cut it. They have fines. I have to go back. It’s just the way the system works is that once they cut it I have to start the process all over again. Mrs. Booker can you address that please. Mr. Smith we give citations and Chris takes them to district court after a certain number of days that we have to give the owner before we can abate an issue and if they don’t we send our abatement company out and we bill them and lien the property if they don’t pay and that is the process. That is the process not only for this particular property but quite a few others as well. Our contractor has been pretty active over the last few months. President Oliver any other public comments? Charles Pearson-Bey 339 Laurel Rd. I haven’t been here in quite a while but wen y’all repave the streets I know there were people that came out and looked at the area and seen what part of the streets that need to be repaved and not repaved how about all the ones who have all the cracks in the street that was never filled and the grass be coming up in it. Why didn’t they just do all of the street. The funds that was dedicated to that was taken away and used for something else and I’m like why. Now I talked to the person that day that it happened at 339 Laurel Rd. and they just say this is just the way it is. My second question is I know the sewer pipes around my area instead of replacing them y’all put some kind of coating inside of it but also when Steve Travers was a part of your council he promised that those sewers would be cleaned out a few times a year. This way it wouldn’t back up. The last time it backed up into my house and you guys said that you were going to do it and I haven’t seen anybody come out in a while to clean it. Are y’all doing it? Did you stop that? What’s going on? 3rd is why did we get a brand new Library and they are closing up earlier. The children get out of school at 3 and the library closes at 5. That only gives them a couple hours. It used to be open on days that they are not even open anymore. Why. President Oliver alright. Mrs. Dean I’ll answer that. Charles Pearson-Bey 339 Laurel Rd. Whenever I hate to sound prejudice but when our people move into certain neighborhoods things stop you know. President Oliver ok your 3 minutes are up. Mrs. Dean I will address that because we lack the staff to keep it open but we are in the process of hiring people to come back on stage. Actually we just hired 2 people Monday. 2 people just started on Monday so we are going to go back to the 7pm hours but you need staff to… because everyone that works for the library is part time we don’t have full time so we can’t be open enough hours so we have them stay for 7 hours anything over that you are full time and then you have to pay insurance and everyone at the library is part time so we have to get more staff because we couldn’t run everyone for 8 hours so to answer your question we just hired 2 people so we are trying to go back to 7pm President Oliver the sewer pipe clean out are we still… Mr. Smith yes in fact all the sewer cleaning has been done. We finished the entire borough about a month ago and we will be doing that annually and regularly as I mentioned earlier we are embarking on other sewer relining this year so that’s all being done. President Oliver now the paving of the street is a 2 part question because I need clarification. You said that we should be paving the street that is cracked and someone told you that the funds that we had for that was reallocated to something else. Who told you that and where did you get that from? Charles Pearson-Bey 339 Laurel Rd. I got it from… I got it from the borough the same date that they did my street when they were cutting it up and they pointed me over to… It was either the manager… Whoever I spoke to on the phone he was like we reallocated that to the trash trucks or some kind of vehicle y’all needed in the borough and I said what are you talking about? Mrs. Dean who said that borough hall? Charles Pearson-Bey 339 Laurel Rd. I’m not sure if you record the calls maybe you can go back and listen to the calls. President Oliver no we do not record. Mr. Smith last year we did not repave roads because we purchased the new dump truck and we used a chunk of liquid fuels money for that. One of the other reasons we have not repaved the roads in the last year or so is because AQUA and PECO have been in town doing a ton of work and they are the ones that are repaving the roads on Laurel, Greenwood, Poplar and that entire quadrant of town. President Oliver explain what liquid fuels pays for. Mr. Smith liquid fuel funds pay for street lighting, snow plowing, any equipment that is related to highway maintenance. WE can also use those funds for street light and traffic signals as well as road paving. President Oliver so his statement is part true part not. The way he said it because he said we was paving the streets but we couldn’t pave the streets because we used the funds for a truck. It wasn’t reallocated we used the funds up that we had in that account so we didn’t pave any streets as the borough manager said also that AQUA and PECO is laying pipes on streets so we try to work with them according to their street maps so we know what streets that they are doing and we will make the money stretch whenever we allocate for that project so when they tear it up they come back and pave and we do the blocks that they are not doing to make it a longer project because they will do it for us. Mrs. Booker anytime AQUA or PECO tears up the street they are responsible for repaving the street so what he is saying is that he is allowing them to do theirs so that we can allocate the money to the streets that they are not doing and that way all the streets are done. Mr. Felder I need some clarification. When they tear it up they don’t do the whole street they only patch or reconstruct what they tore up. They won’t do the other half. Gerard Turner 200 Laurel Rd. So why don’t we do the other half? President Oliver that’s what we do. When they do the street. When you see the whole street done that is us doing it with them. Gerard Turner 200 Laurel Rd. I haven’t seen a whole street done. Mrs. Dean Chester Pike. Gerard Turner 200 Laurel Rd. I mean there is one street done… President Oliver we just did all of these streets Sharon Ave. this street down here. Mrs. Dean and Chester Pike. Gerard Turner 200 Laurel Rd. Oh Sharon Ave did get done. Mrs. Dean and Chester Pike. Gerard Turner 200 Laurel Rd. Chester Pike is a highway that doesn’t count. That is not our money that’s the highway. Mr. Smith none of this is our money it’s all being paid for by AQUA and PECO. Gerard Turner 200 Laurel Rd. I was just saying our streets other than Sharon Ave. Tracey Turner 200 Laurel Rd. like the side streets are they going to get done? Mr. Smith the last repaving we did was in 2017. In 2018 and 2019 we chose not to do it because of all the other project that were going on in town. Gerard Turner 200 Laurel Rd. All the other projects? Mr. Smith PECO and AQUA. Gerard Turner 200 Laurel Rd. Ok you mean the ones they just did. Mr. Smith PECO and AQUA had that whole side of town tore up for 2-3 years so we have let them get that done, get the streets paved and all of those underground utilities by the grace of God should last for 30-40 years. Some of the underground utilities that were replaced were extremely unsafe. Especially the gas lines. That’s why we had them done. I have been here for 6 years now and PECO has been here the entire time. President Oliver other public comments? (Couldn’t hear the name) this question is actually for code. The property at 213 has construction debris behind their house. 213 Laurel has had construction debris behind their house. They tore the house apart and they are renovating it now it’s up for rent and like I said there is all kinds of concrete work out there. There is all kinds of wood. There is about 14-15 Philadelphia recycle bins filled with concrete and stones and you know the kids are out there playing in it. Mrs. Booker do they have a permit Chris? President Oliver hold on. All talking together President Oliver hold on let them finish. Now you can ask Bill what the details are on that. Are the trash men checking that? Mr. Smith yes. Mrs. Booker it’s an ongoing project. Do you check to make sure that there are smoke detectors in there? Ok because those things were going off for months while they are in there working and they never… My husband asked them if they were ever going to replace that and they laughed at him. Mr. Smith whether it’s a property for sale or for rent they will not get the U&O for the sale or the rental license until our list is completed from Chris or Chuck. Smoke detectors, Carbon monoxide you name it. The electrical system etc. President Oliver any other questions? Name and address Sir. Mr. Smith however id you see a neighbor doing work and you think it’s without a permit call her and let us know so we can check however we are as diligent as we can be. Gerard Turner 200 Laurel Rd. I did a lot of bitching the last meeting about the signs being put up and stuff. Thank you for putting them up finally. It’s been a while. 3 years. Mrs. Dean Sharon you put it up? Mrs. Booker no. Mrs. Dean oh ok. Gerard Turner 200 Laurel Rd. I always complain so I just want to say thank you. The next thing is the alley ways. We need help. Since you guys have been in office… We need help with the alley ways. The alley ways look like Philadelphia. I know you are going to say it’s the homeowner’s responsibility. Mrs. Booker it is. Gerard Turner 200 Laurel Rd. But I have bricks coming out of… When the alley way is like this that the bricks are coming up and we have to go around it in the alley way. Mrs. Booker call the police. Gerard Turner 200 Laurel Rd. Nooo. How in God’s creation he didn’t see that and I keep complaining about the alley way and you guys keep saying it’s our job. We have old folks on there that are disabled. There is no way we can get that tar from overhear to over here. I mean if I have to buy a truck and do it for my block but how do we get it leveled. How do we do that? We can’t do that. The old lady at the top of the block can’t do it. That is one thing let me go onto the next one. President Oliver you got another minute. Gerard Turner 200 Laurel Rd. At the top of the block of Laurel Rd. somebody just dropped a whole living room set right at the top of the block like they had no fear. We must start arresting people… I mean follow up by the police. Get cameras so we can see the license plates because they do it in our alley ways a lot. At least every 3 months and now they are doing it at the top of our block right at Chester Pike and Laurel Rd. If you guys ride by there you will see a couch beat up and flipped over. I’m asking for help that’s all. President Oliver can we get the furniture removed. Mr. Smith yes we will get the furniture removed. Shawn is nodding his head and we can also if this is becoming a prolific problem we can put surveillance cameras there. We have drop cameras that we can put. Gerard Turner 200 Laurel Rd. WE need that at the bottom of our block. That’s where it happens consistently. Mr. Smith we can put one on each end of the block. Gerard Turner 200 Laurel Rd. Ok you said cameras I couldn’t get signs up for watch the children. That took 3 years and you are talking about putting cameras up. Mr. Smith we already have them. President Oliver now as far as the driveway. I don’t know how… Mr. Smith I was going to mention that Upper Darby Twp. has just embarked on a program where they are repaving common driveways and Upper Darby is a heck of a lot bigger than us and they have more money than us however they have embarked on a program that I believe they are starting that program in the fall. I’ll be in touch with the Upper Darby Twp. officials to see how they came up with it. I know at one point they just pulled a chunk of money out of their budget to pay for it. I don’t know that we have that luxury for being our size but it’s something that Chris and I have probably discussed at least 10 times. Gerard Turner 200 Laurel Rd. I’m sorry we talked about this with the past president and he was going to just charge each house extra money in our taxes because I still pay school taxes and I vote for… Mrs. Booker so do we. Gerard Turner 200 Laurel Rd. and I don’t have kids in there. Mrs. Booker so do we. Gerard Turner 200 Laurel Rd. I care for the community. I’m asking you guys to care for us. I have been complaining for 10 years about that a… President Oliver so would you like us to look at the budget and put that in for everybody to pay for the common drives and then just add it into the budget and have everybody pay for it? Gerard Turner 200 Laurel Rd. Mr. President that is what Scott said he was going to do. President Oliver I’m asking that’s why I’m here. Gerard Turner 200 Laurel Rd. That would be ok. President Oliver we can talk about that at the budget process. Mrs. Booker that would require a vote from the community. President Oliver we will talk about this through the budget process. We can look at doing all the driveways. Just pave them all. Mrs. Dean that will be an increase. President Oliver that will be an increase but we can know what that number is so when we have the budget meetings everyone can be here to hear the issues. Gerard Turner 200 Laurel Rd. Only because it’s dangerous. President Oliver yes but that’s the point that you can make. That’s the fight that you need when we decide to increase the taxes to do this. Gerard Turner 200 Laurel Rd. Well then I need you guys to fight that fight for me and I’ll be here. President Oliver yes because we need the residents to ultimately… Gerard Turner 200 Laurel Rd. I got you. President Oliver ok can we get with them to have someone survey all the driveways. Mr. Smith I already know which ones are worse. President Oliver but if we are going to tax every resident then we have to do them all. Mr. Smith I understand. Gerard Turner 200 Laurel Rd. You can’t drive down Laurel Rd. President Oliver this is why we are going to have these meetings and publicize and talk about it. That is how we are going to figure out what goes where. Mrs. Dean what about the people that don’t have a driveway? President Oliver then everyone will be arguing. Tracey Turner 200 Laurel Rd. First I want to say thank you guys for approving the block party. Second we bought our house 11 years ago and we just found out that we need permits to park on the side of our house which I just want to make sure we everybody is on the same board. Mrs. Booker what are you talking about? Tracey Turner 200 Laurel Rd. We live on the end house so we have the parking on the side of the house is ours but there are signs up there that say permit parking only. We have never paid attention to it because nobody enforced it. We never had to have a permit so Attix told us that you need a permit to park here because we had problems with the spots because anyone that wants to park their parks there and you can’t do that so I was told to call the police station and I called and nobody knew what I was talking about. I called Ramona because they told me to call her and Ramona had no idea what I was talking about. Mr. Smith but Mike Attix knew. Tracey Turner 200 Laurel Rd. Yes he was the only one that knew so me and the Chief had a meeting and I just want to make sure that we are all on board that you have to have these permits because God forbid I call the cops and it’s him and he doesn’t have a permit he is not going to do nothing. Hold on if we have the permit… He is the only one who will pretty much… Mrs. Booker if the sign says… Tracey Turner 200 Laurel Rd. well listen the other cops will tow your car or ticket he gives you a choice tow it or ticket it. He is a little different so I just want to make sure that everybody is on the same board with knowing that you have to have a parking permit on the corner houses. Mr. Smith on those particular spots I did as the police chief to reach out to you. Tracey Turner 200 Laurel Rd. yes I got my permit thank you. We are all set. President Oliver so normal people should not be parking there if they do not have a permit. All talking together. President Oliver I have to come up and see it. Mr. Smith I didn’t think about it either until Mike Attix came up to me last week and we visited your home I was in your alley as you know. Tracey Turner 200 Laurel Rd. That’s the only places that say it. Mr. Smith it’s all your neighbors along there. President Oliver thank you. Chuck Burk can I just say something on Garvin. Me and the fire chief were on that street yesterday in fact it was a hydrant blocked. Laurel and Greenwood are very dangerous streets for fire apparatus. We are lucky if we can even get them down there and I know it’s going to happen sooner or later and I know what you are talking about. There was a time when we had to make a turn and we are probably not going to make it. I know at least since I have been in the town we have lost a couple of people on that street with fires. Getting up those streets let alone an alley with a crater in the middle so I understand what you are saying Sir. But you have to be careful on those streets because we can barely get a truck down those streets and God forbid it’s going to happen sooner or later. Those streets are terrible for fire apparatus. Gerard Turner 200 Laurel Rd. all you have to do is write tickets for everybody. Chuck Burk you know as well as I do they park wherever they want to park and you know that Sir. I’m just trying to save lives that’s my job. President Oliver thank you. Pat Rumaker as long as he brought it up did anybody look at the news back in April when a tragedy happened on Laurel Rd. on a Saturday when Channel 6 panned up that driveway it looked like North Philly. It was a disgrace. I was embarrassed people said I saw your town on the news. Not my town. Not my block. It’s a disgrace something needs to be done. Trash was Thursday this was Saturday afternoon and there was more trash in that alley than the trash trucks picked up in a week. Somebody needs to do something. President Oliver thank you that’s why we said we are going to put the cameras up. Mr. Bey are you done? Any other public comments? Mr. Pearson-Bey 339 Laurel Rd so I just understand the statement you are saying that PECO did the street right and they are supposed to do the entire street. Mrs. Booker no. President Oliver when PECO comes out and do it they only repair what they tear up. When they do that they only do half the street so we try and align our funds with the streets they are doing so that we can repave the whole street for us. Mr. Pearson-Bey 339 Laurel Rd. right because there is a lot of Laurel Rd. and Bartlett that they didn’t do that. President Oliver did they pave over there yet? Mr. Pearson-Bey 339 Laurel Rd. when I talked to the person that does the engineering and inspect the area they are not doing their job then if they are not looking at our street and see all the cracks and how it’s broken up. It’s like why didn’t they just do the whole street. It would save us a lot of money and time when they were out there doing it for us. President Oliver over the next 5-6 years the goal is to have all of the streets repaved. We are working with the different contractors like PECO and AQUA. WE have a map in there that we bring as Mr. Smith eluded to on here with the relining that we are looking at. We will look at that with the engineer and we say we are going to do these and look to see if that matches what AQUA and PECO are doing and then we fill in the rest with the funds that we allocated because we will know what funds we need to get and that is the way the engineer works. He will look and see if it lines up with what PECO is doing. I don’t know who you are getting your information from but I f you line up with PECO then we can line up our funds accordingly and we can map out… That’s what the division is within here every street would have been done because we can’t just go out and do the whole town at once and that is why we try and work with them and we don’t want to do it and then they come and tear up the street because they are only going to pave half of it when they do it but every street should be getting someway somehow. Any other questions. None being seen… Mr. Pearson-Bey 339 Laurel Rd. The school… The elementary school. Did they ever fix the Ac in there? Mrs. Booker that is the school board. President Oliver yes we have nothing to do with that. Mr. Pearson-Bey 339 Laurel Rd. Thank you. President Oliver and no it’s not fixed in the elementary school. Mrs. Booker I have a comment. I’m sorry. President Oliver public comments are closed for this session we are going to move on. Mrs. Booker I was remiss in letting everybody know because I have been seeing questions on Facebook about the flea market. The flea market is next Saturday and anybody that would like to have a space it’s one for $25 or 2 for $40. The can contact Mona at Borough Hall. The flea market is from 9-2 at Memorial Park. President Oliver before we close out I would like to do a moment of silence for the 2 gentleman that lost their life today down at Aldan while they were working in the sewer system. They were members that you have probably seen in Sharon Hill. I just want to acknowledge them so if we could all rise for a moment of silence. These are the 2 gentlemen that worked for Cleaver Construction/A to U construction service that lost their life. President Oliver I would like to remind council that we have an executive session next Tuesday at 7pm. Our next meeting will be August 8th at 7pm. Thank you all for coming out.