So let's start the um the first questions with mindsai and it's going to be bouncing around. So I'm going to answer some of your questions together I guess. Um I went out to eat the other day googled the place I thought it was open but on there it had the wrong time right because those businesses say temporary close sometimes. So, I don't I don't really know what it says on Google. I've never Googled that company. So, obviously, um that's something that has it has to do with Google, whatever. The company is does exist. It's been here already. They've done work here already. So, just to kind of put that out that way. Yes, they also were in Belleville. There's nothing wrong with Belleville. There's nothing wrong with Elmo Park. I was there, too. I was in Denell. You can look at all those places. Okay.
Um this was through there's a state monitor in Belleville. This is through a state contract. It was also through New Jersey School Board Association. They're a cooperative bid. That's what happens. They do the they do the bidding and and they award the bid. That's how it goes. Same thing like a state contract. So all that was is covered. Um to answer the mayor's qu um if I can call you may mr. Garno's question. Um I don't know um of the bids. I can get you that information, but again it's through a co-op. That's how it all works. Uh again, school boards association. This board, every board, believe it or not, in New Jersey belongs to the school board association. So it's out of there. That's only one co-op this bid was in. I think there's several of them there. Um, I never ran for council.
I ran for senate and I didn't run with anybody on there. Just so you know, I never ran for council, but thank you for for thinking of that. Um, also the park ranger. I'll put that all together. The park ranger was on tonight. We finally found somebody to to take that position. I called it a park ranger because I don't want to call it park security. Um, you know, complex security, whatever it is. I don't This isn't someone with a weapon or anything like that. Doesn't have any ties to that. These will be eyes basically in the complex so that we can allow the public to walk after dinner. I didn't know about the morning thing. That's something we need to talk about with the board. Um but basically to open up that spot. The ranger will just be a set of eyes making sure that everyone there is supposed to be there.
Making sure everyone there is, you know, safe or at least um the bathrooms and all those things are open and what we couldn't do that until we had someone there. uh we didn't think a guard was was was uh you know that was a spot for a guard. Uh then the winter came. So with this approval tonight and I appreciate the approval tonight, we are going to be opening that up as soon as you know the weather's nice now. We could probably open up as soon as possible once this individual gets onboarded and uh basically fingerprinted and whatnot uh because of the approval tonight. So great question. That's that's where we are with that. We're going to open this up as much as we possibly can um for everybody here. Um um never I never said that this was the first time ever like that there was re-registration.
I'm sure it was done here before in the past. What I'm saying is that with re-registration comes a lot of hurdles, right? There are um we may lose some students. Uh it really is stressful for parents sometimes because they have to get like a deed or a lease. I did this years ago. So, but again, it's for no other reason, but the push came from the um the board to make sure that everybody was here, especially for the charter schools, uh special needs. So, we did a re-registration. Everyone's doing a great job. The people prior to these people did a phenomenal job. That's how we we got registr registrate registration working. I'm not saying nobody ever did or did not. Um, so let's just I just want to be clear on that. Um, the guard of the board office I think should have happened since guards were brought here.
I mean, just like every other employee is uh it's important that we protect those individuals and myself. Uh, I mean, a guard up there that's how I mean, I don't know why there wouldn't be a guard there. I don't That's a good question. And I don't know why the bank doesn't have any anyone down there. They don't need it. That's the bank's responsibility. But every other site has a guard. Um you know, I'm not saying that uh it also um the guard upstairs also uh is in charge of downstairs. There are sometimes um arguments downstairs registration. It happens. So I I think it's a great idea. Um I I think it's working out well. Uh I I think that was I I think that was a no-brainer in my opinion, but again um we could we could agree to disagree. Um, sorry. Oh, miss we let's talk about this election uh fees for uh the court fees.
This board has been incredible with kind of just staying the course with this. But again, really not going back and forth even though people are saying I'm just telling you the truth here. This is you could look it up, put the pieces together. This is not This was not the board suing the council. And forget about how we're going to do this. The council went into a special session to stop the board from voting on a resolution. The council went to special session to stop the board from voting on a resolution. That attorney then went to a judge, did an injunction, and I think it was the day of or maybe the day before, Mr. Giser can kind of correct me. We got the injunction not to vote. any board member Dale sorry any board member or any person of a separate entity in my opinion sitting as an X-facto member of this board by the way that's why I can talk about all these things this board should have the right and authority to at least vote vote on any resolution it puts up there vote on it after the vote then go to court if you want this this initial suing or whatever you want to call from the from the council stopped an actual vote.
How does anyone and anybody running for the board per se or anybody on the board here particularly shouldn't even consider that being allowed? We are separate entities. The I couldn't even imagine the board coming to me and saying, "Hey, let's stop the mayor and council from voting on something." No, let us vote on it first. So, what happened? What happened? I'm not saying that the judge was right or wrong. What I'm saying was let's let's be very clear. The reason why we went to court was to fight so that we could at least vote on this. That's the reality. No, it was the same judge. This is where everything's getting, you know, and and I have to commend this board. We've been very quiet about what exactly happened. And you all just brought it up as a question, so I'm answering it. Go back and look at it.
That's exactly what happened. Okay? And at the end of the day, the reason why we didn't even hear this in court is because it was it was untimely. And that's and that's the truth. And you and every listen, you can all disagree with me. It's fine. But what I just spoke was exactly the truth. This board went to council just for the opportunity to vote and we finally got that. We had to have a special meeting to do that and most of you were here for that meeting. So that's the truth. So again, you could say what it was, but that's what it is. And and I'm going to guess the fees that we had to pay, which was again unfortunate. We couldn't even just vote on a resolution. That's all we wanted to do. Okay. I don't know if it was going to pass.
We didn't have a chance to vote. How does one entity in town stop the other entity? Special meeting. You guys had a special meeting. The mayor council had a special meeting just to vote to have the attorney. Now, my my curiosity is I don't even know what those fees are. I don't think he did that for free. But again, that's something maybe we can talk about another time. Um I'm not worried about it. I'm just bringing it out there. Okay. Thank you. Um, I agree that the no parking around the schools too is is something that no one does. I totally get that and that's not that's not an issue. Parking the buses there, great idea. Well, if if that would ever happen. Um, all these other things we talk about. But all these things you're talking about now here about nobody even said anything.
I didn't even know there was a 2013 resolution that was passed by by the the mayor and council back then. Uh, until I had to actually see what was going on. I didn't even know that that wasn't our property. I had no clue. There was no It was It was, "Hey, we're ticking everybody. You can't park here anymore." This is what I'm saying. Whether you agree with me or not, I'm sure all of you have been down there watching the chaos. I'm sure you've all been down there, so I'm not going to say you haven't been, okay? But if you've been down there watching the chaos, then what you should do right now to protect the kids is say, "Let's hold it in oance. Let's sit down. I don't know, maybe you want to charge a fee, whatever it is, you could do that as a as a council." But it it was pulled it was pulled from us mid mid year without any conversation.
That's all I'm saying. That's that's what happened. has nothing to do whether it's right or wrong. Nobody's had a conversation about it. And for all these years I this is I I mayor I've listened to you. I've listened to you. It It's time to listen to me now. Um very very simply put there should have been a conver I get more than five minutes because there's 10 people here. Um there is very simply put there could have been at least a conversation somebody it didn't even have to be in our account anybody just just talk to us about it. This is what we're going to do. This is what we they've been part the teachers and the students have been parking there. You know, we had a scrimmage the other day. People couldn't park there. There's a bunch of stuff happening. I'm just saying please, please, please look at it.
You don't have to believe I'm telling the truth or not, but it's the truth. Um, I'm an X facto member of the board. I don't vote on the board, but I'm part of the board. So, I get to basically say my piece just like any board member. So I could I could I could basically talk to the board and give any respect or um not respect, sorry, give any uh opinion I have. So when you asked that question, Mr. Mater, that was for that. Um all right, next. The extended guardian. Yes, Mr. Derek, thank you very much. We had many conversations about that. We put that in that's going there with with even the back stops. Mr. Derek's Derek has done an incredible job on that. Um you know, we keep talking about jobs and all this other stuff. Let's let's be very clear. We're not talking because because it's important for these to to in my opinion if we're going to go back and forth or the perception is that let's make it very clear.
We're not talking about extra jobs. We're talking about you all are talking about people in the jobs not extra jobs because for example some of these jobs have already existed absolutely existed. So so just just uh let's be really clear on that as well. Um Miss Katzup thank you for the learning communities. want to talk to um Miss Demo about that. I was I wasn't really thematic community. So uh and Miss Bellinger about that as well. Um the music program is very dear to my heart. My my father who passed away 20 something years ago was a professional musician. So I grew up with that. It's very important. I know there's there's a thriving public, you know, interest here for that. Um I know some of the other um the wire boys and girls clubs. I know that they're doing something. Um, uh, the president here has contacted me with community officer so that we're getting music makers involved with the community officer now.
Um, is that Mr. Stewart? Mr. I'm sorry, Officer Stewart. Um, they're trying to put some music production together. So, we are doing that. It's just taking us a little bit time to sorry, get in with that. It's a little dry here. Um, and and all those things. Um, the board and I on Wednesday wanted to go. We had our committee meetings that night so we couldn't make it. We there pretty late. Um was very upset. That was the only because that was the only meeting we could really talk about the budget and and everybody get together. So uh we would have been there. We all talked about it there. Um so again I I apologize for that. We were actually in two separate rooms obviously because the quorum so we were kind of moving in and out as quick as we could but because of how the committees are, you know, and we we we had to meet in those.
But uh but yeah, committee reports I we'll we'll start uh preparing those. Uh, I think that's something that's my responsibility anyway. Um, so we'll do that. Um, but yeah, I mean the M and uh, Mr. Keel has talked to me about music since I've been here. Um, we were talking about putting in um, like a magical program and some of those other things and uh, those are important things and again we have somebody retiring unfortunately, but I think uh, the future looks really bright and uh, you know, we're going to try to add a teacher maybe through title funds if if they we have that um, based on some of the things we were talking about. So that's why it wasn't in the tax levy. So, so hopefully we'll do some of that stuff. Um, um, honoring the guards is a great idea. Thank you for bringing that.
I, you know, it's something that we should definitely talk about. Um, the IT explanation, Miss Capzy, correct? The IT explanation. So, we talked about Active Directory already. Okay. Which, which Minds Eye did help for us and help us with and and all things came through. switches, subscriptions, just just years and years of infrastructure not being updated uh is where we're at right now. Okay? This is not an uncommon thing in schools that have other needs. Okay? It's not it's not an uncommon thing. Listen, let's be let's be real. When when when you guys were going through COVID, you didn't have a onetoone initiative until COVID, right? The CO money helped us, right? It's no one's fault, right? So, you're so you didn't have the infrastructure at that time to support anything because you didn't have the the the machines. Okay? Okay, we're only talking 5 years ago.
It's a reality. Okay. Then you added what's called, for lack of a better term, a pipe. So I think board three or four years ago probably spent a million dollars on a great thing to happen. Okay, that was speed because everything was slow. Everything else, again, it's no fault of anyone. We're just where we are. And when our kids get up here and start doing those things, we have to fix those things. So there, you know, there's stuff called the -ray and there's other things that we can do to try to offset some of those monies, but we won't know that until we actually do the do the projects. Thank you. Means I'm speaking too much. Um, Missy, there's also again the acceptable response times. Usually I like to get back to people right away. I know you're talking about private meetings, but I always say to people is regardless of if we meet on the side to talk about other things, you could always bring it to to the meeting and talk about it.
If if you want to write it out or or say it, that's fine. Um, regardless of what everyone thinks or whoever sees me as, which is fine. At the end of the day, when we all go home, I worry about this place, right? So, if you have ideas that I can't write down or you then then just get them to me and regardless if it's private or public, um, there's no acceptable response time. There's no federal law. There's none of that stuff. Um I I was waiting for your um for your questions so we can answer some of those. Um you have a bunch of great stuff tonight, too. So hopefully um we can get those in. Hopefully I keep seeing you at meetings. Um you know, this is comment only.
There's really I'm not supposed to be answering any questions, believe it or not. But I think if we all sat here and I didn't answer any questions, nothing would get accomplished. Um ReadAcross America, nobody said that was new. I mean, I just was saying how great it was to go. I didn't say you said it either, but it was great. We had a lot of people here reading. I mean, that's what I hope everybody in this room would read at some point. Um, there's nothing wrong with fostering reading for kids. Uh, all I was really doing was saying how great it was to see everybody there. Um, and I I could bullet those visions for you. It's not a problem. We do have after school programs already that you were talking about, like we brought chess wizards in there just for those reasons. The karate karate club, as long as we, you know, fairly distribute that so not one club is making money.