Denville’s State of the Township Address

On January 3rd at the Annual Town Council Re-Organization Meeting, as required by law in our form of municipal government, I presented to the Council the 2023 State of Denville›s Municipality Address.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Holiday Season and I wish you all a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year.

Congratulations to Angie Cote on being re-appointed as Council President. On a personal level, 2022 was a very difficult year for you, yet you performed the duties of Council President extremely well and I have truly enjoyed working with you.

I can honestly state that each Council Member brings a unique perspective and opinion into public policy discussion for the betterment of our community. This Council continues to demonstrate that when our elected officials work as a team, the people of Denville are best served.

We are very fortunate here in Denville to have the three groups of individuals it takes to properly operate and provide quality services and programs to the community. I would like to thank the entire team of elected officials and appointed professionals for working together so effectively. Secondly our Township staff, led by our Administrator Steven Ward, along with our department heads and each of our employees who do a very fine and professional job every day. And last but not least, I want to express my gratitude for our many volunteers for their hard work and dedication to our community. It is their commitment that allow us to provide service that we may not be able to otherwise afford.

In 2022, despite the supply chain shortages and price increases left by the aftermath of the Covid 19 Pandemic we were able to complete many of the project we had planned or had started including:

• Through a NJ DOT grant of $148,000, we completed the installation of new cross walks, new curbing with handicap cutouts and a brick utility corridor along West Main Street and repaved the area of Main Street in front of the Clock Tower at the intersection of Diamond Spring Road and Broadway to Bloomfield Avenue.

• Working with Lakeland Bus Company, in an effort to encourage commuters to use the Savage Road Park & Ride Lot, we enlarged the entrance to the parking lot thereby increasing the turning radius to facilitate its use by today’s longer buses.

• When the decorative fountain by the Main Street bus stop basin leaked so badly the DPW had to shut it down for the necessary repairs, our Beautification Committee took the opportunity to restructure the entire garden around the fountain making for a delightful new parklike setting. It is truly amazing the number of beautiful flowers and decorations the Beautification Committee volunteers brings to our community nearly year-round.

• Remarkably the DPW repaired over 157 Catch Basin, in preparation of all of the scheduled road paving projects and general maintenance of collapsed basins, leaving, ending the year with just a few new Catch Basins that were just called in.

• As asphalt prices are closely connect to oil prices, in early spring when gas exceeded $4.00 a gallon, we made a calculated decision to concentrate on paving the roads first to be paved by New Jersey Natural Gas and then the State of New Jersey before starting our own locally funded paving list. Fully realizing the risk that we might not finish our list in 2022, we reaped the benefits of the price decreasing rather significantly and completed the vast majority of the roads on our locally funded list in late-October. We did holdout on paving the Lower Bloomfield Lot, and 2 streets in the Cisco

Tract which we will complete in 2023.

• We recently completed the refurbishment and painting of the Beacon Hill Water Tank, the largest of water systems tanks. This project was completely paid for through our first ARPA fund installment of $800,000.

• The County finished the Palmer Road Bridge replacement. Not only has that extremely dangerous bridge been replaced our main involvement has been the replacement of the water main under the bridge. Replacing that water main is an important water utility infrastructure improvement easy to go unrecognized.

• The second phase of the Denville Brook Trail, Trail #6, has been completed, which runs 1 mile from the Openaki Bridge to Denbrook Playground. The trail was paid for with two grants totaling more than $315,000 from the Morris County Parks Commission, and people are already enjoying the easy, pleasant and scenic walk along the Den Brook.

• At Gardner Field, we finished the continued on page 18