Mendham Twp Mayor Sarah Neibart's Reorganization Address

"Good Evening, Everyone, and Happy New Year!

I could not be more excited to welcome you to the 2025 Township of Mendham Reorganization Meeting back in Mendham Township’s 101-year old (& counting) Town Hall Building! It has been a long time coming, but with the leadership of our Township Administrator and Clerk, help from our project managers, and flexibility of our entire Town Hall and Library staffs we are able to all celebrate here in person tonight and - of course - via Zoom. Thank you!

I want to extend my heartfelt appreciation to all of you who are here live in-person and those attending virtually - residents, friends, our first responders, professional staff, the many elected officials, members of the press, and my family including my almost one-year-old daughter Sheila. Welcome to Mendham Township’s 2025 Reorganization Meeting!

On behalf of the entire Township Committee, I want to congratulate my running-mate and friend Deputy Mayor Nick Monaghan for his re-election to the Township Committee. I also want to thank our Administrator and CFO Jason Gabloff, our Township Clerk Karen Bellamy, Recreation Director David Guida, and Township Attorney John Mills for putting everything together for tonight. And Rabbi Herson - as always, thank you for providing those much needed and meaningful words of reflection to set the tone for our meeting.

I always like to start this welcome address with a reminder of why we are here tonight. It is not about the five of us up here…. Tonight is about the individuals we are swearing-in to protect the safety and health of our community, the volunteers we are appointing that go above and beyond to ensure Mendham Township remains the best place to live, work, play, and retire, and the professionals who assist in carrying out the vision of our five-member dais.

So before I continue, can I please get a round of applause for all of them.

2024 was a great year for the Township of Mendham -

Despite state mandated increases in health and pension costs and the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection's stormwater management regulations, it was the 5th year in a row of no municipal tax increase (actually with the increased value of ratables in our town, every resident should have seen a decrease in the municipal portion of their tax bill).
We accomplished this while maintaining our debt paydown schedule.
And I am proud to say that we also maintained our AAA Rating for the 6th year in a row.
Additionally, we were able to maintain our road program and pave over 2.5 miles of road including East/West Main Street and Woodland.
We continued our partnership with Morris County on road projects with the completion of Route 24 and we are currently working with Morris County on a bridge improvement on Ironia and improvements to the Route 24 and Roxiticus Road Intersection.
As you know, we successfully completed the Town Hall and Library building Rehabilitation and Renovation Project.
The Clerk’s Office finished a big records management project - updated the archives list and worked with the file bank and the state to discard over 100 boxes of files that are now digitally stored.
We maintained our current shared services agreements and expanded our shared services with the Board of Education for cleaning services. We are also looking into exploring a Bus Maintenance agreement.
Last year, a group of residents requested that the Township change the names of East and West Main Street. Although the Township Committee did not take any official action on this matter, the committee did establish a working group to assist residents of East and West Main Street with solutions to issues arising from duplicate addresses.
This past summer, the Township purchased a new Engine 2.
We opened a new walking trail on Route 24, which was named and dedicated this past Saturday to Ethan Posner, a former student member of the Environmental Commission who passionately worked on this project and tragically passed away last year.
We received a $55,000 grant from the State for a new air compressor and fill-station for our Fire Department, and through our Office of Emergency Management we received thousands of dollars of FEMA reimbursements for our efforts during and after natural disasters.
Working closely with the Sewer Committee, we kicked-off the process of valuing and selling Sewer East and West in an effort to stabilize rates for those residents and pay-off the debt on the systems.
We negotiated a new contract with our PBA to ensure we are able to be competitive with our neighboring towns and retain officers over the long-term.
Partnering with the Mendham Alliance for Preservation & Conservation, we lobbied at the state capital against the new affordable housing legislation because of the lack of consideration for sustainable land-use practices and precious environmental and naturally-occurring resources found throughout the state.
Mendham Township became one of the first municipalities to seriously tackle its Ash Tree Problem by removing over 250 Ash Trees on the Township’s frequently used hiking trails and recreation areas.
We were also able to provide our state contract pricing to residents for tree-removal in the right-of-way.
Working with members of the Environmental Commission, the Township Committee is in the process of launching one of the first municipal reforestation initiatives.
Through our Recreation Department we increased programming for our senior population, which I am proud to say are always packed programs and events.
Through hundreds of hours of work by Finance Committee members, we are in the process of finalizing the updates to the 2017 Equipment and Facilities Report and are working hard to create a comprehensive road map and capital plan for the Township going forward. In addition to capital needs, this report will also include information on grant opportunities, volunteer retention efforts, needed technological upgrades, and a pathway for electrification efforts.
The Township has taken its affordable housing obligations seriously, while balancing the needs to protect our environment and limit development. As many of you know, the Township has until January 31, 2025 to respond to the state on the 4th Round of Affordable Housing Numbers. The Township Committee has discussed a plan and we are in the process of crafting a formal response to the state. We will have our response finalized by the January 23rd Township Committee Meeting.
Also, with “out of the box thinking” we have deemed Alcott Manor an “area in need of redevelopment”. We have received the state’s approval, and will begin crafting our Redevelopment Plan.
Our updated Affordable Housing Plan and Redevelopment Plan for Alcott Manor will need to be included in our Master Plan. This year, I will ask the Planning Board’s Master Plan Subcommittee to review and update our Master Plan and include some additional components.
We reinvigorated the Open Space Trust Committee to continue preserving, protecting, managing, and enhancing Mendham Township’s valuable Open Space and Environment.
We are also nearing the end of the Highlands Assessment Process and should receive a report from the Highlands within the month.
During 2024, we celebrated our fifth annual celebration of many town events we launched in 2020 during Covid. This summer we had our fifth annual fireworks event, followed by the fifth annual Mendham Night Out, Halloween Celebrations, and celebrations of both Christmas and Hanukkah. It has been so incredible to see our community’s children take part in these events year after year and watch them grow-up. It was truly a special experience for me to include my daughter in these events this year.
Finally, we created a solid waste and recycling utility to be able to use as a flexible funding and budget tool in the future.

Last year, we expanded our committees to allow for additional members. Through that program, we met a lot of new people who had never been involved previously. This year, we received a record number of applications for committees. I am delighted to announce that in 2025 we will have more people serving our community than ever before. Even outside our formal volunteer framework (which you will be hearing about a lot later tonight), there are members of our community who volunteer daily behind the scenes - without titles - that assist the Township Committee and our staff on many technical projects. Some of them are here tonight, they know who they are... I am so truly grateful that they sacrifice their time and share talents with our community. We are so lucky to have a community of people who give so much of themselves who ask nothing in return and just want to be helpful.

As we begin 2025 and kick-off the municipal budget process, we find ourselves in a hard economic environment, given the statewide mandates for increased insurance premiums and stormwater maintenance as well as the cost of funding pension benefits. Like every year, the Township Committee and Finance Committee will need to navigate those rough waters. You may not know, but only about one-fourth of the Town’s budget is discretionary. The rest are fixed costs, such as salaries, benefits, insurance, etc.

In recent years, the costs of garbage and recycling have skyrocketed. The Township temporarily avoided this cost surge because of its fixed three-year waste removal contract with RTS that started in 2023. However, as the Township prepares to bid for a new garbage contract in 2025, we expect to see a 50% jump in costs.

This substantial cost surge, when combined with other, non-discretionary cost increases, will impose an unbearable burden on the Township budget. Municipalities have state-mandated tax and appropriation caps, which prevent us from absorbing an increase of this magnitude. As a result, trying to fit the prospective waste management cost jump into the budget would require ill-advised cuts in critical services.

Over the past year, the Township Committee and Township Administrator Jason Gabloff, with help from the Finance Committee, have analyzed, explored and created a Solid Waste & Recycling Utility. This Utility would remove the cost of garbage and recycling from the municipal budget and establish a new system through which residents will pay for these services separately. This utility approach is used in many municipalities throughout New Jersey, including our neighbors in Chester Borough and Chester Township.

The Township Committee is hosting a working session on Monday, January 13th at 7:00pm to discuss this proposal and the future of garbage and recycling collection in Mendham Township. We invite everyone to come, listen, and provide your thoughts and feedback.

Additionally, this coming Saturday, January 11th at noon we will have a re-opening celebration for this building. Refreshments will be provided and we will be offering tours! We hope to see you there!

Thank you again for coming this evening.

It is my honor to serve again as Mayor of Mendham Township… serving this community continues to be one of the greatest honors of my life and I am humbled to have received your overwhelming vote of confidence for another term. I promise to continue to put all I can into serving this community along with my colleagues on the Township Committee to make 2025 an incredible year."