Mayor Akerman's First Address - Outlining projects for 2013

[Applause] As everybody's indicated or said, we expect this to be a fairly challenging year and we have a lot to accomplish and obviously I appreciate the vote of confidence from the committee and vote of confidence from the public. Thank you all obvious and we'll need this to be a collective effort. I can't do it on my own and I'm looking forward to your input and it will always be welcome to me and very important to me. I hope that we meet the challenge and I hope you come out looking very good from this the top of the year the better we can end up looking and I'm pretty pretty confident with what we have working with us that that we will come through and we'll do a very good job. I'm going to address some of the concerns we face at the council. Some of them were mentioned by other by other members and some of them weren't. I don't plan to go into too much detail. It's New Year's party after so here to enjoy ourselves. Um some some of these ideas are my own. Some of them are are ideas that the committee's been working on in the past and I hope to I want to bring them up in a general way right now and hopefully you'll read more about in the papers as the committee works together to bring them to fruition. Number one issue I don't have to tell anybody in this town is taxes. is expected to be a very tough budget year and defining I will announce that he's our budget leazison but it doesn't mean he's on his he doesn't mean he's on his own and it doesn't mean should taxes go up that he's going to take the blame for there are five of us I don't blame him on there are five of us up here and we all have taxes on our minds we're all taxes and none of none of us want to see our own taxes go up and we all take full responsibility in terms to the deputy mayor for his help and guidance, but we all take responsibility. We all have our own ideas and we're all always counting every single penny. I don't want anybody to think that because we're up here different we try our hardest to keep the budget down and we will do so this year and we we hope that at least a flat budget if not a lower budget as we have in the past two years. There there are some there are a lot of ways of bringing in revenues and I don't even want to get into too many details too many ideas that we have going. One of them is um we we intend to chase grants. There are a lot hundreds of grants out there that we can tap into. Not all of us will apply to us. Some of them are matching grants. Some of them uh we we some of them are are full grants. For the most part they're matching grants. Craig Remington, our engineer, had presented to us a whole list of grants such as park trail grants, $25,000 park trail, which I don't know if it's still available for this year, but we're we do the work anyway. We there are many things around town that would do the work anyway. It's it should be very simple for us to get some of these grants and and every $25,000 50,000 $100,000 adds up. the very main street brands out there for precise buildings. There there are a lot of brands that we hope to chase. I don't know if we'll be setting up the commission for brands or rely solely on on our engineer but but it's something that as a committee we hope to we hope to pursue. I hope to combine certain certain departments to save costs. Um we discuss implementing impact fees on builders as builders build. We we need more traffic lights. We need We have 80 better roads, more improve roads and it cost the township a lot of money and we've been putting the bill ourselves and we hope we've been discussing impact fees and I hope to bring that to fruition as well. Um, recently Deputy Mayor Langanger discovered that we have a lot of uncollected funds as usual municipal court. I don't know that we could collect it, but we would definitely try. It's a significant amount of money. We passed a resolution to do a reverse auction on a utility studio to do a committee company called Emmex. At the time the S discussed were in the ballpark of $100,000. I don't know if that that amount still applies, but something I'd like to chase as well. I would like to to start shopping even more for products and services. And of course, we will continue to work on bringing new businesses into Japan and expand our commercials. In regards to traffic, this may be the year that public transportation comes to Lakewood. It's already in the works. I'm not going to take credit for for bringing it to town. It's been in the works well before I was on the committee. And I hope but I hope that this is the year that we bring it to fruition. It's about time we get to public transportation at least on some [Applause] level. We're working on we're working on bringing more street lights to town. We're working on finishing such a fine fine street to create more pass through road. But most importantly, I hate to scream this right now on everybody, but I think we're all in agreement here. when we do a full court press with the help of our representatives Senator Singer and Sean to finally try to w at least [Applause] someone as committee said city is a great concern for the sake of the residents living in tent city as you know there've been many many incidents of of late and and for their own safety and for the sake of the residents living in in surrounding areas. We had a meeting this morning where people was complaining about health issues and and safety. We we take that we take all these concerns seriously and I definitely without commitment defines everybody else on the committee pledges. It's it may be time for us to take a tougher stance and find out exactly what our rights are. But we definitely want to tackle this issue head on. As I said, both for the sake of residents of Tent City and and for the sake of of residents in the neighborhood because we're compassionate people because we don't want people to to to get hurt. Some of you may have had a hard time finding parking on your way in here today. Many businesses are suffering because of insufficient parking, and I hope to continue to increase the number of parking spaces in the municipal and downtown areas. We lost a lot of the trees to development over the years and recently due to hurricane Sandy, president of our public club is already working on bringing 12 or so thousand trees to town. We hope to look other ways as well to for people to bring trees to town in the tens of thousands hopefully so we can bring back some beauty to Lakewood. I hope to promote buying in Lakewood as well as the Ashimo startup last year starting with the township itself. It's my intention to start advertising in local papers and media to make shock vendors and service providers aware of what we're doing so that they submit bids as well. There's so much more to talk about, but as I said, the clock just keeps ticking and seniors today. I'll tell you that I hope the public feels they should help shoulder the burd burden of responsibility of making Lakewood an even better place to live. If anyone has a good idea, they should feel free to email me. my account email address. You don't have to memorize it now. Amen. It's up on the website. I expected from people. We can't do it alone. We all have we we give as much time as we have and and we need more help. If you have an idea, I don't care who you are. I want to hear it. At least email it, call it into the township office. I'm going to be setting up a phone line, a direct phone line at the mayor's office for myself as well. People So people will call and and submit their ideas and and like I said there are five of us up here but it's a wonderful town with many volunteers many concerned citizens and let's do it all together. I want to thank my wife first of all for unrelenting support before I got before I went out to the committee. I sort of knew what I was getting myself into, but I sort of didn't let her know exactly. And I hope she can forgive me because I don't think she was prepared for this craziness. And anyone who says thank you to me, please turn to her and say thank you very much cuz she's a great woman. I have to thank my children too for giving up their time. I know recently I asked my wife where where their father is and hurt me very badly and I had a question to make some more family time even though I know people want to hear me say I question every ounce of every second of time the township I do but family time is healthy and I've come to realize it and my two children sitting in the back I apologize to you and just give over a message to the rest of the crew and then my parents who have never been involved in politics and politicians. He's going to follow up in the city of Manhattan for his his entire career and he knows what's going on and and I don't think they were comfortable with me going into politics and sitting right here. You can ask them. I don't think they I don't think they like politicians too much. I hope they can learn to love me because uh I think it may be too late for me to say I'm not a politician. I'm still thinking of that one. But but um I gave you that blessing a few years ago. I did call them before I decided to sign up to run. Tell them I'm I'm well aware that they call them that they're not fond of politics and and um I asked them I told them I'm very well intentioned and I beg them to give me their blessings to run for office and they did. I'm here today with their blessings and I thank them very much. I commend them for their result. My in-laws are are in the same boat. I thank them for coming. Forgive me for calling Rabbi, but I I um I I admire them and I adore them and they're the same as my parents. They're not fond of politics. They gave me they they gave me their blessings as well. I'm only here because they gave me their best blessings as well. I appreciate the Olympic support. A home is always a safe for me. People want to know my secrets. If you can't find my home, I may just be in my hands 18 press drive. Lastly, I want to thank everybody here from Senator Singer Craig, president of the Republican Club. I hate the names, but I know I'm going to miss quite a few. I'm Helen Sinski. I can't miss your name. Thank you for your blessings, your constant blessings. I appreciate it very much. Brian Suzuki, Captain Marcelo, Joe Ho, um Greg Greg Stafford Smith, Michael Herman, Karen Stafford Smith, entire public club, board of ed members, Tessy Cyber, Cartis, and I know I'm missing a lot of people and I need to thank every single one of you in this room personally. I I feel supported. I appreciate every I appreciate everything you do for me. I appreciate the constant support I get, moral support. I know You have my back. I know the committee has my back. I appreciate you for that. I appreciate all of you for what you do for me, what you've done for me in the last two years, for bringing me up to where I am right now, for making me hopefully be the capable person that I am and taking a seat. Thank you very much. [Applause]