Board Meeting Minutes July 2009

HCTA Trustees Meeting- July 31, 2009 Frank Residence

Present: LN, ST, CG, BF, SL, BL Absent: TC, JC, KF, PK, KR, MP

Treasurer’s Report (Barbara Frank): As of June 26, we have $3115.83 in our account. We have made $372 in income since the beginning of the year due to sales of HCTA items on Zazzle.com, our Community Yard Sale and membership dues. We will have upcoming expenses for our Annual Meeting to be held on August 29th. • The Trustees present also discussed purchasing signs to advertise our meeting that can be re-used each year. Additionally, we returned to a topic we discussed before: the HCTA would like to have enough funds available to sponsor safety signs for the Blvd. or additional “protect our dunes” signs. We will investigate the costs associated with each, and depending on the outcome of the Blvd decision, decide which would best serve the community.

JCT Representative (Charlie Gaver): School District consolidation is a big issue. The Times of AC published an article this week announcing the probable first 10 districts to be studied for consolidation, Southern Regional/Long Beach Island/Stafford was one of those 10. As Charlie stated last month, that could cost us up to a 40% increase in our school budget taxes. In the last school budget election in April, Harvey Cedars as well as the Island voted to approve the budget. • (According to Mayor Jon Oldham, if we are consolidated with mainland school districts in addition to paying more taxes, we could pay 80 % of the costs of that district hiring another school administrator. This is how the law is currently structured and the Mayor suggests taxpayers contact their state representatives, no matter where they are registered to vote and voice their complaints.) Charlie said the JCT is brainstorming ways to handle voter lists and asking each Taxpayer Association to contact voters to get people to register at least one household member here. For more information on the JCT, please see their meeting minutes posted under the “JCT Minutes” tab on this website.

Blvd. Safety Update (Susan and Bryan Lewis): Phil spoke with the county and received the latest traffic count numbers after the County counted actual traffic over the weekends of July 11 and 18 and input the new data into their Traffic Simulation model. The numbers came in at a 20% increase over weekday traffic flow when. This was good news as the commissioners had asked the county to increase the weekday traffic counts 30% to account for weekend traffic. The next step is Bryan and Phil Kunz to attend the next meeting hosted by the Borough. This will be on August 11th, with the Borough’s invited guests. The County will present their updated findings and the findings will be discussed to determine next steps. (For a full report on the first meeting attended by Bryan and Phil, please look under the “Issues-Replenishment/ Blvd Safety” tap on our website.) The goal of this meeting as stated by Mayor Oldham is “to have an intelligent conversation. The numbers don’t lie.” Also discussed was the one-sided and inaccurate article in the Sandpaper regarding the findings of the County and the engineers and how the HCTA should respond.

We will decide the date and location of our next meeting after the Annual meeting in August