STORM UPDATE

Last Friday the Borough experienced a severe windstorm that resulted in about 400 fallen trees and power was out for more than 2/3 of town. A state of emergency was declared by OEM Coordinator Steve Heicklen and all Police, Fire, EMS, DPW and Wastewater employees reported for duty. Emergency services from neighboring towns were brought in to cover while our crews worked on the recover efforts. PSE&G responded with a substantial number of crews to remove trees from power lines and restore power. By midnight Saturday more than 90% of the Borough had power and by noon on Sunday the emergency was declared over and the difficult job of cleanup was already underway. I commend the efforts of our emergency services volunteers, first responders and all active Borough employees who responded to the emergency call. We were fortunate in that all injuries were minor but through the coordinated and dedicated efforts of our first responders we were able to get the Borough back up and running in less than two days.Please keep in mind that cleanup efforts will take several weeks. We are identifying trees and limbs that require immediate attention and also hauling away the many trees already down. Residents hiring a tree service to remove their trees are urged to have the service remove the trunks and limbs to aid in the Borough's cleanup. Regular trash collection and recycling will continue normally, while bulk trash may be suspended for a period of time in August. If anyone continues to have power outages please call PSE&G at 888-436-7734 and other issues may be reported to DPW at 654-9383. Geoffrey Urbanik, Borough ManagerTAX BILLSThe tax bills will be mailed this week and 3rd quarter amounts will be due on August 31st. Once again the delays in certifying tax rates have resulted in a delayed billing. Sewer billing due on August 15th are not affected by this delay.

Geoffrey D. Urbanik
Borough Manager
Borough of Medford Lakes