HANOVER — At the 2024 Annual Reorganization meeting for Hanover Township, Mayor Gallagher gave his State of the Township address. It is listed here:
Happy New Year and Thank you very much for being here tonight. I hope everyone had a very nice Holiday Season with family and friends.
I would like to begin by congratulating our esteemed colleagues Mike Mihalko and Brian Cahill on being re-elected to serve on The Hanover Township Committee. Congratulations guys.
It is a true honor to serve alongside you two gentlemen and the true beneficiary of your continued selfless service will be the residents of our great township. Thank you, and Thank you for your continued service.
I would also like to thank the entire Township Committee for what I believe was a very productive year. We have had quite a few serious accomplishments this year which are being noticed and enjoyed by our residents and neighboring municipalities.
I would like to Thank our Entire Municipal Staff, Our Municipal Family, everyone on our Professional Staff, every single person that volunteers on any one of our Boards, Councils, Commissions, or Committees, all of the people that serve tirelessly with all of our organized sports organizations, our scouts and of course, Thank you to our all of our Houses of Worship and The Knights of Columbus.
I would like to Thank Joe Giorgio/James Brown
The Hardest Working Man in Show Business – Joe is The Hardest Working Man in Hanover Township
Thank Joe’s Entire Staff
Thank you Linda
Thank you Krista
Thank You Fred. You are not only my brother, but you are also more and more becoming Hanover Township’s Big Brother, you are phenomenal and always on the job.
Bill Byrne
Thank The Township Committee
I’ve had the honor and the pleasure of serving on The Hanover Township Committee for the past 10 years, and just prior to this I served on the K-8 BOE for a few years, which I will always credit for teaching me about policy and the importance of evaluating policy and importance updating policy when necessary.
So again, there is nothing new about me, the only thing that is relatively new, is I will continue to use my latest title.
My personality, my style, my work ethic and my determination is nothing new to many of my friends and colleagues.
This hasn’t changed and will not change. The only thing that will change, however, is I plan on further increasing my focus. Build on what works and work to discontinue what doesn’t. I will continue to work to implement new structures to produce on an even higher level for all of the residents of Hanover Township utilizing every single resource available.
So right off the bat I would like to inform and assure Hanover Township that we are moving forward hard and strong regarding just about every one of our “already approved” major construction projects in Hanover Township, which is instrumental in many ways to our Township especially when it comes to rateables which is of course directly related to our tax dollars.
I’ve personally spent quite a bit of time working to better understand the process between the Township Committee approval of a zone change, the submission of the actual plans to the Planning Board and from there the Planning Board approval.
I know this due diligence, focusing on this important piece, has made quite a difference in creating a much better flow and a better pathway for success for many of Hanover Township’s construction projects.
We have all heard about the reasons for lack of construction activity, the supply chain, the labor force, interest rates, the difficulty of getting approvals from the Township, the County, NDEP, and the list goes on. Every one of these issues is somewhat legitimate, however, what can we do about it and what have we done about it in order to get real movement meaning actual shovels in the ground.
I will begin by saying we are communicating much better with our developers and professionals in-house along with many outside professionals. I’ve said this several times, and I can say Hanover Township has begun to practice this quite aggressively. Once the legal back and forth takes place regarding zoning and zone changes, we have to dust ourselves off and work together to make it much less likely to have stalled construction projects, piles of dirt and rock that look awful and have no tax benefit coming in to off set the costs of running Hanover Township at least on an acceptable level.
In 2023 we’ve called in and spent countless hours dealing with property owners, architects, development companies along with the appropriate municipal professionals, outside professionals and of course our Municipal Attorney, and Business Administrator to formulate and put in place aggressive strategies to turn these piles of dirt and rock into beautiful businesses that we can shop in, enjoy and which will generate much needed tax revenue for Hanover Township.
The Re-development of commercial properties:
John covered quite a few commercial Re-development projects that received Planning Board approvals in 2023. I’d like to go into some detail on what took place in order to get these companies to be able to bring plans to the Planning Board in the first place.
Without getting too deep into the specifics, I have personally had countless conversations with every one of these commercial property representatives in the last 18 months. Every conversation had the same common denominator, we have to update these commercial zones that were put in place in the 70’s and 80’s in order to complete and succeed in the 21st century.
With The Morris County Mall for instance, I initially called them in to simply discuss the condition of their property and share with them how upset Hanover Township was with the condition of their buildings and property. I asked them for their plan moving forward. They told me they had no plan. They couldn’t get tenants, their building was old, they weren’t allowed to do the necessary updates to attract tenants, and they couldn’t compete with the brand-new complex across the street, and the new complex on the opposite side of the street with the new Morris Township Retail Center. They said they were considering going to the Board of Adjustment for some relief from their current zoning constraints, but that may not be enough.
I asked them why not go for a straight zone change, they said no because they were told it takes years to do that and they do not have years. I asked them what their specific zone was and when was it put in place, I was told it was called a “shopping center” and it was put in place in 1971! 1971! I immediately said, if you had the same zone as across the street do you believe you would fill those stores? I was told they’d fill up in a heartbeat. I told them straight up, then don’t go to the BOA. I’d advise going for a straight Zone change, B-3 just like across the street, and this should have been done a long time ago. I went out on the front porch of Town Hall, called a couple of my colleagues on the Township Committee and we agreed in principle this should be done and should have been done a long time ago. We got to work, and the zone change was completed in 6 to 7 months. Look at The Morris County Mall today. All are based on one conversation. 11 million dollars is being pumped into upgrades and redesigns as we speak.
1515 Route 10, The land swap with Parsippany which is going to allow us enough good land for a new hotel.
That was one conversation and a hand-shake agreement with Parsippany Mayor Jamie Barberio.
Each commercial property that has come in has a story on why they can’t succeed, and the common denominator is to complete in 2024 you can’t complete with zoning that is 40 to 50 years old. But at the same time, we must respect existing buildings and businesses and help to rebuild in a modern way and not just knock everything down and hope that one day it will be rebuilt.
So, listening to the businesses, listening to their concerns, and working to understand their vision is paramount. Also putting in the time to learn what surrounding municipalities are doing and try to replicate their success, where they have had it.
Deputy Mayor Mihalko and I hosted a round table discussion with 65 property and business owners on South Jefferson Road from Rt. 10 to Cedar Knolls Road to listen to their concerns regarding their outdated zoning and how it was not conducive to any type of success moving forward in the 21st century. We gathered very good information that we already have in play to make this area much more profitable for these businesses and for Hanover Township
In the beginning of my comments, I referred to policy, evaluating and updating policy where necessary. With that comes updating our methodology with our own structure, to be quicker and more efficient in-house, and if that’s not working bring in top professionals from the outside to help our team, because the world goes much faster today than it did 30 or 40 years ago, and we have to not only accept that but embrace that
The Morris County Mall, the story, and the initial 11-million-dollar investment in the upgrades
Pine Plaza
Chimney Rock
The former Shell station on Route 10 and Whippany Road
The former Molly Malone’s property
712 Rt. 10 West – The Office Building across from The Brookside Diner
Duck Donuts
South Jefferson from Rt. 10 to Cedar Knolls Road
We worked and began almost immediately in 2023 a 4-point major communications initiative, with our residents, our businesses, and between one another.
We introduced Tapinto Hanover Township, which in less than one year is the second most popular and read Tapinto in Morris County.
We created the “Ask Your Governing Body”, question, anytime, ask anyone in the municipal complex any question and receive an official accurate answer within 5 working days.
Launched our official Facebook page and are now on Twitter X.
Better communication with our residents, better communication with our businesses, better communication between our municipal departments, and better communication between ourselves.
The Morris County Mall – What was the impetus?
As a musician and “not being an athlete” I refer to Ensemble play, or collaboration rather than teamwork but it’s the exact same principle.
I truly believe in the theory that a piece of thread is thin and not very strong. But when you have many pieces of thread, it becomes a rope, which can be very strong.
We have put this philosophy into practice more and more in Hanover Township. It is truly an incredible problem-solving mechanism, working together towards a common, tangible goal, and when you include solid knowledgeable people, you are much more likely to get the desired result and that is exactly what we are now doing across the board.
This concept and structure when applied on a regional approach has already enabled us to take on serious issues that involve Hanover Township and our surrounding municipalities with very good results.
To list a few very good examples, we have strengthened and further developed our very aggressive regional partnerships to better understand and help even more people in need, especially in the areas of Mental Health, Drug Abuse, and Alcohol Abuse. We also have created an incredible amount of good programs, we work to support and promote programs and we jump in to help make good programs even better if we can. We now schedule Mental Health Symposiums regularly, we just hosted a very successful event here in Hanover Township this past October.
We truly believe these efforts helped thousands and thousands of people and this Coalition of wonderful people has been recognized by The State of New Jersey as a recipient of The Jefferson Award by The Governor of New Jersey.
This type of collaboration is more and more important now since we are hopefully out of the COVID-19 crisis.
We are all just beginning to understand the emotional toll this has taken on so many people, especially our youngsters, not to mention all the people “all ages” struggling not related to COVID-19.
So, it’s truly a blessing for all of us to be able to work with so many wonderful selfless people and organizations.
The Partnership we now have with The Mental Health Association is worth its weight in Gold. Thank you to The Mental Health Association, We Love you Guys.
The Partnership we all have with Morris County Sheriff James Gannon and The Morris County Sheriff’s Office is a true gift from God. Thank you, Sheriff. Please know how much we all appreciate you and your great work.
Another example of this type of outreach, several of us worked very hard to create to address a serious need — The Whippany/Passaic River Flood Remediation Task Force. This Task Force includes Hanover Township, East Hanover Township, Florham Park, Morris Plains, Morristown, and Parsippany, and between us, I know firsthand that the next leg of this journey is going to involve many more municipalities.
We created a six-municipality legal shared service agreement in which Hanover Township is the Chief agency, all of our operations are run right of this Municipal building. We hired top experts to do a realistic analysis of the Whippany River from Morristown to 280 and the Passaic River from Chatham to Eagle Rock Ave in East Hanover. Not only did The Whippany/Passaic Flood Remediation Task Force identify eight key areas to be addressed, but this incredible team also put together very specific remediation plans forward under the guidance of Colliers Engineering along with our team of surrounding Municipal engineers.
Our last notification was that the USDA approved every one of our recommendations and plans for remediation, they were able to fit all our issues in their boxes and now we are officially waiting for the release of the funding that we have been awarded.
This award was $1.8 million, which is quite a bit of money that we could never appropriate from any of our available resources.
By the way, we did apply for further funding which hasn’t been awarded yet.
These types of relationships and partnerships can only be built on Trust and Respect.
This type of structure enables us to combine our resources in a much more focused and aggressive manner, working with the best people, which will better assure a positive result.
My philosophy is and has been, instead of taking 1 step forward and 2 steps back, as the now classic Bruce Springsteen song says, I say, take one step back, evaluate, and then take 2 steps forward.
But please always keep in mind the saying made famous by The Yankee’s former Manager Joe Torre “Paralysis through Analysis” That behavior is too prevalent in today’s world and the crews we work with will not have it. I will not have it and that type of passive behavior truly benefits no one.
I refer to Trust and Respect quite a bit, to me Trust and respect must be earned, and I will say with 100% confidence that we have assembled and are continuing to further assemble an incredible team of true public servants based on trust, respect, and dedication to the people we took an oath to serve.
Last point on The Regional Approach:
Hanover Township now has a position on The Morris County Chamber of Commerce Advisory Board.
As of February 2024, Hanover Township will have an Officer on The Morris County League of Municipalities Board.
Hanover Township currently has one of six seats on The Morris County League of Municipalities “Fair Share Housing”, Sub Committee.
Hanover Township is one of The Founding Members of The NJC4EPC which currently includes 15 to 16 Townships and Cities not to mention is a strong partner to many incredible County and state Agencies. This coalition is also run right here out of the Hanover Township Municipal Building.
Hanover Township currently holds a Position on The 200 Club of Morris County, in the capacity of a Trustee and Chairman of membership.
There are a few more, but truthfully the point is Hanover Township is aggressively working too and is getting much more involved in networking on a higher level to further develop relationships that will make our Township much more successful in many ways.
Just a few more highlights that haven’t been touched on.
You’ll see on Township Committee Assignments, the newest detail that Committeeman Brian Cahill oversees is HR Succession. This is a new structure we have put in place to better prepare Hanover Township for the future, on the professional side, and in 2023 this position was a very big help.
Periodically we all joke about how fast times goes, but, it does. So, another goal we all share is we want to leave Hanover Township in a better place than when we got here and leave as little to chance as possible, that is why regularly a few of us refer to short and long-term goals, what are they and what is the plan to achieve them.
So in addition to our professional succession plan, we must and have begun to take very seriously an outreach to encourage more and more of our residents to get involved in any of our boards, committees, councils, authorities, or commissions, we have to look at the next 1 to 3 years and the next 3 to 5 in many of our areas of personnel to truly prepare for the future.
The goal is once again to embrace and encourage the best available people to join us in working together to create new solutions to new problems not to mention new solutions to older problems. This initiative would hopefully bring in new eyes, ears, and ideas.
A bit of news that is inspiring. Mayors Wellness Campaign
Just a few more highlights from 2023 that are important:
I’ve reported that Hanover Township has completely revamped the methodology in which we handle tax appeals, we have seen a very good benefit utilizing this newer approach, but of course we will be adjusting it and making it more effective moving forward, but we all agree it is a great step and very good business.
We were the first Municipality to introduce into Hanover Township Law the way we distribute funding received through PILOT programs, which continues to get quite a bit of accolades and is now a model in several municipalities which is a straight 38% to the K-8 school district, which was never the case, and the only entity that would have been hurt by this program, not in Hanover Township.
Tomorrow night is the first night of “Friday Nights” at Mennen Arena.
Thank you very much again for placing your confidence and trust in me to serve on your Township Committee and God Please and Please Bless Hanover Township.
