CAI-NJ June 2019 (w)

LOOKING AHEAD LARRY THOMAS, PCAM | CAI-NJ CHAPTER EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

T his month’s theme “Renewables” isn’t the easiest topic to write about. I can come up with several definitions for renewables. I will address the definitions that imme- diately came to my mind. First off, “Did you renew your CAI membership and your credentials?” As we in the office ponder over the monthly expired lists from our National office, we often see names that have been members for a long time and somehow during the recent months, their membership has expired. There is an easy solution to this. Every CAI member has access to their individual histories on the www.caionline.org website and can readily check their membership status along with a variety of other mem- ber specific information. When someone joins CAI, they are automatically given a username and password. The username is their email address that was provided on the membership application (for business partners, it’s the “pri- mary contact” person) and the password is the last name of the member with the first letter capitalized. We encourage all members to immediately change their password after initially signing in. Once you’ve logged in, you can access your membership status and any CAI National events that you may have attended along with any purchases made through CAI. I think that the intent of the theme “Renewables” is primar- ily focused on energy related matters. It’s hard to keep up with all the progress and new energy efficient items that are available to us. One of the major items that has been in the news recently is the mandate for anyone living in a multifamily scenario to change their smoke and carbon monoxide detectors over to 10-year lithium-ion batteries. This only applies to smoke and carbon monoxide detectors that are battery operated. If your facility has hard wired detectors, you are ok. If you want additional information, it’s part of the updated fire code (N.J.A.C. 5:70-4.19) Caroline Record, Esq. and I recently attended the League

of Mayors Annual Conference in Atlantic City. Caroline is an attorney at Hill Wallack and is a member of the New Jersey Legislative Action Committee. While at the conference we attended the Mayor’s Legislative Action Committee meeting. There were three central issues that they addressed: (1) Towns dealing with the possibility of the legalization of marijuana, (2) the proposed changes in the state’s liquor licenses and (3) the recent substantial increases in the recycling fees. I am only going to address the recycling fees as this fits within the “Renewables”

“Every CAI member has access to their individual histories on the www.caionline.org website and can readily check their membership status along with a variety of other member specific information.”

category. It seems that due to the recent trade conflicts with China, China has restricted the amount of recycled materials that they are buying from the United States. This decrease of exported materials has in effect created large increases in the recycling fees that are being transferred to our towns and common interest communities. The mayors are very focused on this matter and are looking for alter- natives to keep the recycling fee increases at a minimum. Hopefully, there will be better news in the coming weeks and these increased fees can be controlled or minimized. As I started this month’s column, “Renewables” isn’t the easiest topic to write about. I used my imagination a little and expanded the intent of the theme to include more than the envisioned topics. n

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