Ray Bider & Jamie Casey Installed to Bellmawr Council; Steven Hagerty Named Council Pres.

(Part 1 of 2) This post will feature the installation of Ray Bider and Jamie Casey to Bellmawr Council and also the committee reports from the January 6, 2017 reorganization meeting. The second post will focus on the agenda items and approved business.

Installation of Newly Elected Council Members

At the Borough of Bellmawr’s January 6 reorganization meeting, V.F.W. Post #7410 presented the flags and led the Pledge of Allegiance prior to the installation of Jamie Casey and Ray Bider to Council. Both Bider and Casey were elected to serve three year terms.

Also in attendance were many elected state and local representatives.

Steve Hagerty Named Bellmawr Council President

Council member, Steve Hagerty, was named Council President and was sworn in by Borough Solicitor, Robert Messick.

Excerpts from Committee Reports

Councilman Jamie Casey

I want to wish a Happy New Year to everyone. I want to thank everyone who got me here. There are a lot of people in this room who worked really hard to make sure I was in this position.  I put up with a lot of stuff too.

Councilman Paul Sandrock

To Jamie: It’s nice to see a known man step up and serve his community. He brings a nice family and certainly, a great deal of experience to the table and it’s going to be a pleasure serving with you.

To Ray: We’ve had the esteemed pleasure to work with you for the past few months, and it’s been a certainly enlightening experience. Congratulations.

To all the residents in town and to all of our Borough workers that mean so much to all of us: We wish you a happy New Year and a healthy New Year.

Our Borough workers do a terrific job day in and day out and we do have a great community and we do great services here and I am proud to be part of this Council.

Councilman Jim D’Angelo

First of all on behalf of everybody at the Rec Department: Happy New Year. I hope everybody has a healthy New Year.

Congratulations to Mr. Bider. I’ve known him for a very long time through Bellmawr Hockey, [it’s] a great fit. You deserve to be here. I am looking forward to an exciting year. I think we will have a lot of fun. I wish you the utmost congratulations.

To my friend, Mr. Casey:  I’ve have known [you] for a number of years through school board, which is another thing we have in common besides being cops. I wish you the best and I think you also deserve to be here, especially with all of your experience going back to the school board. I think it is a good fit. I am excited for you as I am for all of us. I am excited to be here, quite frankly. I have known the Casey’s for a long time.

Councilman Steve Sauter

I also would like to wish everyone a happy and healthy 2017. I would like to extend my congratulations to Ray and to Jamie, for being sworn in to their terms for Council. As it’s being said, it’s well deserved.

To Steve Hagerty for being sworn in as President of Council, I am sure you will do an excellent job.

On behalf of Public Works, if you missed it: We were featured on CBS-3. It was the Public Works Department all lined up and ready to go prepared for whatever we get. We are ready.

Councilman Steve Hagerty

To Ray: Congratulations. To Jamie: Congratulations. To all of the residents: Happy New Year.

Councilman Ray Bider

I won’t congratulate myself, but to Jamie: I look forward to a very successful three years and maybe beyond, working together. Steve, I think the mayor made a tremendous choice in you [as Council President ]… I’d like to wish all of you a Happy New Year.

Mayor Frank Filipek

I’d like to thank everyone for being here today and have a nice New Year. I hope it’s healthy and it’s a good one. Bellmawr has always been God’s country. We’ve been great from the beginning and it’s still great. It’s great because of the Norcrosses and the Assembly people and the Freeholders who work with all of us. But most important, it’s because of our Chief of Police, our directors, our public works, recreation, sewer departments, and all of our employees. They make us look good. We have a good working relationship.

We work together very well. It’s been like that for years and that is why Bellmawr is such a clean, close-knit town. We have our problems and we get them straightened out, we hope.

We miss our friends. I miss two people especially: [former council members] Regina [Piontowski] and Dave [Duncan]. I miss Tony Infanti, ex-mayor. They were friends of mine and we get older and that’s what happens. I have to give credit to Angelo Errichetti. He might have been in jail, but he was a close friend of mine and brought me into politics. The other one is George Norcross, Donald’s brother. We started in politics together. I’ll be 76 and I started way back.

To the citizens: We hope there aren’t as many complaints as last year. When something is wrong, you’re on the phone blaming us. But, you have to remember something, we don’t make major decisions. We can only do what we can do.

We work along well with the Freeholders at the County. We work along with the Senate, also Congress.

For the first time, we have somebody in Washington who I can call and he will answer my call right away.

I want to thank [Borough Clerk] Chuck [Sauter] for all the work he has done for us. And [Borough Solicitor], Bob Messick has been here. I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for all the work that you do.

Josh, our Business Administrator, is doing a great job and …he continues to work hard.

God bless you all. We have a good working group.

(Part 2 of this article will be posted later in the week.)

SJO’s Photo Gallery of Bellmawr Council’s Re-Organization meeting: