Merry Christmas to all! And Happy New Year in Livingston, NJ!

It’s 2010 right around the corner, and that means time to take down the lights, tree decorations and the tree itself.

Livingston is going green this year again and mulching up all discarded live Christmas trees. Just put your trees out curbside anytime in January Monday through Friday from 8:00 am to 4:00 pm and the township will pick them up for free.

The Livingston Department of Public works will chip the trees into mulch (I believe by the Livingston circle, behind the Firehouse). The best part is that the DPW makes all the mulch available to residents for free pick-up, at no cost, while supplies last.

Just call the Livingston DPW at 973-535-7931 for details and to schedule a pick-up.

Livingston township is using a system called SWIFT911 for high speed notification of town residents of urgent news. The key feature of the system is the capability of delivering pre-recorded messages to the entire community via telephone, cell phone, email and text messaging.

This system will be used by more municipal departments now, including:

• the Tax Department, for property tax notifications;
• the Water Department, for water maintenance and outage notifications;
• Engineering, for messages about road construction on Township roadways; and
• the Police Department will continue to utilize it for emergencies.

The Swift911 system uses a publicly available list of phone numbers for both residents and businesses.

BUT if you’re number is NOT listed in the telephone book, your number is probably not in the system.

Residents and businesses can add or remove their phone numbers from the system online by visiting www.livingstonnj.org or by clicking on the Swift911 icon above to get to the township website page with details. The service can also add cell phones numbers and e-mail addresses.