Residents Pack Meeting To Hear Bonding Plan

739
Story and photo by Liz Sheehan
SEA BRIGHT – In a nearly four hour long public meeting Tuesday night, residents questioned borough officials about the three bond issues that will be on a referendum ballot scheduled for Tuesday, Sept. 27.
The bond issues would pay to replace facilities lost in Super Storm Sandy, including the firehouse, police headquarters, the public library and the existing Borough Hall, which has problems that has led borough officials to question its further use.
The project would be paid for by the bond issues, and funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and insurance payments. The bond issues were approved in a 4-2 Borough Council vote in June but a petition calling for a referendum on the bond issues required the vote since it was signed by more than 15 percent of the voters in the last election, in which members of the state Assembly were on the ballot. Borough Clerk Christina Pfeiffer said 69 of the signers qualified where 45 were required.
At the meeting, Councilman Brian Kelly said he had been working on the issue of upgrading borough facilities for years. “These needs were here ten years ago,” he said.
Kelly said the town had looked to sharing services with nearby municipalities but had not found a good match.
The proposal funded by the bonds would consolidate the three lost buildings, the library, the fire house and the police headquarters and the borough offices into two, Kelly said.
He said the Borough Hall did not have safe conditions which had an impact on the town’s employees.
Kelly said the longer the borough took to act on the replacement plans the more the risk of losing FEMA funds increased, a warning that was repeated by both officials and residents during the meeting.
FEMA funds would provide $5,390,818 towards the $12.7 million cost of the project.
In a previous meeting, Kelly said that the bonds would raise taxpayers’ costs by about two cents per hundred dollars of valuation. But Councilman John Lamnia, Jr., who voted against the bond issues, said he did so because “the cap was too high.”
He said before approving a project you “first figure how much money you have.”
Lamnia said “the council worked very hard,” on drawing up the plans for the buildings, but “I believe that we could build these buildings for less.”
Both Kelly’s and Lamnia’s positions drew support from the audience, many of whom had to stand during the long meeting because of the packed crowd.
One resident asked that the contingency fee, $2,345,709, be eliminated, making the cost lower. But Mayor Dina Long said it was important to keep it in case of unexpected events.
Linda Boyce said she has not yet been able to return to her home, which was badly damaged by Sandy, but “believe in this town.” She said she supported the project of rebuilding. “No matter what happens, Sea Bright will go on,” Boyce said.
Councilman Charles Rooney III, said “This is our chance,” to make history in the town by rebuilding the damaged buildings. He said the four years ago, right after Sandy, the town’s residents met at the Rumson-Fair Haven Regional High School “trying to figure out when we were going to come home.”
Councilman Jack Keeler said he had voted against the bond issues because he did not believe the borough offices should be placed in the building with the firehouse and police department and the first aid offices. He also said there had been unexpected events that had happened in past years that had caused financial problems for the town and its residents, such as Sandy, the 1992 storm and the 2008 financial meltdown, and the future could not be counted on to be without similar occurrences.
Several borough officials cited the income from the recently introduced metered parking and planned expansion of the cell tower as providing funds to pay for the 20-year bonds for the buildings.
A slide projection at the meeting said that paying for the bonds would cost a home-owner with a house valued at $500,000, the average in the town, $172 more in taxes a year for the bond payments, Acting Borough Administrator Joseph Verruni said Wednesday that insurance and a settlement of a beach lawsuit would supply $1.57 million to costs of the construction of the buildings.

An area of agreement at the meeting was that if the bonds were approved, a vigorous effort would be made to pare down costs.
“We are all ears,” Long said, for suggestions to reduce how much would be spent on the project. She said the town wanted “to make it so we can afford to live here.”
Councilman Marc Leckstein introduced a new consideration about the status of the Borough Hall when he said that there was a deed restriction on the property it was built on placed by the donor of the property, J. Horace Harding in 1918, that the site be used as public playground for the children of Sea Bright.
The present Borough Hall was placed on the property, he said, and a large gym in the building was used for public recreation including the children of the town. The gym is no longer in use and Leckstein said the use of the building could be legally challenged.
The town has scheduled two drop-in session for residents to ask questions and obtain more information about the proposed bonds and the project they would fund on Saturday, Aug. 27 from 10 a.m. to noon and Wednesday, Sept. 7, from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m.