By Sunayana Prabhu
RED BANK – A resolution added last minute to the borough council’s meeting agenda to add the Red Bank Senior Center property to the state’s Recreation and Open Space Inventory (ROSI) passed with a majority vote.
While the goal of council members and residents is to preserve the property for posterity, adding it to the ROSI would put the senior center under state control and governance, an idea several residents objected to at the June 14 meeting. Many felt the decision was being rushed.
Two ways to preserve the senior center property were discussed at the Wednesday meeting by some outgoing council members and incoming council members expected to take office at the borough’s July 1 reorganization. The center could be protected from any future development through a borough-enforced deed restriction or the state-governed ROSI.
Each municipality prepares a ROSI, a document that serves as a master list of its green acres restricted lands that qualify for the state’s Green Acres Funding program for conservation which also brings the entire property under permanent state governance. Many at the meeting were skeptical about that and insisted the council allow more time for the public to weigh in before making a hurried decision.
A deed restriction would maintain borough control over the land to achieve the same goal by adding a conservation easement to protect and preserve the open back lot of the senior center, a 25-foot steep bank leading to the Swimming River. However, a deed restriction could be challenged in the future.
A majority faction of the borough council including outgoing council members Ed Zipprich, John Jackson and Jacqueline Sturdivant who attended virtually, voted to start the process to add the senior center property to the ROSI, a measure strongly disputed by newly elected members Nancy Blackwood, Laura Janone, Kristina Bonatakis and Ben Forest at the lightly attended meeting, opening up the possibility of reversing the action when the council reorganizes next month.
The borough’s planning board at its June 5 meeting rejected the idea of subdividing the senior center property into two lots, one with the existing building and the rear lot with open space intended for ROSI.
Bonatakis argued that a 143-page document governs the restrictions on ROSI properties and that’s a “lot to go through.” Any changes sought by the borough – for instance, imposing fee structures to limit public access – would have to go through the New Jersey Department of Environment Protection (NJDEP) which would add “administrative burdens” and “cost restrictions” for no “tangible benefit,” she said.
Advocating for ROSI, resident Linda Hill recalled properties like Maple Cove, Veterans Park, Eastside Park and Riverside Gardens Park that were added to the ROSI but Mayor Billy Portman argued that all those properties are mainly open parkland space, unlike the senior center. Giving away the senior center to ROSI would make it “a public use facility that anybody can use,” Portman said.
But resident Cindy Burnham expressed a lack of trust in borough governance over parks, referring to the borough’s proposal to put a “65-space parking lot” at Marine Park which she said “is insane.”
Borough attorney Ed Herman, present on the phone, explained that “there are rules and regulations about things that you can do, things you can’t do” with ROSI properties as dictated by the Green Acres Program. As a ROSI property, the borough would be restricted from making any changes to the senior center.
Both Forest and Janone urged for more time to make the final decision. “I would like a more deliberate report from some sort of land use expert about what’s the best way to do this,” Forest said. “I don’t like this last-minute switcheroo changing things.”
Janone said the decision is “rushed, as usual.”
“There’s no transparency and it’s just laid out here very quickly when we all were at meetings all day today trying to learn about government and this is not correct.” Residents took issue with the fact that agenda items published on the borough’s website until 4:06 p.m. the day of the meeting still included a resolution authorizing the execution of a deed restriction for the property. The amended resolution proposing the ROSI was handed out at the meeting without prior notice. “Somebody was able to stick this (resolution) onto the agenda with no public notice until we got here,” said resident Stephen Hecht. “Going forward, I hope that the new council will make that impossible.”
Michael Ballard, Angela Mirandi and Kate Triggiano were absent from the meeting. The next and final council meeting before the new government reorganizes is scheduled for June 28.
The article originally appeared in the June 22 – 28, 2023 print edition of The Two River Times.
