Works by Kathy Polenberg, above, and other local artists are showcased as part of the rejuvenated Red Bank Art Walk event on Friday.  

It looked for a while as if it might never regain its footing — but after sitting out the past couple of years, the Red Bank Art Walk makes its return this Friday, hot on the heels of the borough’s selection (by Smithsonian Magazine) as one of the top three Best Small Towns in the USA for culture and quality of life.

A three-hour, self-guided tour through the downtown Green and points west, the Art Walk is both rejuvenated and reconfigured in its 2012 incarnation, with a new cast of participants joined by several “non-traditional spaces” where Art Happens, from restaurants and retail stores to at least one transformed place of worship.

Going on between the hours of 6pm and 9pm, this first in a projected new series of events is being spearheaded by a relatively recent arrival to town — Gallery U and Boutique, the rather Unique and Unorthodox artspace that opened its doors at 80 Broad Street last year.

Jon Fried and Deena Shoshkes of  legendary NJ band The Cucumbers make a rare Red Bank appearance at Gallery U on May 11, during the Red Bank Art Walk.  

A companion to an existing Gallery U in Montclair, the Red Bank space is managed by Robert Langdon and operated by Livingston-based Universal Institute Medical Rehab Therapy Center, a facility specializing in the treatment of patients with brain and spinal cord injuries. UI established the two galleries as part of their vocational training program for adults with traumatic brain injuries, and quickly generated buzz that centered around the success of the program’s therapeutic aspects, as well as the high quality of the art featured in such well-received group shows as Awakenings — a recent exhibit that incorporated pieces created by the Institute’s disabled clients.

That show was curated by Ben Danzi of Rumson, and featured contributions from Eileen Kennedy of Red Bank, as well as Long Branch-based Kathy Polenberg — herself a former head injury patient, and a seemingly tireless creator of indoor/outdoor art, theatrical scenery, residential flourishes and other amazing stuff in evidence throughout the greater Green and beyond. The artist known as “Polekat” returns to Gallery U for Promenade, an event that boasts a live musical performance (and super-rare Red Bank appearance) by Deena Shoshkes and Jon Fried, co-founders of The Cucumbers — a reborn combo familiar to fans of the 1980s Hoboken scene, as well as listeners of the late and lamented WHTG-FM.

Also featured in Promenade are works by Alexandra Alger, Lisa Budd, Jill Caporlingua, Bill Cohen, Lauren Curtis, John Darvey, Karissa Harvey, Kathleen Heron, Jonathan Hernandez, Robert Langdon, Marci Shrewsbury Lopez, Adena Macri, Onix Mora, Marilyn Rose, Kristian Sacca, Randy Schaeffer, and Erik von Ploennes.

Elsewhere on the Art Walk, Bolivia-born “action painter” David Banegas offers live demonstrations of his specialty at his Banegas Fine Art Gallery (43 Broad Street), while Gallery 135 inside Monmouth Street’s Red Bank Community Church presents a first look at one of Red Bank’s best kept secrets: a newly rebranded exhibit space curated by associate pastor and contemporary artist Reverend Gerda Liebmann. Up at  McKay Imaging Gallery , an exhibit of “New and Unknown” works by Red Bank legend Evelyn Leavens is open for public perusal (see redbankgreen‘s feature on that ongoing installation, LEAVENS GETS LINEAR).

Also on the tour will be such long-established borough spaces as The Art Alliance of Monmouth County and Beacon Fine Arts Gallery on Monmouth Street, as well as Chetkin Gallery on Wharf Avenue. They’ll be joined for the Art Walk by such art-friendly restaurants as Front Street Trattoria, No Joe’s Cafe, Good Karma Cafe, and Jon Bon Jovi’s nonprofit JBJ Soul Kitchen. In fact, all participants in the Red Bank Art Walk are encouraged to contribute non-perishable food items to donation boxes set up at various venues on the Walk, with a collective donation being made to Foodbank of Monmouth & Ocean following the event.

Strolling art aficionados can pick up free street maps of Red Bank along the route, highlighting Art Walk locations, and, as an additional mark of distinction, each venue will also be displaying red balloons outside their doors.

As the headline suggests, the weekend that awaits is jammed with the potential for good times.

We’ve got the fifth Red Bank Townwide Yard Sale, this one making a migration from fall to spring.

We’ve got one of the inaugural events of this year’s weeklong Paint the Town Pink festivities to raise awareness about breast cancer and the importance of early detection.

And capping it all off, rain or shine, is the first-ever Red Bank International Flavour Fest, an outdoor celebration of the wide variety of cuisines available year-round at Red Bank restaurants.

And Mother Nature appears to be in a mood to cooperate.

Details, as they used to say when that was still a two-syllable word, are just below.

SATURDAY: Red Bank Townwide Yard Sale
Location: all over town. Maps available at the Red Bank Public Library and at many of the participating homes.
Time: Officially, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., but sellers can set their own hours.

From an email update from Beth Hanratty, president of the Friends of the Red Bank Public Library, which has hosted the event since 2010:

lots of records, books and air conditioners

SATURDAY: Pink Hat Tea Party
Pilgrim Baptist Church
172 Shrewsbury Avenue
Doors open 10:30 a.m., Event 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Don’t miss this important Paint the Town Pink event, presented by Riverview Medical Center. Gather all the special women in your life to join us for an educational and entertaining Pink Hat Tea, with a hat and apparel fashion show courtesy Geneva’s Boutique of Neptune, a speacial presentation from Adi Smolinsky, M.D., a Riverview Medical Center OB/GYN, education about Paint the Town Pink’s mission of the importance of annual mammography, and more! Refreshments will be provided by Jameson’s Ultimate Southern Cooking Restaurant in Neptune. Don’t forget to wear your pink hat!

*Pink Sale Event. Deck your pink all year long with our exclusive Paint the Town Pink gear and goodies for sale at this signature event.

This event is FREE but registration is required. RSVP: 1-800-DOCTORS

SUNDAY: Paint Everything Pink Community Day
Riverview Medical Center parking lot
1 p.m. to 4 p.m.

Pink your town, pink your house, pink your family. Everything is pink at our family-centered, free Community Day! Featuring many of the same pink “zones” families have come to expect as well as exciting new ones, this year’s event will feature:

Kids’ Fun & Games: Rides, arts and crafts, face painting – all the things your kids have come to love! And don’t miss photos with Dr. Bernard from the Pawsitive Action Team at
K. Hovnanian Children’s Hospital.

Pink it Yourself Man Cave: In line with this year’s theme of Men in Pink, our “man cave” will offer the men in your life an area just for them. Activities will include DYI demonstrations from the Home Depot, interactive games, and of course our exclusive Real Men Wear Pink t-shirts.

Rockin’ Country Thunder 106.3: Bring out the country in you! With live music from a local country artist, this local-favorite station will have you dancin’ in your boots. Your kids will love our pony rides and everyone can enjoy some good old fashioned root beer!

And that’s not all! Enjoy some snack-food favorites and other sweet treats, and beverages from a number of local pink partners, and don’t forget to stop by our educational tables to pick-up important information about Paint the Town Pink’s mission of raising awareness of the importance of annual mammography.

Special Pink Cotton Candy and Snow Cones presented by Arrow Limousine.

SUNDAY: Red Bank International Flavour Festival
White Street Parking Lot
12 p.m. to 7 p.m., rain or shine

Here’s the National Weather Service forecast:

Saturday: Mostly sunny, with a high near 68. Northeast wind between 10 and 13 mph.

Sunday: Mostly sunny, with a high near 68. Northeast wind around 9 mph.

By JOHN T. WARD

A Navesink couple is the latest in a string of wealthy donors to write a whopping check to help pay for a new surgical center at Riverview Medical Center in Red Bank, the hospital announced late Tuesday.

Richard Saker, the third-generation CEO of the Saker ShopRite chain, and his wife, Laura, have donated $1 million to the cause through the business, the hospital reports.

The commitment pushes the hospital’s campaign for the 22,000-square-foor surgery center “well past” its $15 million goal, the nonprofit said in its announcement.

Prior donations have included $5 million from Bob & Joan Rechnitz, founders of the Two River Theater Company, and $1 million from George and Vita Kolber of Locust. Hospital workers themselves ponied up nearly $375,000, officials said at the center’s opening last month.

The hospital did not immediately say how the campaign surplus would be spent. [Update: Riverview spokesman Tom Paolella tells redbankgreen via email that the Saker contribution "continues the significant momentum and support from this community that has us ahead in our plans for a second phase of growth for Riverview that we will be sharing with the community shortly."]

Here’s the full announcement from the public relations office at Riverview, one of the hospitals in the Meridian Health universe:

Red Bank, NJ – April 17, 2012 – Riverview Medical Center today announced a $1 million charitable donation from Saker ShopRites to Meridian Health to benefit the Life.Changing. Campaign for Surgical Excellence at Riverview. The donation will help support the construction of Riverview’s new 22,000 square foot center for surgical excellence, and effectively vaults the campaign well past the $15 million fundraising goal. The project, which is currently underway includes: two sophisticated specialty surgical suites, renovated post-anesthesia care area, relocated and renovated surgical day stay, and a state-of-the-art conference and educational center. This advancement will allow patients to continue to receive advanced surgical procedures close to home, without having to travel to New York City or elsewhere.

The Saker family has spent a lifetime sharing their blessings. Richard currently serves as a member of the Riverview Medical Center Foundation board of trustees. As president and chief executive officer of Saker Holdings Corporation, and Saker ShopRites, Inc., Richard has harnessed the power of this huge enterprise to benefit countless lives and the quality of life for the residents of Monmouth and Ocean counties. Together with his wife Laura, a professional educator, dancer, and choreographer, they have both helped to raise millions of dollars to benefit the hungry, and many other worthwhile causes.

“Our family is extremely proud and honored to be a part of a project that is going to have such a life-changing impact on the surrounding communities,” said Laura. “We feel it is important to support the community we call home,” said Richard. “Laura and I have always had a deep affection for Riverview Medical Center where our children were born and where our family members have always been well cared for. When we heard about the new center being built, we wanted to do what we could to help make it happen.”

Richard serves on the boards of Wakefern Food Corporation, the New Jersey Food Council, the Academy of Food Marketing at St Joseph’s University, and the Joan Dancy and People with ALS Foundation. Both Richard and Laura have been recognized by singer Andrea Bocelli for their charitable work with the Vision of Children Foundation and are steadfast supporters of the FoodBank of Monmouth and Ocean Counties. In the past year alone, over 1,500 Central NJ organizations have benefited from Saker ShopRites charitable donations. In addition, Saker ShopRites supports the “ShopRite Partners in Caring” program, a charity dedicated to the fight against hunger, where this year over 1000 charities have received a portion of the $2 million donated by “ShopRite Partners in Caring”.

As third generation in a family business, Richard remains loyal to his roots in Monmouth County and to his hometown of Freehold; site of the first family owned and operated Saker’s market, established in 1906 by his grandparents. Together with Laura who serves on the boards of the Monmouth County SPCA, Two River Theater Company, Monmouth Conservation Foundation, and the Drumthwacket Foundation, they have maintained a decades-long Saker family tradition of giving back to the community in which they work and live.

“We are grateful for the long-standing commitment to Riverview Medical Center by one of Monmouth County’s most charitable families,” says David Flood, president of the Meridian Health Foundation. “This gift is a tangible affirmation of our commitment as the healthcare heart of our community and provides critical support for the programs and services we are developing. Thanks to their generosity and vision, the Sakers have put this campaign over the top, while contributing to a momentum that has us ahead in our plans for a second phase of growth for Riverview that we will be sharing with community shortly. This great community demands and deserves superior healthcare, and Riverview is committed to delivering just that with every dollar invested.”

“The Saker’s generosity is inspiring,” says Tim Hogan, FACHE, regional president of Riverview Medical Center and Bayshore Community Hospital. “People rightly acknowledge that Riverview has had an exceptional past. But exceptional isn’t going to be good enough for the future; as healthcare moves forward we need to be at the forefront of patient care. The campaign provides an opportunity for any and all community members to put a personal stamp on this historic project — one that will provide state-of-the-art healthcare for generations to come.”

To learn more about the center for surgical excellence, or to support the Life. Changing. campaign visit www.RiverviewMedicalCenter.com/LifeChanging.

About Riverview Medical Center

Riverview Medical Center, a member of the Meridian Health Family, is a 463-bed not-for-profit community hospital located on the Navesink River in Red Bank, New Jersey. Riverview Medical Center provides health care programs and services in all major medical disciplines including: maternity, oncology, orthopedics and rehabilitation, neurology, thoracic and vascular surgery, cardiology, renal dialysis, diabetes management, and emergency and critical care services. Riverview’s Jane H. and John Marshall Booker Cancer Center offers comprehensive cancer services close to home, while Riverview’s Jane H. Booker Women and Children’s Center combines expertise and convenience to address preventative health, diagnosis, treatment, and support for women of all ages. Riverview Rehabilitation Center is Monmouth County’s only fully-accredited inpatient rehabilitation facility, and Riverview is a designated Primary Stroke Center and has also maintained prestigious Magnet designation for Nursing Excellence since 1998. Riverview is the only hospital in the region with the groundbreaking CyberKnife® system, offering new hope for patients with inaccessible or inoperable tumors. For more information about Riverview Medical Center and Meridian Health, please call 1-800-DOCTORS or visit www.riverviewmedicalcenter.com.

It’s not just Mother Nature’s recent toying with the thermostat that’s giving us a taste of spring in February.

Every year at this time, Red Bank’s temperature rises for a few hours as hundreds of women, most of them bedecked in luscious red, gather for drinks, dancing and a good cause: ‘The Red Dress Event,’ hosted by Meridian Women’s Heart Connection.

Once again, on Thursday night, stunning designer gowns from New York’s Fashion Week were on display at Buona Sera Restaurant, where a ballroom turned into a scarlet ocean and the dance floor was jumping.

redbankgreen was there, natch.

By JOHN T. WARD

As go Red Bank’s Independence Day fireworks, so go Rumson’s.

For five years, the two towns put on simultaneous, mirror-image fireworks displays just miles apart on the Navesink River.

But the decision announced Wednesday by the KaBoom Fireworks organizing committee to shelve the Red Bank show in all likelihood means there also will be no fireworks anchored around the Oceanic Bridge between Rumson and Middletown this year, Rumson Mayor John Ekdahl tells redbankgreen.

“We’re probably not going to be able to go ahead,” he said.

Operating as one of the shore’s best little secrets, the Rumson show was an exact replica of the KaBoom show except for the size of the shells, which were smaller. The shows were synched to the same timer and music track.

Unlike the Red Bank show, however, Rumson’s event was financed by the private Rumson Foundation, with a relatively small group of well-heeled donors picking up the cost.

Though that funding would appear unaffected this year, “we’ve lost the economy of scale” of buying two shows from the same provider, Garden State Fireworks, which saved both shows 10 to 15 percent off the fee they would otherwise have paid, Ekdahl said.

But of greater concern, he said, is that Rumson can’t absorb even a small fraction of the crowd that the Red Bank cancellation might steer its way, he said.

The Rumson event, which typically drawns 15,000 to 18,000 spectators, mostly to the area of the Oceanic Bridge, “couldn’t take even 10 percent” of the estimated 100,000 that Red Bank draws, Ekdahl said.

Ekdahl said the foundation’s board has not met to decide the fate of its show, but he expects it to be cancelled.

“We did it for five years, at no cost to taxpayers, and everybody loved it, so it’s kind of sad, actually,” he said.

By JOHN T. WARD

Three months after opening, Soul Kitchen, the pay-what-you-can-or-work-it-off restaurant on Red Bank’s West Side, is  progresssing toward its goal of feeding the haves and have-nots in equal numbers, new manager Ryan Timmons tells redbankgreen.

About 30 percent of the restaurant’s patrons pay with vouchers earned through volunteer work at Soul Kitchen or a growing roster of other non-profits, Timmons said. The goal is a 50-50 mix among diners, and “the voucher-to-payment ratio is going up,” he said.

Meanwhile, paying customers are being generous when settling up bills via the discreet donation envelopes that servers present to them at the end of their three-course dinners, he said. The suggested donation is $10, but “very few” customers leave just that amount, he said, and instead pay more to help subsidize meals for others.

Timmons is heading into his second weekend running the restaurant, having been hired away from his on-again, off-again gig as Andrew Gennusa’s right hand at Zebu Forno last week.

He was brought on board at Soul Kitchen, he said, to free executive chef Zeet Peabody to focus on the food, public outreach, and the sponsor JBJ Soul Foundation‘s goal of replicating the model elsewhere.

“We’re trying to structure this so we can put more of these restaurants in places where they’re needed,” he said.

Soul Kitchen is the brainchild of pop rocker Jon Bon Jovi and his wife, Dorothea Bongiovi.

The restaurant staff, with two outreach employees, is beginning to solidify relationships with other organizations where volunteers would earn vouchers. Already on board are the nearby soup kitchen, Lunch Break, St. Anthony of Padua RC Church and a homeless shelter at Fort Monmouth, and Soul Kitchen hopes to soon begin working with Habitat for Humanity and local arts groups.

Timmons, 32, of Fair Haven, has been working in the food service industry since he was 16, when he began busing tables and washing dishes.

As much as he enjoyed working at Zebu, he said, the offer from Soul Kitchen was something he could not turn down.

“This is why a lot of us get into this business – to see the smiling faces,” he said. “Nobody who comes here complains. They’re here for the right reasons.”

Some of the customers, he said, have not eaten in a restaurant with linen tablecloths in years, if ever.

In one of his first days on the job, he said three women who work as housekeepers volunteered to dust the restaurant, including a high wall of shelves. That night, he said, the women came in with their families and paid for their meals with the vouchers they’d earned.

At the end of the night, he said, “you leave here feeling great.”

Soul Kitchen is open Thursday through Saturday, featuring community-style seatings at 5, 6 and 7 p.m. Sunday hours are 12 to 3 p.m. Alcohol is not permitted.

By JOHN T. WARD

The oversized, constantly changing photos of well-dressed young models you may have noticed in the window of Skye Blue & BeTween in Fair Haven aren’t stock images provided by clothing manufacturers.

They’re the store’s ‘tween customers, girls aged 13 to 16, the age “just before they start shopping at Urban Outfitters,” says shop owner Debbie Mishan. And a spot in the boutique’s frames has become one of the hottest tickets among adolescent girls on the Green – and a marketing boon for Mishan and a local photographer.

Mishan opened the River Road store three years ago, after selling a building across the street where she ran What A Doll, a doll shop, for a dozen years.

Soon after she opened, in wandered Rumson photographer Avery Brighton, who asked Mishan if she might display some of her work in the store to generate portrait business.

“I said, ‘How about we put some of the customers in the window?’” Mishan tells redbankgreen.

They did, and soon, “customers started coming in and asking, ‘How do you get in the window?’” Mishan said. “It mushroomed.”

That’s evident in the the large glass vase on the store’s counter. It is stuffed to overflowing, mushroom-like, with hundreds of clothing tags, each bearing the handwritten name and phone number of a girl eager to be among the eight chosen for the new monthly display.

“It’s been phenomenal what’s happened,” said Brighton, who posts the latest crop of photos on her blog.

Winners are treated to a free photo session at Brighton’s Shine Bright Studios, complete with hair-blowing fans and a stereo system pumping out Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga and other cohort-appropriate ear candy.

The girls find the experience thrilling.

“Debbie has amazing clothes,” said 12-year-old Charlotte Kaye, a recent transplant from Rumson to Allenhurst who was featured in the January display. “I was really looking forward to it.”

“They’re beside themselves when they come in,” said Brighton, who notes that the process of selecting clothes for the shoot, and the shoot itself, is often “a bonding experience between the girls and their mothers, who sometimes see a side of their daughters they’ve never seen before” once the music starts playing.

“The moms are like, ‘I had no idea she could dance like that,’” Brighton said.

“It’s a huge self-esteem booster, especially for girls this age,” said Jennifer Kaye, Charlotte’s mother. “These girls are just so fragile. Anything that helps them feel good about themselves at that formative age is wonderful.”

The posters are noteworthy in an era of increasingly sexualized youth for their unforced, naturalistic depiction of girls having the time of their lives in the latest fashions.

“These girls have just gotten their braces, they have freckles,” said Brighton. “These are real kids.”

The pictures “have a lot of personality, and they’re very age-appropriate,” Kaye adds.

The shoots have become so popular that one donated by Mishan and Brighton is said to have raised more than $1,2000 for a local charity, though Mishan said was unable to confirm that.

The effort has generated more sales for Skye Blue than any type of advertising Mishan has ever tried, she said. But she admits that what now looks like a bolt of marketing genius was actually inspired by a far more pedestrian aim.

“The god’s honest truth is that I did this to keep the sun out,” she said, pointing to the store’s south-facing windows.

The parents are under no obligation to buy any pictures. But the arrangement has been a fruitful source of referrals for her as well, Brighton said.

“We’re taking two small businesses and working together, using both our strengths, to do something nice for the community and to help our businesses,” she said.

The Red Bank Roller Vixens put on an action-packed show for a full house at the the Red Bank Middle School in a fundraiser for the eighth-grade class trip Friday night.

The event also featured a bit of hardwood action by the Red Bank Riot Girls, a junior league squad for girls ages 12 to 18; some nasal silliness by the Pretty Things Peep Show; and a raffle based on a storm of ping-pong balls.

redbankgreen was there, natch.

By JOHN T. WARD

Heeding the sound of Red Bank’s rattling tin cup, a fifth nonprofit has made a cash contribution to the town lieu of taxes.

Habcore Inc., which provides shelter and other services to the homeless and disabled  on South Pearl Street, has cut a check for $9,900, Mayor Pasquale Menna said Wednesday.

In addition, a comparable sum has been pledged by another charity that he could not yet publicly identify, Menna said.

Habcore’s donation follows a renewal by Menna of a campaign to relieve borough taxpayers of some of the costs of supporting social service and religious education facilities that benefit an area beyond the town’s borders.

Menna has floated two proposals: tax nonprofits for newly acquired properties in towns deemed to be “regional centers” where at least 15 percent of the land area is now exempt; or create a mechanism whereby such towns would be compensated for hosting charities, either through state or Monmouth County coffers.

The sum given by Habcore exceeds what it would have owed the town if its holdings were not exempt from taxes.

Habcore officials could not be reached for immediate comment.

On South Pearl, Habcore  has a 4,400-square-foot residence with an assessed value of $632,900. Property records show Habcore also owns 119 River Street, valued at $358,900. Combined, at the current local tax rate of 51 cents per $100, Habcore would only have owed the town $5,058 had those properties been on the tax rolls.

Red Bank also gets annual contributions from Riverview Medical Center, the town’s largest nonprofit, which gives $200,000 a year; the Monmouth Boat Club ($5,000); the Navesink River Rowing club, though it does not own any property ($2,000); and Wesleyan Arms senior citizens’ housing project on Wall Street. Wesleyan Arms contributes a fixed percentage of its rent collections, Menna said, though he and other officials did not have the sum handy Wednesday night.

[UPDATE AND CLARIFICATION: Steven Heisman, executive director of Habcore, says that organization's payment to the town is not new. Habcore, he says, has been making payments in lieu of taxes (PILOTs) to Red Bank for 25 years under contract, including one signed in 2005 and expiring in 2015. It does the same in Asbury Park, where it also owns property. "We do use borough services, and so we should help out," he told redbankgreen Thursday morning. "I don't want people to look at Habcore as a drain on the community."

Heisman said he had written Menna a letter recently to remind him of the agrement because Menna had called out other nonprofits that made payments to Red Bank without mentioning Habcore.

Asked Monday why he had framed the payment as a new contribution, Menna, however, said he was unaware of the PILOT contact between Habcore and Red Bank. "I don't look at every single tax notice, he said.]

By JOHN T. WARD

It’s become a familiar refrain of Red Bank officials: the borough is choking on nonprofits that provide services to a wide swath of Monmouth County’s citizenry but return nothing to the town’s coffers.

For all the societal good they do, a sprawling medical center, various churches and other do-good institutions occupy land that might otherwise generate tax revenue – and they increase the load carried by borough taxpayers each time they expand, says Mayor Pasquale Menna.

“Our residents have to pay for the deficiency,” he said. “That societal good is borne by those who are the least able to pay for it.”

Menna says that this year, he’ll be dialing up efforts to address what he considers a fundamental unfairness. But having gotten nowhere with earlier efforts, he’s retooled, and is now pitching a provocative idea: Make nonprofits pay when they acquire property now on the tax rolls.

The suggestion, Menna cautions, is just that. Though other media coverage of the proposal has focused on the controversial notion of upending a longstanding exemption from taxes for charities, Menna tells redbankgreen that the idea is merely a conversation-starter, and that he’s open to other mechanisms by which towns like Red Bank are compensated.

The problem, he says, came to the fore with the end of state aid to all but the most distressed cities in New Jersey, and it could be addressed by having Trenton, or the county seats, recognize and steer money back to towns that serve as regional centers, such as Red Bank, Morristown and Princeton.

“Basically, it’s an invitation to the legislature to start thinking outside the box,” he said. “There has to be a program that recognizes there are some municipalities that are not distressed cities” but provide essential services to a broad region.

Menna says that nearly 25 percent of Red Bank’s land is tied up by non-profits, four or five times the average of nearby towns. And every time they expand, they put increase the burden on their own neighbors.

“You can’t continue to have one-quarter of your tax base be tax-exempt and have your residents carry that burden,” he said during his annual state of the borough speech at the government reorganization meeting Sunday.

His foot-in-the-door proposl is not a call for taxes on existing holdings, Menna said. Nor is he gunning for government entities like New Jersey Transit, which has a large swath of real estate in town, to contribute.

Rather, he said, property taxes would apply to properties acquired by nonprofits in towns where 15 percent or more of the land in a town is exempt.

Menna said he is shopping around for legislative support for a yet-to-be-written bill. So far, he’s getting at least a slightly warmer reception than a proposal pitched by Councilman Michael DuPont in 2010 calling for taxation of nonprofits.

That request, to the town’s three Republican reps in Trenton, was met with a “get-your-own-finances-in-order-first”-type reply. Now, however, the Asbury Park Press reports that state Senator Jen Beck is “researching” the idea, which she says may require a constitutional amendment, and Menna says Assemblyman Declan O’Scanlon is interested in the idea.

If such a law existed, it would not impact St. James RC Church plan to buy the former borough hall at 51 Monmouth Street from the Community YMCA, That structure, which is exempt by virtue of the Y’s nonprofit status, is valued at $1.9 million, though the assessment appears to include the Relief Fire Company home, which is part of the structure.