By JOHN T. WARD

Kathie Panepinto was leading a tour of the Red Bank Primary School property and lamenting the heavy growth that hides an adjoining pond Monday when groundhog that had been sunning itself in the grass scooted across her path and into the brush.

“Oh, look at that,” she said said excitedly, noting that up-close sightings of deer and other wildlife are common at the school, which sits on landfill in a former wetlands abutting the Swimming River.

It was the kind of moment that for decades has inspired talk of the school’s potential as natural sciences learning center. And it underscored the value of ongoing efforts by Panepinto and other volunteers in their most ambitious effort to date: creating a permanent physical link between the school and the inaccessible pond.

A concept plan shows a walkway out into the pond that the foundation hopes to win funding for. (Click to enlarge)

Since its revival from dormancy four years ago, the nonprofit Red Bank Borough Education Foundation has focused its efforts on small-bore projects: leading cleanups of the 17-acre primary school property, lending a hand and a few dollars to installations such as a butterfly garden, a small greenhouse and a human sundial clock.

Now, though, the all-volunteer group is raising its sights with a proposal to build an outdoor classroom in the form of a pier and observation deck on the pond. The structure would enable students at the K-3 school to see land and aquatic habitats up close, and “to do wet and muddy samplings,” said RBBEF member and Councilman Ed Zipprich.

“Most folks don’t even know there’s a pond back there,” said member Susan Berke.

“The idea is to make access to the pond not just for science, but for reading, writing, art,” said Panepinto, an RBBEF officer.

No cost estimate for the project has yet been worked up, and foundation members don’t even know if they would need and might obtain permits from the state Department of Environmental Protection for the structure, which may be subject to limitations on building in coastal areas.

Still, they’ve begun the process of trying to win a grant for as much as $460,000 from the National Science Foundation, said foundation president Doug Winning, an architect. “We’re going for the full enchilada,” he said.

Meantime, the organization has raised about $10,000 in each of the past two years through art auctions held at the Atrium at Navesink Harbor. This year, no such event is planned, though members hope to put together an Antiques Roadshow-type event for 2013.

Meantime, the group has produced a reusable canvas shopping tote featuring Red Bank student art that will soon be available around town for $5. For $10, residents get the tote and membership in the RBBEF.

“We’re still taking baby steps at this point, but we’ve got momentum going, and that’s the important thing,” said Zipprich.

By JOHN T. WARD

Red Bank officials told proponents of a community garden Wednesday that they need to satisfy the concerns of two adjoining neighbors before they can get an all-clear to farm a borough-owned lot on Marion Street.

“If you really want a community garden, I suggest you go speak to” a next-door neighbor who recently expressed concerns about home security and basement flooding, Councilwoman Kathy Horgan told lead garden advocate Cindy Burnham at the council’s bimonthly meeting.

“Maybe you can change her mind and we can get down to basics,” including the provision of water to the site, Horgan said.

“We don’t want to cram this down anyone’s throat,” said Councilwoman Juanita Lewis.

Where the garden would get water was a sticking point at the last council meeting, when public utilities director Gary Watson was asked to look into the cost of connecting to the water main under the street.

Watson tells redbankgreen he reported his recommendation back to the council, but declined to say what that recommendation was, and the details did not come up Wednesday night.

Still, town officials said the garden could go ahead, provided the concerns of the neighbors were addressed.

The owner of a second adjoining property has asked that there be a 10-foot buffer of unplanted ground along the shared property line.

Burnham said that a buffer on each side would only leave five feet for planting on a lot that she said is just 25 feet wide. Councilman Art Murphy said the lot is at least 40 feet wide.

Property records describe the lot as 50 feet wide by 120 feet deep.

Borough Administrator Stanley Sickels said he would communicate with the two neighbors, but “we probably need your help to sell it” to the neighbor who is concerned about the hours at which the gardeners will gather and who will be there, he told Burnham.

The site is the location of a disused water pumping station enclosed in a shed that the town uses to store materials used in cleanups of oil and other spills, Watson said.

A narrow borough-owned lot with a disused pumping station on it needs water access before it can be transformed into a community garden, town officials say. (Click to enlarge)

By JOHN T. WARD

The battle over a proposed Red Bank community garden abated Wednesday night when its main proponent appeared to accept to an offer of a vacant East Side lot as its location.

Now, it’s just a matter of finding water.

Led by garden organizer Cindy Burnham, garden backers came away from a March 28 borough council meeting scratching their heads over the governing body’s latest in a yearlong series of rejections of their request for a pilot plot on land adjoining the public library parcel, on West Front Street overlooking the Navesink River.

Though the gardeners say the location is ideal – wide-open, underutilized and centrally located – they’ve encountered persistent opposition. Elected officials and members of the town administration have raised questions about the potential need for state Department of Environmental Protection permits, parking, and the dedication of prime riverfront property to the use of a select few residents, among other objections.

At that meeting, council members Kathy Horgan and Ed Zipprich suggested the gardeners instead break ground on a town-owned lot on Marion Street, just a few steps west of Eastside Park, and the site of a disused pumping station.

At the latest meeting, Wednesday night, Burnham questioned the availability of water at the Marion Street lot.

Public works director Gary Watson said he would look into the feasibility of a metered water hookup. Zipprich said he was also looking into whether a pumphouse on the property might be outfitted with gutters and a rain barrel for supplementary water.

Officials flatly rejected Burnham’s suggestion of allowing a single gardener to have key-controlled access to a nearby fire hydrant to water the garden twice a week.

Burnham also asked if a strip of broken asphalt might be removed, and said a soil sample had been taken to test for contamination of the site.

But for the first time, she signaled that the fight over the location was lost.

“We’re going to take it, but we don’t feel this is the appropriate location by any means,” said Burnham, who lives in Fair Haven and owns property in Red Bank. And when she began revisiting her frustration over the council’s rejection of the West Front Street site, Councilwoman Sharon Lee cut her off with, “Thank you, Cindy,” and Burnham took a seat.

Afterward, though, Burnham fumed that the water issue, and thus the start of planting, was unresolved, and that she would continue to press the council.

“Sombody has to be the heavy, somebody has to be the bitch,” she told redbankgreen.

The site is bounded on either side by residences, and the owner of one, Cecilia Davis, spoke against the proposal, citing concerns about the security of her home.

Clay-trap shooters gathered at  Rumson Country Club’s shooting range for the event, a fundraiser hosted by Ducks Unlimited. (Photos by Peter Lindner. Click to enlarge)

By STEPHANIE SCHROEPFER

A misty fog offered the perfect hunting-in-the-field vibe for nearly 50 enthusiasts who gathered for a trap-shooting event at the Rumson Country Club Saturday.

Shotgun blasts broke the morning calm as 47 participants took turns firing at orange discs lofted into the air at the the Monmouth County chapter of Ducks Unlimited‘s third annual clay shoot, a fundraiser for the conservation and maintenance of North American wetlands.

The clay shoot and the other charitable events Ducks Unlimited sponsors create opportunities for shooters and hunters to put money back into the wetlands, said state chairman Scott Paterson, a Rumson police lieutenant. Funds raised from entry fees and raffles will be dedicated to conservation efforts, he said.

“Hunters give back more than anybody,” Paterson said. “Trap and skeet shooters too, but we take, take, take, and we need to give back.”

Anyone who has hunted “at one point feels the need to give something back,” said Craig Widmaier of Red Bank, treasurer of the Monmouth County unit.

“This is strictly a grassroots and volunteer effort for habitat and wetland conservation,” one that has grown exponentially as Ducks Unlimited is now an international organization in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, Widmaier said.

Paterson, Widmaier and Monmouth County chairwoman Anne Pfaff have racked up a combined 50 years volunteering with Ducks Unlimited. The event, and the organizations’s mission, made for “a natural fit,” Pfaff said, as she ran around organizing shooting squads on the range’s blacktop surface.

Each shooter got three rounds of 25 clays, and chances at individual and team prizes. Raffle merchandise included prints, hand-carved shore birds and decoys by Anthony Ciambrone.

Paterson is also planning a spring shoreline clean-up in coming weeks with help from Ducks Unlimited and students from Rumson-Fair Haven Regional, he said. Volunteers will find contact info on the Ducks Unlimited website.

By JOHN T. WARD

Community garden proponents assailed the Red Bank council Wednesday night for what they termed its “because-I-said-so” opposition to the creation of a farm plot at a borough-owned Navesink River site.

Revisiting the council’s 2011 rejection of a proposal for a pilot garden behind the borough library parking lot on West Front Street, residents challenged elected officials to articulate their opposition to the plan, and left as frustrated as they were going in.

“What we have a hard time understanding is that we haven’t really heard a good reason why not,” Locust Avenue’s Kathleen Gasenica told the governing body.

“It’s very simple,” replied borough Administrator Stanley Sickels. “The council doesn’t share your vision for a garden there.”

“That doesn’t really answer the question,” Gasenica said.

Marked by sharp exchanges and several instances of gavel-banging by Mayor Pasquale Menna, the hearing pitted gardening enthusiasts against council members they feel have irrationally dug in their heels against a spot proponents consider ideal for a garden.

The site, with ample upland area, is “underutilized” by the public that the council professes to want to keep it open for, said garden movement organizer Cindy Burnham, of Fair Haven, who previously led the push to save nearby Maple Cove from sale by the borough.

But officials questioned whether the site might be within the purview of the state Department of Environmental Protection, which borough Engineer Christine Ballard said has jurisdiction over all development within 300 feet of waterways – an assertion that prompted mutterings from the audience that gardening is not “development.”

Officials also questioned how the plots would be apportioned among residents who want to raise vegetables and flowers at the site; where gardeners would park without taking spaces reserved for library patrons; the accessibility of the site to handicapped; and plans for the restoration of a deteriorated bulkhead, possibly this year, that might require the destruction of the garden.

In the past, officials argued that the waterfront site should be preserved for use by all residents, and not the select few.

The session kicked off with councilmembers Kathy Horgan and Ed Zipprich offering a compromise, one they said they had arrived at after visiting every borough-owned parcel of vacant land over the weekend: Marion Street, near Eastside Park, the site of an old pump station.

“It seemed, in our uneducated opinion, to be the ideal spot,” Zipprich said.

But the suggestion elicited a welter of complaints by Burnham and others that the site could hardly be less centrally located for the use of all residents, a requirement that some on the council itself had insisted on last year.

“Marion is as far out on the East Side of Red Bank as you can get,” Burnham said. She said nearby residents are likely to oppose having a community garden next door, “and I don’t blame them.”

Horgan also suggested the gardeners approach New Jersey Transit about creating a plot on a triangular lot outside the train station on Monmouth Street, arguing it was unlikely to be vandalized because of the number of passersby. But she also wondered aloud whether an alternative offered by the proponents, at Maple Cove, might not be right for the same reason.

“There are a lot of people around. It could get destroyed,” she said.

Environmental Commission chairman Andres Simonson told the council that it was “missing the boat” by rejecting the library site. “What a great beacon that would be” for the town’s commitment to the community gardening concept, he said.

The sharpest attack of the night was leveled by Ernest Anemone of Riverside Avenue, who singled out Zipprich for what he and others called the council’s “because I said so” rationale for opposing the library site.

“This town doesn’t need to impress you,” he said. “You need to impress this town.”

By meeting’s end, the council had approved a resolution approving the Marion Street site, but leaving open the possibility that Maple Cove might be farmed for a year – even though farm engineer Tony Sloan, appearing on behalf of proponents, said the site would require “itty-bitty plots and itty-bitty walkways.”

The agenda for the bimonthly meeting of Red Bank’s council Wednesday night is a busy one.

On the docket:

• Red Bank RiverCenter comes in for approval of its annual budget. No details have yet been provided. Last year’s spending plan, like the two that preceded it, totaled $512,000. The business promotion agency, which manages the borough’s state-chartered Special Improvement District, is funded by a surtax on commercial properties within a defined zone and gets no money from borough coffers.

• Proponents of a community garden, who were shot down repeatedly last year in their request to farm a portion of the public library property overlooking the Navesink River, return to renew the plea, this time with a twist: that the town allow it for just one growing season.

• There’s an ordinance up for introduction to amend the rent control ordinance. There’s no information on the borough website, or the agenda itself, explaining what this is about.

• A bond ordinance to cover the costs of installing artificial turf fields at Count Basie Fields is up for final vote.

The council meets at 6:30 p.m. in the first-floor council chambers at borough hall, 90 Monmouth Street, corner of Maple Avenue.

Here’s the full agenda: Red Bank Council Agenda 032812

By JOHN T. WARD

After nearly a year of controversy, a 100-foot tulip poplar that rallied both supporters and detractors of Fair Haven’s tree preservation law is coming down.

With members saying they were swayed by the “compelling” testimony of an arborist last week, the borough planning board reversed itself Thursday night, giving builder Bob Susser of Rumson an OK to remove the tree on the site of a three-home development on Woodland Drive.

The law, written to prevent clear-cutting, prompted gnashing of teeth even among officials who relied on it to repeatedly deny Susser of Buttonwood Investors, a permit to take down the tree. They said the law was poorly written, giving them little or no guidance on how to handle appeals. One board member called it “spongey.”

Over the course of the last ten months, Susser had a permit granted; rescinded over concerns about a conflict of interest involving the borough code enforcement officer; denied by the borough administrator; and rejected on appeal of that denial by the planning board. The board also shot down Susser’s request for a re-hearing of the appeal.

Last week, however, Susser was back before the board, again asking to remove the tree or, in the alternate, to amend a site plan than the board had previously approved, before the board was drawn into the tree issue.

At the March 14 hearing, Michale LaMana, an arborist hired by Susser testified that the tree, while healthy, was at risk of “catastrophic failure” because of its bifurcated trunk, size and brittleness.

LaMana’s conclusions matched those of two other tree experts, including Bill Brooks of Red Bank, Fair Haven’s contractual tree enforcement officer. But because of the substantive similarity in testimony of the arborists, board members faced the question of whether they had the right to vote again on the matter or were barred from doing so, as several neighbors argued they were, by the legal principle of res judicata, which says, in essence: the matter has been decided and may not be voted on again.

The case was carried until a special meeting Thursday so three members who were absent from the March 14 session could listen to a recording of the hearing in order to vote. And when the matter resumed, a 4-2 majority of board members concluded that LaMana’s testimony had been so “compelling” as to merit a reopening of the matter.

In a unanimous vote, Susser finally won approval.

“They got me with ‘catastrophic failure,’” said Chairwoman Joan Jay. “It’s time to put this to bed.”

Two other board members said they had been anguished by thoughts of a tree limb falling on someone.

“I couldn’t live with myself if a large branch fell down and hit somebody in the head and killed them,” said Alison Dale.

Afterward, a neighbor asked if the borough would alert neighbors before the tree came down and have an official on site when it does.

Susser tells redbankgreen the tree will be cut down as early as next week.

He said he agreed with councilman and planning board member Bob Marchese, who contends the law is unconstitutional as it applies to property rights. Additionally, Susser said the law is flawed in that it was used to force him before a planning board, which deals with land-use matters and is not equipped to interpret or apply the tree law.

“Thank god that reasonable minds prevailed,” he said.

The tree had previously been described by experts as 60 feet or so tall, but LaMana testified that laser measurements put it at 100 feet. He also estimated that it had put down roots as early as 1930.

Dianne Drewing in the Monmouth Street mews where she plans to open a spray-tan salon next week. (Click to enlarge)

By JOHN T. WARD

For most of her life, Dianne Drewing was a tanning nut.

“A perfect day for me was always a day at the beach, tanning with friends or family,” she tells redbankgreen‘s Retail Churn. She even chose a college in Florida in part for the rays.

Then came an awareness of what kind of damage the sun can do to human skin, a lesson amplified when Drewing began noticing its adverse effects on her own skin, which she describes fair.

Demolition work appeared to be underway earlier this week at the future home of a Subway sandwich shop. (Click to enlarge)

That was seven years ago, right around the time a friend persuaded Drewing to set aside her aversion to spray-on tans. The effect was transformative, she said.

She’s been a “sunless client” ever since. But not just any sunless client. Drewing acknowledges that salon owners might be forgiven for regarding her as the client from hell, the perfectionist who insists on an even application of a color that’s natural to her pigmentation. None of that John Boehner orange cast for her.

Now, she’s the one who will be holding the spray nozzle. Next Tuesday, Drewing plans to open Sunkissed Airbrush Tanning in a tiny second-floor space upstairs from That Hot Dog Place, in the alleyway beside the Dublin House on Monmouth Street in Red Bank.

But there’s a twist. This is an all-organic salon, said Drewing. The main ingredient in her aerosol solution, she said, is dihydroxideacetone (DHA), which she describes as “a colorless sugar that reacts with the amino acids of dead skin cells” to produce a different hue of tan in each client, depending on his or her own body chemistry.

“My goal is to never make a client look overdone, but to have the most natural-looking, even tan possible,” she said.

Sunkissed doesn’t use a spray tent, as other salons do, because the noiseless compressor Drewing employs enables her to control the spray, she said.

The salon will offer services from a face-only tan for $12 to full-body, for $38. Package deals for weddings, proms and girls-nights-out are available.

The salon is the first business venture for Drewing, 41. She grew up in Warren and now lives in Tinton Falls. She works as a high school and college English teacher, and plans to be open in the evenings during the school year and all-day during the summer.

# # #

In other Churnings, Lucki Clover opened Wednesday in half the space formerly taken by Zebu Forno, at 20 Broad.

And workers were seen doing early prep work this week in the planned home of Subway Café, a 28-seat “hip” variation on the sandwich shop chain’s usual offerings, at 60 Broad Street, in a long-vacant space between the Red Bank Nail Salon and Hip & Humble Home furnishings.

Last week’s photo showed some luscious greens in a raised vegetable bed. Did you recognize the location?

Our photo was taken in the Rumson Road, Little Silver front yard of Wendy Weiner, the Front Yard Farmer who we featured in these pixelated pages three years ago. Weiner’s agricultural skills are portable. For a fee, she’ll come to your home and teach you how to  build raised beds and tend your own little front yard farm.

Weiner helped create the vegetable and herb garden out in front of the pay-what-you-can-or-lend-a-hand Soul Kitchen on Monmouth Street in Red Bank.

Writing in were Yvonne MacDonald, Maria Sciarrino, Alicia Woods and her daughter, Jenn Woods, Karen Irvine, Joseph T. Kenney, Paul Sperber, Jeffrey Knight, Jill Ridenour, Trish DePonti, Sandra Talarico, Anna V. Higgins, Jackie Francisco Sapienza and Danielle Holter. Nearly all of them had the location right, and we thank each of them for chiming in.

Does this week’s photo (click to enlarge) ring any bells? If you know where it was taken, drop us a line, please.