That, he said, would at least begin to address the law’s most problematic elements, as demonstrated by a recent brouhaha over a 100-foot tulip poplar.

At Monday night’s borough council meeting, Marchese proposed removing the controversial tree-preservation law from a land-use ordinance and reconstituting it as a code-enforcement matter.

The effect, he and borough Attorney Sal Alfieri said, would be that homeowners wishing to remove trees protected under the ordinance would no longer be required to obtain a zoning variance. Instead, they would take their cases to the borough council.

The law protects specimen trees and those that exceed specified girths. Builder Bob Susser saw his plan for a three-home subdivision on Woodland Drive, which otherwise required no variances, held up for months as his request to remove an 80-year-old tulip poplar was kicked from one department to another, and later on appeal to the planning board — three times. He succeeded in winning approval to remove the tree on the third try, in March.

Councilman Jerome Koch wondered if the change would “take some of the teeth out” of the existing law. Marchese said the move “doesn’t change how we define protected trees, but reduces the burden” on the planning and zoning arms of the town government.

“I still haven’t changed my opinion of the tree ordinance,” Marchese told redbankgreen afterward. “I will still seek to make it better.”

The amendment is expected to be formally introduced at the next council meeting on May 29.

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.

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

Buds were bursting outside the Atrium at Navesink on Riverside Avenue in Red Bank Sunday as

Monday’s temperatures are expected to hit 71 degrees under partly sunny skies, according to the Weather Channel. Spring debuts Tuesday with highs of about 64. (Click to enlarge)

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.

By JOHN T. WARD

After more than 350 years of rather quiet contentment in Little Silver, Sickles Market is taking it to the old country.

The market, whose roots on the same Rumson Road property date back to a farm started in 1660, is organizing an October tour of gardens, cheese-making shops, olive pressers and other artisanal food producers on the Italian island.

For $6,000 per person, up to 12 travelers will get to indulge in “an exclusive insider’s culinary and cultural view of Italy,” says says Kirsty Dougherty, who was hired recently as Sickles’ director of tourism training..

That’s right: Sickles is in the travel biz now. Dougherty says the idea for the foodie tours grew out of store owner Bob Sickles’ own global jaunts to find new products and supply lines for his increasingly international market – à la the Tunisian condiments rolled out at the store two years ago.

Sickles plans to run three trips to differing regions of Italy in 2013, Dougherty.

“These are very much food lovers’ tours,” Dougherty tells redbankgreen. With their behind-the-scenes focus on food from where it’s grown to the plate, the excursions “are targeted at the gourmet palate,” she says.

The October tour, led by Sicilian food broker Gioacchino Passalacqua, includes nine nights of luxury hotel stays; chartered bus travel to and around Palermo and two other cities; meals at “hand-picked” farms, chocolatiers, restaurants and more. Airfare is not included. Take it here for complete details.

On the grounds of the First Presbyterian Church at Red Bank, atop Tower Hill, is a wonder of a nature: a paper-bark birch throwing off its clothes in paper-thin layers to reveal something purer underneath.

Red Bank arborist Bill Brooks tells redbankgreen that the exfoliation process occurs “pretty much year-round” for the trees, also known as white birch and canoe birch, because Native Americans used the detritus to waterproof their vessels.

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