The spending plan includes debt service on the estimated $1 million cost of a replacing 25-year-old Ladder 91, above. 

By JOHN T. WARD

Still a work in progress, the 2012 Red Bank budget calls for a $94 tax increase on property assessed at the borough-average $401,393, officials said Wednesday night.

The figure  reflects a 4.5-percent increase in the municipal rate, to 53.2 cents per $100 of assessed value, from 50.9 in 2011, said Chief Financial Officer Colleen Lapp.

Driving the increase is an unexpected $464,000 spike in insurance costs, “the majority of it health insurance;” tax-appeal refunds, which in the first two months of the year have already rung up to $135,000; and a contractual $118,000 increase in pay for police, said Lapp.

Councilman Mike DuPont, who heads the governing body’s finance committee, which is responsible for crafting the budget, said he’s cautiously optimistic the $20.77 million spending plan, up from $20.15 million, can be trimmed before it is due to be approved on April 25.

The fattest target for trimming, he said, is health insurance, which accounted for more than half of the overall 4.5-percent increase. “We received an increase of almost 22 percent without justification,” DuPont said.

In recent years, borough employees have absorbed higher deductibles, utilization claims have been down, and the borough has gotten refunds from the plan, he said, which makes this year’s increase “disturbing,” he said.

DuPont said he is scheduled to attend a meeting this week with administrators of a joint municipal health insurance fund in which Red Bank is a member.

“I’m saying this is not fair, and we’re not going to pay it,” he said.

The budget benefitted from a couple of turnarounds, as pension costs declined $76,000, and $170,000 that had been set aside for snow removal at the end of last year turned out not to be needed. A year ago, the town was socked with a $540,000 bill for snow removal following the paralyzing blizzard of December 26 and 27, 2010. “We got a late Christmas present this year,” DuPont said.

Debt service costs for the year are “virtually flat” with last year’s level, despite the final approval, also on Wednesday night, of a $1.1 million bond to cover the cost of replacing the volunteer fire department’s sole aerial-ladder truck.

Ladder 91, housed at the Navesink Hook & Ladder station on Mechanic Street, experienced a parts failure during testing last fall, and replacement parts are no longer available. The vehicle, built in 1987, is also now out of compliance with federal safety standards, officials said.

The preliminary budget increase complies with state caps on both spending and levies, Lapp said.

A public presentation on the elements of the spending plan will be held before the April 25 adoption hearing, but not date has yet been set, DuPont said.

Local-history librarian Elizabeth McDermott, below, with a custom-branded Eisner lightbulb in the second-floor New Jersey Room of the Red Bank Public Library, once the home of industrialist Sigmund Eisner. (Click to enlarge)

By JOHN T. WARD

On April 15, 1937, the Red Bank Public Library – for decades an itinerant but growing collection of books and archival material – finally found a permanent home, relocating from a downtown storefront to a mansion at 84 West Front Street.

Three months earlier, the heirs of Sigmund Eisner – mass-manufacturer of uniforms for the Army, the Boy Scouts and other organizations  – had donated their late father’s mansion overlooking the Navesink River to the library.

The shared hope of H. Raymond, Monroe and J. Lester Eisner was that the house would provide a warm and dry place for reading, but also that it would function “as a bit of a museum, too,” says local-history librarian Elizabeth McDermott.

Next month, the library will celebrate its 75th anniversary in the house with museum-like displays that highlight Eisner and his transformative impact on Red Bank as an industrialist and philanthropist.

The event, says McDermott, “is completely about” Eisner.

The ornate first-floor parlor of the Eisner mansion, above, and an undated photo of Sigmund Eisner, below. (Click to enlarge)

Valued at $25,000 at the time, the house was donated partly furnished, according to a Red Bank Register account of the opening. Wicker chairs provided welcome indoor seating overlooking the river.

The house had been home to Eisner and his wife, Bertha Weis, a member of a well-established Red Bank family. An Eastern European immigrant who “came to Red Bank as a peddler,” Eisner set up a sewing machine in a rented house near Broad Street and eventually built an manufacturing empire that employed 5,000 people at its peak during the first World War, said McDermott.

Eisner’s complex of factory buildings at the West Front Street and Bridge Avenue was reported to be the largest uniform factory in the world, she said.

Some of that property is now the home to the Galleria at Red Bank, a collection of restaurants, shops and offices. Another portion, on the northeast corner of that intersection, is home to the Antique Center of Red Bank.

Antique Center owner Guy Johnson is lending some of his collection of Eisner and old Red Bank memorabilia to the library display, including uniforms and a lightbulb branded with the Eisner name, probably for use in the factory, McDermott said.

The event will also highlight the reopening of the library’s New Jersey History Room. For many years, an ornate front room trimmed in ornate Gothic woodwork served as the repository for reference and archival materials about Red Bank, Monmouth County and the state. But the rarity and delicate condition of some of the materials, including one-of-a-kind atlases and directories, called out for a dedicated, controlled-access space, said McDermott.

That space is now a second-floor room of several hundred square feet that is open to the public from 2 to 4 p.m. each Tuesday afternoon, and by appointment at other times. McDermott said it is available to anyone, and is particularly helpful to people interested in researching family and property histories.

McDermott herself has been immersed in the materials as she assembles the exhibit, she said. And one regular visitor, a volunteer in the effort to put together the exhibit, has been known to exclaim, while going through old photos, “Oh my god, that’s my great-grandfather,” McDermott said with a laugh.

The goal of the exhibit is to create “a kind of timeline” about Eisner, a philanthropist who left money in his will to his factory workers, as well as to a host of churches of various persuasions, said McDermott.

“He didn’t have any barriers,” she said.

The building got a $1.6 million renovation in 2007, reopening after a problematic 15-month closure in January, 2008. In the interim, the library operated out of retail space donated by Hovnanian Enterprises.

Here’s an article from the January 6, 1937 edition of the New York Times announcing the donation of the house to the borough: Eisners deed house to library

And here’s the announcement about next month’s event:

On Saturday, April 14, 2012, from 2 – 4 PM, the Red Bank Public Library will celebrate 75 years as the Eisner Memorial Library with a Ribbon Cutting and Reception in our newly restructured New Jersey History Room.

Our New Jersey Collection contains many unique and valuable items pertaining to the Library, the Borough of Red Bank, and Monmouth County. The Library building itself is a special place, having been previously the home of Sigmund Eisner, businessman, civic leader and philanthropist, and his wife Bertha, an influential businesswoman and civic organizer. Presented to the Borough of Red Bank in January 1937, the former mansion was opened as a Public Library on April 15, 1937, thanks to the generosity of the Eisner sons, Raymond, J. Lester, and Monroe Eisner.

Please join us on April 14, as we celebrate this historic anniversary in our beautiful building on the Navesink River. For more information, please feel free to contact the library at 732-842-0690.

The $14.93 million budget approved at a Tuesday afternoon session of the governing body marks a $67,486 decline in overall spending, Press reporter Larry Higgs writes.

From the Press:

The budget, which was approved unanimously by all six council members Tuesday afternoon and comes with a tax rate of 33.2 cents per $100 of assessed valuation, is a slight increase from the 2011 rate of 33.17 cents per $100. That rate doesn’t include school, regional school or county taxes.

Under the 2012 rate, the owner of the average home assessed at $1 million would pay an annual municipal tax of $3,320, an increase of $3 over the 2011 tax of $3,317. A public hearing on the budget is scheduled for 4:30 p.m. April 3 in the Charles Callman courtroom.

What’s behind the two-tenths of a cent increase is a balancing act between covering increased expenses, such as a $93,000 hike in health benefits, revenues that dipped by $23,000 and increases by the Two River Regional Water Reclamation Authority to process the borough’s sewage. Despite that, officials delivered the second budget in a row that’s dropped spending, Borough Administrator Thomas Rogers said. And part of the tax rate increase was to provide more money for the statutorily mandated reserve for uncollected taxes, he said.

Part of it is momentum from past years of bringing in the borough budget at the governor’s two percent spending cap, said Mayor John Ekdahl. That includes having settled contracts with employee unions for 2012 and 2013.

By JOHN T. WARD

Three new police officers joined the ranks of Red Bank blue Tuesday night at a packed-house council meeting that also saw three veterans of the force elevated to new positions.

The new hires were touted by elected officials as an exceptional bargain for the town: unlike many of their predecessors, all three already have worked as officers in other jurisdictions. Which means they also “have already been through the police academy training, which saves the borough quite a bit of money,” said Councilman Art Murphy, who doubles as police commissioner.

The trio were culled from an applicant pool of 500 that was swollen with experienced cops who’ve been laid off because of budget issues, Chief Steve McCarthy tells redbankgreen.

Because they’re replacing higher-paid officers who retired recently, “we were able to hire three new officers basically for the price of one or one-and-a-half, if my calculations are right,” said Councilman Mike DuPont, who heads the finance committee.

Added as probationary officers in the patrol division were:

• Stanley Balmer, a former Monmouth County Sheriff’s Department officer and, before that, a Long Branch PD detective in the juvenile bureau. He has a bachelor’s degree in physical education and health for the University of West Virginia, according to a biography provided by the borough.

• Garrett Falco Jr., a former patrolman in Asbury Park who also has experience with the Monmouth County Gang Task Force. He has a bachelor’s in criminal justice from Sacred Heart University and a teaching certificate from Montclair State University.

• Jhonatan Quipe (pronounced kees-pay), a former patrol officer with the Rutgers University PD and, before that, with the Camden PD. He served four years in the Marines and is fluent in Spanish. He’s working toward a degree in criminal justice at Raritan Valley Community College.

All three got the “highest respect” from their former chiefs, McCarthy said, adding: “Most important is they’re all good people of outstanding character.”

Getting promotions were:

• Wendy Samis, who moves from investigator to detective. She’s been with the force for 10 years and was praised for her work leading the case in which 26-year-old borough resident Viridiana Beltran-Gomez went missing and was found murdered six weeks later. Samis, a graduate of the University of Delaware with a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice, has worked in the patrol division and as the department’s DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) officer; she’s worked undercover on loan to the Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office’s Narcotics Strike Force; and since 2009, as an investigator in the RBPD detective bureau.

• Juan Sardo, on the force since 1999, also steps up from investigator to detective. A native of Venezuela, he’s fluent in Spanish and recently completed State Police courses in crime scene investigation and homicide investigation.

• Robert Clayton, a detective, moves up to the sergeant’s rank, and will take over as shift commander in the patrol division. A 20-year veteran of the RBPD, he was promoted to detective in 2002 and was the lead detective in the case of Anthony Sims, convicted of shooting two men at the Montgomery Terrace apartments in 2007. Clayton is the son and grandson of former borough police chiefs.

The Oceanic Bridge and the Rumson-Sea Bright Bridge are among the four movable Monmouth County bridges whose operations will be run by a private contractor starting next year, according to a report by the Asbury Park Press.

Reporter Joe Sapia writes that the Monmouth County Freeholders “voted 5 to 0 Wednesday to turn over the operation of the bridges to a Florida company, which a county analysis shows can do the job at an annual savings of $572,270.”

The other two bridges affected are the bridge over the Shark River Inlet between Avon and Belmar, and the Brielle Avenue bridge over Glimmer Glass in Manasquan.

From the Press:

The county’s 21 bridge workers will be offered interviews with the company, Drawbridge Services Inc. of Pompano Beach, Fla., according to discussion at the freeholders meeting. The company does not work in New Jersey and so has no employees based in-state now.

Drawbridge Services would run the bridges, providing workers and doing some maintenance, throughout 2012 for $1,485,508. The county also would have the option to renew the contract at the same price for the two following years.

Costs to the county would have only gone up in future years, because of benefits and other factors, said John W. Tobia, director of the county Department of Public Works and Engineering.

In going with Drawbridge Services, the freeholders rejected a proposal by the affected bridge workers, whose plan showed $448,000 in savings.

While 21 bridge workers are now on the job, a full crew would be 30. One way the the bridge workers proposed saving money was by using a full crew of only 27, according to Mike DiGangi, a bridge operator and shop steward of Communications Workers of America Local 1032

Additional savings would come from more efficient scheduling, according to Local 1032.

The local said that under the plan approved by the freeholders, while the current workers are county employees already on the job, the new workers would be employees of a private company.

“You’re going to get what you pay for,” DiGangi said.

By DUSTIN RACIOPPI

After howling from residents and business owners last year over a plan to lay off a handful of employees and  privatize trash collection in Rumson, the borough council scrapped the idea — for this year, at least — and instead came up with cost-saving measures within the public works department.

Now, as the borough prepares to implement one of those measures, some local merchants are bristling at the plan that they say digs further into their pockets.

Beginning July 1, public works will no longer pick up commercial Dumpster trash from businesses.

It will still pick up trash, but only if it fits into three standard cans.

For many of the borough’s smaller businesses, the change has no impact. But those that generate a higher volume of trash will be forced to hire an outside contractor to pick up the trash that Rumson won’t.

“I think the whole thing is ridiculous,” said Barbara Russell, owner of What’s Your Beef steakhouse. “I know times are tough, but you don’t hit the little guy. I just don’t understand why the one service we do get from the town we can’t get anymore.”

Borough Administrator Tom Rogers said by cutting the volume of trash the borough collects and transports to the Monmouth County landfill in Tinton Falls will save about $100,000 a year in tipping fees. It will also save on labor, he said.

The idea was one drafted by public works director Mark Wellner after he was faced with losing up to six men amid budget cuts the council proposed to stay within the state’s two-percent property tax cap, Rogers said.

But Barnacle Bill’s co-owner Todd Sherman said the businesses pay taxes, too, so paying more money to an outside source to pick up their trash is going to cut into their profitability.

“We feel as a business in town we pay taxes just like everybody else does, and we should get the same kind of consideration,” he said. “It’s going to cost us quite a bit more. We need (trash) picked up four times a week.”

Even though merchants are miffed, Rogers said Rumson is one of the last towns in the area that still offer commercial trash pick up. In a case like Barnacle’s, hauling away heavy loads of trash twice a week was essentially being subsidized by residents, he said.

This new system, while saving money, makes it more fair on all taxpayers, he said.

“The goal of the borough, really, is to try and preserve the services of our residents,” Rogers said. “I recognize there are some merchants that are disappointed in the decisions, but the reality is we’re trying to preserve the workforce and the services we have.”

Russell, who has owned What’s Your Beef for 30 years and said she’s trying to circulate a petition against the plan, doesn’t necessarily buy it.

“We don’t ask the town for anything. What does it cost to back a truck in to empty a Dumpster?” she said. “If it’s a matter of cost, that’s absolutely crazy.”

By DUSTIN RACIOPPI

There isn’t much to Rumson’s Department of Public Works building — a narrow, bland concrete stretch of garage bays with a couple of offices behind borough hall.

One of those offices belongs to director Mark Wellner, where warmth is generated by a space heater next to his desk. When he steps out, he’s in the department’s conference room, which also happens to be the kitchen — consisting of a microwave and small counter — and, during snow emergencies, a bedroom for a dozen or so on-call employees who try to catch z’s on one of a few used couches picked up curbside over the years.

“Sometimes, you’ve got a guy laying on the table with a blanket trying to get some sleep,” he said.

Attached to the conference room is a closet of a bathroom, with one toilet and a sink behind a rickety door.

“No room for the guys to even wash their hands,” Wellner said.

There’s not much in the way of comfort and privacy for the DPW guys, that’s for sure. So it must’ve been frustrating to watch last year when the borough built its pristine, $5.77 million government offices building right in front of the public works structure that went untouched in the 56 years since it was built.

A view of the Rumson DPW conference room/kitchen/bathroom. (Photo by Dustin Racioppi; click to enlarge)

An outpouring of public support for the department last October kept the budgetary axe from falling on a half-dozen DPW trash collectors, at least for the time being. Now, their workplace is about to get a sprucing-up.

“We were talked to in October. We knew the borough had a plan,” Wellner said.

That plan, to initiate the first major renovation of the DPW building since 1955, has started, with more to come.

Using two state grants, the borough has upgraded portions of the department’s heating and lighting system. And the council is poised to bond about $200,000 to redesign and renovate the cramped and aging spaces.

“It’s been a long time coming,” Mayor John Ekdahl said. “This is a much-needed project.”

The renovations, tentatively slated to begin in June, will include a reconfiguration of the conference room, adding new lockers and expanding the bathroom for more privacy, Wellner said. One of the bay garages, he said, will be remodeled to make more room for mechanical work on various equipment.

More heating is expected to be installed, he said, including in the conference room, which is kept warm by an ancient gas furnace “that kicks on and sounds like a jet engine.”

For the two dozen DPW workers, many of whom spend more time at the department than at home, Wellner said the improvements will be a huge boost.

“The guys are really excited,” Wellner said. “They knew it was coming. It was just (a matter of) when.”