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

Mark Lockwood spent the night on his boat at the Shrewsbury River Yacht Club in Fair Haven Friday, and woke to the sight of a Navesink River gone brown. The worst kind of brown, he thought.

Though it didn’t smell, it appeared to be human waste, he said.

“It was disgusting,” he told a Fair Haven police officer who’d come to the club to investigate Saturday evening. “I’ve never seen anything like it, and I’ve been on this river all my life.”

Ben Hamilton, whose home abuts the club property, said he had never seen anything like it, either.

But whatever they saw, it wasn’t from the town’s sanitary sewer, said an official with the regional sewerage authority that serves the borough. And it may have been pollen.

“We can guarantee that the Two Rivers Water Reclamation Authority pipe isn’t leaking,” TRWRA commissioner and yacht club member Bill Baarck told redbankgreen Saturday night, referring to a waste pipe that runs just beneath the Navesink River shore from Gillespie Avenue east to the yacht club, where it meets a pumping station.

“But we can’t guarantee that tides and winds haven’t brought in pollutants from elsewhere, over which we have no control,” he said.

Though he said he had not seen the brown tide himself, other recent reports of human waste — one on the Metedeconk River, and one at a location he could not immediately recall —  turned out to be vast collections of dead pollen on the water, Baarck said.

An authority inspector investigated the Navesink report and found no sign of leakage along the beach, either from the buried pipeline or the several manhole-topped access holes along its length, he said.

The entire stretch of pipe, which is about 40 years old, is scheduled to be replaced soon, with heavy construction equipment slated for delivery to the beach via the yacht club’s ramp as early as Monday. Baarck said the work is preventative.

Mayor Ben Lucarelli tells redbankgreen that a recent video inspection of the pipe found river water infiltrating the system at the foot of Gillespie Avenue, but that no sewage was getting into the river.

“It’s in weak condition,” Baarck said, and was one reason the authority sought and obtained state Department of Environmental Protection permits to replace the piping with a new system.

The new pipes will be laid next the existing pipes and, when completed, a cut-over from old system will be scheduled for the middle of the night to prevent any waste from getting into the river, he said.

Lockwood and Hamilton said the brown stuff appeared to have come from the west, based on Saturday’s winds. Baarck said that while the authority ruled out the Fair Haven system as its source, he could not rule out the possibility that it had come from the Red Bank system.

Lockwood and other club members said they sometimes see post-storm waste from the Middletown side of the river, where mansions along Navesink River Road are not hooked into a sewer and rely instead on septic tanks. But Saturday’s brown blob was far larger, they told redbankgreen.

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.

By JOHN T. WARD

Heading into a sunny Easter weekend, redbankgreen revisits the scene of the 2007 White Street Tree Slaughter, and finds the update equally sunny.

Five years ago this month, nine mature Bradford pear trees lining the Red Bank municipal parking lot on White Street were cut down by borough workers, prompting some jaw-dropping by passersby.

Fourteen new Harvest Gold Crabapple trees were planted in May 2007. (Click to enlarge)

The trees were growing into wires and liable to send limbs falling, tree experts said at the time. And they were soon replaced by 14 Harvest Gold crabapples.

So how are the babies doing? We asked borough Shade Tree Commission member Boris Kofman, who replied via email:

They’re all alive and doing pretty well! Given the tough conditions, that’s no small feat. DPU and STC have been taking care of them, with annual mulching and some pruning. Nature takes care of the rest.

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.”

By JOHN T. WARD

Sixteen months after the debut of an artificial-turf football field at Count Basie Fields, Red Bank officials are planning to ramp up the facility’s ongoing modernization this year.

A final vote by the borough council on a $1.6 million bond ordinance scheduled for next week is expected to clear the way for the $2.1 million project, which would add a synthetic-turf little league/softball field and a baseball field overlain with a multiuse field marked for lacrosse, field hockey and soccer play.

The fields, all under existing lights, would complement the $900,000 stadium football and soccer field that debuted in late 2010. Three grass fields for baseball at the facility’s southern end would remain as natural turf.

When completed, by the end of the year or early next year, “all the fields with lights will have artificial turf, to extend the hours they can be utilized,” borough Engineer Christine Ballard, of T&M Associates, tells redbankgreen.

Ballard said a $250,000 Monmouth County Open Spaces Grant and a $171,000 Community Development Block Grant have already been secured, the second primarily to cover the cost of a Americans With Disability-compliant path and a restrooms.

Town officials hope to hear this summer on two additional grants: a $558,000 one from the state Department of Environmental Protection, and a $60,000 grant from Baseball America, a private sector source.

By then, construction is expected to be underway.

Ballard said she was unsure if Red Bank Catholic, which contributed to the stadium field replacement as a long-term tenant for football practice and home games, was contributing to this phase of the project. Borough Administrator Stanley Sickels could not be reached for comment.

Here’s the bond ordinance: 2012-4

With his son Enzo holding the Bible and borough Attorney Sal Alfieri officiating, Ben Lucarelli recites the oath of office as mayor Monday night. (Click to enlarge)

By JOHN T. WARD

Ben Lucarelli became Fair Haven’s new mayor Monday night on a quick and unanimous vote by his colleagues on the borough council.

He was immediately sworn into office to succeed former Mayor Mike Halfacre, who resigned in January to take a job in the Christie Administration as head of the state Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control .

Uncertainty remained, however, about just when Lucarelli’s mayoralty ends.

On a nomination motion by Councilman Bob Marchese, the council, including Lucarelli, voted unanimously to install Lucarelli as mayor. Councilman Jerome Koch was absent at the special meeting, called solely for the purpose of filling the mayor’s seat.

When Lucarelli’s term ends was unclear, however. Though the borough had advertised that the purpose of the meeting was to appoint a mayor through the end of 2012, Attorney Sal Alfieri said the appointment may only be effective through the end of the next general election, on November 6. He said he would research the question.

The local Republican Committee earlier this month nominated Lucarelli and two others – Council President Jon Peters and former Council President Andrew Trocchia – to succeed Halfacre. Trocchia’s name never came up Monday night, and the meeting opened with Peters saying that his job, as an assistant professor of finance at the College of Staten Island, would make it difficult for him to serve.

Lucarelli, 50, joined the council in early 2009 as a term-completer after Tom Gilmour resigned, and was in the third year of his three-year term as elected member of the all-GOP governing body.

He jokes that he grew up “on the mean streets of Rumson,” and now owns a property management firm with an office in downtown Red Bank.

Lucarelli said his priorities would be to continue Halfacre’s focus on cutting expenses and taxes, and to enact amendments to the borough’s controversial tree-protection law that would be “much fairer to the residents” who want to build while preventing clear-cutting of trees.