By JOHN T. WARD

In a contentious exchange that appeared to foreshadow a lawsuit to come, a lawyer for a Red Bank convenience store challenged the rationale for a new local law that banned all-night businesses Wednesday night.

Squaring off against three lawyers sitting on the council dais, store attorney Philip San Filippo said a revision to a noise ordinance passed by the governing body just moments later was overly broad in scope and designed solely to torpedo his client’s plans, now pending at the borough planning board, to convert the store to a 24-hour 7-Eleven.

The law, cast as an amendment to a noise ordinance, was “absolutely” designed with his client’s plans in mind, San Filippo told reporters afterward.

“It absolutely was not,” insisted Councilman Mike DuPont, even as he touted the hastily enacted law as a “creative” response to a problem.

Welsh Farms owner Dina Enterprises is scheduled to return to the planning board on May 21 for what is expected to be a vote on its proposal, which calls for a small expansion and changes in signage.

The plan, however, has met fierce opposition by neighbors. They say allowing the store, which now closes at 10 p.m., to operate all night raises security and quality-of-life issues.

At the council’s April 26 session, Mayor Pasquale Menna, who is an attorney and a member of the planning board, introduced the noise ordinance amendment. The item was not on the agenda, and no written copies were available. Afterward, asked why the council was acting in such a rush, Menna told redbankgreen: “Get it done now.”

The law doesn’t affect existing businesses, only those within 100 feet of a residential zone that are not already open after 11 p.m. Restaurants and bars are also exempted.

Now, though, even if Dina Enterprises is successful at the planning board, the Welsh Farms would be barred from opening all night. San Filippo said he would consult with his client about the possibility of filing suit against the council.

That prospect was already in DuPont’s mind when the public comment portion of the meeting opened and San Filippo began asking questions about police department data cited at the April 26 introduction. That data purported to show a pattern of disturbances requiring police intervention at convenience stores late at night.

DuPont, a lawyer whose office is next door to SanFilippo’s on Broad Street, repeatedly cut off San Filippo.

“Your asking questions which I find to be alluding to or insinuating that the statistical date didn’t support the vote,” he said. “It’s kind of disappointing. It was a creative way to protect our neighborhoods from all-night establishments that had never been there before.”

San Filippo, though, argued that the kinds of disturbances cited in the data are already against the law, whereas the amendment seeks to curtail land use without going through the process of vetting the change against the town’s Master Plan and land-use bodies.

“If you’re really concerned with noise associated with businesses located in proximity to residences, then let’s deal with the activity that generates the noise,” he said.

Menna and borough Attorney Dan O’Hern defended the change as supported by court precedent. O’Hern also said the change reflected “common sense. If you put a 24-hour operation within 100 feet of residences, that’s going to interfere with the peace, quiet and solitude of the residents nearby.”

Here’s the ordinance: 2012-8001

By JOHN T. WARD

Without explaining the reason for its haste, the Red Bank Council introduced an ordinance change Thursday night to ban retail businesses from remaining open between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m.

The law, an amendment to the town’s noise ordinance, would not apply to any business that now operates at those hours, said Mayor Pasquale Menna. Nor would it affect bars and restaurants.

Not a word was said, however, about its potential impact on the East Front Street Welsh Farms convenience store, which is in the midst of planning board hearings over cosmetic changes as it prepares to convert to a 7-Eleven and remain open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The measure was prompted, Menna said, by a neighborhood brouhaha over Best Liquors, a West Side packaged goods store that attracted so many complaints and legal run-ins that the council revoked its liquor license five years ago.

A recent review of police and code enforcement data by police Chief Steve McCarthy led to a recommendation that the town adopt a noise ordinance barring the operation of any business within 100 feet of a residential zone, excepting bars and restaurants, Menna said.

If any council members harbored any reservations about the amendment, they did not speak Thursday night. Councilman Mike DuPont called it “a very creative way to protect our neighborhoods. I think it’s a wonderful initiative.” Councilman Ed Zipprich said it offered “a good opportunity to protect the quality of life, to protect [neighbors] from a change, a dramatic change.”

“This is just a little bit of tweaking to that helps out our residents,” said Councilman Art Murphy.

The proposed change was not listed on the council’s agenda for the meeting, and no copies of its language, which Menna paraphrased, were available.

Afterward, Menna said there was no advance notice of the introduction because the language was still being drafted shortly before the meeting. Asked what the rush was, he replied, “Get it done now.”

Reminded that Best Liquors wasn’t open all night, Menna replied, “Yes, but it was open late.”

Pressed to address the impact on Welsh Farms, Menna said that if the store changes its hours to all-night before the law goes into effect, “they will be fine.”

He also acknowledged, as the store’s attorney maintains, that town officials did not limit the store’s hours of operation when they approved it as a convenience store and filling station in 1975.

The store has never operated all night, and now closes at 10 p.m.

A public hearing and vote on whether to adopt the amendment was scheduled for May 9. The planning board next meets on May 7, but it could not be immediately learned if the Welsh Farms hearings would resume that night.

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.

Fair Haven Fields, opposite Rumson’s Meadowridge Park on Ridge Road, would be maintained by Rumson under the deal.  (Click to enlarge)

By JOHN T. WARD

Three years after the wheels came off a politically charged plan to merge the police forces of three area towns, two of them have found another, less contentious route into shared services.

Fair Haven and Rumson have agreed to provide key maintenance services to one another in what they’re billing as a “groundbreaking” deal announced Wednesday morning.

Under terms of the deal, Rumson will dump its residential brush at Fair Haven’s processing center and get engineering services for small jobs from Fair Haven’s in-house engineering office.

Fair Haven, meanwhile, will no longer maintain its own parks and other borough-owned properties, handing off that responsibility to its neighbor to the east, Rumson Mayor John Ekdahl tells redbankgreen.

Rumson will also provide street-sweeping and storm sewer catch-basin cleaning services to Fair Haven under the deal.

“The big pickup for us is brush,” said Ekdahl. He said borough DPW trucks made some 500 trips to a farm in Tinton Falls last year to dispose of residential brush, with each round-trip taking about an hour and a half, consuming gallons of gas and putting wear-and-tear on costly vehicles.

Under the agreement, “we cut that trip down to seven minutes,” he said. “For us, that’s the sweet spot of this deal.”

The number of trips typically number between 350 and 400, but was boosted by the cleanup after Tropical Storm Irene last August, he said.

Though Fair Haven will wind down its DPW operations, no jobs will be lost as a result of the deal in either town, Ekdahl said.

The pact, billed as an expansion of an agreement under which the two towns shared building inspection services, arose from regular discussions between their business administrators – Theresa Casagrande in Fair Haven and Tom Rogers in Rumson – Ekdahl said.

Official discussions began about six weeks ago, when Mike Halfacre was still Fair Haven’s mayor, and continued “without interruption,” Ekdahl said, after Ben Lucarelli replaced Halfacre, who resigned to take a job in the Christie Administration.

Lucarelli could not be reached for immediate comment, but in the press release called the deal “a wonderful opportunity that will benefit the residents of both of our communities.”

Rumson will also have access to the services of Fair Haven Engineer Rich Gardella for projects such as upgrades on the Rumson DPW facility. Rumson will continue to retain T&M Associates of Middletown as the consultant to its council and planning and zoning boards, Ekdahl said.

Ekdahl said the savings to taxpayers under the agreement, which is expected to begin early next month, “will be hard to quantify until we’ve had about a year of experience.”

He said Fair Haven would be able to avoid the purchase of a street sweeper, which costs about $500,000, and that savings on gasoline, labor and other costs associated with Rumson’s brush removal would be significant.

Here’s the press release issued by the two towns: Press Release – Interlocal Agreement

Here’s the Fair Haven resolution: FH Resolution

And here’s Rumson’s: Rumson Resolution

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.”

Council members Juanita Lewis and Ed Zipprich opposed a permit application for the event last month, with Zipprich citing a Virginia law that would require most women seeking abortions to undergo an invasive ultrasound procedure. “I believe religious organizations have funded this attack on women’s rights,” Zipprich said. The permit was approved by a 3-to-2 vote. (Click to enlarge)

By STACIE FANELLI

Sixty years old, the Rumson-Sea Bright Bridge over the Shrewsbury River is rapidly corroding, inadequate for today’s traffic loads and behind the times on accident safety. Its electrical system is the same one installed in 1952. It’s not up to snuff in terms of earthquake resistance, either.

In a word, Monmouth County engineering officials say, the bridge’s condition is “serious.”

Whether to spend an estimated $10 million to rehabilitate the bridge or some $50 million to replace it was the core question at a pair of public hearings held Monday in Sea Bright and Rumson. More than a dozen county officials and consultants were present at each to kick off a series of discussions aimed, they said, at “building consensus” on a solution.

But some residents of the two towns voiced skepticism that their concerns – which include the impacts of a new span on property values on the Rumson side and on the business district in Sea Bright – would be given much weight in the process.

“They seem to have it in mind to build a new bridge, and I just don’t want it destroying the neighborhood in the process,” said Tom Calvanico, who lives near the Rumson anchorage.

The bridge, designated S-32, was the focus of an open-house style meeting in Rumson Monday night, as well as at a separate meeting in Sea Bright earlier in the day. Thirteen members of the project team were on hand to answer questions about traffic, design, engineering and the environmental impact of several courses of action.

On the table are replacing the low drawbridge or building a high fixed bridge, which would mean road realignment and a possible loss of private property, officials acknowledged.

“Doing nothing is not an option. At some point, something has to be done,” Martine Culbertson, a community involvement facilitator hired by the county, told the Rumson audience.

But as in Sea Bright earlier, the Rumson Q&A session elicited concern over whether the community’s voices would actually matter in the final decision of the preferred alternative that will be presented to the federal government.

“This just reminds me of Sandy Hook,” said Rumson resident Phil Wagner, referring to the replacement of the Route 36 Highlands Bridge with the new Joe Azzolina Bridge. “Everybody was listened to and all of a sudden, hocus pocus, a decision was made.”

Jon Moren, the county’s principal engineer for bridges, repeatedly assured the audiences that no decision has been made regarding any aspect of the bridge’s construction, including whether construction will ever occur. And team members stressed that in order for the project to qualify for federal funding, Uncle Sam requires them to weigh all options. He encouraged residents to comment in writing with their objections to a fixed bridge.

While a drawbridge would allow for the structure to stay where it is, an issue of funding concerned the crowd. Glen Schetelich, project manager from the engineering firm Hardesty and Hanover, refuted the rumor that the federal government is not interested in funding movable bridges because of maintenance.

“It’s project by project,” he said. “I’ve worked on drawbridges that were replaced with drawbridges.”

The estimate is $10 million to repair only what has been damaged up until now. That does not include preventative construction or replacement, which could come with a budget of over $50 million, said Moren, who added that the county typically spends only $10 million per year on bridges altogether.

All funding is expected to come from the federal government, through the North Jersey Transportation Planning Authority, but only if the project team follows the procedures outlined by the National Environmental Policy Administration (NEPA), which include holding Monday’s public informational meetings.

The meeting “is one of the early litmus tests the Federal Highway Administration will take a look at,” Culbertson told the Rumson crowd.

A traffic survey will be conducted during the summer, the peak of bridge use, to address concerns about congestion.

Moren, who is also the project manager of the Oceanic Bridge project, said construction would not happen on both bridges at once. He confirmed that the current closure of the Oceanic is on schedule to end before next Memorial Day, which is when only the first phase of the Rumson-Sea Bright bridge would be completed.

If Rumson, Sea Bright and the county cannot reach a consensus, though, the team will have to go off course from the schedule put in place by NEPA and will lose its federal funding. The first phase of planning, “local concept development” is 18 months long and should end by April 2013. If everyone agrees on the type of bridge to build and how to do it, they will then go into the engineering, design and construction phases.

Members of the team could not comment on how long construction might last or when it would begin because no one has agreed that it will be built yet. But there seemed to be a consensus opposition to a completely new span.

“That bridge would have to be so huge that it would have to start at Holy Cross and end in the ocean. You would have to build a monstrosity,” said Rumson resident Ingeborg Perndorfer.

“Stakeholders,” which the officials said includes fire and police departments from both municipalities, Holy Cross School, the two hospitals, marinas, bordering towns and local business owners, already met with the project team earlier this month to discuss their apprehension. The most notable bullet was keeping the bridge open during construction.

The bridge is a vital part of the evacuation on Route 520, but community members cited the last time it underwent repairs as a main concern. It was the early 90s and the bridge was shut down entirely for about three months.

“Business in Sea Bright practically died,” said Rumson resident Jude Skowron.

The next public information meeting will be held in October, when the data collection is finished and the preferred alternative for the bridge will be presented, officials said.

Stacie Fanelli, a sophomore at Syracuse University, is a reporting and photography intern at redbankgreen

Former Mayor Maria Fernandes of Sea Bright has died, redbankgreen has confirmed.

She passed away at about 10 a.m. Sunday at Monmouth Medical in Long Branch, where she’d been taken by borough emergency volunteers two nights ago for difficulty breathing, according to Councilman Read Murphy, who was on the EMS call.

We’ll have more details Monday.

By JOHN T. WARD

Ashley Dupré, the former high-priced courtesan whose romps with Eliot Spitzer torpedoed his career as New York’s governor, plans to open a lingerie and swimwear store in Red Bank, redbankgreen has learned.

Operating under the name Femme by Ashley, Dupré has signed a lease at 15 Broad Street, a stylish storefront recently vacated by children’s boutique Lavish Kids, a source close to Dupré confirms.

Dupré, who posed for Playboy in 2010, has signed a lease for 15 Broad Street, above. (Click to enlarge)

Dupré could not be reached for immediate comment. “She’s not trying to hide,” says the confidant. “She just wants to concentrate on getting the store open.” A May debut is planned, he said.

A 26-year-old former Wall Township resident, Dupré became “infamous, not famous,” in her words, when her $4,300-a-pop trysts with Spitzer came to light in 2008.

In recent years, she’s posed nude for Playboy, earned a real estate agent’s license and now writes a sex advice column for the New York Post. A recent installment of “Ask Ashley” discussed lingerie.

redbankgreen sources say Dupré and her boyfriend, paving contractor TJ Earle, have been regular visitors to Red Bank in recent months, dining occasionally at the glitzy Blue Water Seafood a few doors away from their new store.

They’ve also been working fashion and trade shows, hoping to set up vendor agreements with brands such as La Perla, Roberto Cavalli, Cosabella and others, we’re told. Whether any deals have been signed is unknown.

Dupré’s shop would be the second in downtown Red Bank peddling sexy underthings, joining Angie Courtney‘s two-year-old Sweetest Sin Boutique on White Street. And if it gets the labels named above, Femme by Ashley would appear to be a neat complement to its next-door neighbor, Coco Pari, which offers those brands in dresses and shoes, but doesn’t carry lingerie or swimsuits.

Bigger picture, the sultry would-be singer’s shop would add star power – if also a tinge of infamy – to a business district that is suddenly abuzz with leasing and development activity.

That includes the 2011 openings of Surf Taco, Blue Water and the Yestercades retro video arcade, as well as the planned debuts this year of Char Steakhouse, Boardwalk Fresh Burgers & Fries, two sub shops, several clothing stores and a health food store.

The local Republican Committee last week submitted the names of Council President Jon Peters, Councilman Ben Lucarelli and former Council President Andrew Trocchia to fill out the 2012 portion of the two years remaining on Halfacre’s term, committee chairman Rich Magovern tells redbankgreen.

The borough council, though it meets tonight, has scheduled a special meeting to select a new mayor from among the three on Monday, February 20 at 7 p.m. 5 p.m.

Magovern, himself a former councilman, tells that he’d “feel confident with any of the three” nominees taking the center seat on the council dais. Fair Haven’s mayor is allowed a vote only to break a tie.

Halfacre, a lifelong borough resident in his second term as mayor, resigned January 25 to take the top job at the state state Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control.

If either Lucarelli or Peters gets the nod, the local GOP will have to go back to the drawing board and find a replacement for his council seat, Magovern said.