By JOHN T. WARD

A bridge-replacement project in Little Silver that’s expected to take up to nine months could jam up a pair of intersections more than a mile away starting in July.

That, in turn, may also reinvigorate a dormant debate over whether those intersections are long overdue for traffic signals, Mayor Bob Neff tells redbankgreen.

The detour involves the installation of a temporary light at Branch Avenue and White Road, above, and another at Branch and Rumson Road. (Click to enlarge)

The replacement of a small, timber bridge on Seven Bridges Road just north of the Little Silver Point Road intersection is scheduled to begin shortly after the July 4 holiday, officials said. A concrete span with 12-foot lanes, three-foot shoulders and a six-foot pedestrian walkway on the westerly side will be installed in the $2.7 million project.

The work, originally scheduled to begin in 2008, has been repeatedly delayed.

Neff said that as part of the traffic-control portion of the project, the county will install temporary traffic lights at two locations on Branch Avenue: at the intersection of White Road, and at the intersection of Rumson Road, just yards away. That’s to accommodate an expected increase in volume caused by the closure of Seven Bridges at its northern (Rumson Road) and southern (Silverwhite Avenue) ends, as well as at the eastern ends of Kings Road and Point Road.

Residents whose homes can only be accessed via Seven Bridges will be permitted to bypass closure signs, but the bridge will remained closed to all but pedestrian and bike traffic for most of the duration.

But the installation of the lights prompts the question: why not make them permanent?

That turns out to be a live wire line of inquiry, said Neff. Hearings on the bridge “before my time on the council” some six years ago stirred up passions pro and con, he said.

The borough “held huge hearings, well-attended enough that one had to be moved to the Markham Place School,” he said.

And then, as he expects today, “you had people who want no traffic lights, people who had wanted traffic lights for years before this project came up, and people in the middle. The conclusion was the best way to do it was to go with temporary lights.”

Now, he said, “this discussion has started again: should we make these lights permanent?”

One one side are commuters who lament the difficulty of making left turns off Rumson and White roads, backing up vehicles on each at rush hours. On the other are those who see the lights as unnecessary and likely to adversely impact property values near the intersections.

The temporary lights should be a good test of whether the signals should become permanent, Neff said.

“Perhaps the use of the temporary lights will give us some idea of whether they might be workable,” he said, though the detour may be seem as exaggerating the extent of the problem, he notes.

In any event, the question of permanent signals “is a county issue, because it’s a county road,” he said of Branch.

Officials from the Monmouth County Engineer’s office could not be reached for comment.

Little Silver has asked the county to install the temporary lights during late-night hours to prevent further traffic congestion and to minimize the number of police officers required to direct traffic, Neff said.

By JOHN T. WARD

For six months, Salt Creek Grille owner Steve Bidgood has watched with guarded optimism the progress of work to replace the 100-foot-long bascule on the Oceanic Bridge over the Navesink River.

Denied since October the benefit of traffic the 72-year-old bridge was built to carry between Middletown and his side, Rumson, Bidgood’s foremost concern has been that the job wrap up, as advertised, by the start of the busy summer season – Memorial Day weekend.

“I’d love to see them do it,” Bidgood told redbankgreen this week, eyeing the elegant bridge framed by the restaurant’s windows. “If they do, I might even buy them dinner.”

It’s looking as though Bidgood will need to reserve a large table.

Monmouth County Engineer Joe Ettore, whose office is managing the project, tells redbankgreen that the Oceanic’s target reopening date remains Thursday, May 31.

An earlier reopening is possible, he said. But don’t count on it.

“We are doing everything we can, working with the contractor, to come in with the best possible date for reopening,” Ettore said Wednesday. “But there is critical work that remains, and that critical work has to by necessity take place at this late point in the project.”

Eighty-five-to-95 percent of the structural work is done, he said, but critical testing of the electrical and mechanical systems remains.

Ettore said the project “had a very tight window in which to complete a substantial amount of work” on the moving parts of the 2,752-foot-long span – by far the county’s longest. The timetable was designed to minimize the adverse economic impact on businesses that are reliant on bridge traffic, he said.

Aided by a snowless and unseasonably mild winter, it appears not a day of the summer season will be lost, Ettore said.

“The fact that we’re on-schedule is a real good sign, and we’re very happy with the contractor’s performance,” he said. The contractor on the $3.6 million job is Iron Bridge Group of North Brunswick.

Funding for the project came from the state, which prohibits early-completion incentives, Ettore said.

The repaired bascule is expected to have a useful life of 20 years, he said, but the long concrete approaches to the bascule are already overdue for replacement, a project that’s not expected to get into construction for at least three more years.

Local and county officials are hoping to persuade the federal government to fund another low-level drawbridge, rather than a high-arc, fixed span that area residents say would adversely affect property values and the aesthetics of the river.

The opening of a new bridge “is at least six years away, and it’s not inconceivable that it could be 10,” Ettore said.

Documents explaining the repair job can be found at the engineering department website.

“There’s no money for business interruption,” says Red Bank Marina owner Steve Remaley, below, who also stands to lose land on both sides of the bridge. (Click to enlarge)

By JOHN T. WARD

Steve Remaley is about to get it from all sides.

As Monmouth County nears its long-overdue replacement of Hubbard’s Bridge between Red Bank and Middletown starting early next year, the owner of Red Bank Marina is facing:

• the loss of a large parcel of land, opposite his shop on West Front Street, where many of his customers park their vehicles and boat trailers

• the loss of a strip of land on the marina’s main property for the creation of a new pedestrian and bike path to Shrewsbury Avenue

• up to two years of diminished business, including a stretch of at least three months during which bridge traffic will be shut down entirely.

And that’s the best-case scenario.

“I have no idea what I’m in for,” Remaley tells redbankgreen, leaning on a boat being readied for spring and summer use. “This could be the best thing to ever happen to me, or the worst.”

A 2008 plan showing the new bridge, in red. (Click to enlarge)

The new, permanent bridge is expected to cost $12 million and will replace the “temporary” steel span in place since 2004. But unlike the straight path followed by the existing bridge, the replacement will take an arcing sweep toward the north, anchoring at the same points on either side of the Navesink River where it becomes the Swimming River.

The new alignment improves sightlines and safety for motorists, said county Engineer Joe Ettore. It also, coincidentally, allows for construction of most of the new structure without impacting traffic, except for the anticipated three to four months that will be needed to tie the bridge into the landing points, Ettore has said at two presentations on the project.

But it also means that Remaley will lose some 17,000 square feet of land, 12,000 of it underwater, on the north side of West Front Street. What’s not taken by the bridge will, along with a house acquired by the county at Rector Place and West Front, be deeded over to Red Bank for recreational use.

Remaley, who bought the marina in 2007 after years of running one in Oceanport, uses the parcel for boat storage, but the riparian rights he has there allow for the potential expansion of his operation, including the installation of a dock. In compensation, he’s getting a small amount of land on the south side.

“It’s not a fair exchange,” he said. “Everything I can do on this piece of property I can do over there. I can’t stop them from putting in a bridge, but marina properties are very valuable,” and he’s concerned he won’t get a fair price for the balance.

Remaley is also concerned, he said, about the sidewalk that will be built on the southern edge of the bridge. The county plans to acquire a strip of his property adjoining the New Jersey Transit railroad for the construction of a path to connect the bridge to Shrewsbury Avenue, south of the railroad grade crossing.

The existing bridge has a sidewalk only on the north side, and Remaley questions the logic of building one on the new structure, noting that the western terminus of it, near Chris’ Landing, does not meet a sidewalk, so pedestrians will be forced to cross to the north side anyway.

But Ettore said the new sidewalk, in addition to giving Middletown residents more direct access to the Red Bank train station, enhances safety for the marina’s customers.

Without the sidewalk on the south side of the bridge, “there’s no convenient place for someone to get access to the marina” from the northern side, said Ettore. “This way, there is complete access, safe access.”

Ettore said the southern sidewalk, estimated to cost about $750,000, “absolutely has a major functional purpose, which is to avoid a mid-block crossing, where there’s limited sight distance. And quite frankly, the old bifurcation of the marina property, almost necessitated that marina patrons who chose to park on the north side would have to cross mid-block.”

Remayel is worried, though, that the additional sidewalk there will now be more people crabbing from the bridge, and leaving trash behind. And while the bridge is under construction, he’s hoping that the boating channel to the broader Navesink remains open, or his business will suffer yet more.

“There’s no money for business interruption” in the sums that the county is offering in ongoing negotiations, he said.

Despite his many worries, though, Remayel said he’s not dead-set against the bridge.

“Maybe I won’t be affected that much,” he said, acknowledging the county’s goal of limiting the traffic shutdown to winter months, when his business is slow anyway.

And the new bridge will mean no more of the constant clanking of metal parts on the existing structure, he said.

“I’ll be glad because it won’t be so noisy,” he said.

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

By JOHN T. WARD

Monmouth County officials say they have solved the daunting sidewalk-to-nowhere conundrum they faced in designing a new bridge to connect Red Bank and Middletown at West Front Street.

The fix? Create a walk-and-bike path that will bypass the narrow rail trestle on the Red Bank side, Monmouth County Engineer Joe Ettore said Wednesday.

In what was billed as a preview of a fuller public presentation to come in the spring, Monmouth County Engineer Joe Ettore told Red Bank’s mayor and council that the revised plan for the new Hubbards Bridge also calls for a construction timetable that will detour traffic around the span for just three or four months of the projected 18-to-24-month buildout.

And when it’s all done, the borough will end up with a new parcel of green space overlooking the upper Navesink River, he said.

The new span, scheduled to go out for bid to contractors in the fall, is to replace a “temporary” steel span installed a decade ago, which is to be re-used elsewhere, Ettore said. Construction is expected to begin in early 2013, with at least one lane of the existing bridge remaining open, except for about four months toward the end of the project, when traffic will be routed to the nearby Cooper’s Bridge on Route 35.

That’s possible, he said, because the new bridge, while anchoring in the same places as the existing one, will be built slightly north of the current span.

The job is expected to cost in the vicinity of $12 million, and will be paid for completely by federal funding, Ettore said.

Ettore’s presentation was an update on one he gave in September, 2009, covered here by redbankgreen. That plan remains in effect, but with some new features.

• As previously proposed, the new two-lane bridge will have four-foot-wide shoulders and six-foot sidewalks on both sides. But under the former plan, the southern sidewalk was to have come to an abrupt end on the Red Bank side, because the narrowness of the train trestle there prohibited it from continuing to Shrewsbury Avenue. That would have forced walkers and bikers to cross the heavily trafficked bridge itself.

The solution, Ettore said, is for the county to acquire a strip of land adjoining the New Jersey Transit rail line from Red Bank Marina for the creation of a stepped series of ramps leading up to the railroad grade crossing on Shrewsbury Avenue. The ramps will comply with Americans with Disabilities Act standards for accessibility, he said.

“The biggest challenge is the grade,” he told reporters afterward. The sloping ramps will be interspersed with stretches of landing, he said.

The county hopes to acquire the land through negotiation from the marina’s owner. “He’s, unfortunately, severely impacted” by the project, Ettore said.

• Because a retaining wall alongside a residential property at the northwest corner of West Front and Rector Place was causing sight-line issues, the county has already acquired that property and plans to demolish the house there, Ettore said. The retaining wall will be removed and the property will be regraded to eliminate the issues, he said.

“The ability of the county to acquire that, we feel, is going to be a huge benefit to the 17,500 vehicles that cross that bridge every day,” he said.

When the project is completed, the parcel, less than a half acre in size, which has access to the riverfront beneath an adjoining rail bridge, will be deeded over to the borough for use as open space, Ettore said.

• The full closure of the existing span is expected to occur in early 2014, after the Christmas holidays of 2013, and in expectation of the bridge reopening before the start of the summer season, Ettore told the council. Afterward, he acknowledged to reporters that such a timetable would require the job to be completed in 18 months or less, rather than 24, and said the county was shooting for a closure period between February and April of 2014.

A public review session, with full construction drawing and a question-and-answer session, will be held, possibly at borough hall, sometime in April, Ettore said.

Elected officials praised the plan, and Ettore’s office for working with borough officials and keeping them apprised of changes. Mayor Pasquale Menna was effusive in thanking Ettore for minimizing the shutdown period, for his concern about green space, and for the architecture of the bridge, which will pick up on the brick and antique lamppost elements used by the state on the Cooper’s Bridge.

Councilman Mike DuPont said the plan “seems to promote not only transportation, but to create some pedestrian walkways and bikeways, with access to and from the river.”

By JOHN T. WARD

It happens fairly often, Red Bank officials say: someone will express interest in volunteering as a firefighter or first aider, but when informed about what’s involved in terms of training and commitment, he or she begs out.

With first aiders required to put in some 130 hours in training, and firefighters 200 or so hours, “most people who want to volunteer say they can’t commit that much time,” says Tommy Welsh, the head of the borough’s Office of Emergency Management and the town’s deputy fire marshal.

Now, there’s a third way to help during disasters, both actual and potential, said Welsh: the Community Emergency Response Team. And an open house to detail the opportunity is scheduled for later this month.

Welsh and his OEM deputy, retired deputy police chief Ernie Van Pelt, are hoping to round up several dozen men and women who can be counted on to help in the coordination of emergency services during storms, fires, accidents and other catastrophes. Five three-hour training sessions are required for certification.

During an actual emergency, members might be called in to check in on invalids or residents with special needs, or to go door-to-door to provide information about conditions and services, said Welsh, who anticipates the team will conduct about four drills a year, two of them “tabletop,” and two in the field.

Volunteers will learn basic fire prevention, search-and-rescue, bandaging and other skills. Senior citizens are encouraged to consider signing up, said Welsh, who emphasizes that CERT members are viewed as those who can take steps to mitigate a disaster’s impact until such time as other, more highly trained assistance is available.

“We’re trying not to take from the tactical side of fire and first-aid response,” he said.

Van Pelt, noting that the town is divided by a rail line that could become an obstacle in the event of an emergency, said he’s hoping both east and west siders will attend the open house. He said a particular effort will be made to draw in non-English speakers from the town’s large immigrant population.

The OEM office doesn’t have much of a budget, but recently got a boost when Prown’s Home Improvements donated $3,000 from the sale of calendars depicting Red Bank weather-related catastrophes over the past half-century.

Though Monmouth County, state and federal governments provide some funding, funds are needed to outfit each volunteer with a helmet, safety vest and basic equipment.

Last August, three days before Hurricane Irene hit, the borough took title to a heavy-duty truck donated as surplus by the City of Long Branch and put it to use in the storm. Welsh said scouring government websites for surplus gear is an example of the kind of scrambling the CERT operation needs. Information technology and ham radio specialists are also sought.

Welsh’s first full year heading up the OEMwas a doozie.

Starting on January 1, 2011, he immediately inherited the traffic-crippling effects of the blizzard of the week before. In August came both a rare earthquake and the hurricane, which threatened a riverside nursing home. The OEM coordinated the temporary relocation of the home’s patients.

In that time, Welsh has expanded what was, for 20 years, a three-person operation into one with five deputies, an updated emergency operations plan and, now, the goal of establishing the CERT program.

Here’s the full text of a recent announcement from the OEM:

Red Bank is one of several shore area towns that will be participating in an open house offering more information on the program.  Representatives of the Red Bank OEM will join Eatontown, Little Silver, Oceanport, Shrewsbury, Tinton Falls and West Long Branch at the Eatontown Fire House, Broad Street, on Saturday, February 25, between 10 am and 2 pm.  All are welcome to stop in any time during the open house to learn more about what they can do to protect themselves, their family and their community and how they can apply to join the Red Bank CERT team.   For more information, please contact Red Bank OEM Coordinator Tom Welsh at 732-530-2777, ext. 496.

By JOHN T. WARD

Fingers crossed, but so far, the repair job on the Oceanic Bridge over the Navesink River between Middletown and Rumson is going like clockwork, thanks to relatively mild winter weather.

Monmouth County officials said the bridge, closed since October, is on schedule to reopen in time for the start of the summer season Memorial Day weekend.

“They’ve been fortunate with the weather,” said Rumson Mayor John Ekdahl.

The work is focused on the 100-foot-long steel bascule portion of the 2,700-foot-long span – the county’s longest – that opens for marine traffic.  Work crews have been removing, repairing and replacing everything from giant support beams to the machinery that opens the bridge to the catwalks.

From an announcement by the county press office:

During the second full month of the closure, the contractor removed and replaced two major floor beams on the north leaf of the bascule span and reinforced the east and west girders. The contractor also completed the installation of a temporary platform on the south leaf’s bascule in preparation of rehabilitation of that span.

On the north leaf, approximately 95 percent of the existing components have been cleaned and primed; some areas have also been painted. Painting work has been stopped for the winter and will resume when structural repairs, stringer and grating deck installation are completed. During the cleaning process, 10 55-gallon drums of rust and paint chips were removed from the north and south spans. Mechanical work to various components of bridge machinery continues to be repaired off-site.

“This project is continuing on schedule,” [Freeholder John] Arnone said. “This winter, so far, has been relatively mild so that work crews have been able to keep working schedule and we are proceeding toward an on-time re-opening prior to Memorial Day weekend.”

The repairs are expected to extend the life of the bridge, built in 1939, by about eight years. In the interim, plans for a replacement structure, which may include a controversial fixed-span bridge 65 feet above the river, are in the works.

TEXT

By JOHN T. WARD

Right off the bat, the above photo hints at what new Sea Bright Mayor Dina Long is up against.

Long is far from the first of the town’s top elected officials to confront flooding issues. Pinched between the Atlantic Ocean and the Shrewsbury River, the three-mile-long spit of sand can always count on seeing water slosh onto residential streets abutting the downtown business district during storms.

But a fix is finally in the works, says Long, who hopes to check off flood control, beachfront redevelopment, cellular service quality and one or two other longstanding projects from her to-do list in her term.

“I refuse to see things as problems,” Long told redbankgreen in a recent interview over coffee at Steve’s Breakfast & Lunch on Ocean Avenue. “Otherwise, you’re just stuck all the time.”

Long with Councilman Read Murphy at Steve’s Breakfast & Lunch. (Click to enlarge)

Long says Sea Bright has kind of been “poised at the edge of progress” for a years, and that it’s her job as mayor to “make the numbers work” to enable it to happen.

Her vision for the beachfront redevelopment, she says, is the same as the council’s: to transform a town of 1,800 that serves mainly as a summer destination for visitors into one with year-round draws. And the first stage of that plan is “finally about to happen,” she says.

Likewise for a flood mitigation plan that calls for taller bulkheads along the river and a pumping station to keep the streets drier, if not immune to nature’s worst.

Long, 42 years old, grew up in Neptune, where her parents still live. After graduating from Rutgers, where she studied journalism – a subject she teaches as a full-time faculty member at Brookdale Community College – Long worked as a paid campaign staffer for governors Jim Florio and Jim McGreevey, presidential candidate Bill Bradley and then-Senator Jon Corzine.

She met her husband, Rob Long, on the Florio campaign, for which he was treasurer. They moved to Sea Bright in 2002, when he became pastor of Sea Bright United Methodist Church. Rob now works for a law firm and serves part-time as associate pastor at Christ Church in Fair Haven. The couple have an 8-year-old son.

“Is Sea Bright like any other place you’ve ever seen?” Long says brightly, just minutes after helping some of her neighbors remove their cars from flooded New Street.

From early on in her decade in Sea Bright, Long says she has been enamored of a town that’s a little bit of Mayberry by the Sea, and was inspired to serve it. She had one year left in her third three-year term on council when she was elected mayor over former Mayor Jo-Ann Kalaka Adams in November.

Councilman Read Murphy, who clashed loudly and often with one of Long’s political mentors, former Mayor Maria Fernandes, says Long is “trying to get rid of the politics here” to make things happen.

Despite her party pedigree, Long calls herself a “disaffected Democrat,” one who is “extraordinarily conservative” fiscally, a fan of Governor Chris Christie and says she’s “holding a grudge against” President  Obama over bank bailouts, carbon tax credits and other issues she declines to detail.

She says Murphy is right that she wants to maintain and build consensus across party lines. But no one should mistake her for a pushover, she suggests.

“If you refuse to play politics, and everybody else is playing politics, then they’re going to politic you,” she says, adding, “I don’t allow myself to be trampled.”

More particularly, Long expresses resentment for party bosses “and other people who are not elected attempting to make decisions that should be in the hands of elected officials. I really object to that.” Though she says that, in all her time in politics, “at least on my side, that has never happened.

“There have been times when I’ve marched away from my party, away from the party chairman, because I’m independent,” she said. “I’m out for what’s best for Sea Bright.”

She declines to give examples of it happening on the other side, however, instead turning the conversation toward her “collegial” relationship with the borough council, all of whose members she’s worked with productively for at least two terms.

“She’s a real asset,” said Murphy, a Republican whose brash, often crass manner could hardly be more different from Long’s careful choosing of words. “I think she’s going to be a great mayor.”

Sea Bright residents and fans can now follow the town’s doings on Facebook and Twitter, via accounts set up by Long earlier this month.

By JOHN T. WARD

Red Bank Mayor Pasquale Menna says it looks like “an airport runway,” and he’s not the only one who marvels at the candlepower along River Road in neighboring Fair Haven.

Resident Ruth Blaser wonders, “Did the town engineer go to a closeout sale for streetlamps and say, ‘I’ll take them all?’”

The sarcasm, however, may be in for a dial-back soon – at least as it regards late-night travel along the road.

The 73 old-fashioned lamps lining the town’s main drag from Smith Street to Elm Place are the most visible elements of a recent streetscape makeover funded by $886,000 in federal stimulus money that ex-Mayor Mike Halfacre opposed but sought on the borough’s behalf. The pricetag also bought new sidewalks, curbs, benches and trashcans.

Now, the overall runway effect is in for a dimming.

The lamps were installed with the capability of being turned on and off individually, said borough Administrator Theresa Casagrande. But an issue involving a utility pole that had to be removed prevented the option from being available, she said.

That problem has either been fixed or is about to be, and soon, every other light will be shut off after 11 p.m., she said.

redbankgreen was unable to find out how many lamps the new ones replaced. But the new ones, said Casagrande, spread their light over a smaller area than their predecessors.

How much do they cost to operate? Less than the old streetlamps, it appears. Bills for the comparable June-through-mid-November period for 2010, when the old lights were still used, and 2011, when all the new ones were in, show a drop in electricity costs for the borough to just under $46,000, from slightly more than $60,000.

The bills, however, include non-streeet-lighting expenses and other variables that may have accounted for some of the difference, Casagrande said.