SEA BRIGHT FACILITIES IN SPOTLIGHT
What to do about the cramped Borough Hall is among tonight’s topics in Sea Bright.
By LINDA G. RASTELLI
If you want to read Sea Bright’s Smart Growth report, a copy of the document will set you back $40 at the borough hall.
But if that’s a little rich for your blood, you can attend a special council meeting tonight, where an update of the plan will be presented in PowerPoint form.
“It’ll be an informational session, with a Q&A afterward, to present four or five options” for upgrading municipal facilities, says Councilwoman Maria Fernandes.
The preferred option, according to the report, is to “relocate the borough hall and courts to a new building just north of the firehouse, consolidate the police department into the new borough hall, raze the existing police building and replace with a new integrated office/garage building housing First Aid and [the Office of Emergency Management], and sell the existing borough hall building and land and adjacent parking area.”
Other options involve such ideas as rehabilitating the existing police building, eliminating the basketball court at borough hall, and relocating First Aid and OEM.
All the recommendations include extending the fire house garage to fit modern fire trucks, relocating the public works department, and replacing the beach operations building with a new building and adding outdoor beach lockers.
One plan that Mayor Jo-Ann Kalaka-Adams had been touting was to purchase Donovans Reef for the town. But as redbankgreen reported last week, that plan sank when negotiations with the owners fell through.
The Smart Growth report, prepared by a private consulting firm and paid for with a $50,000 state grant awarded three years ago, also recommmends building a public municipal indoor pool to be shared with other towns. A feasibility study for building a pool is now underway by the councils beach committee, says Fernandes.
“We’re also waiting for a structural integrity report [on the municipal buildings] from an architect before we can decide anything,” she added.
The meeting takes place at the borough recreation center at 7p.