Government consultant Ken DeRoberts will manage the agency. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)

By JOHN T. WARD

The Red Bank council approved two of its own members and five other residents to constitute a new borough redevelopment agency Wednesday night.

Spurred by a in Management Enhancement Report written last year by Government Strategy Group, the agency is expected to focus initially on borough facilities that are considered in need of immediate attention. Ken DeRoberts, who heads Government Strategy Group, will also head the agency.

Mayor Pasquale Menna said Councilwoman Kate Triggiano, of Leighton Avenue, and Councilman Hazim Yassin, of Spring Street, would each serve on the agency through the end of 2019.

Selected from “many extraordinary individuals” who applied to serve on the panel, at no pay, were:

• Wilson Beebe, of the Elkridge complex on Ambassador Drive, to serve through 2021. Menna said Beebe works in the lending industry, is a member of the board of directors at the National Cooperative Bank, and is a former executive director of the New Jersey State Funeral Directors Association.

• Alpha Reynolds-Lewis, who Menna identified as a resident of the West Side, through 2021. A real estate appraiser, she’s also a trustee of the Red Bank Affordable Housing Corporation.

• Megan Massey, also of the West Side, through 2022. She has a master’s degree in city and regional planning and is currently employed by New Jersey Transit in the capital planning department, Menna said.

• Jan Wouters, of the Navesink Pointe development on the East Side, through 2023. An attorney specializing in real estate law at the Lakewood-based law firm Bathgate, Wegener & Wolfe, Wouters headed an ad hoc “blue-ribbon panel” appointed by Menna in 2016 to study a proposed, and ultimately failed, expansion of the Red Bank Charter School. He’s also got an undergraduate degree in architecture and master’s in urban planning, Menna said.

• David R. Huber, of the Bluffs development downtown, through 2023. He’s a recently retired chief financial officer of Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey who has served on the New Jersey Economic Development Authority. Huber is also co-chair of the board of trustees of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra.

With Councilman Ed Zipprich absent, the vote to approve the appointments was 4-1. Councilman Michael Ballard, who has argued in the past that redevelopment oversight should be managed in-house by Business Administrator Ziad Shehady , cast the sole ‘no’ vote.

An attorney and other professionals will be appointed after a round of requests for proposals for the work, Menna said.

Menna also appointed a group of technical advisors or “observers” to the agency:

Jim Scavone, executive director of Red Bank River Center; Tim Hogan, former president of Riverview Medical Center and now an executive with its parent company, Hackensack Meridian Health; Jeffrey Nadell of NJ Transit’s real estate department; Jesse Garrison, a retired borough public works employee and former member of the zoning board; Michaela Ferrigine, chair of the Historic Preservation Committee; Frank Corrado of the Environmental Commission; schools Superintendent Jared Rumage; Reverend Terrence Porter for the Red Bank Affordable Housing Corporation; and Adam Philipson, CEO of the Count Basie Center for the Performing Arts.

Menna said he would ask that the Red Bank Business Alliance suggest a business owner who’s also a borough resident.