A view down South Street on August 3, above, and a century-old tree being removed Monday. (Photos by John T. Ward, above, and Kenny Katzgrau. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
The abrupt removal of nine trees along South Street in Red Bank this week was “unavoidable,” according to interim borough Manager Darren McConnell.
Residents, though, said they were in the dark about the plan until it was too late to change it.
As part of a road repaving project, a crew began removing nine trees along South Street in Red Bank amid complaints from residents Wednesday morning.
redbankgreen plans to follow up with a story. (Video by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
An aerial view of the Red Bank Senior Center property, located at 80 Shrewsbury Avenue. (Photo from Google Maps. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
Following what one critic called “the old switcheroo,” Red Bank’s soon-to-be-unseated council pushed through a measure to include the Senior Center property in a state conservation program Wednesday night.
The 11th-hour, unadvertised move was opposed by Mayor Billy Portman and at least four members of the council that’s slated to take office July 1, setting the stage for possible reversal.
Twin fawns spent a sun-dappled afternoon in adjoining backyards on Madison Avenue in Red Bank Monday, watching other wildlife and awaiting the return of their mother.
The Senior Center as seen last August. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
After a failed attempt to preserve part of the Red Bank Senior Center property by subdividing it, the council will try another approach Wednesday night.
An aerial view of the Senior Center property. (Photo from Google Maps. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
Red Bank’s planning board rejected a proposed subdivision of the borough’s riverfront Senior Center property Monday night.
Board members said the plan would cede too much control of the riverfront site to the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, when other conservation tools would not.
Who’s there? A young owl surprised neighbors when it perched in a tree on Hudson Avenue in Red Bank last week.
Danielle Boyle and her crew planting flowers on Broad Street Friday morning. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
Any day now, perhaps in time for Mothers’ Day, peonies as big as softballs will be blooming on Broad Street in Red Bank.
In coming months, downtown visitors will also be treated to bursts of color provided by hydrangea vanilla sundae, whirling butterfly and other plantings, thanks to a RiverCenter project utilizing the talents of a highly regarded gardener.
In the works for more than eight years, Swimming River Park in the River Plaza section of Middletown is set to make its official debut Monday.
In decades past, members of Red Bank’s North Shrewsbury Ice Boat & Yacht Club, the oldest organization of its kind in America, could count on winters packed with racing and casual sailing.
No more. What’s now called the Navesink River has not frozen well enough for iceboating for five years straight, sending the club’s members, including Mark Petersen and Steve Foster, right, north in search of ice elsewhere. And even that hunt is often futile, as borough resident Brian Donohue reports in his latest ‘Positively Jersey’ video essay for News12. Watch the short video here.
There’s no hope of ice crystals forming Thursday, when local daytime temperatures are expected to crack 60 degrees again (following Wednesday’s peak of 69), according to the National Weather Service. Check out the extended forecast below.
A fall planting of 75 young trees in Red Bank began with a gingko finding a home on Leonard Street Monday morning.
Seventeen oak trees on Ridge Road in Little Silver were cut down this week by a contractor for Monmouth County.
An eastward view of the Navesink River from Red Bank earlier this week. (Reader photo. Click to enlarge.)
The Army Corps of Engineers plans to dredge the Navesink River from Red Bank to Sandy Hook in 2023, according to an announcement by sixth-district Congressman Frank Pallone, Jr.
A fox dashed across Madison Avenue in Red Bank at the sight of an approaching bicyclist Friday morning. Or was our foxy friend simply getting an early jump on the Memorial Day weekend?
The unofficial start of summer will bring warm-to-hot temperatures and ample sunshine Sunday and Monday, according to the National Weather Service. Check out the extended forecast below. (Video by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
Angela Mirandi, in second pane from left in the top row, attended her first session as a council member. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
See CORRECTION below
By JOHN T. WARD
Three years after a fire suppression system leak forced a shutdown of Red Bank’s Senior Center, the borough council approved nearly $2 million in financing for repairs Wednesday.
As in the past, members clashed over the reasons for the time elapsed and cost. Added to the acrimony was a new element: blame for failure to identify money recently found sitting idle in old accounts and now earmarked for repairs.
Unmentioned during the virtual meeting was a lawsuit, announced hours earlier, that seeks to remove Angela Mirandi, who attended for the first time as a council member.
A municipal boat ramp on the Navesink River was once envisioned for the north end of Maple Avenue, now a nature area called Maple Cove. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
Red Bank officials boasted earlier this month that they’d “cobbled together” about $1 million from idle accounts to soften the impact on taxpayers of repairing the long-shuttered Senior Center.
It turns out a big chunk of that sum has been stuck in the borough’s sofa cushions for 30 years, designated for a never-built boat ramp, redbankgreen has learned.
Debbie Nagel, who then served as the borough’s backup animal control officer, with a raccoon pup rescued from a tree on Brown Place last May. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
Just six months in, Red Bank is rethinking its deal for animal control services with the Monmouth County SPCA.
The agreement generated a firestorm last spring, in part because it ended an in-house service provided by a borough employee who many residents praised for his dedication to the task.
Maple Cove in Red Bank provided a summer-ending birder’s bounty Tuesday. Who can identify these feathered friends of our beautiful Navesink River?
Autumn flutters in at 3:21 Eastern Daylight Time on Wednesday, according to the Farmers Almanac. The new season will arrive under cloudy skies, and maybe some rain, with temperatures rising to the high 70s, says the National Weather Service.
Check out the extended forecast below. (Photos by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
The work to preserve trees on Hudson Avenue included bumping out curbs and extending driveway aprons. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
Mid-project changes to preserve trees helped boost the tab for road work in Red Bank by more than $227,000 to this summer, officials said.
And the added expenses came in one penny below the threshold at which the entire $1.14 million project would have had to be re-bid.
Creating the turtle habitat at Bellhaven involved trucking in a special blend of sand. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
Red Bank’s Environmental Commission has debuted a pair of completed projects spotlighting turtles and water conservation in recent weeks.
A cluster of dead bunker in the Red Bank borough marina at Marine Park earlier this month. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
A massive die-off of bunker fish in the Navesink and Shrewsbury rivers this spring poses no health threat to recreational users of those waters, environmental scientists said Thursday night.
Meantime, experts are still trying to determine what environmental “stressors” might have turned a bacteria that’s common to the species into a mass killer that has littered shores with tons of dead, putrid carcasses.
A cluster of dead bunker in the borough marina at Marine Park earlier this month. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
Clean Ocean Action and local officials, including Red Bank’s, will get the virtual town hall with New Jersey environmental officials they’ve been seeking to address the recent “severe” fish kill in the Navesink and Shrewsbury rivers, the organization announced Friday.
For the second day in a row, a wildlife officer was called out to the corner of Brown Place and South Street in Red Bank to care for a raccoon pup that had fallen from a nest about 20 feet above the ground.
Fish carcasses on the shoreline at Maple Cove in Red Bank Thursday. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
Red Bank officials this week called on the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection to host a virtual town hall meeting to address concerns about a fish kill the agency has called the “most severe” in recent memory.
Dead menhaden cluster at a Navesink River dock in Fair Haven last week. (Photo by Bernie McSherry. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
A massive fish kill in the Navesink and Shrewsbury rivers in recent weeks is “the most severe mortality event in recent memory,” but New Jersey environmental officials still don’t know why it’s targeting only one species, Clean Ocean Action reported Thursday.
The environmental advocacy group also pressed the state to remove at least some of the dead fish from Red Bank-area waters.