What You Missed from This Week's Council Meeting

For those who couldn’t make it to Monday night’s township council meeting, there were a few interesting items that didn’t make it into a full story, but were nonetheless noteworthy. Here are a few leftover tidbits from the meeting:

• Council unanimously approved an ordinance to bond $655,500 for improvements to the  (total cost: $690,000). The ordinance because he said he didn’t know what the tax impact of the project would be. Township manager Scott Carew presented information Monday showing the project—due to multiple sources of offsetting revenue—would be essentially tax-neutral. That satisfied Testa—who made the motion to pass the ordinance—as well as all the other council members. Architect Rick Ragan said all the pieces of the rec center improvement project should be completed by next summer.

• Carew said the pieces are just about in place to roll out the . He said the “menu” of options for sponsors, as well as the design for the promotional materials, are pretty much set following a meeting with Taylor Design Group last week. Carew provided examples of some of the sponsorship options, including a seasonal banner on an outfield fence at one of the ballparks and 10-year naming rights for fields. “It’s a very conservative estimate to think we can raise $50,000 or $100,000 a year,” he said. According to Carew, the goal is to sell the sponsorships during the fall and have them in place in time for the spring season. : the clubs get 25 percent to use as they see fit, the township keeps 75 percent to spread amongst the clubs based on need.

• Carew said he’s hoping to have sometime in mid/late September. Carew has been having discussions behind the scenes for months with a number of as-yet unnamed municipalities about the possibility of a shared court facility as a cost-saving strategy.

• Ragan, principal of Ragan Design Group, explained that the “rapid impact compaction” process—which essentially involves a big machine slamming a several-ton weight repeatedly into the ground—at the town hall site should be less disruptive in terms of noise than other types of soil compaction processes, and that the contractor responsible will be digging trenches around the site to “interrupt the waves” generated by the compaction. The process is necessary because , which won’t be suitable to build on without compaction. The process is expected to last roughly a week.  

Council will hold its next regular meeting at 7:30 p.m. Sept. 10 (due to the Labor Day holiday) in the IT room at .