RED BANK: BRUSH PICKUP REMINDER
With summer 2023 nearing its end, Red Bank’s public utilities department is reminding residents that there are only two remaining brush pickups scheduled for the year. More →
RED BANK: REPORT RIPS DPU CONDITIONS
A “temporary” office trailer has been in use at the public utilities yard on Chestnut Street for 20 years and is now “separating and shifting,” a report says. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
A detailed review of Red Bank’s public utilities department found unsafe vehicles, inadequate staffing, facilities in need of upgrades and numerous other deficiencies, redbankgreen has learned.
The 14-page report, by former interim director Gary Watson Sr., includes a recommended boost in staffing to improve dealings with residents, who often can’t get answers to their inquiries, he wrote.
FAIR HAVEN: PLAN AIMS TO CUT GRIND WORK
A truck preparing to back into the brush-grinding site as a child rode a bike nearby last May. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
A brush-grinding facility that has irked Fair Haven neighbors for nearly a decade will see a 60-plus percent reduction in activity under a plan officials unveiled Monday night.
But one council member pressed for a permanent solution: moving it out of the residential area.
FAIR HAVEN: BRUSH GRINDING SITE GRATES
Escorted to the transfer site by police, an 18-wheeler needed more than five minutes of maneuvering to back into the tight space last Friday. (Video by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
A brush-grinding and transfer station tucked into a leafy Fair Haven neighborhood has got to go, neighbors say.
Though Fair Haven officials have touted the operation for years as a model of interlocal sharing and an environmental boon, residents call it a “monstrosity” of noise, dust and dangerous truck traffic.
FAIR HAVEN, RUMSON COMBINE ON SERVICES
Fair Haven Fields, opposite Rumson’s Meadowridge Park on Ridge Road, would be maintained by Rumson under the deal. (Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
Three years after the wheels came off a politically charged plan to merge the police forces of three area towns, two of them have found another, less contentious route into shared services.
Fair Haven and Rumson have agreed to provide key maintenance services to one another in what they’re billing as a “groundbreaking” deal announced Wednesday morning.
Under terms of the deal, Rumson will dump its residential brush at Fair Haven’s processing center and get engineering services for small jobs from Fair Haven’s in-house engineering office.
Fair Haven, meanwhile, will no longer maintain its own parks and other borough-owned properties, handing off that responsibility to its neighbor to the east, Rumson Mayor John Ekdahl tells redbankgreen.