Cliff Keen on Broad Street last June. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
At its first working session of 2023, the Red Bank council fired public utilities director Cliff Keen Wednesday night.
Unmentioned at the meeting: he was replaced on an interim basis, at a cost of $16,500 per month, by Gary Watson Sr., whom Keen succeeded in 2016.
Red Bank reversed its seasonal water supply arrangement after complaints about taste and odor. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
After a burst of complaints about stinky, foul-tasting water, Red Bank officials reverted to the municipal water supply earlier this week, redbankgreen has learned.
Now, those officials are waiting for New Jersey American Water Company, which supplies the borough’s water for six months of the year, to clear up an algae problem at the Swimming River Reservoir before resuming the flow, they said.
Cliff Keen, above, is the new director of public utilities, and Charlie Hoffmann, below, runs parks and rec. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
Recent months have brought some new faces to Red Bank government.
In particular, three departments that residents have regular interaction with, and occasional strong opinions about, are under new leadership: parks and recreation; planning and zoning; and public utilities.
Here’s a quick intro to the new directors.
Construction underway last month on a lime feeder room at the DPU complex on Chestnut Street. The new well would be to located at the building’s far corner. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
Red Bank may soon be getting a new water source, though officials hope not to need it.
The borough council has scheduled a single-issue special meeting Monday night to consider whether to authorize its engineering consultant, T&M Associates, to draw up plans for a new, 750-foot well at the Chestnut Street public utilities complex.
The view looking south on Leighton Avenue through the windshield of a borough salt truck early Wednesday morning, above. Below, a plow working Monmouth Street. (Photos by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
The plowman got lucky this time.
Tuesday’s fast-moving snowstorm may have caught motorists and school administrators off guard with its blinding swiftness. But it dropped a powdery load, and ended late at night, giving those responsible for clearing it from roadways a leg up.
In Red Bank, it also helped that more residents than usual moved their cars off the streets, said Gary Watson, director of the borough public utilities department.
“That made a huge difference,” he told redbankgreen as he drove a road-salting truck early Wednesday morning.
The brick fascia of a retaining wall at Riverside Gardens Park in Red Bank collapsed recently during a heavy rainstorm, eight months after it was undermined by Hurricane Sandy, public works director Gary Watson tells redbankgreen. His department is awaiting borough funding to repair the wall, which is structurally sound, Watson said. “It’s completely cosmetic,” he said of the damage.
Additional fixes to address runoff from the park may also be needed, he says. (Click to enlarge)
By DUSTIN RACIOPPI
Raises are going out at Red Bank Borough Hall, but stopping at the dais.
After two years of austerity, the borough council approved two-percent raises across the board for non-unionized employees last week. But the governing body kept its own pay flat.
In early celebration of Arbor Day on Friday and Red Bank’s fifth annual designation as a “Tree City,” members of the Shade Tree Committee distributed white pine seedlings to attendees of Tuesday night’s borough council meeting. STC secretary Boris Kofman, right, hands a baby tree to assistant borough administrator/public works director Gary Watson. (Photo by Dustin Racioppi; click to enlarge)
In an interview, Red Bank public utilities director Gary Watson and supervisor Bob Holiday discuss the challenges of the December 26-27 blizzard. Below, a jagged glacier of snow dumped by municipal haulers at the Navesink end of Maple Avenue. (Click to enlarge)
A fast-falling, heavy snow, stranded cars and eager-to-dig-out residents combined to make last week’s blizzard a tough clean-up challenge, says the man in charge of Red Bank’s effort.
“This was a significant storm,” public utilities director Gary Watson tells redbankgeen in the video interview above. “You can’t compare this with other storms.”
A parking authority employee applies new yellow stickers to meters on Broad Street earlier this month. (Click to enlarge)
By DUSTIN RACIOPPI
Two weeks after the end of free Saturday parking in downtown Red Bank, not a single ticket has been written for overtime violations on Saturdays, redbankgreen has learned.
And it has nothing to do with full compliance from the meter feeders.
The borough, it turns out, hasn’t been enforcing the Saturday parking charge, and won’t start until next month, even though the rationale for the change was to boost revenue for the cash-strapped town.
“We’re going to start enforcing the weekend after the fireworks,” Assistant Borough Administrator Gary Watson said.
When asked why, he said, “I don’t know any rhyme or reason.”
The restrooms at Riverside Gardens Park were apparently broken into, used and abused recently. (Photo by Dustin Racioppi)
By DUSTIN RACIOPPI
One needed to get within only a few feet of the restrooms at Red Bank’s Riverside Gardens Park in recent days to become victim of a most egregious assault on the olfactories.
It’s difficult to describe the alien fetor, nor would it be appropriate here, just as it would be to describe what one would have seen upon entering the men’s room.
Suffice it to say that the the sticky floor was the least of it.
The ladies’ room wasn’t much better, according to a redbankgreen reader who alerted us to this situation late last week. She emailed to tell us she’d popped in to use the facilities while jogging, and was “appalled” by what she encountered:
I am an easy going person to put it simply, it was truly DISGUSTING! It made NJ transit bathrooms look like the Ritz