Judge William Himelman swearing in a defendant last year. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
Red Bank municipal court Judge William Himelman died Thursday, according to Mayor Pasquale Menna. He was 85 years old.
The circumstances and place of his death were not immediately available.
Believed to have been New Jersey’s longest-serving local court jurist in modern times, if not state history, Himelman presided on the borough bench for 38 years. Long past the age at which others in his position retired, he doled out justice to everyone from cellphone-gabbing motorists and drunk drivers to a pair of men who squared off while naked.
The home page of the new Red Bank borough website. Information technology director Joe Fagliarone, below. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
After years of talk, Red Bank finally has a new website.
Launched without fanfare late last month, the new portal to local government information services replaces a clunker that in its final months couldn’t find the mayor’s name in a search.
The market will set up in the municipal beach lot every Thursday through October, with a finale one week before Thanksgiving, an organizer says. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
Can you beat this: shopping for fresh Jersey corn, tomatoes, blackberries and more, just yards from Atlantic Ocean, in summer?
With an OK from the Sea Bright borough council this week, a group called Community Green Market Organizers begins a weekly farmers’ market in the borough parking lot Thursday from 2 to 7 p.m.
Jacki Flor on the site of the Sea Bright municipal parking lot reconstruction, which she’s overseeing, and Christine Ballard, giving a presentation in Red Bank below, say their interest in solving mechanical problems was nurtured when they were girls. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
Of the 565 towns and cities in New Jersey, only 19 have female municipal engineers. And two of them serve towns on the Green: Christine Ballard in Red Bank, and Jaclyn Flor, in Sea Bright.
Municipal engineers are the brains behind public infrastructure, designing everything from crosswalks to sewer lift stations. They pursue grants to pay for ballfields and bulkheads. And they serve as emissaries, navigating the often choppy waters between zoning board applicants, contractors, elected officials and taxpayers.
In that realm, a woman’s point of view and way of communicating can often be helpful, Ballard said.
“There have been a lot of men doing this for a long time, and I’m sure they did it well,” she told redbankgreen. But “there’s been a wonderful transition to women in government,” and it turns out that other women are “sometimes better at translating projects, and why we need to spend a million dollars to fix the water plant,” to diverse constituencies, she said.
In fact, the broader field of engineering could use many more women, which is why the American Association of University Women and the Girl Scouts of the Jersey Shore are putting on an event at Brookdale Community College on Saturday to encourage girls to consider careers as engineers.
Red Bank won’t pursue a proposal floated by Mayor Pasquale Menna to form a regional municipal court with four nearby towns, the Asbury Park Press reports Wednesday.
The reason? The borough’s court is pretty efficient all by itself, bringing in nearly $175,000 more than it spends on salaries and operating costs each year, town Administrator Stanley Sickels tells the Press.
Also, Red Bank “never heard back” from Fair Haven, Little Silver, Rumson and Shrewsbury about the proposal, Sickels said.
The location of the proposed court is up in the air, says Mayor Pasquale Menna. (Click to enlarge)
By MOLLY MULSHINE
Taking a cue from three other Monmouth County towns, Red Bank’s mayor has invited leaders of neighboring boroughs to consider forming a joint court system to cut costs.
Red Bank has waived fees for parking in municipal lots through December 26, as per a request from RiverCenter, and the traditional moratorium went into effect Friday afternoon. Let the shopping begin! (Click to enlarge)
Judge William Himelman swearing in a defendant last year. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
Red Bank municipal court Judge William Himelman died Thursday, according to Mayor Pasquale Menna. He was 85 years old.
