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.)
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.
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.
Parking is prohibited this week on the southern half of Spring Street in Red Bank as “minor concrete work and fire hydrant replacement” is scheduled to begin Monday, acting borough administrator and police Chief Darren McConnell tells redbankgreen.
Red Tank Brewing owner John Arcara speaking at Wednesday’s council session. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
The Red Bank council voted Wednesday to boost the fees charged to restaurants to maintain tables in parking spaces converted to streateries.
The action followed claims by two business owners that the hike was onerous.
Borough workers created a streatery outside Bombay River and Tacoholics restaurants on Broad Street in July, 2020. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
At the Red Bank council’s first in-person session in more than two years last week, a lone member failed to advance a pandemic-era fix said to be favored by two merchant organizations: street eateries.
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.
Without discussion, the Red Bank council authorized a restaurant’s closing of a public street for seating of diners Wednesday night.
Amid a boomlet in parklets to help boost Red Bank restaurants, Mayor Pasquale Menna was critical Monday of one eatery’s unauthorized takeover of a public street over the weekend.
Public works employees installed concrete barricades around several parking spaces on Broad Street in downtown Red Bank Thursday afternoon.
A public parklet on Witherspoon Street in Princeton. Red Bank officials plan to allow parklets for designated restaurant use. (Photo courtesy of Planet Princeton. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
Among a series of adjustments, Red Bank’s economic reopening committee has scrapped the Sunday pedestrian plaza on Monmouth Street.
Instead, the Broad Street plaza, which has drawn large turnouts three nights a week since debuting June 18, will become a four-day affair with the addition of Sunday operations starting this weekend, Red Bank RiverCenter executive director Laura Kirkpatrick tells redbankgreen.
At the same time, plans are in the works for “parklets,” or temporary seating structures, to be built in parking spots outside a handful of downtown restaurants, including three that participated in the aborted Monmouth Street plaza effort.
Bowing to the prevalence of giant passenger vehicles, Little Silver officials have agreed to make a short, narrow lane into a one-way. (Photo by Trish Russoniello. Click to enlarge.)
Church Lane runs alongside the Embury Methodist Church cemetery. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
Not for the first time, Little Silver officials have taken up the question of what to do with a short, narrow roadway that’s a vestige of 19th-century life.
Some residents want it turned into a one-way to address the issue of today’s “humongous” family cars.
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.
Blacktop shows through on the treated portions of Marion Street, above, and the south end of Worthley Street, below, after last week’s snow. (Photos by Bobby Holiday. Click to enlarge)
By WIL FULTON
A salt brine pretreatment used to retard the formation of roadway ice passed its first test last week, Red Bank officials say.
So far, so good, DPW supervisor Bobby Holiday said of the chemical, following a light snowfall last Friday and Saturday.
Salt brine laid down in a wavy pattern on Brown Place, near Branch Avenue, above, and bending around the corner at Hudson Avenue and Harding Road, below. (Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
In anticipation of the season’s second “snow event,” Red Bank is trying out a new road de-icer, which has left the town’s streets marked with what appears to be parallel chalk lines.
“I’m exposing my new, artistic side,” quips public works department director Gary Watson.
‘Heads,’ an all-outdoor exhibition of more than 50 paintings by Dumitru Gorzo, (right, with Red Bank Councilwoman Sharon Lee), opened with a reception at the Galleria at Red Bank Sunday. Art lovers flocked to the Two River Theater, above, and the public library, below, for their first taste of the widespread show, organized by the New Jersey Museum of Contemporary Art. Gorzo’s art will hang remain on display throughout town until October 14. (Click to enlarge)
Ledger Live‘s Brian Donohue, a Red Bank resident, thinks his property taxes are a pretty good bargain, considering what they buy him.
Jenny Rossano, seen here in 2009 with Safe Routes Red Bank co-founder Jim Willis, will help coordinate the integration of a recent bike and pedestrian study with the town’s master plan. (Click to enlarge)
It’s probably a stretch to call her the borough’s bike czar. But Red Bank is about to get an official advocate for safe walking and biking.
Jenny Rossano of Worthley Street is expected to be named as a volunteer liaison to the borough planning and zoning boards to help spot potential conflicts with a recent study of pedestrian and bicyclist safety by Urban Engineers, a Philadelphia planning firm.
“I don’t want to be a czar of anything,” Rossano says with a laugh. “I just don’t want all this work that Urban Engineers did to be pushed under the carpet.”
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.”
This pale blue beauty has seen its last days on Little Silver streets. Public Works is getting a brand new one to tend to all the gutter and basin cleaning needed this time of year. (Photo by Dustin Racioppi)
By DUSTIN RACIOPPI
All the signs were there and Little Silver’s decisionmakers knew that the public works department’s powder blue, rust-spotted baby’s days were numbered in town.
It was old, from 1985, and the problems, most recently a ruptured hose, were becoming more frequent. It was only a question of how much longer the jet and vacuum truck could continue sucking leaves and debris from drains and catch basins throughout town.
Following a thoroughly argued discourse on the topic and a split vote that caused the mayor to tip the scales, the answer has come, as borough finally pulled the trigger to buy a new jet and vacuum truck for its DPW.
Workers getting ready to install a light stanchion at Maple Avenue and West Front Street earlier this week.
The long-awaited reconfiguration of traffic lights at two problematic intersections in Red Bank won’t be finished next week as planned.
Red Bank’s Locust Avenue won’t be legally renamed for the late Daniel J. O’Hern after all.
Instead, under the terms of an ordinance approved by the borough council last night, the street will undergo a ceremonial renaming in honor of the late mayor and state Supreme Court associate justice, who grew up on Locust.
That suits Locust Avenue residents just fine.