Mayor says no borrowing will be necessary

VERNON—If you travel along Canistear Road to get to work or school each day, your morning drive should become a little easier following the completion of upgrades later this year to the road’s northern two-mile portion approaching Breakneck Road.

Also planned are repairs to a portion of the Lake Conway Dam that was damaged during last summer’s Hurricane Irene.

The projects, both of which are expected to be completed in 2012, are among several that the township will be undertaking in phases as part of a long-range capital improvements plan that the council and mayor are considering. As envisioned by Mayor Victor Marotta, the plan would have the township set aside $1.2 million from the township’s operating budget over the next three years to pay for road repairs, upgrades and equipment that he said the town had been “woefully inadequate” in addressing over the last decade or more.

PHOTO CREDIT: Eric Obernauer, TRR

“We have a solid budget for this year and know that our taxes are not going to go up for the municipal part of the budget,” Marotta told the council at a special work session on capital improvements last Saturday. “Our objective is to be frugal, but the other side of the coin is we can’t do that at the risk of allowing our capital assets and physical plant of roads, storm drainage and buildings to go by the wayside.”

Under the township’s mayor-council form of government, council members will have the final say in determining how much money is allocated and which projects are given priority when they take up the mayor’s plan at the next council meeting on Thurs., Feb. 16. However, both the mayor and council agree on the need to finish the upgrades and paving that already have been completed on the lower four-mile stretch of Canistear Road in Vernon Township but that have yet to take place along the road’s northern two miles leading up to Breakneck Road.

“It’s going to come to a point where if we don’t fix that section soon, it’s going to turn into the Ho Chi Minh Trail,” said Council President Brian Lynch.

So badly has that portion of Canistear Road deteriorated that Councilman Eddie Dunn, whose commute to New York City takes him along the road each morning, likened its pitted and crumbling surface to the roads he encountered while on an Army tour of duty in Iraq in 2004.

Marotta reiterated last week that the township would not have to borrow money for the Canistear Road and Lake Conway Dam projects, for which the town already has set aside $400,000 in this year’s operating budget.

Although the actual cost of the Canistear Road work will be about $520,000, DPW Director David Pullis said approximately $200,000 of that amount was being covered by a grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation. As a result, the direct cost to the township will be only about $320,000.

The balance of the $80,000 leftover for capital projects will be used to fund engineering studies on the Lake Conway Dam required by the state Department of Environmental Protection. Marotta said this amount would not cover the actual repairs to the dam, whose costs are the subject of ongoing negotiations between Township Attorney Kevin Kelly and representatives of the Lake Conway Community Association, which owns the dam.

Councilman Dan Kadish, for his part, questioned whether the township should have any responsibility for the dam at all. He acknowledged that the township owned a road running across the top of the dam, which would constitute a right of way. Still, he said, “All dams that are owned by private lake communities are supposed to be their responsibility.”

Marotta said the road going across the dam was built in the 1970s and that for whatever reason, the DEP later came to list the township as the owner of the dam itself. He said that for many years afterward, the town had been paying an engineering firm to do the required inspections and that when the town ceased doing so in the last decade, the DEP sent a letter to the town demanding that Vernon continue paying for the required inspections.

Marotta said negotiations between the lake association and the township, which have been ongoing since July 1 of last year, have been “positive and cooperative.”

“Remember this: This is simply a plan,” Marotta said. “If it turns out that we are successful in reducing the cost [of the engineering studies] to the township, then those funds will be available to either go into our surplus or for other uses in the future. But we have to be prepared, and part of being prepared is being prepared for the worst.”

Being prepared, said Lynch, also meant that the council would make it a practice to fund projects through the budget process whenever possible rather than relying solely on bonding to pay for them or, even worse, leaving things to chance.

For this reason, the plan envisioned by Marotta proposes to build on the $400,000 set aside in this year’s budget by allotting an additional $400,000 per year in 2013 and 2014 to pay for further needs anticipated over the next couple of years.

For 2013, the plan calls for purchasing a large tractor mower for about $65,000; road tar and asphalt totaling about $200,000; guide rails for the town’s roadways at $15,000; drainage upgrades at $20,000; lighting upgrades and a new boiler totaling about $50,000; and a new police car for up to $50,000.

For 2014, the plan anticipates spending up to $180,000 for a used bucket truck and $220,000 for fire and first aid equipment.

“I don’t have a crystal ball to tell you what 2013 or 2014 will bring,” said Marotta. “But we do have a plan.” However, he acknowledged that some of the items in the plan could be revisited or postponed if the council decided to give priority to other projects such as additional road upgrades.

If that were to happen, the two roads most likely to see work would be Lake Walkill and Breakneck roads.

Although road resurfacing normally is done on no more than a ten-year cycle, Pullis said there had not been any work done since 1993 on Lake Walkill Road, which he said was now “in desperate need of repair.” According to Pullis, the cost of resurfacing the entire three-mile length of Lake Walkill Road would be at least $525,000, which the township could spread out over two years by completing the work in phases. Pullis said Breakneck Road also would need repairs in the next few years.

“What you have in front of you is just a menu,” Marotta told the council. “If it doesn’t taste good, don’t order it. But what I need to hear from you is where you want the dollars spent. What I would like from you is some direction.”

Marotta said he saw little hope that the township would grow its way out of its budgetary dilemmas, as it was able to do throughout the 1980s when steady population growth and construction of new homes ensured a steady stream of revenue growth. Although he expects the construction of new sewers in the town center to help spur an expansion of the township’s commercial base, he said the benefit from that was unlikely to offset the impact of the Highlands Act, which has all but eliminated the possibility of significant new home construction. At most, Marotta said, the town now sees only three to six new homes built per year.

Marotta said the decline in assessed property values also presented a continuing challenge to the township’s finances, though he senses that the worst of the town’s real estate woes may be over.

“This is where the rubber meets the road,” Marotta said. “It’s very nice for us to say that we’re not raising taxes and we’re not increasing the budget. I certainly have been a proponent of that myself, as evidenced by the recent budget I delivered to you that achieves that. But I think it’s important for you to understand that as long as we make that our primary objective, there are other things about how this town is run and the way our assets get managed that are going to suffer.”

“Is the priority no tax increase, ever?” Marotta asked the council. “In that case, you need to be communicating to the township that this is the goal of the governing body, and as a result, these are some of the things we would like to do but are not going to be able to do.”