The township council has approved a lease agreement for the compost site on Alexander Road with Carnevale Disposal Company until the end of next year. The agreement, approved at the November 13 council meeting, allows the company to run the compost station, which will provide free mulch to residents, for another year, until January 2009, as the redevelopment process is ongoing. It also provides revenue to the township.##M:[more]##
But council members, including George Borek, said they wanted to see some type of clause in the agreement allowing for them to get out of the contract if they needed the site quickly for parking garage or lot as a result of progress in redevelopment. Borek suggested a clause that allows the township to give 60-days written notice if such a situation were to occur.
Township attorney Mike Herbert Jr. said the contract was negotiated with Carnevale’s attorney, and if it was to be renegotiated, it would probably change a lot of aspects of the agreement. “The gentleman that operates the business out there needs to have some ability to know that his business will be run for a specific period of time,” Herbert said.
Council members Charles Morgan and Heidi Kleinman said they agreed with Herbert, but Council President Will Anklowitz and Borek still expressed concern for the clause’s needs.
Said Kleinman: “I look at his business as a seasonal business,” she said. “I realize that 60 days at a certain time of year may not see very long, but 60 days when they’ve brought the mulch there and they’ve mulched it and they haven’t gotten rid of it,” would hurt it, she added.
Further, “I can’t see moving things quicker than six months, so I thought this was to our advantage, not to our disadvantage, and we get to rethink this next year at this time,” Kleinman said.
Still, Borek suggested putting some type of assurance in the agreement that the township would have the ability to test wells or survey the property, without displacing the company, if needed, but the council ultimately decided to hold off looking into that until next year, when it comes up again.
Also regarding the compost site, the council voted 4-1 to spend up to $300 to test one of the wells on site to ensure there is no threat to public safety, pending that the Department of Environmental Protection does not test the wells already. The move was urged by resident David Siegel and his wife.
“I would just say in light of we haven’t had any testing on that site in quite a while, it would be prudent on our part to test those four wells and see what we have right now, so we have a baseline of what we have,” Borek said.
But Kleinman and Councilwoman Linda Geevers said they wanted first to ask for the Environmental Commission for recommendations before moving forward with testing. “It is important to use the expertise of the Environmental Commission,” as a first line in the process, said Kleinman.
Morgan disagreed. “If the Environmental Commission doesn’t act quickly or they come back and say, ‘We don’t think we should test the wells,’ are we going to be satisfied?,” he asked. “I don’t know I would be.” In addition, he said, “this is classic government bureaucracy getting in the way of a simple health question.”
Anklowitz said if the council finds out the DEP test them, however, there would be no reason for the council to spend money to do so. Kleinman voted against the measure.
