Regular meeting will be held at 8 p.m. Tuesday.
By: Lea Kahn
Township Council plans to hold public hearings and take final action on nearly a dozen ordinances, including one that sets a $50 fee for nonresidents to rent a garden plot in the community garden, when it meets Tuesday night.
Township Council will meet at 8 p.m. in the Lower Level Conference Room at the municipal building.
The ordinance to raise the fee for nonresident gardeners was suggested by Municipal Manager William Guhl. It costs the township about $50 per plot to prepare the land for the township’s community garden. The land is owned by The Lawrenceville School, which allows the township to use it for a community garden.
For many years, township residents paid $5 per plot and nonresidents paid $10. The fee for township residents does not change under the ordinance. The council agreed with the manager that the fee for nonresidents should increase, however.
Last year, there were 142 plots. A dozen nonresidents rented 20 of those plots. The number of garden plots has been reduced to 120, but the size of the plots is larger. The community garden is located on Route 206, north of the village of Lawrenceville.
When township officials floated a proposal in March to restrict the plots to township residents, that suggestion drew fire from some residents who said they value the help offered by some of the nonresident gardeners.
The residents who objected appeared before Township Council at its April 1 meeting to plead their case for allowing the nonresident gardeners to rent a plot. The council said the residents could rent a plot, but it would cost $75 per plot. Later, the council reduced it to the $50 fee in the ordinance.
The fee for nonresidents is being raised, Mr. Guhl said, because township officials are dealing with a tight municipal budget. The money that is spent on preparing the garden plots is allocated through the municipal budget which, in turn, is funded by municipal property taxes. The low fee for nonresidents meant township property owners were subsidizing them through municipal property taxes, he said.
In other business, Township Council plans to hold a public hearing on a salary ordinance for nonunion employees that would increase their pay by 3.25 percent for this year, 2004 and 2005. The ordinance does not increase the mayor and Township Council’s salaries, which will remain at $13,724 and $10,596, respectively.
Also set for a public hearing and final action is an ordinance that would prohibit left turns from Lawrence Avenue onto Rossa Avenue between 7 a.m. and 8 a.m. on school days. St. Ann’s School is located on Rossa Avenue.
The council plans to hold a public hearing and take final action on ordinances that ban right turns from Gedney Road onto Princeton Pike, and from Texas Avenue onto Princeton Pike, when the traffic light is red. There are traffic lights at both intersections.
A public hearing and final action on two bond ordinances for road work are on the agenda. One bond ordinance for $260,000 would allocate money for an overlay of asphalt on Glenn Avenue and Stonicker Drive. An overlay is a thin layer of asphalt.
The second bond ordinance for $600,00 would set aside money for an overlay of asphalt on 18 streets, scattered throughout the township. The work would be done by the Public Works Department in two phases one in the spring and one in the fall.

