he Clarksburg School renovation project probably never should have been started, but it’s too late to back out now, Millstone Township Committeeman Elias Abilheira said.
"Should this project have ever been pursued?" he asked recently. "Absolutely not. They should have stopped it. But now we are at a point where yes, you have to spend the extra half a million. What we have now is useless. I don’t know where it has gone."
Abilheira, who took office on Jan. 1, estimates that it will cost the township another $500,000 to finish the work. The township may be able to secure half of the cost in grants, he said.
Abilheira met recently with the township engineer and Township Manager James Pickering to review the numbers for both phases of the project.
"We are already looking to put together the audit," he said. "We saw some of the numbers and asked the engineer to pull the bids on the first phase. We are going to want to have those looked at. No one actually knows how much has been spent."
Township Committeeman John Pfefferkorn wants more than an informal review of expenditures. He is calling for an outside "forensic" audit.
"It’s a project that is out of control," Pfefferkorn said at the March 3 Township Committee meeting. "It’s just an atrocity."
Pfefferkorn estimated that so far the township has spent roughly $1.6 million.
"I want an outside audit to know what’s happened to the money," he said. "I want the audit on the whole project — what’s left, what is needed to come in."
Pfefferkorn made the request for the audit after the committee agreed to make a temporary emergency appropriation to pay an unanticipated $4,000 natural gas bill for the building.
The original renovation price was approximately $600,000, said Pfefferkorn, who has abstained on every vote for project costs.
"But the numbers started to go up and up and up," he said. "Obviously, there needs to be a conclusion here. I don’t like the fact that we haven’t reached out to other agencies for other considerations."
In the long run, "it doesn’t matter what pocket the money comes from," Pfefferkorn said. "The question is, why does the project cost so much?"
The township has spent $1,800 just on doorknobs for the building to preserve its historical character, Pfefferkorn said.
"What’s the matter with $45 Schlages [for doorknobs]?" he asked. "It’s my money. As long as I can open the doors, why do we have to pay $1,800 on doorknobs?"
Pfefferkorn thinks the building would be best suited for a branch of the Monmouth County Library.
"If you want to go to the library, you have to go to Allentown and Manalapan," he said. "It’s great to have a county golf course in town, but let’s provide the needed services for education."
The Millstone School District sold the building to the township for a dollar. The school is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
An underground plume of contamination caused by a ruptured storage tank was discovered at the site after the township bought the building from the school district, which spent over $100,000 for the remediation.
Pfefferkorn thinks the municipal offices should stay in their current location on Millstone Road.
"I am against moving the municipal offices there," he said. "To me, it’s going to be an expansion. We are not hiring people. Everybody doesn’t need their own office."
Although Abilheira said the project had been mismanaged, he praised former committeeman Cory Wingerter for obtaining grant money for some of the costs.
"The money could have been spent better someplace else," Abilheira said. "It really has been mishandled. But if for $500,000 we can have it usable, you have to spend the money. Otherwise, it’s useless."