HIGHTSTOWN: Council members call for Borough Hall action

By Christina Whittington, Special Writer
   HIGHTSTOWN — Nearing the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Irene’s destruction in the municipality, Borough Council members and Mayor Steven Kirson held yet another special meeting Aug 23 regarding the future location of the Borough Hall complex.
   Since Hurricane Irene swept through the town last August, Hightstown’s Borough Hall and police headquarters were forced to relocate due to damage caused by flooding. Borough Hall has yet to reopen. The Municipal Court now operates out of Robbinsville.
   The borough administrative offices have been operating out of the Public Works building on Bank Street.
   The Hightstown Borough Police Department moved into a vacant space owned by Lucas Electric Co. on Mercer Street. The borough pays rent to house its Police Department there.
   Last Thursday marked the fourth special workshop meeting on Borough Hall since the flood.
   Eight members of the public, all of which were Hightstown residents, attended the meeting. Other meetings have been more heavily attended while the first meeting was sparsely attended.
   Discussed was the option of placing a modular structure in the Bank Street parking lot that could contain municipal staff, formerly housed in Borough Hall, and the police station.
   The modular option, which was presented by Councilman Robert Thibault, would involve placing a modular structure in the existing Borough Hall parking lot or possibly even purchasing the lot behind the Hightstown Historical Society located on Bank Street.
   Additionally, this modular option would be on 1.13 acres, and the project would be sized to meet the exact needs of the borough. The estimated price range for this option would be $1.5 million to $2.5 million.
   Four other options for Borough Hall also were discussed.
   — Option 1 consists of the remediation and upgrade of the front part of the existing Borough Hall building as well as the demolition of the police and the Public Works sections of the complex. The estimated price range for this option is $ 708,920 to $963,840.
   — Option 2 consists of the remediation and upgrade of the front part of the existing Borough Hall building and the police station and the demolition of the Public Works section of the building. The estimated price range for this option is $1.214 million to more than $1.898 million.
   — Option 3 consists of the demolition of the current Borough Hall complex and rebuilding it in the same place. An original estimate was given to the borough for this option Feb. 6 from Perez Radosti for the amount of $ 3.695 million, but that cost now has risen to $3.777 million.
   — Option 4, which has been at the center of many heated discussions among council members and the public, is the possibility of purchasing the Lucas Electric Co. owned building on Mercer Street to house the municipal government.
   This property, which consists of 7.75 acres and 17,979 square feet of space, yields $64,891 in property taxes of which $18,174 is municipal tax.
   The estimated price range for the Lucas option is $4 million to more than $4.2 million, which consists of the purchase price for the property, renovations to the building to meet the needs of the borough and the demolition of the existing Borough Hall.
   The borough’s Irene claims to the Federal Emergency Management Agency and insurance company for Borough Hall and Police Department refurbishment is $837,821.
   At the meeting, Bill Gilmore, a Hightstown resident and member of the Greater Hightstown-East Windsor Improvement Project, said, “I have been consistent with this also representing GHEWIP. We have been thinking about Borough Hall. It does not need to be downtown.”
   Mr. Gilmore said Borough Hall does not belong downtown because it negates the redevelopment possibilities of that area. He also said that the Borough Council lacked vision when it came to the relocation of the facility.
   ”Have you had one meeting to talk about vision?” he asked. “When are you going to have that meeting? ‘Cause the problem is the vision for this community; we are not sustainable as an independent entity. East Windsor and Hightstown are going to be joining. The vision that you have, you are thinking — this place is going to be here forever — it’s not.”
   Mr. Gilmore said as the Lucas Electric Co. property is on the border of the two communities, East Windsor and Hightstown, it offers an opportunity.
   ”It’s a 7-acre property that resolves a huge problem where it ties the downtown and extends it and creates a downtown for East Windsor and the joint community. The visioning (GHEWIP) has been doing is obviously not what you have been doing,” Mr. Gilmore said.
   The Herald was unable to find out when GHEWIP meets and if those meetings are open to the public, as of press time.
   As of Thursday’s deadline, the Herald also was unable to find an official website for GHEWIP online.
   ”Local business people supporting community projects” is the tagline of the organization, according to the website of Downtown Hightstown. Also, Downtown Hightstown lists GHEWIP as a partner via its website.
   ”Consolidation is going to happen so don’t establish a permanent situation downtown,” Mr. Gilmore told the Borough Council. “As far as I am concerned, make the right decision, take some time to do some visioning for this community, which is not downtown; it’s back at Lucas.”
   Hightstown resident J.P. Gibbons disagreed.
   ”It’s amazing that people who say we are not sustainable can turn around and in the same breath, at the same presentation, say that it does not matter if we spend $3 or $4 million (per the Lucas property),” Mr. Gibbons said. “It sure does to the taxpayers. The council is split for one reason, and that is because some people want to merge with East Windsor at any cost — that’s their prerogative. But people like myself and others want this borough to have every opportunity to survive, and we support it.”
   He added, “A Borough Hall is an identity to a community, and that’s the argument you people don’t understand, and when you do understand it, you fight against it because it is an identity. The Borough Hall is the court, the Borough Hall is the (municipal) offices, the Borough Hall is a place where people know to go for council meetings.”
   Hightstown resident Keith LePrevost, executive director of the Hightstown Housing Authority, also voiced his opinion.
   ”We need to function again,” Mr. LePrevost said. “We need to stop arguing. We are not getting anywhere. All we are doing is becoming more and more divided. We need to think, we need to plan, we need to talk to each other like adults.”
   Mr. LeProvost was concerned over the possible purchase of the Lucas property.
   ”Buying that Lucas property would scare me because of the PCB issue on that site. Who is going to clean that up?” Mr. LePrevost asked.
   As to the overcrowding issue of the borough administrative staff in the Public Works building, Mr. LePrevost suggested one option could be to place additional trailers on the Borough Hall parking lot that could house anywhere from six to 10 people.
   In closing comments, council members voiced their thoughts on the future of the Borough Hall.
   ”The time has come to make a decision,” Councilwoman Gail Doran said. “Otherwise, we are just chasing our tails. That’s wasting your time and wasting the borough’s time. It is absolutely absurd that we are having fundamental conversations on the one-year anniversary of this hurricane. Are we experts on this? Nope. Were we elected to do this job? Uh huh.”
   She added, “We need to take the best advice we can get, whether that be from the audience from our professionals or from our Planning Board. We need to take the first step in order to get this thing moving. We are as ready as we are going to be.”
   ”I think that we, as a council, have been working very hard on this,” Councilwoman Lynne Woods said. “This is what, our third or fourth meeting? The credit for those meetings goes to council for pushing for those meetings. We actually set up a problem-solving process, and I think that we have given this lots and lots of consideration, and I was hoping that we would be ready to move forward with our decision. I hope that happens at the next council meeting.”
   ”We need to be up and running functionally in a space that enables a useful working environment for everyone,” Councilwoman Selena Bibens said.
   Ms. Bibens added, “Everything that we had talked about seems to have gone out the window. We asked for a planner at the beginning, we didn’t get that. We asked for similar advice, we didn’t get that, and here we are one year later. I don’t know how we have come full circle. We are going to have to have another meeting or two of this to establish the absolute, positive decision of where we are going to be, and, unfortunately, that falls on the six of us for the other 5,500 in the community. And, I think we are on the right track. This is a multimillion dollar project that we are going to be accountable for the next council and the next council after that.”
   Councilwoman Susan Bluth said, “We do need to come to some sort of decision. We have a lot of thinking to do. We need to come up with an idea.”
   Councilman Thibault added, “Money is the issue. We have the highest tax rate in Mercer County outside of Trenton. Our taxpayers, our residents, all of us are overburdened. We can’t continue to increase taxes.”
   He went on to address the redevelopment action strategy for the borough by GHEWIP, which he acknowledged he had read.
   ”That is one of the things that led me to say leave Borough Hall where it is,” he said. “The report acknowledges that retail along Main Street here can’t survive without subsidies from high-density residential development in the mill. I don’t want to see a high-density residential development in the mill. It will impact the schools and other things, and if that’s what (is) required to keep retail viable here, it is not a good tradeoff.”
   Council President Larry Quattrone said, “We are going to have a Borough Hall when this is all said and done. Maybe in the mill, maybe next door or maybe up the street (at Lucas). If you really look at the bottom line, up the street may not be a bad option. It gets it out of here and everything up there.”
   He asked, “What happens now? We have a big meeting, and 10 people show up representing 5,500 people. Then when we finally make a decision, 150 people will be in here saying that we made the wrong decision. You got to spend a little more time and a few more meetings until we come to that decision.”
   Mayor Kirson said, “A lot of stuff was thrown out tonight. I think it was productive. I do believe in another two or three meetings, the borough will come to a conclusion. A little more work, a little more thinking, and I think in another two or three sessions, we will conquer this thing.”
   Seconds before Mayor Kirson adjourned the meeting, Councilwoman Doran asked what was the process for formulating a resolution to get a location voted on at the next meeting.
   Borough Attorney Fred Rafetto said that since no formal action could be taken at the special workshop meeting, the council could direct preparation for something for future action.
   The next Borough Council meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, Sept. 4, at 7:30 p.m.