The borough-owned Steamboat Dock Museum in Keyport, shortly after it was destroyed by superstorm Sandy. The borough is considering allowing Keyport firefighters to stage a training session in the building and help clean up the property. KEITH HEUMILLER Even as billions in federal assistance flow into the state as part of the congressional Sandy aid bill, municipalities throughout New Jersey are fighting battles on multiple fronts to rebuild and recover.
In Keyport, a small Bayshore borough of about 7,000, delayed insurance payments and a drop in municipal tax revenues are just a couple of the concurrent issues the governing body must address as it attempts to erase the damage caused by the Oct. 29 superstorm, which hit the Jersey Shore more than 100 days ago.
“We lost about 1 percent of our ratables, which is going to come in at about $7 to $8 million, and our ratable base has been steadily shrinking over the last four years,” Mayor Robert McLeod said during the Feb. 5 Keyport council meeting, referring to lost properties and successful tax appeals that had been on the rise even before Sandy.
In Keyport, dozens of local businesses were rendered inoperable by the storm, which brought flooding and torrential winds to the bayside borough. Leaving behind a number of devastated, flattened buildings throughout the borough’s waterfront business district, Sandy also left a hole in Keyport’s municipal budget. At the meeting, Keyport Business Administrator Lorene Wright pointed to two initiatives slated to begin next year that might provide some relief for the town.
One of those programs is a state law recently signed into effect by Gov. Chris Christie, which will change budgeting and filing deadlines for municipalities and allow them to better plan for revenue losses resulting from successful tax appeals.
Currently, towns like Keyport estimate future tax appeals and factor those planned numbers into the budget, a process that can lead to revenue shortfalls and other complications when successful tax appeals exceed expected levels, or an unforeseen natural disaster destroys part of the town.
“We’ve already paid the county, paid the school, and we’re not able to recoup any of that,” Wright said, referring to municipal outlays that towns lose in the event of a successful tax appeal. “In this new tax calendar, your budget will be struck in May and you will be able to then come to understand what that effect will be on your tax base prior to the adoption of your budget.”
The new calendar, effective in 2014, will coincide with a property tax reassessment project in Keyport, which borough officials hope will help offset some of the losses the town experienced this year.
“It’s a double win for us,” Wright said.
Meanwhile, Keyport officials are still trying to coordinate with insurance companies, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), engineers, property owners and others to demolish properties, rebuild infrastructure and rectify some Sandy-damaged areas of town that still pose a safety risk to residents.
One of the major projects before the council is the repair of Waterfront Park, an award-winning bayside hub for residents and visitors that underwent an aesthetic renaissance in the years before the storm. Since Sandy knocked out much of the park’s lighting and electrical infrastructure, however, it has spent winter nights in darkness, which council members say poses a significant risk to pedestrians and vehicles. Last month, Wright solicited an engineering services estimate from borough engineering firm T&M Associates, the firm that helped plan the Waterfront Park redevelopment. The firm’s $47,500 estimate, however, alongside the estimated $335,000 worth of repair work at the park and the $1.4 million appropriated at the Feb. 5 meeting for town-wide storm repairs, was simply too much for the governing body.
Some council members, including Joy-Michele Tomczak, pushed for Wright to solicit new estimates from T&M and other consulting engineers, this time eliminating an estimated $125,000 railing repair effort at the park and focusing solely on lighting and electrical repairs.
When, three weeks later, the borough received a new T&M estimate of $26,500 — alongside one from consulting engineer CME Associates for $30,000 — many on the council wondered publicly if Keyport had fallen on the borough engineer’s list of priorities.
“Seeing such a drastic drop in this proposal to do this work, in such a short time period, with not a drastic change in the scope of the work, is clearly concerning,” said Tomczak, who had previously expressed concerns with T&M’s oversight and management of borough projects last year, including work on Borough Hall and at Benjamin Terry Park.
“The original proposal certainly didn’t have our best interest at heart, if it could drop that drastically in that short a time period.”
Former borough Department of Public Works Superintendent George Sappah, who retired at the end of last year, addressed the council from the audience, saying that T&M had also taken nearly two weeks to respond to the damage in Keyport following Sandy.
“We were waiting multiple weeks for any reports,” agreed Councilman Kenneth McPeek. “That’s one of the problems that we are facing right now.”
Sappah said that it felt like Keyport had fallen to the bottom of T&M’s priority list.
“Maybe they’re on the bottom of ours now,” Tomczak said.
Because of the concerns raised over T&M’s initial proposal, the council unanimously agreed to award the engineering project to CME even though its estimate was slightly higher.
“I can’t argue,” said Mayor Robert McLeod.
That project will now go out to bid to contractors, along with some of the other borough repairs that will be funded by the $1.4 million appropriation, also approved unanimously last week.
In addition to the Waterfront Park work, the borough will be addressing damage to Fireman’s Park, William K. Ralph Pier, the Municipal Boat Ramp, Beach Park, the West 1st Street at Beach Park streetscape, Myrtle Street Park, Benjamin Terry and Cedar Street parks, and the Steamboat Dock Museum, said Wright.
The museum, a borough-owned property, has been earmarked for demolition, alongside a number of other commercial properties in town, such as the Ye Cottage Inn, which remain standing.
The borough, said Wright, is still waiting on a written settlement agreement from its insurance provider before Keyport can move ahead with plans to tear down the museum, while the owners of some private properties await word from their own insurers, the federal government and others. At the meeting, residents called the hollowed out, half-collapsed properties “eyesores,” pleading with the council to formulate a plan and begin work on removing them. McPeek agreed, saying these structures, too, will become safety hazards when the weather gets warmer and pedestrian traffic picks up throughout the borough.
Wright discussed sending out notices to property owners informing them that their storm- or fire-damaged buildings would have to come down within a specific time frame, but acknowledged that the museum would have to be a part of that plan. McLeod and the council agreed.
“Our own property sets an example,” he said.
Another member of the public, Keyport Fire Chief Robert Aumack, suggested a novel idea for demolishing the museum that would save on costs and help sidestep some of the bureaucratic hurdles the borough is facing.
“We could use the building to drill on it,” he said. “If we are provided with Dumpsters we will put everything that we do cut up in the Dumpsters, which will make the area much better. We’d like to have a drill on a Saturday afternoon, we would wear our gear, we would look for artifacts. We could actually get some training.
“We would love to clean up the borough of Keyport and so would a lot of residents in this town,” he added.
The council agreed, unanimously passing a motion that would allow the fire department to drill so long as it is approved by the borough risk manager and the borough attorney and there are no “open issues” on the property regarding insurance.
At the end of the meeting, resident Michael Lane called on the council to continue working on the borough’s damaged properties, including some vacant buildings he said had been flooded out during the storm. It is as vital for Keyport as it is for other towns throughout the state, he said, to be fully rebuilt before summer begins.
“It’s not a very pretty picture of the town right now.”