EATONTOWN – The Eatontown Borough Council has amended the municipality’s land use ordinance in a manner that will allow two alternate members to be appointed to the Planning Board.
During a meeting on Sept. 22, council members adopted an ordinance that will provide the Planning Board with two alternate members. At present, the board has nine regular members and no alternate members.
The nine regular board members are Eatontown residents and the alternate members will also be borough residents, appointed by the mayor.
Once appointed, the alternate members will be permitted to participate in all Planning Board matters (i.e., asking questions of an applicant’s professional witnesses), but they will only be permitted to vote on business that comes before the board if a regular board member is absent or disqualified from voting, according to the ordinance.
Two alternate members are permitted to be appointed to the Planning Board by the Municipal Land Use Law, according to the ordinance.
The ordinance states it is in the best interest of Eatontown to create the alternate member positions to better ensure the board has a quorum available at its regularly scheduled meetings in order to accommodate residents and businesses.
The current members of the Planning Board are Mark Woloshin (chair), Cathy Silva (vice chair), Mayor Anthony Talerico Jr., Councilwoman Danielle M. Jones, Virginia East, Meir Araman, William Diedrichsen, Barry Roth and Mark W. Regan, according to the borough’s website.
In other business, the council members passed a resolution authorizing Borough Engineer Ed Hermann to perform environmental remedial investigation services in connection with the Department of Public Works building on Lewis Street. The engineering services are in an amount not to exceed $34,260.
According to the resolution, there has been an ongoing environmental investigation of contamination at the DPW building and recent testing has demonstrated the presence of contamination of the ground water.
Hermann’s firm, T&M Associates, responded by submitting a proposal to conduct additional legally required environmental services, including licensed site remediation professional management, ground water sampling, slug testing of existing monitoring wells, and sediment and surface water sampling, according to the resolution.
The council members believe it is in the best interest of residents to continue to perform all environmental investigation/remediation of the DPW building to ensure the health and safety of employees and residents, according to the resolution.
Finally, the council passed a resolution which authorizes Hermann to perform additional engineering services related to the new DPW building at the former Fort Monmouth property. The engineering services will be in an amount not to exceed $100,000.