BY TALI ISRAELI
Staff Writer
MARLBORO – The Township Coun-cil has denied a performance bond reduction requested by the developer of the Tennent Estates residential development, Tennent Road.
In a 4-1 vote on Feb. 1, council Pres-ident Jeff Cantor, councilwomen Patti Morelli and Rosa Tragni and Council-man Steve Rosenthal voted not to authorize the reduction of the performance bonds. Councilman Joseph Pernice voted in favor of reducing the bonds.
According to the resolution before the council, the township engineer’s report recommended a partial reduction in the current performance bonds.
Morelli and Cantor voiced their opposition to reducing the bond because they said residents have been complaining about flooding in that area.
According to Township Engineer Jim Priolo, the Tennent Estates project was approved to include the installation of an 18-inch pipe on Tennent Road to remediate some of the flooding.
Morelli said she would like to wait to see if the pipe works before releasing a portion of the performance bond.
Priolo said the developer is not obligated to do anything further to remediate the flooding problems even if the pipe does not work.
In other business, in a 3-2 vote the council approved a bond release for the Triangle Business Park, Amboy Road.
Morelli and Cantor voted to deny the bond release. Tragni, Rosenthal and Pernice voted in favor of releasing the bond.
Steven Meiterman and Bernard Meiterman are the developers of the Triangle Business Park. The Meiterman brothers were recently indicted on federal charges of bribery related to development in Marlboro and obstructing a grand jury investigation.
During the council’s discussion of the resolution, Morelli questioned whether this property was one of the projects named in the Meitermans’ federal indictment.
Township Attorney Andrew Bayer said he did not believe so, but said he could not be certain. The attorney added that the specific purpose of performance bonds is to ensure that a developer has built a project in accordance with the approval. He noted that even if the developers were found guilty the council would need a court order to hold the performance bond.
Bayer said there are two issues to consider; if the approval of the project has been tainted by corruption and if the project was not built in accordance with the developer’s approval.
Pernice said although he did not want to release the performance bonds, the council had no choice but to do so.