By Kayla J. Marsh
Staff Writer
LITTLE SILVER – To continue to provide the services and programs residents know and desire, borough officials are looking to establish a five-year master plan that will outline different facility needs and provide a map as to what can be improved upon and what new activities can be implemented.
At the Borough Council’s Feb. 8 meeting, Recreation Director Doug Glassmacher said during the past five years, the department has seen a significant increase in participants and revenue coming in.
“It is great we are bringing in a bit more revenue,” Glassmacher told the governing body. “You have been very generous in supporting our programs and I wanted to show that we have been working hard to present quality programs and obviously the community is responding.”
He said this year; the department will have about 700 participants taking part in activities for the spring season.
“This is our biggest season because we do have baseball and softball as well as lacrosse,” Glassmacher said. “We have about 860 kids in our school system so as you can see we have a very high level of participants in our recreation program.”
In order to maintain the level of programming they provide the borough’s approximately 6,000 residents, Glassmacher said the department is looking to put out a request for proposals for services to help establish a five-year parks and recreation facilities master plan.
“We have done a lot of discussion at the recreation level, at the recreation committee level and we really feel it is necessary for us to come up with a five-year plan,” he said.
“You can look at what our vision is for the program and … as we apply for more grants once we have this five-year plan in place, it will be a real asset when presented to the granting agency.”
Borough Administrator Kimberly Jungfer said the request for proposals and master plan itself will look at a number of details.
“This request doesn’t only ask them to look at the fields, but also asks them to look at all our recreational facilities, meaning all our parks and our playgrounds in town,” she said.
“It is going to make recommendations not only for things that might need to be upgraded, but also it is going to ask for suggestions or a game plan on maintenance.”
Glassmacher said over the years, the borough’s amenities have become worn and overused and need to be looked at to ensure safety for a growing number of participants.
“We have limited the amount of camps … because the turf is fragile, and when you have a lot of kids doing camps on them, it does affect it,” he said. “So something we are going to examine as part of this master-plan is flipping the fields.
“We don’t have an extra field where we can rest another one, which is what is recommended, but at the very least, we’ll investigate having the goal mounts in different spots because they are the areas that get the most worn down.”
Jungfer said that while the process to complete a five-year master plan might take a bit to accomplish, the end result is worth it.
“Funding for this would come out of the Recreation Trust which is exactly what the money and donations are used for and basically what this does is when we go to the county [for grant funding] it just gives the application that much more strength that we are following a plan for improvements and further maintenance,” she said.
The borough’s Shade Tree Commission is also looking to submit a grant application to help begin the process of establishing a Community Forestry Management Plan.
“We would like to put together a management plan and this grant will essentially cover the cost for us hiring a consultant to put the plan together,” Chairman Rick Brandt told the governing body at the Feb. 8 meeting.
Jungfer said the 2015 Green Communities Challenge Grant from the New Jersey Community Forestry Program offers up to $3,000 that will be 100 percent matched by the community with an equal amount of either cash or in-kind services.
“[The plan] will give us a vision for future projects, whether short term or long term, small scale or larger scale,” Brandt said. “The [consultant] would work very closely with us, assessing trees and prioritizing required work throughout the next five years … and we would put together a plan that is very Little Silver specific.”
According to the New Jersey Community Forestry Program, the creation of a Community Forestry Management Plan is a first step in compliance with the New Jersey Shade Tree and Community Forestry Assistance Act.
The plan, according to the site may lead to lower tree-related hazards, decreased tree maintenance and removal costs, reduced municipal costs and increased community safety with its proactive reactive approach to tree/forest management.
According to Brandt, officials were surprised to hear the commission didn’t already have a plan established.
“Almost every municipality in the state of New Jersey does have a management plan,” he said. “I’ve spoken with Rumson and Shrewsbury and their plans don’t just give you a guideline for the different aspects of all the trees in town, but they put together good programs for students and the community to get involved with as well and that is the type of thing we would like to do as well.”