Workers Receive Layoff Notices After Cedar Creek Privatization

BERKELEY TOWNSHIP, NJ - All of the Civil Service employees at Cedar Creek Golf Course recently received individual layoff notices and all employees received general notices, Township Administrator John Camera said.

Sending the notices is a requirement of the work force reduction plan recently approved by the New Jersey Civil Service Commission, he said.

The Township Council recently voted to privatize Cedar Creek and give Farmingdale-based Atlantic Golf a five-year lease with a five-year option to operate the course off Forest Hills Parkway, after a steady decline in revenues.

All of the Cedar Creek employees have been temporarily assigned to other departments, Camera said.

"We are also working to avert any layoffs by moving employees into any appropriate vacancies which we currently have or which may come up in the near future," he said.

The township had poured nearly $5 million into Cedar Creek over the past 10 years and could not raise enough revenue to keep it going, Mayor Carmen F. Amato Jr. has said.

Atlantic Golf will pay the township $125,000 for the first year's base rent. The rent will escalate for the first five years of the contract, he said.

Atlantic must also pay the township 15 percent of its gross income over $600,000, he said.

The current full-time staff of roughly nine employees will have the chance to apply for positions with Atlantic and positions left vacant after retirements and resignations in the township, Amato has said.

Employees in Civil Service towns have "bumping rights," and the Civil Service Commission decides who has the rights, and what jobs they can bump, Camera said.

"The decisions are based on titles of the employees and how long they have been employed in their title," he said. "For these reasons everyone covered under the Department of Administration has to be given a notice."

Photo: Courtesy of Berkeley Township