Berkeley Heights Township : Notes From The Administrator's Desk: February 2022

Press release from the Berkeley Heights Township:

March 1, 2022

Notes From the Administrators Desk – February 2022

By Liza Viana

Well, 2021 was quite a year, and one I personally wasn’t too sad to see sail off into the sunset.

Keeping our residents safe and our businesses open was just one facet of managing the COVID19 global health pandemic. As federal and state guidance lagged, towns were left to navigate many issues relating to COVID much on their own, including personnel and other labor issues, safe creation for our kids and safe programming for our seniors, balancing the need to have some semblance of “normalcy” and resuming activity while still ensuring no outbreak occurred during Township-sponsored activities.  

Yet we had many other big-ticket items not related to COVID to deal with, to help keep our town moving forward while a global pandemic threatened to paralyze us:

• Getting the Municipal Complex finished despite environmental challenges, construction delays and material shortages (the Township recently issued a Notice of Default to the developer Epic, and its performance bond company for failure to perform);
• Ensuring our long-term care facilities and businesses had what they needed to survive the pandemic;
• Keeping redevelopment projects moving to ensure we fulfill our court-mandated affordable housing obligations;
• Keeping road and drainage projects moving forward despite materials shortages, price increases and contractor constraints;
• Tropical Storm Ida, which decimated some of our infrastructure;
• Trying to otherwise address our crumbling infrastructure. 

Despite the very many challenges 2021 posed for us, we also accomplished a lot for our residents, including:

• We continued forging a solid financial path for the Township.
• Opening a beautiful new Town Hall, library and police station for our residents
• Helping vaccinate hundreds of senior citizens against COVID (thank you to all of the volunteers who also helped in this effort!).
• Helped secure Union County acquisition of the former Berkeley Caterer’s property to preserve as open space, permanently protecting it from development.
• The Council adopted an end-user sewer agreement, which forces any adjacent town developer wanting to send their sewer flow to Berkeley Heights to 1) pay for studies on our sewer infrastructure to identify weaknesses, 2) pay for any necessary upgrades identified in that study, 3) pay for any associated legal or other fees.
• Work began on the preservation of the Little-Lord Farmstead, the last major remaining historic site in Berkeley Heights, dating back to 1760.
• The Town completed a great new and/or improved sidewalk network along Plainfield Avenue near Columbia Middle School as part of the Safe Routes to Transit grant award.
• We received a $240,000 federal grant to help offset equipment costs as part of our shared service with Union County for emergency services dispatch.
• We received an AARP grant to create trail maps and kiosks for the maps and other trail and Township information at various park locations throughout the town.
• We completed an extensive study for our “West Side Drainage” project to identify the shortcomings of our underground drainage system in a specific part of town; this project may cost upward of $15 million to rectify. Work to get that project to the New Jersey Infrastructure Bank for low-interest financing is ongoing. 
• We worked with federal lawmakers to insert earmarks for the “West Side Drainage” project into federal appropriations bills. 
• We increased our electronics and foam recycling collection at our DPW to twice/month for our residents. 
• We began working with Union County to extend our Passaic Trail network which we hope to run from Berkeley Heights to Summit when completed.
• Pothole crews from our DPW were dispatched to resident homes typically within 48 hours of request. 
• Snyder Park got a beautiful new turf baseball field and the soccer fields were returfed.
• The Recreation Commission and Department has done a fabulous job making infrastructure and facilities improvements at Lower Columbia Park.
• We continued to grow our senior programs.
• We are on the verge of completing our long-awaited Master Plan, which includes a revitalization of Sherman Avenue to turn it into a more pedestrian- and business-friendly corridor.

But we still have so much more to do.  

More roads need to be paved or reconstructed. More drainage needs to be installed. More infrastructure needs to be rebuilt or repaired. More economic development efforts need to be executed to retain businesses in Berkeley Heights and attract new ones. Our sewer plant needs to be brought up to date. More grants, as well as state and federal funding, need to be obtained to help offset Township and taxpayer costs for infrastructure repairs and other Township improvements.  

Everything takes money. Everything takes time. A lot of this work is hard. The Mayor, Council and Administration are working hard to find ways to pay for many of these items in 2022 and beyond, but it won’t happen overnight. We thank you in advance for your patience. 

This press release was produced by the Berkeley Heights Township. The views expressed here are the author’s own.