The June 14, 2010 Township Committee meeting agenda

[Guest]

Mr.Wow, there is no ax to grind with the TC, just a possible ethics question regarding the builder who was awarded the contract for the barn and his close relationship with the person who has the power to award that contract. The TC ought to be interested enough in that, but you glossed right over that part. Why are you so protective of the TC anyway? Everything concerning the public should be allowed to be openly discussed and debated without people getting angry and insulting, like you.

[Guest]

[Guest]

[KAISER]

[Guest]

Sorry, that last sentence is particularly laughable on several levels.

[Dan Mulligan]

Hello here are my notes from last nights meeting...

Township Committee Meeting 6/14/2009

To start the evening off our first responders in Cranbury were honored for their years of service.

Affordable Housing -
The s-1 bill looks good Cranbury if the 7.5 % of homes must be affordable language stays in the bill as we already exceed that number

Trash moving to town contract and not individual home owners

- The Committee discuss moving from individual trash service to the town negotiating one contract for all. The discussion centered on have a referendum in November.

Some questions of note raised were as follows

- What if home owners are in existing contracts that could be multi year with a trash service?

-The new town contracted trash pickup would be a tax assessed within your property taxes thus it is not use based and contradicts what was done recently with the sewers in town as they are use based and not a tax based on property value. As a result the more your home costs the more you pay for trash pickup and the less you pay for trash pickup if your home is lower priced

- Will this service if provided via contract by the town be once a week pickup pr twice? Many in town prefer one or the other

Shadow Oaks Easements

- The parks commission presented about wanting to mark easements between homes in shadow oaks as to define access to the Millstone. Specifically this is on Washington in shadow oaks. One idea was to mark the curbs with a symbol that represents the access points. Some issues raised by residents were safety

- that the trails were not really open as they are overgrown, so why are we really doing this?.

-Comments were made that things are fine the way they are. One person called them the easements to no where.

Reinhardt Property Acquisition

- 60 acres - reached out for funding, however we have none but state or county should contribute to this in the end.

Cranbury Housing
Rt 130 d to be presented to the planning board july 1st

Four Seasons:
Their is a December 2009 resolution that k Hovanian is in default of of bonds and needs to rectify a punch list or lose their bonds. The concern now is the bonds expire in August. The engineer did review and said - 68 trees deficient - a performance bond was already given back andnow working on maintenance bond with no escrow -

The tree issues are:

-The wrong trees were planted and died or are dying

- The hole is half the size of ball which casueses the trees to die

- Trees were planted in clay

- Wire was meshing left on the tree bulb

[Guest]

Dan,

Good notes and thanks. However, your post leads to some questions.

1) On Trash one container or multiple? If it is one day a week, but multiple containers then the number of days of collection does not matter.

2) What is the cost? I get it is in my taxes, but so is everything else. I don't have kids in school, but I pay more than my neighbor who has 3 kids. All of our expenses except sewer and water are in the tax base.

I pay 17k (higher than average) and change in taxes, but if that means I am paying less than 600 a year I still benefit (I pay 160 a quarter). My neighbor pays about 120 a quarter. So if he's less than 480, he's still ahead and if he gets twice a week he's better off than today. If you know the average cost as per the average home assessment the calc is fairly simple to see if we benefit or lose. The end result may be that I am paying less than today and can still write it off on my taxes. Which means to me $$$.

Let's also not forget not every resident is on sewer, we all generate garbage. So not exactly a fair comparison. If there is one container of X size or two containers of X size then we all will have the same amount of garbage.

3) On the easements.
- Do they exist today?
- Where does it lead? I get no where because it is over grown, but where does it lead to if it is winter or I cut my way through? Is it to a preserve or park type land
- If they exist and people do not know what's wrong with saying here they are? Or is this a case of I moved next to the Turnpike and now the town needs to do something about the noise?

[Dan Mulligan]

[Guest]

Dan,

I did not keep the original statements, but I am the poster who asked the questions.

Thanks for the response.

On garbage we agree to disagree, yes the amount paid is calculated on the assessed value, but it's also a fixed cost to the town like parks, buildings, town cars, fire trucks, etc... A police car costs X and I'll pay more for that car cost than will my neighbor, but the police will respond to him and I equally. With garbage, we'll have the same vehicle (container) and have the same pick up etc... All residents will benefit equally.

The sewer was always a usage based, but in the past all residents even those without sewer were paying not just those on sewer. This was split out last year so that only sewered residents paid for sewer. We always paid a sewer usage charge.

Again, thanks for the update!! Much appreciated.

[Guest]

[Guest]

The easements were in place at the time of the development. No one should be surprised.

[Guest]

We have a right to go back there, marking it means I won't trespass on someone's property. The easements are already there. We should be encouraging people to hike and go outside not stopping them or discouraging them. Buy the home and know what you're buying.

[Guest]

Reclaiming the trail sounds like a great Boy Scout project.

[Guest]

[Guest]

Once an Eagle Scout project is done on town property, it is up to the town to maintain it. Sure scouts can do a good turn (as can anybody in the town for that matter) to clean up weeds, but it is town property.

[Guest]