Officials in negotiations for new rec center site
BY PATRICIA A. MILLER
Staff Writer

Brick Township

BRICK TOWNSHIP - Township Council members went into closed session recently to discuss possible land acquisitions for the new recreation center.

"Our appraiser has to leave," council President Stephen C. Acropolis told the audience at the Jan. 23 council caucus meeting. "We said we would get him in and out quickly."

Township officials have been looking at possible sites around town for the center, since abandoning the old Foodtown site on Route 70 last year.

"We are still in the negotiating stage," Acropolis said Monday. "Obviously everyone on the council and the administration is committed to a recreation center for the 12th-largest municipality in the state of New Jersey. We will try and work together to make sure that happens."

Officials will also be meeting with potential purchasers of the Foodtown site soon, he said.

Possibilities for the site include an extended-stay, hotel-type business or offices, Acropolis said.

"Both of those potential businesses would have less of a traffic impact than a shopping center," he said. "We are talking to these potential purchasers about the bypass route. I don't believe there will be consent on the council without the bypass route."

The proposed bypass road would run behind the Foodtown site on Route 70 to an undetermined site on Route 70, Acropolis said.

"We think there is an opportunity for people to be able to go through that Route 70 and Chambers Bridge Road intersection," he said. "Anything that happens at the Foodtown site is going to be a low-impact business and will have to include a bypass road. We are playing pretty hard with that."

In other business, the schedule for the 2007 budget sessions is set, Acropolis said at the meeting.

The sessions will start on Feb. 13 and end on April 10.

"We will have 16 people come and give their testimony before the council on their budgets," he said. "Mr. Pezarras [Township Administrator Scott Pezarras] has done a fine job putting that together. We are ready to start."

The Township Council also planned to vote on a change order at the Jan. 30 meeting that would increase the cost of three ambulances by $1,785, from $267,000 to $268,785.

One of the ambulances is slated to go to the Herbertsville First Aid Squad. The other two will go to the township-run, Brick EMS units.

The Herbertsville squad had requested electric side steps on the ambulance and the township-run squad followed suit, Pezarras said at the meeting.

Councilman Michael Thulen questioned the need for the additional expense.

"Did anybody think to say no?" Thulen said. "The old ambulances didn't have electric steps, did they? We know how to say no."

"We encountered a lot of problems with back injuries," Pezarras said. "Then we also have to pay for them, whether it's volunteer squads or not. They are under our workmen's comp."

The township saved between $30,000 to $40,000 on the ambulances by going with a stock order rather than a custom order, Acropolis said.

"That's three ambulances for $269,000," he said. "In the past the ambulances were costing us $125,000 each."