Township Committee To Hold Special Meeting At 5:30 On Monday

by Patricia A. Miller

The ad for the Lacey Township Committee’s special caucus meeting at 5:30 p.m. on Monday seems fairly routine for a governing body at the end of the year.

Paying bills, personnel appointments, possible transfer of funds, possible award of projects. But Donna Bahrle, a member of the Lacey Rail Trail Committee, is urging residents to attend the meeting.

“The Lacey Township Committee has just advertised another “Special” meeting for this Monday, December 29, 2014 at 5:30 pm to award a contract to build a road on the railroad right-of-way,” she posted on the group’s Facebook page.

“This meeting is not a normal end of year meeting that one resident was told when they called the clerk’s office,” she wrote. ”The township is trying to slip this in during a time when most people are away or busy between the holidays. PLEASE attend and show the committee your disapproval of such wasteful spending of your tax dollars.”

Lacey Committee members unanimously adopted another $3 million for the controversial rail trail bypass road at the Nov. 29 meeting, even though an appellate judge granted a stay for the permit recently issued by the state Department of Environmental Protection.

Mayor Gary Quinn has said the township would only use what is necessary to build the bypass road on a section of the Rail Trail.

The roadway portion that will cut through the Lacey Rail Trail will consist of 1,750 linear feet, not the entire 1.9 mile section in the recent permit granted by the state Department of Transportation, Quinn has said.

Some in town were angered when township officials held a special meeting at 8 a.m. on Nov. 5 to set things in motion for the project, since Quinn was leaving on vacation and the project had to be advertised and bid before Dec. 31.

But Quinn said the meeting was necessary because the $1.06 million grant the township will receive from the state Department of Transportation for the project will not be available after January, Quinn said.

Lacey has already paid down all but $468,000 of a $3 million previous ordinance set aside for the work. The $3 million approved at the Nov. 25 meeting will be paid down with the DOT grant and another $500,000 that Ocean County in for the bike path, Quinn has said.