Borough receives $250,000 in extraordinary aid

On July 31st, the Borough received notification of a $250,000 award of extraordinary aid from Governor Corzine and Commissioner Levin, an excerpt of which appears below:

"Dear Mayor Casey:

On behalf of Governor Jon S. Corzine and the Department of Community Affairs, I am pleased to award your municipality $250,000 in CY 2006 Municipal Property Tax Relief Act Extraordinary Aid. As required under law (N.J.S.A. 52:27D-118.36), this award must be used in your municipal budget to reduce the local property tax levy and you must amend your budget to bring this additional property tax relief to your residents."


This award is directly tied to our Flood Recovery efforts and the hard work of the Borough's CFO, Donna Condo and Manager Knight. This is the 2nd time the Borough has been awarded such extraordinary aid and, although the amount is slightly less than last year, it is remarkable in light of the States much publicized budget issues.

Borough Council has budgeted for the total costs of flood recovery in each of the last two year's budgets at approximately 16 cents per hundred dollars of assessed value. Last year's extraordinary aid covered almost all of this increase and this year's aid will cover 10 cents of the 16 cent total. While there are no guarantees the Borough will continue to receive such relief, we are grateful for this award in the midst of a state budget crisis.

Borough Council Awards Dam Construction Contract

At the Borough Council meeting of July 27th a contract was awarded to Northeast Remsco Construction for the construction of Upper and Lower Aetna Dams. Northeast Remsco Construction was the lowest responsible bidder with a bid amount of $8,238,632 ($4,004,105 for Upper Aetna and $4,234,508 for Lower Aetna.) These prices were in line with the higher range of the previously prepared estimates by the Borough's Engineers and within the funding previously approved by the Borough.

A pre-construction meeting will be held in early August to kick-off the project. At this point, dam construction activities are expected to begin in late August/ early September with primary concrete work being performed in the November to February time frame.