Dredging, Budget Dominate Session; Borough Tax Rate to Remain Level

STONE HARBOR – Stone Harbor Borough Council’s March 1 work session utilized its new, open discussion format introduced by Council President Karen Lane. This was the second meeting in the new format and it was greeted warmly by attendees.
The meeting opened with a focus on the borough’s back-bay dredging project, a multi-year effort to catch up with dredging of the bay channels and harbors after years of material build-up. The project has been a high priority one for the borough and eagerly waited by its residents.
The lifting of state and federal bans on dredging during winter flounder season has allowed the project to continue past assumed deadlines when it was first initiated.
Council heard a report on the permitted reuse of sand separated from the dredge material for replenishment of areas of ocean beaches hard hit by recent storms.
A special extension of the dredging project has been approved by the Army Corps of Engineers and the state Department of Environmental Protection. It allows for sand, recovered in the dredging, to be placed on beaches. The sand is being separated from silt and clays in the dredging material at a work site in the Stone Harbor Marina parking lot between 80th and 81st streets. 
The marina area itself had already been appropriated for dewatering activities throughout the earlier dredging efforts.
The permits will allow dredging activities directly related to sand recovery for beaches to continue through April 30. Demobilization at the site and return of the marina for summer use will be completed by May 14.
The contractor is scheduled to be working 12 hours per day, from approximately 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday in order to achieve maximal sand recovery.
The new approvals come at a time when the borough needed them most. Although the borough is on the schedule for a federal beach replenishment project, officials have been informed that there was no way any such project could happen before this summer season.
The hope is still that replenishment will occur in the fall, but damage from storms left the beaches in need of immediate help. Contractors are expecting to be able to recover 28,000 cubic yards of sand to be placed along 8,000 linear feet of beachfront from 83rd to 122nd streets.
What was good news for many was not such for those who reside along the area adjacent to the marina. Residents used the public portion of the meeting to chide the borough for using a residential area as a dewatering site and extending that to the sand recovery process. 
“We are being treated like collateral damage,” one noted. “We cannot live a normal life with all the noise.” Residents claimed that the contractor was beginning early and ending late, extending work beyond even the hours scheduled.
Council made few replies to comments from marina neighbors who know that the end is not in sight for them since the dredging project will mobilize again next year at the same location.
Budget
The meeting saw introduction of the 2016, $14.9-million budget, available on the borough website. A public hearing is set for April 5.
Chair of the Finance Committee, Barry Mastrangelo, said that the focus for the budget was on the next phase of the dredging project, construction of the Public Safety Building, installation of sentinel well, which is a requirement of the borough’s water allocation increase, and various capital improvements.
Mastrangelo said the budget met priorities without any increase in the municipal tax rate, which will remain 23.9 cents per $100 of assessed value. About $10.6 million will be raised by taxes to support the budget.
Borough Administrator Jill Gougher noted that the actual amount to be raised by taxes will increase but that the increase is covered in the budget through a rise in “assessed value.”
The borough is making use of a slightly higher level of surplus funds to cover appropriation growth, largely salary and wages. Gougher said maintaining a surplus balance at about 10 percent of the budget level was achieved.
Other
Council member Mantura Gallagher suggested that the borough give thought to development of a multi-year plan aimed at providing long-range goals to guide short-range decision making.
Some discussion of the master plan ensued, but it was clear Gallagher’s focus was not on zoning and land use issues involved in the master plan, but rather on what in the business world would be termed a strategic plan.
She suggested that such a planning process would provide guideposts for short-term policy and capital investment decisions in light of longer-range goals.
Gallagher’s example was the dredging project underway that had been complicated by the number of years since the last major dredging took place.
The meeting ended without a clear sign of whether Gallagher’s suggestion had any support.
To contact Vince Conti, email vconti@cmcherald.com.