Stone Harbor Adopts 2016 Budget, Gets Cost to Plan Utility Wires Burial

STONE HARBOR – Stone Harbor Borough Council held its public budget hearing April 5, then followed it by adopting its 2016 budget.
The budget’s current fund portion allows for $14.9 million in appropriations, $10.6 million of that will be supported through the local tax levy.
The local tax levy will stay the same as 2015 at .239 cents per $100 of assessed value.  The overall amount expected to be raised through the municipal tax will increase $35,000 over last year with the added amount covered by an increase in ratables.
The Water and Sewer Utility budget came in at $3.7 million with the two largest items of expenditure being charges from the county Municipal Utilities Authority and debt service on capital borrowed.
The overall budget allows for 75 full-time positions and 152 part-time. Salary and wages represents about one-third of the current fund appropriations.
An ordinance extending the rolling three-year CAP bank passed unanimously. The budget makes use of an increased $318,787 in surplus, but Chief Financial Officer James Craft explained that the remaining surplus is very similar to the balance in the fund after adoption of last year’s budget.
Immediately following the budget adoption, council passed three bond ordinances with $1.7 million for capital improvements. The other two totaled $1.85 million for improvements projected in the Water and Sewer utility budget. 
The borough’s bond rating from Standard and Poor’s remained AA. All capital improvements listed in the bond ordinances were anticipated in the adopted budget.
Atlantic City Electric
One item in the agenda was a letter from Atlantic City Electric reporting an estimated cost to the borough of $14,800 to have the utility develop and plan for moving the high-capacity transmission wires underground for the 17 blocks that they traverse the borough on their way to the new substation at 60th Street in Avalon.
The steel poles in place on the island to handle transmission lines have been cause for significant opposition from an organized group of residents.
The utility has also been asked for a more comprehensive plan which would move all distribution wires as well as cable belonging to Comcast and Verizon to underground conduit. The estimated cost of developing this larger plan was not available.
These two prices, the $14,000 one presented at the meeting, and the one still to come, represent only the cost of the planning phase for burying some or all wires.
The borough would still have to confront the cost of implementing the plans if it elected to move in the direction of reversing the utility’s work. The electric company has claimed that it needed to act in order to increase power capacity prior to this summer season.
Hobie Cat Refunds
Council passed a resolution to refund to residents who have already paid fees for storage of equipment at the Hobie Cat beach. The area traditionally used for that beach is between 122nd and 127th streets, but damage from recent storms will not allow that area to serve this year.
Mayor Suzanne Walters said that the borough had looked into the possibility of using some other area of beach, but “That just will not work this year,” she said.
Beaches, Dredging
Borough Administrator Jill Gougher reported that the dredging contractor was demobilizing and preparing to turn the Municipal Marina at 80th Street back over to the borough for the season.
A recent spill at the dewatering site caused the Department of Environmental Protection to order a halt to the dredging. An earlier accident resulted in a halt near the project’s beginning.
Residents in homes bordering the site have been very vocal in opposition to selection of the marina as the dewatering location. The borough’s plan calls for remobilization for a second season of dredging beginning in mid-September. No change in site has been made.
The halt to dredging dashed the borough’s hope for much-needed help with its badly-depleted beaches. The borough had secured permission to dredge in specific “sand heavy” areas beyond its original end date for the project. 
The borough would then have been allowed to separate sand from the dredge material for trucking to its beaches. The hope had been to extract enough sand from the dredge material to alleviate the problems on its beaches for one summer.
The last breach at the dewatering site and DEP order to stop dredging put an end to that hope.
The borough’s only option is moving existing sand around on beaches and hoping that natural wave activity returns sand that nature had taken during the storms.
Walters repeated that the borough is “on the list” for a federal replenishment project but it will not happen until fall.
To contact Vince Conti, email vconti@cmcherald.com.