When is trash picked up (big blue cans)?
Regular household trash is picked up Monday mornings; recycling on Tuesdays. If a holiday falls on a Monday, then trash pickup on Tuesday and recycling on Wednesday. Newspapers must be tied in bundles not more than 12" high; magazines, phone books, cataloges in tied paper bags.
What's the latest news on dredging lagoons?
Posted by the Times-Beacon Newspapers on 11/09/2006
BY CARRIE ATKINSON; STAFF WRITER
LITTLE EGG HARBOR - Osborn Island residents are beginning to wonder how their property values will fare with a lack of easy access to its manmade lagoons.
Residents, like Gary Rizzolo of Kentucky Drive, primarily bought their property because of the value of having a site with such easy access to the township's waterways, but now it seems that ease of getting in and out of the water is becoming more difficult as each day passes.
"We bought this property intending to be able to get in and out of the water easily," Rizzolo said, "But now we are really only able to get in and out of the lagoons at high tide."
A member of the Osborn Island Residents Association and formerly a member of the township's now defunct dredging committee, Rizzolo recalled a 2005 petition that the association presented to the township which asked for funding to have an engineer estimate the cost for dredging the lagoons.
"We didn't hear back from them," Rizzolo said.
Township Administrator Raymond Urezzio said that the project has not gone to the wayside, as the township is currently searching for grants to help fund the project, but has not had much success.
"The township is looking for some type of state intervention," Urezzio said, elaborating that the township has to look at dredging as a community issue, meaning looking at all waterways, not just the lagoons.
"The township must look at all water areas as a whole and not just piecemeal," Urezzio said.
While Urezzio said that there is no way to estimate the cost of a township-wide project, he did say that there were alternatives available for residents wishing to take on the lagoon dredging themselves.
Residents of the township can dredge in front of their homes after they apply for a maintenance dredging permit, and anyone in the township can apply for a permit to dredge the entire lagoon, if they also assume responsibility for funding the project.
Originally, the plan for the lagoon dredging was that the Osborn Island residents and the dredging committee would coordinate the project without the township's involvement, but Richard Maas, President of the Residents Association, said that township intervention is the project's best bet.
"It is something that would be best administered by the township," Maas said.
Maas also questioned the township's ability to get funding for the project, citing the dredging project in Tuckerton and also the beach replenishment projects in municipalities like Long Beach Township and Surf City as examples of areas that found available funding even if taxes needed to be raised.
Maas does realize that that could be the most difficult part of the project — getting the township to agree to a tax hike. However, he does think that the project would be palatable to the community since most residents came to Little Egg Harbor because of its waterfront location.
"There is support for it," Maas said. "But it wanes the higher the dollar amount goes, and that's a shame."
Urezzio has said that the township has applied for a number of grants through various agencies, including the state Department of Environmental Protection, to address the problem.
But Maas feels that the dredging project should be higher on the township's list of priorities.
"We understand that there is a lot the Township Committee does on a daily basis and they have to manage several issues at once," Maas said. "But the bottom line is I'm not getting what I paid for and something needs to be done."
What did I hear about 74 homes being built?