Committee Meeting Highlights

Miss last night's Barnegat Township Committee meeting? Here's our regular breakdown of the main news:

• Following a shared services agreement negotiation, the Township Committee accepted a bid by Waste Management, Inc. to continue providing trash pickup in both communities. According to elected officials and township Administrator David Breeden, the new agreement will save Barnegat $400,000 per year over the next five years, and will save Ocean Township $125,000 per year. Bids for recycling collection were rejected, said Barnegat Mayor Jeffrey Melchiondo, because none came in lower than the cost of current in-house pickup. Check back with Barnegat Patch today for more details on the contract.

• Deputy mayor Alfonso Cirulli said the township budget remains the Committee’s “main concern,” and said that while he can’t yet give specifics, the township is facing an across-the-board reduction in its workforce that will amount to a half-million-dollar cut. “Everything will be taken down to the bare minimum without putting (the township) at risk,” he said, adding that contracts with the police department, still under negotiation, will hopefully help stabilize any further increases in the budget.

• Melchiondo announced a separation agreement between the township and longtime clerk Kathleen T. West, who will retire at the end of the month. Deputy municipal Clerk Sharon Auer will be appointed acting clerk June 24, Melchiondo said.

• Committeeman Al Bille urged residents to contact their representatives in Congress to push for support of local post offices. Several in Ocean County face closure, he said, and “coming down the line, it’s going to affect our community.”

• Township Administrator David Breeden said that in a recent meeting with township engineer John Hess and himself, Department of Environmental Protection officials said they had secured funding to dredge the shoaled entranced to Double Creek, the passage to Barnegat Bay for many local boaters. The township again offered its municipal dock parking lot on East Bay Avenue as a temporary storage site for dredging spoils come fall, said Breeden, but per its own rules, the DEP would need to find an ecologically safe permanent location for the dredged material – and it’s still looking.