A much needed municipal complex

While they can disagree with the plan for the building itself, no one can criticize the Shrewsbury Borough Council of acting rashly in its recent vote to pass a bond ordinance for a new municipal building.

Borough officials have been discussing construction of a new municipal building for somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 years.

In that time there were many fits and starts, but somehow nothing ever got done.

To this council’s credit it looks like something finally will.

The borough is further along in the process than it has ever been, and is finally beyond the point of turning back.

What gets built may have some modifications from the plans drawn up by Red Bank architectural firm Kaplan, Gaunt, DeSantis, but the certainty that something will be built has to be a comforting thought to those who will work in the building or will be in it on a regular basis.

The current municipal building, the historic Wardell House, has all the charm of the early American era in which it was built. But as anyone who has spent significant time trying to get work done in such a building, particularly when being crowded by other people and modern machinery, can tell you that charm can wear thin pretty quickly.

Yes, there are plenty of other pressing needs in the borough. The situation with the firehouse will have to be addressed in the near future, and a school referendum in the next few years seems to be a certainty. It seems as if there will always be a need for more recreation facilities in the borough.

Those concerns will have to be addressed, and criticism of the proposed building may not die down until long after the employees have moved in, but as one member of the overflow crowd at Monday night’s council meeting put it, it really is time for the borough to stop batting the bullet and start biting it as far as a new municipal building is concerned.