SEA BRIGHT — The borough has received a $158,000 Community Development Block Grant that will go toward planned beach improvements.

Councilman Thomas Scriven made the announcement at the Dec. 18 Smart Growth workshop meeting.

Borough Engineer David Hoder said the funds will be used for beach access to create pathways over the dunes to the beach. Hoder worked with Councilman Jack Keeler to obtain the county funds.

To qualify for the grant from the Monmouth County Community Development Office the borough had to submit, "a standard application package for community development, we had to give a verbal presentation and the county has a committee that votes on it and they voted it in," Hoder said in an interview after the meeting.

The borough applied for the grant in March and was notified it would receive the funding in November.

A three-phase plan for the beach improvements includes an extensive boardwalk, a new lifeguard station as well as a new recreation area with a pool and deck surface.

The main focus of the final Smart Growth meeting of the year was to discuss the beach plans and explain some of the details regarding the location for the new borough hall.

A proposal to purchase 3 Church St. and use that building as the new borough hall facility was met with opposition from Church Street residents at a meeting in November. The additional traffic, noise and danger to children living on the street were among the residents' concerns.

After listening to comments from residents, the council decided not to purchase that building and instead renovate the current borough hall located at 1167 Ocean Ave.

Councilman Brian Kelly said the governing body considered many options for the new borough hall location. Renovating the current structure would mean losing the recreation center.

"That's the reason we didn't do it in the past, because we never considered encroaching on the rec center," he said. "But it just seems like it makes the most sense."

The need for a new or renovated municipal facility became more pressing in October when Judge Lawrence Lawson said the borough would lose municipal court revenues if the court facilities continued to remain out of compliance.

Court employees have been housed in a trailer behind the borough hall for a long time and the borough has been in violation of the Superior Court of New Jersey directive concerning the work space.

In addition, the tax collector and the registrar are not in sufficient office space as determined by the state. Lawson told the borough it needed to purchase 3 Church St. or submit to him alternate plans explaining how the court facilities would be brought into compliance.

At the Smart Growth meeting, Mayor Maria Fernandes said she would be drafting a letter with Kelly informing Lawson of the borough's plans. The letter is due to Lawson by Dec. 31.

Kelly said the council hasn't met with the architects yet regarding the renovation. The plans will also include input from the new council members who will join the governing body after the New Year.

"We don't know yet if we're going to expand the building at all. If we need the space, we may extend in the back where the current trailer is to give us a bigger footprint for the facilities," he said.

Kelly said that while the recreation center space will be used to extend borough offices the renovations will include a multipurpose room.

In an interview after the meeting, Kelly explained that the recreation center was originally intended for the children who attended school in Sea Bright. Now that the borough is a sending district and no children go to school in Sea Bright, the room is rented out but only generates about $6,000 a year.

"When we redo the beach facilities we're going to have some recreation included in that," he said.

Kelly said the renovations will also allow for more space for borough offices.

"In the front offices everyone is just cramped. They've been cramped in there for years. [We will] try to give them a workable area where everyone can feel comfortable and have their own space," he said.

He said the borough offices are at about 1,000 square feet and the recommendation is to expand them to 4,000 square feet.

"In terms of square footage we don't have to stick to any one plan right now," he said.

Kelly said the borough will also keep in mind environmentally friendly and efficient approaches to help the environment and to possibly lower operating costs.

In an interview after the meeting, Kelly said he'd like to see the renovations started in summer 2009 and finished by the end of the year. He said the borough has not determined whether or not it will put out requests for proposals (RFPs). He said he'd like to have an architect chosen in January and RFPs can sometimes be a lengthy process.

"What we've done in the past is invite like three of them to give us an initial plan and then we review the three and then it's a combination of cost effectiveness and intelligent design, what we want to do, especially factoring in energy efficiency and so forth," Kelly said.

He said the borough has already worked with many architects, and they are familiar with what the governing body is trying to achieve.

"We've worked with quite a few architectural firms already so we might just pick one of them and move forward. It depends on how we proceed," he said.

Contact Sharon Leff at

sleff@gmnews.com.