Township Council Approves CDGB Applications Worth $254,000

Mayor Brian Levine, standing, ripped into RPM Management LLC for the company’s failure to initially install a handicapped-accessible door at the Parkside Senior housing building.

Funding for all but one of the 14 applications submitted for the township’s 2014 Community Development Block Grant program were approved June 24 by the Township Council.

The only group that received none of its requested funding was the township’s Pop Warner Football program, which asked for $10,000 to install additional lighting for its practice fields.

RPM Management LLC, which manages the Parkside Senior Housing development on Parkside Street, received some of the money for which it asked.

The council approved $9,635 of the $19,135 it had requested to install a handicapped-accessible entrance door in the development’s 70-unit building. RPM will provide the remainder of the money, township manager Robert Vornlocker told the council.

“I’ve been given ever assurance by RPM Management that they will fund the other half of the cost and the door will be installed,” he said.

RPM also asked for $11,502 to install security cameras, but that request was not funded.

RPM’s failure to install the handicapped-accessible door in the building when it was first constructed, generating the need for the grant request, prompted scathing comments from Mayor Brian Levine.

“Seniors need the door and it should be in,” he said. “RPM didn’t step up to the plate.”

Calling a company representative’s claim that RPM did not have the funds to instal the door “bogus,” Levine said, “RPM could have come up with the extra $9,000. We could have used that money for something else.”

“Their architects fell down on the job,” Levine said.

This is the final year of the township’s 5-year CDBG program, program coordinator Deborah Mitchell said.

Also receiving funding were:

• Wilentz Senior residence: $19,076 for kitchen renovations
• The Sisters Network of Central New Jersey: $10,000 for walkway improvements
• The Center for Great Expectations: $9,500 for playground refurbishment and $5,700 for child care services
• Franklin Township Food Bank: $40,000 for an emergency generator and $1,500 for its community farm
• Family & Community Services: $5,700 for a part-time youth counselor
• Homesharing: $5,700 for staff funding
• Central Jersey Housing Resource Center: $5,736 for housing counseling services
• Township Recreation Department: $6,895 summer camp funding for low- and moderate-income youth and $6,894 for the Boys and Girls Circle Club
• Township-wode housing rehabilitation services: $77,000 for rehabilitation of seven low- and monderate-income homes.

An additional $50,834 will go toward administrative costs, Mitchell said.

The requests were unanimously approved.

Your Thoughts

comments