Township To Apply For Williams Park Grant Money

Township officials are preparing a grant application targeted to fix up the trail and make other enhancements at Naaman Williams Park.

Plans are to apply for a grant offered by Sustainable Jersey, a statewide organization whose mission is to help New Jersey’s towns create a sustainable future.

The grant will be either for $10,000 or $20,000. The final amount will be determined after a cost analysis is conducted.

The idea for the grant originated in the township’s Trails Advisory Committee; Tara Kenyon, the township’s Open Space Consultant, brought it to the Open Space Advisory Committee at its January 17 meeting.

Trails committee members suggested the township try for a $10,000 grant, 10 of which are available, Kenyon said.

But the Open Space committee members voted to apply for a $20,000 grant, five of which are available.

Township Manager Robert Vornlocker said the township would conduct a cost analysis “to see what we can do with what kind of money, and go from there.”

Vornlocker said the park “gets used often by many people. It’s a very heavily used trail system around the perimeter of the park.”

Kenyon said the Trails Committee members suggested applying for the $10,000 grant to remediate the ponding and flooding on the Williams Park trail, and then work on connecting the trail to other woodland trails.

Township Councilman Carl Wright (D-Ward 4) also attended the meeting. Kenyon asked him if the people in his Ward would want the work to be done.

“Because we don’t want to do something that people don’t want to be done,” she said.

Wright said they would want the work done.

“Anything that makes the neighborhood better, people want,” he said.

“Being that it’s attached to the senior housing complex, they use it more than anybody else because it’s in their back yard,” he said. “You have those housing units around there, and they have families now, so the young ones use it.”

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