Tuesday Meeting Canceled After Turf Field Bond Funding Pulled Back in Bernardsville

A Saturday morning meeting by the Bernardsville Council resulted in a first-step vote to repeal a $1.2M bond ordinance approved Aug. 12 to pay for installing a synthetic turf field over a grass field at the municipal Upper Polo Grounds — but the story isn't over yet.


The Borough Council needs a second and final vote to definitely repeal the ordinance. However, a scheduled meeting to further discuss the bond ordinance at 8 a.m. on Tuesday has been canceled, said Bernardsville Mayor Lee Honecker.

Borough Councilman Joe Rossi said he and a majority council will go through with the final vote to repeal the bond ordinance at the council's next official meeting on Sept. 9.

Aug. 30 is the deadline to put a referendum on the November ballot — as requested in a petition signed by about 400 borough residents in the past week and a half — that would put a halt on the bond ordinance, said Borough Councilman Craig Lawrence.

But Rossi said on Sunday the repeal will go through because council members do not want to go through having residents oppose the bond proposal on a ballot petition.

Lawrence is an opponent of the bond ordinance — since he said previously and at Saturday's meeting that other options have not been fully explored for sites within the regional school district, and he also called into question the safety and even economics of a rubber turf field over a grass field.

But Lawrence voted against repealing the bond ordinance since he said he wanted the residents' petition to block the $1.2 million spending proposal also to be placed on the ballot in November.

Rossi, who is in favor of installing the field on a pre-existing field that he said would provide more playing time instead of being prone to soggy conditions, said he and a major of the council members supported the repeal of this proposal for funding the field because, "We just wanted to end it and go forward."

But Rossi said the proposal "will be alive until we build one." He said building a turf field over a grass field is less costly than purchasing land for a totally new field without parking and other infrastructure.

By a 2-to-1 margin last November, borough voters defeated a non-binding referendum to fund the field project.

But Rossi said on Saturday, as he has in the past, that the borough was unable to change the wording on last fall's referendum to update figures on the plan that would have shown how the borough could have found funding within the open space plan and from other accounts to finance the project.

Borough resident Anthony Della Russo approached the council and said that the cost of the proposed field would add about $35 annually onto a borough home assessed at $500,000. But he drew boos from the audience when he suggested that some of the women in the audience spend more than that to have their nails done, and asked what they had done for the borough lately.

Terry Thompson, a member of the Borough Planning Board and former Environmental Commission member, followed his remarks saying that she and many of the other women in the audience had contributed to the borough. She added that it is not proven yet what the long term effects of a turf field might be for young athletes, and for flooding.

The meeting was held just two days following a flash flood that filled much of Bernardsville, a point raised by some speaker.

But Rossi countered that a synthetic field installed more than five years ago at Bernards High School is engineered to handle drainage, and is constantly and successfully used by student athletes on a constant basis.

Longtime resident Katie Dooley said that some who signed the petition were not objecting to the field, but the manner in which the council approved a bond ordinance to pay for the field after the residents voted against the proposal last November.

"This is about the way the council is disrespecting...the will of the people," she said.

Resident Joanne Wissinger was among those who raised concerns about how the turf heats up to higher temperatures than would a grass field.

Lawrence ended the meeting by bringing up a study of turf fields by the University of Arkansas that raised questions about such issues as heat building up on the rubberized surface and also the cost of disposal of the synthetic surface.

Another council meeting coming up at 8 a.m. on Tuesday

Lawrence said another meeting of the Borough Council will be held at 8 a.m. on Tuesday to address another proposal floated to put a referendum on the ballot this November asking voters whether the money for the turf field should be spent from accumulated open space funds.

On Sunday, Rossi said he doesn't know if the Tuesday meeting will be held since the turf field proposal already was addressed at Saturday morning's special meeting.

But on Monday morning, Mayor Lee Honecker, who was not present on Saturday, said that the Tuesday morning meeting had been canceled since action on the bond ordinance had been taken on Saturday.

He added that it is too late for the council to approve a referendum, suggested earlier, to ask voters if the funds for the field should be taken from the recreational portion of the open space fund that can be allocated for active recreation.

But Honecker agreed with Rossi that grant money could be pursued for the project, and said he had already started looking into the possibility of a county grant.