READINGTON TWP. - As of Monday, the Solbergs were closing in on their goal of collecting the signatures of 969 registered township voters to allow the public to vote on the question of whether the Township Committee should appropriate $22 million in a bond ordinance to buy development rights for Solberg Airport, owned by the family since 1939.
If the Solbergs are successful in obtaining the signatures of 15 percent of the number of township voters who voted in the last general election, as required by law, the $22 million bond ordinance approved by the Township Committee on Feb. 21 will be placed on hold until the matter is placed on a public ballot.
“We are close, and we are optimistic we will make it,” airport co-owner Suzanne Solberg Nagle said on Monday afternoon. The family’s supporters started collecting signatures the night the bond ordinance was unanimously approved by the Township Committee, and several petitions were still outstanding, she said.
“We don’t have a final count,” she said.
The Solbergs had within 20 days to file their petition, and the results of a referendum would be binding for that particular referendum, township clerk Vita Mekovitz said last Friday.
At the same time, Mayor Gerard Shamey and the Township Committee had formally requested the Solbergs to again begin negotiations on the future of the airport. Negotiations were broken off in January.
“I am hopeful that our future discussions will bear more fruit than those we have undertaken in the past,” Shamey wrote in a letter to Solberg Aviation dated last Thursday, March 9.
“The township’s position has been stated with clarity,” the mayor wrote, referring to the committee’s demand that the airport length be kept at 3,735 feet, since experts for the township testified that a runway of 4,000 feet or more could support additional jet traffic at the rural airport site.
The letter asked the Solbergs to suggest several dates on which they might be available to meet to resume negotiations.
Nagle said on Monday that she had not yet received a copy of the letter.
“We would like to sit down and talk with them,” she stated. However, Nagle added, “We still feel a mediator (present) would still be in the best interest” of concluding negotiations.
“I am sure there’s an amicable solution,” Nagle said. Nevertheless, she said the Solbergs still would like citizens to have an opportunity to vote on the $22 million bond ordinance.
Shamey said on Monday that the township is still researching the process of how a referendum would affect the bond ordinance.
In a separate letter to the editor submitted this week, Shamey again stressed the Township Committee’s contention that their idea of a productive outcome with the Solbergs would leave ownership of the airport with the family, while purchasing open space and development rights to limit any expansion at the airport.
“It is critical that we redouble our efforts to achieve a successful resolution that we can look back on with pride as a township and a community,” Shamey said in his letter to the editor. “We have a unique opportunity before us and it is my fervent hope that the Solbergs and this township do not squander it,” he wrote.
However, despite Nagle’s suggestion that the negotiations could benefit even from a non-binding mediator to help maneuver the sticking points in talks, Shamey has stated several times he would not want to bring in an outsider. He suggested that such a mediator might just split in half the Solberg’s request that the airport runway be allowed to expand to a maximum of 5,000 feet in the distant future, with the township’s demand that the runway be capped at 3,735 feet.
“Any proposal that calls for lengthening the main runway beyond its current licensed length of 3,735 feet will not be acceptable to the township, as such an expansion is inconsistent with the township’s preservation goals,” stated Shamey’s letter to the Solbergs.
The township’s view is that runway length is a crucial tool in preventing an expansion that would bring corporate jets and other larger aircraft into Readington, endangering the quiet rural atmosphere, lowering property values and permitting a stream of air traffic over nearby schools.
The Solbergs have stated that they have no plans for an expansion at this time, but don’t want to cut off all potential growth at the airport forever.
The Solbergs and others have also decried the cost to taxpayers of the bond ordinance, and any related costs of taking over the facility.
Several years ago, public sentiment rose against a plan by the Township Committee to acquire the facility through condemnation, or eminent domain, and family members said they fear township officials are heading in that direction again, despite their stated intentions otherwise.
Shamey said in his letter to the editor this week that “acquisition of the open space surrounding the airport and development rights with respect to the airport itself via the use of eminent domain is not the preference of the township and remains, hopefully, a distant possibility and last resort.”
Last August, the state Department of Transportation informed township officials that Readington would be ineligible for any reimbursement funding through their programs if the property were condemned. “It is the policy of NJDOT to provide funding only to those airport purchases done on a willing-seller willing-buyer basis,” said the Aug. 12 letter from the NJDOT to then-mayor Frank Gatti.
However, township officials have since then stated their goal of obtaining grant money to defray the cost of the bond ordinance through programs administered by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.
Karen Hershey, a spokeswoman for the NJDEP, said on Monday, “A municipality can come to Green Acres to apply for local assistance on land acquired by a town through eminent domain.” Hershey said the DEP will not contribute funding towards the process of condemnation, but would still consider offering funding towards preserving property acquired through eminent domain.
In the worst case scenario, if no state or federal reimbursement were received on a $22 million expenditure, following through on financing the bond ordinance approved last month would cost the owner of a home assessed at $400,000 an additional $55 a year in taxes for three years, to pay off temporary notes, and then an estimated $165 more annually for the remainder of the life of the 20-year bond, township officials said last month.
The Solbergs have never agreed to that amount, anyway. Negotiations ended with the family asking for a reported $36 million for the development rights only for both the airport and surrounding open space.
© Recorder Newspapers 2006
Date: March 15, 2006 Source: Hunterdon Review
URL: http://www.zwire.com/site/index.cfm?newsid=16308893&BRD=1918&PAG=461&dept_id=333252&rfi=8
