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Bond Issuance For Ice Palace Purchase Pushed Back To October
By Catherine Galioto
The next step in the township's plan to turn the Ocean Ice Palace into a community center stalled this week.
About $5.4 million in bonds some township officials hoped to approve this week to fund the purchase of the Ocean Ice Palace will now have to wait until October. The township council was scheduled to vote on it this week, but it was tabled at this week's township council meeting.
The holdup comes because the Local Finance Board is requiring the township to complete its annual audit. The county board would not approve Brick's application to waive the five percent down payment on purchasing the property, Business Administrator Scott Pezarras said, until it knows that Brick has its financials in order.
The waiver would have paved the way for the township to pay for the 13-acre property with bonds.
Now, Brick must wait until at least mid-October to take the next step, Pezarras said.
Pezarras went before the local finance board August 8 to seek the waiver. In the routine application, board members instead said they would like the township to complete its audit before the board approves the waiver, Pezarras said. That way, it is clear that the numbers in the process are not last year's, but are current dollars and cents.
The waiver is not dead, Pezarras said, and neither is the bond ordinance. Just delayed.
"We're not denied, we should have had our audit in," he said. "Not that they didn't believe me and the application, they just wanted to make sure."
The deadline to submit an audit was June 30, Pezzaras said. Now, the township must hustle to complete an audit, and have the township council recognize it. Pezarras said he is hopeful this can be done before end of October, to coincide with the local finance board meeting and the township council meeting.
As a result of not having the local finance board's waiver, the township council voted to table its own ordinance that would have authorized bonds to pay for the land deal.
Pezarras is trying to figure out how to pay for the 13-acre Chambersbridge Road property through the use of surplus township funds and issuing bonds. The local finance board suggested the use of surplus instead of bonds, but Pezzaras said the township's surplus is smaller than it looks. The township already dipped into surplus to decrease the tax rate earlier this year, making the amount available millions less than expected, he said.
Although it decided not to vote on the bond authorization, the township council did decide to hold a public comment session for the measure, as the room filled with residents eager to comment on the community center project.
The council heard several hours of comments from hockey supporters, senior citizens, parents and concerned citizens, some of whom shared their support for the project, while others urged the township to consider asking the public if the project was really what it wanted via a referendum on the November ballot.
One resident said he was glad the matter was tabled through October. That way, the township could spend money and time with a specific feasibility study of the project and the site.
But Pezarras said that was not possible either. The bonds on the agenda would provide the funding for any new study.
Councilwoman Kathy Russell also called for a more in-depth report of the facility's structure, and the costs of what the township hopes to do there. Pezarras is using industry standards, old feasibility studies for land behind the post office, and calls to experts to draw up some basic scenarios of the fiscal picture of the project, its expenses and the revenue it could generate.
In the end, the council voted unanimously to table the bond authorization until mid- October, when it hoped the local finance board would approve its down payment waiver.
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