Posted on March 26, 2018
By Molly Bilinski, PressofAC
Anchorage Poynte’s lagoon is one step closer to its first dredging in more than a decade after Township Committee passed a $710,000 bond ordinance Wednesday to help fund the project.
“I’m firmly in favor of this project,” said Leonard Dagit, a resident who said he represents two properties that would be affected. “We suffered a lot of infill thanks to (Hurricane) Sandy, so the lagoon is relatively unnavigable, especially at low tide, and this would only help to obviously increase our property values, which have been adversely affected by the silting in of the lagoon.”
While a handful of property owners were there in favor of the ordinance to help fund the project for the lagoon off Somers Point-Longport Boulevard, one attorney present, Eric Garrabrant, represented two property owners who objected to the ordinance because of the cost split among the homeowners.
When the ordinance was introduced Feb. 7, Township Administrator Peter J. Miller said each of the 34 property owners affected would be responsible for an estimated $3,500 per year for eight years after the project is complete.
“We believe that is an unfair apportionment of the tax burden because this is public property,” Garrabrant said.
“This is property that is publicly owned, is required legally to be navigable, and now these homeowners are shouldering that burden, which rightfully belongs to everyone, in our opinion,” he added.
While the developer of the property was responsible for the dredging, he never dredged for 10 years, Garrabrant argued, and that inaction led to the lagoon being turned over to the township.
In addition, splitting the money for the project evenly among the homeowners doesn’t take into consideration which homeowners will benefit more when their property values are reassessed, Garrabrant said.
Miller said at the end of the project, a Board of Assessment Commissioners will do a review and make the ultimate decision about how the cost is apportioned.
“The preliminary apportion was done by me,” Miller said. “Looking at that all 34 property owners had the same access to the waterway and they all had a dock behind their home.”
Because of the winter weather, many of the property owners in favor of the project could not attend the meeting, Mayor James “Sonny” McCullough said. However, a petition in favor of the project was emailed to him signed by 23 of the 34 homeowners, making more than 67 percent in favor of the project.
The estimated total cost of the project is $922,000, with $48,000 from the capital improvement fund, $164,000 from grants in aid and other funds and $710,000 in authorized debt.
Source: PressofAC
