Holiday decorations and lights, the township council spent the majority of its meeting last week discussing exactly how best to spend township funds for two much talked about issues in Moorestown.
Acting Township Manager Tom Merchel said the lighting system at the Jeff Young, Fullerton, and Maple Dawson Parks are aging and need to be replaced. He brought the issue up at an earlier township council meeting and was asked to come back with some various options for either replacing the lights or salvaging the poles as they are right now.
The current lights at the athletic field of Jeff Young Park, he said, were installed in the 1970s and are very out of date. The lights are affixed on top of wooden poles, Merchel said, and while they’re still serviceable they’re not exactly the safest structures.
Eight poles need to be replaced, he said, and would cost about $5,000 each.
However, Merchel also came back to council with several estimates to replacing the light poles and upgrading the systems at each park. He went to a local lighting company, which gave several estimates and suggestions for different systems at all three parks. All of the systems include composite light poles — the current poles are wooden — and state of the art control systems and energy efficient light fixtures.
For Jeff Young Park, Merchel said the lighting company suggested 50-foot candles in the infield and 30-foot candles in the outfield, which would cost $270,000 to $290,000.
For the park’s basketball and tennis courts, the lighting company suggested 30-foot candles, which would run between $100,000 to $115,000.
At Fullerton Park, the company suggested 50-foot candles for the tennis courts and 30-foot candles for the basketball court. It would run about $100,000 to $115,000, Merchel said.
All of these suggestions include cost-free maintenance for the next 25 years, Merchel said.
Mayor John Button and council agreed that the township should look at the options for installing new lights instead of salvaging the old poles.
In addition to the poles, the council again discussed a project suggested by the Moorestown Appearance Committee to spend over $30,000 for holiday decorations for Main Street.
Merchel suggested spending $17,500 on the decorations and then asking the Moorestown Business Association to pitch in some private funding for the rest of the decorations.
Council member Stacey Jordan said the township needs to prioritize which township projects are the most important. There’s a limited pool of funding in the township, she said, and it would be wise to look to as much private funding as possible.
In other township news:
• The council approved an ordinance on first reading for a road-resurfacing project for New Albany Road. The project will cost about $525,000, Merchel said, and will resurface the road from W. Camden Ave. to Riverton Road.
Council approved the ordinance on first reading, but asked Merchel to look at grant opportunities through the county for additional funding for the project.
• The council announced a special township meeting to identify which fields would be first worked on for the Moorestown K.I.D.S. initiative. Various coaches and leaders of the youth sports program have said they trust the township to determine which fields would be converted first to artificial turf.
Council said this is necessary because all of the fields won’t be worked on at once. Individual fields would be converted first, instead of all of them converted at the same time.
