Dems made right call on $9M bond vote
The Sayreville Borough Council faced the toughest decision of the year so far when it wrestled with the question of whether to bond for $9 million to pay down some of the debt owed to Middlesex County. The payment is overdue on loans the county gave Sayreville to condemn the former National Lead property in 2004.

The council's four Democrats made the right decision Saturday by supporting the bond ordinance, so that the county can have the money it anticipated in this year's budget. The two Republican council members opposed the move.

The county's Board of Chosen Freeholders has been generous to Sayreville regarding the National Lead redevelopment project. Four years ago, the county doled out $39 million in grants and loans so that the borough could purchase the 427 waterfront acres through eminent domain. Since then, the freeholders have extended the payment due dates while the Sayreville Economic Redevelopment Agency (SERA) worked through two rounds of proposals and negotiations with potential redevelopers.

The county has the legal right to take over the redevelopment project if its loan is not paid back on time, though it seems unlikely at this time that the county would yank the project from a town that has looked at the National Lead site as its future "gold coast" for so many years. But when county officials informed the borough recently that another extension was unlikely, and that the money was needed for the county budget, fulfilling its request was the right thing to do.

Republicans, including Mayor Kennedy O'Brien, disagreed. He said he did not want borough taxpayers to become liable formoney associated with the National Lead redevelopment, because it is SERA that owes the county money, and not the borough. He said he did not believe the council should have to bail out SERA on the loan because of the lack of a redevelopment agreement. While protecting residents from this debt sounds admirable, it also seems like sour grapes on O'Brien's part, since the Democrats have blocked his attempts to be reappointed to SERA, an autonomous agency O'Brien formed when Republicans were in power. O'Brien and the Democrats need to find ways to get along.

Officials on all sides are hopeful that the money owed to the county, and the $9 million in new borough debt, will be paid off when SERA reaches an agreement with O'Neill Properties, the firm looking to redevelop National Lead. SERA is deep into negotiations with O'Neill for an enormous, mixed-use project that should bring in more tax revenue each year than the $9 million currently at issue. It is expected that an agreement will be reached soon that will allow O'Neill to purchase the land from SERA and begin the long-awaited process of cleaning up and revitalizing the former industrial site.

In approving the bonds for the county, the borough took a difficult, but necessary step that will allow the town to retain control of an extremely valuable project that appears to be inching closer to reality.