A review of Millstone decisions made in 2007
BY JANE MEGGITT Staff Writer
Looking back, the beginning of 2007 in Millstone seems to have set the tone for the story that would eventually unravel by year's end.

At the 2007 reorganization meeting, the Township Committee, less Elias Abilheira, chose Nancy Grbelja to serve as mayor for the second year in a row and Bob Kinsey to again serve as deputy mayor. Abilheira, who ran for and won reelection with Grbelja in 2006, did not attend the meeting.

When later asked if he agreed with the committee's decision to re-elect Grbelja as mayor and Kinsey as deputy mayor, Abilheira said, "That's fine."

He continued, "The mayor has to take phone call complaints from residents at all hours of the day and night, and Nancy [Grbelja] is willing to do that. She does that well."

Grbelja started her new year of township work looking forward to continuing to develop Millstone's "booming open space program" and putting together a long-term recreation plan. She also expressed that she wanted to improve the township's line of communication with residents via the local cable access channel and the township's Web site.

Township officials faced many difficult decisions in 2007, starting in February, when the Planning Board reconsidered and approved an application for a six-lot subdivision on Route 526 that it had previously rejected. Millstone's Lee family owned the property that Millstone-based developer Gerry Baldachino would develop.

The nearly 59.5-acre tract, located on the corner of Route 526 and Old Noah Hunt Road, is in the township's rural preservation (RUP) zone, which requires a minimum of 10 acres per building lot.At the Oct. 11, 2006, Planning Board meeting, the applicant's engineer said that the average lot size amounted to 9.9 acres. Manny Blanco, who had originally voted against the application, said that the fact that the property had been over 60 acres before several dedications over the years, including one for Route I-195, was the deciding factor for him to support it in the end.

The Township Committee decided to cut township Fire District No. 1's proposed 2007 budget in March after voters turned it down 154-186. The Township Committee unanimously approved a $1.1 million budget for the fire district, reducing the tax impact for the average homeowner to an additional $12 more for fire taxes in 2007 instead of the proposed $51 more per year.T

he Township Committee's car wash issue began in March when it voted 4-1 to introduce an ordinance that would permit car washes as permitted conditional uses in the highway commercial zones along Route 33 and Route 537. Abilheira cast the dissenting vote.

Before the committee had a second reading and public hearing on the ordinance, the township's Zoning Board ofAdjustment heard a presentation in June for an application to put a car wash, service area and warehouse on Route 537. However, the township's Environmental Commission wrote the mayor a letter discouraging such a use.

In response to the letter and after further discussion, the Township Committee ultimately voted 3-1 July 5 to table its car wash ordinance. Abilheira cast the dissenting vote and Committeeman Steve Sico did not attend the meeting.

When asked why he voted against tabling the ordinance, Abilheira said that the ordinance is clearly inconsistent with good planning and that it should be put to a vote.

With an indefinitely tabled car wash ordinance, the Zoning Board in August unanimously rejected the car wash application before it.

Since the Millstone Township School District's $30.3 million proposed budget for 2007-08 failed with voters in the April election, the Township Committee had to review the spending plan and decide whether to make cuts. Three additional questions on the ballot also

failed with the voters.

The Township Committee voted to restore

the budget and two of

the three other requests

for funding.

Whereas the committee

did not restore funding

for a full-day kindergarten program, it did vote for the addition of an applied technology teacher to the district at a cost of $69,781 and the purchase of language arts textbooks at a cost of $78,700.

Grbelja said at the time that the close vote in the election indicated to her that people wanted the township government to review the budget, which she did.

Abilheira said at that time that he had gone through the "inches of documents" the school district provided about the budget "with a fine-tooth comb." While he said he would have allocated some of the funds differently, he said, "I think I would violate the trust that residents put in me when I was elected if I [voted] to cut the budget. I think it would be harmful to the town."

At the April 18 Township Committee meeting, four members of the governing body unanimously voted to authorize the purchase of development rights easements for a 117-acre farmon Stagecoach Road and a 168-acre property on Battleground Road. Grbelja was not present at the meeting.

Also in April, the Township Committee proposed amunicipal budget thatwould not affect the tax rate. The $7.3 million budget amounted to an increase of $113,000 over the 2006-07municipal budget but used $2.8 million in surplus to keep the tax rate stable.

Abilheira had recommended cuts to the budget before it went to public hearing and cast the only vote against the spending plan when the rest of the committee later approved it.

"I never expected the Township Committee to fail to cut even a single penny from their own budget, given the fact the residents have sent a clear message [that] they want to see spending decrease, not increase," Abilheira said at that time. "I guess I was wrong."

An ongoing ethics issue since 2005 was put to rest onMay 17, when a three-person District IIIA Ethics Committee panel agreed to dismiss ethics charges against Abilheira after concluding that his actions during a May 25, 2005, Planning Board meeting did not constitute unethical conduct.

Resident Frank Geck had filed the ethics complaint and had alleged that Abilheira was responsible, in part, for the passage of some variances under consideration by the board and that Abilheira acted as an attorney representing a potential purchaser of the property that needed the variances in front of the board that evening.

The township revamped itsWeb site in June and got it up and running again after several months of downtime.

Another of Grbelja's goals for the year started to take shape when a township study concluded that the Lee farm on Red Valley Road, which the township purchased in 2007, could satisfy many of the community's future recreational needs.

The community celebrated the opening of its new middle school on Baird Road in September.

Referencing a recent demographic study and master plan changes that gave much of the township 6-acre and 10-acre zoning, Grbelja said that the number of children entering township schools would "greatly reduce" in upcoming years and that the school district could already absorb the number of children expected at build-out.

"With the opening of the middle school, that should be it," she said.

Also in September, the community celebrated the grand opening of the 25-acre Abate Park.

In October, the infighting that the beginning of the year seemed to hint at started to become apparent at Township Committee meetings. Grbelja accused Abilheira of spinning "numbers out of nowhere" when he alleged that the township would deplete its $1 million surplus this year based on the amount of debt it has issued.

Abilheira also alleged that the 9-cent tax rate could more than triple to 30 cents by 2010. DeputyMayor Kinsey askedAbilheira to provide an analysis to back up his allegations to other members of the governing body by Oct. 19, but Abilheira never did.

In November, Abilheira called for Millstone to adopt an ordinance regarding a more fair and open appointment process and alleged that the township's Republican County Executive Committee, under the auspices of Chairman Steve Lambros, had too much control over appointments in recent years.

Grbelja said that numerous discussions regarding the fair and open process had taken place and that recent modifications to the law have made it possible for the Township Committee to entertain such a resolution. However, by Dec. 31 the committee had not discussed the issue again.

Committeeman Ray Dilfanian resigned in December to focus on professional interests.

The car wash issue reared its head again in December when Rogan O'Donnell, the developer of the failed car wash proposal, alleged that Abilheira encouraged him and his father, who had been a tenant ofAbilheira's at one time, to go forward with the project in a 2006 meeting. O'Donnell and his business partner, Avinash Vashisht, also alleged that the Examiner once quoted Abilheira saying that Mayor Nancy Grbelja tried to get the car wash application approved for her friends.

However, Examiner staff could not locate such a statement in any past editions. The paper did quote Abilheira in the Nov. 15 edition saying that he did not agree with Grbelja and Deputy Mayor Bob Kinsey when "they both supported a proposed car wash plan that the township's Environmental Commission members deemed to be in clear violation of the master plan."

Kinsey asked, "You physically sat with Elias and he told you [that the project] was a good idea and [that] you should move forward with it?"

Whereas O'Donnell replied in the affirmative, Abilheira called the allegations untrue.

At the same meeting, Lambros asked Abilheira about comments he made to the Examiner regarding the RCEC controlling the appointment process for municipal positions. Abilheira told Lambros that he would love to comment on the article once he read it.

During that meeting, the mayor also related that she has not had a telephone conversation with Abilheira since October 2005.

"There's no communication," she said.

Abilheira told Kinsey to provide him with numbers regarding the surplus, and in response Kinsey reiterated that he had asked Abilheira to provide a context for the numbers he came up with. Kinsey also alleged that Abilheira does not have the numbers to back up his allegations.

"I'm getting fed up with the way you throw stuff at the wall to see what sticks," Kinsey said at that time. "You should apologize to the residents."

Abilheira did not attend the last meeting of the year on Dec. 20, when Lambros submitted the names of Chris Pepe, James Bell andMichael Kuczinski to the governing body as potential replacements for Dilfanian.