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Byram Council to introduce capital ordinance after USDA grant hurdles for municipal building
Summary
Township officials agreed to introduce a capital ordinance June 16 to fund work needed for a stalled USDA grant for the municipal building after discovering the site sits in the Lubbers Run 100-year floodplain; immediate costs include an environmental report ($5,000) and a Phase I site assessment (about $5,000), with floodproofing potentially adding $50,000 or more.
Township Manager Joseph Sabatini told the Byram Township Council on May 19 that efforts to secure a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) grant for work at the municipal building "are not going well" and will require further funding and studies. Sabatini said the township needs about $5,000 to prepare the Environmental Report required for the grant and an additional roughly $5,000 for a Phase I environmental site assessment.
Sabatini added that existing 100-year floodplain maps for Lubbers Run place the municipal building inside the floodplain, which would trigger floodproofing requirements. "The 100-year flood plan associated with Lubbers Run will find that the entire Municipal Building will be located within the 100-year flood plain," he said, and noted that meeting elevation and floodproofing standards — roughly three to four feet of elevation — would likely increase construction costs by more than $50,000 and might not guarantee the building is fully outside the flood limits.
Mayor Rubenstein asked staff to check soil borings completed in 2020 before ordering new tests. Sabatini said the township engineer submitted a memo outlining the scope of work for the Environmental Report on May 19 and that a capital ordinance would be required to fund the necessary steps.
The council reached consensus to move forward and requested that a capital ordinance be introduced at the June 16 meeting to cover the next phases of work. The motion to pursue the ordinance was recorded as the council consensus; no formal vote on construction or project approval was taken that night.
Context and next steps: the staff estimates described to the council cover only preliminary environmental and engineering steps needed to advance the USDA application. The $5,000 Environmental Report estimate does not include the building-specific environmental review nor the Phase I site assessment, which Sabatini estimated separately at about $5,000. If officials move ahead with design or construction changes required by floodplain rules, costs for floodproofing or elevating improvements could exceed the preliminary estimates and will require separate capital appropriation and further council approvals.
