LAKEHURST – Borough officials lamented the gall of youthful vandals who damaged the bathrooms at Horicon Lake and ordered food at the site shortly afterwards.
“We had more vandalism at our bathrooms. It was rather substantial damage,” Councilman James Davis said.
Mayor Harry Robbins noted that this time, the vandals were caught on camera as the newly installed video cameras at the lake caught images of those responsible. Those images made the rounds of local social media and the suspects were found and identified. Several were juveniles.
“They busted in the door knobs. They were hanging out there probably overnight and they actually had DoorDash deliver to the bathroom. They were looking for some place warm. The garbage cans were full with sandwich wrappers, stuff like that, empty alcohol bottles. They made themselves at home,” the mayor added.
“There was one adult and there were minors. The police know exactly who they are. The police went to corral them up. It is a shame because a lot of people work hard for a long time to see bathrooms come here and for this to happen, it hurts,” he said.
“It is something we needed and the public should be grateful for. I’m grateful as it is certainly better than the crummy porta johns that we previously had to utilize. Thank god we have the cameras up there,” resident Bruce Morrison said.
Ordinance Work
In other council news, Councilwoman Patricia Hodges said “the ordinance committee has met several times. We are now working on the land use section.” She added that while work on codifying the borough’s ordinances is continuing, “we are still waiting for them (the firm handling that service) to address ordinances that we know need to be addressed and need to be revised. The work is progressing. I think the land use section may not be as onerous as we thought it might be.”
She noted that the borough’s finance committee would be meeting shortly and would be reviewing areas that would lead to the development of this year’s budget.
Fire Company Update
“I had a nice meeting with the fire company. They provided an extensive amount of information about fire coverage from last year. They gave me a nice breakdown and there was 70 responses that they were called for – 38% being related to incident responses, 20% being mutual aid responses out of town. Less than 10% were actual fires in our community,” Councilman Robert McCarthy said.
He also reported that radios and new extrication equipment were received by the department. Some of the goals for 2022 is the upgrade of some of the extrication equipment and recruitment of members.”
He said during the meeting an issue that extends beyond the borough and is a county issue was discussed. “It is taking up to six alarms and six different departments to attain 16 to 24 responders to work an actual structural fire. This is a problem across the entire county.”
“It ranges from fire to first aid as well,” McCarthy added. “We are working together to try and find a way to build our membership.” McCarthy said he would soon be meeting with the borough’s first aid captain, “to speak to him about the state of the First Aid Company.”
Lakehurst Centennial
Mayor Robbins said that two meetings were held for the borough’s delayed centennial celebration committee. The centennial was to be held two years ago but due to the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions it had to be cancelled. “Funding will determine whether the celebration will be either one- or two-day event.”
He invited those interested to come out to the next Centennial planning meeting which will be 6 p.m. on February 16 at the Lakehurst Community Center building. “We are planning for this celebration to be very special. We encourage people to come out and join us at the planning meetings.”
