Township animal shelter bids come back too high
BY PATRICIA A. MILLER
Staff Writer

WOODBRIDGE - Plans for a much-needed permanent township animal shelter hit another snag recently, officials said.

The most recent round of bids in September came in over the roughly $850,000 set aside to build the new shelter, said township purchasing agent Marianne Horda.

The lowest bid received in September was $1,046,000. The highest bid was $1.2 million, Horda said.

The township readvertised for the shelter recently, but took a different tack this time, she said.

"We gave an alternate bid," she said, "if some vendor just wants to do the site work, or the building or the lump sum."

The new bids will be opened on Friday, Horda said.

State Sen. and interim Mayor Joseph F. Vitale said he was "surprised and disappointed" the latest bids were still too high.

"The bids were higher than we had anticipated and were willing to accept in terms of costs," he said. "We have asked our planner to provide some guidance ... to see if we can ratchet back the costs without undermining the building."

The township had planned to award the bids for the shelter on Sept. 26 and possibly begin construction by the end of October.

The new shelter will replace the "temporary" 5-year-old shelter that sits in the middle of old tank farms and the collapsing buildings of an old arsenic-producing chemical plant in Sewaren.

The current shelter houses up to 12 dogs and 30 cats. The state Office of Animal Welfare found 20 violations over a seven-month period in 2005. The state did not levy any fines back then because then-Mayor Frank G. Pelzman, who died on June 29, had pledged to have a new shelter up and running by 2006.

The new shelter will be "state of the art" and will include an air-exchange system to keep it fresh and prevent airborne illnesses, Vitale has said.

The new facility will have 18 dog runs, 40 to 50 spaces for cats, temporary cages, and storage facilities, officials have said.

"We should get the proposals back within the week," Vitale said. "Then we can just move forward."