A HIDDEN MUNICIPAL RESOURCE
Are you aware that some townships offer free compost to their residents? Towns like Lawrence, NJ which notifies its residents on their website. Does Mount Holly offer free compost? It does, but nobody knows because it is not advertised anywhere. I’ve looked in vain on our web page and debated the issue with our current Mayor Banks. He agreed that the Township could do more to let residents know about it.
I will return to the issue of Mount Holly’s failure to inform its residents at the end of this article. First, I will describe what I know about the compost and how I came to know it.
I was appointed to the Mount Holly Environmental Committee a some years back and when our committee created a “pollinator garden” on High Street, I was told that Public Works would deliver a load of compost to the site. As we spread the compost I noticed that it was a lovely rich leaf compost, made of leaves collected from our streets in the Fall. There were occasional bits of shredded plastic from bottles sucked up by that Public Work’s “Vac Truck”. But otherwise, the compost seemed to be high quality.
Eventually, Public Works gave me the lock combination and permission to enter the composting facility at the end of Herald Avenue. When I visited I was impressed by the size of the operation and its numerous, giant rows of ground leaves. The image below with the adjacent homes gives you a sense of its size.
More impressive was the giant pile of finished compost about 10 high and maybe 30 feet long. It was curved and largely covered by weeds, so it was hard to estimate size, but I believe it contained more than 600 cubic yards of high-quality compost.
INQUIRY LEADS TO ADVERSARIAL EXCHANGES
During 2022, I inquired with Township Council whether the compost was being made available to residents. They did not know and said “We will get back to you”.
I did not wait for Council’s response but instead inquired directly with the professionals who administer our contracts: the Manager and the Clerk. The Clerk had previously told me that one difficulty in getting compost to residents is that the Public Works Department has difficulty fitting the task of transporting the compost into their busy schedule.
But once I obtained the compost contract, it seemed to indicate that it was the vendor that had to deal with Mount Holly’s “5,000 cubic yards” of leaves and its resulting compost. The contract was not an easy read. The lawyerly language referred to an “Off Site facility” and referenced other documents that set the guidelines for how residents would be allowed access to the free compost.
When I tried to get clarity on these things, the Township Clerk responded that the contract “does not specify who delivers the compost, nor does it specify how much” and that the referenced documents did not exist.
But that was not true. They did exist and so I pressed the Clerk to provide them:
“The 4/20/21 RFP and the 5/4/2021 "exceptions" letter are incorporated into the contract at Section 1.3 by reference.”
She provided the requested document but also took the opportunity to say I was wasting her time.
RFP REVEALS INTENT OF COMPOST CONTRACT
It turns out that the “Request for Proposal” [RFP] proved the Vendor was responsible for providing compost to residents, not our public works department as I was led to believe.
At "Operational Instruction" on page 13, the RFP stated that:
"The Vendor shall provide public access of processed materials including mulch and topsoil
available to Mount Holly residents for their own personal and private use at no charge."
I wrote to the Mayor recommending that the Twp enforce this contract provision on the vendor and cease asking Public Works to transport compost to the park. Additionally, since the vast majority of residents do not know we offer free compost, I recommended that we get the word out on the webpage and perhaps in a MUA bill.
MAYOR BANKS RESPONDS TO MY SUGGESTIONS
At the next Council meeting I asked for a response to my suggestions and Mayor Banks took that opportunity to play Prosecutor. He asked if any compost was available in Iron Works Park.
I responded that it was a pathetically small amount that could serve one or two people at most and that nobody even knows it exists. To which the Mayor responded:
“Can you get compost in the park, Yes Or No??”
Mount Holly’s “Free Compost” is a tiny weed-covered pile at the rear of Iron Works Park near the boat launch. At least it was a couple months ago when I last checked. To the best of my knowledge, the township has made no effort to inform residents about this resource, despite acknowledgment from the Mayor that they should.
If you want compost, I suggest that you write to our Township Manager Josh Brown jbrown@twp.mountholly.nj.us and ask whether or not the pile has been replenished. Let me know what kind of response you receive. nick.sodano@verizon.net