Kiwanis June 19 Program: Vincent J. DeNave, Chatham Borough Engineer, spoke on Zoning, other activities.

Herb Ramo (L) introduced Vincent J. DeNave, Chatham Borough Engineer at the June 19 Kiwanis breakfast meeting. Vincent became Borough Engineer five and a half years ago and is temporarily serving as acting Administrator while Bob Falzarano recovers from a serious accident.  Right now, Vincent gets involved with a little bit of everything that happens in Borough Hall. He is also the Zoning Officer and sits on the Planning Board.

A Civil Engineer, he likes to work on projects which build permanent things.  Chatham Borough really works with residents to meet their needs. Time is spent with residents to understand their issues.  One of his first Chatham projects was the Streetscape project. Cory Fuller was passionate about this project and was very supportive. Five years later it still looks good. It looks so pretty that film crews like to shoot commercials downtown.
 
More recently, Vincent worked on the Memorial Park swimming pool redesign. Before it was reconstructed, the pool always lost money. Now, income has more than doubled and the pool more than breaks even, a success story.

The 26 miles of roads in the Borough have to be maintained. Very old trees have caused sidewalks to raise and break. Summer interns are doing a complete inventory of sidewalks and a plan will be created to solve the problem.

As Zoning Officer, Vincent enforces the Chatham Property Maintenance Ordinance.  For example, a fence might fall down and not be fixed. Most enforcement is driven by complaints. Usually, sending a letter to the homeowner will get the issue resolved. He is also working on a new ordinance to control nuisance lighting (high intensity and glare).

Vincent said that an application has been approved by the planning board for establishing a KinderCare facility at the Parrot Mill. Click here to read Chatham Patch article regarding Parrot Mill project.