Sparta council split on financing for salt shed

SPARTA. The Township Council has declined to introduce an ordinance to issue about $2.16 million in bonds for construction of a salt shed at the township’s Department of Public Works facility.

Introduction required four votes; only three council members voted to it while Dan Chiariello and Molly Whilesmith voted no at the council meeting Nov. 22.

“You should consider whether everybody should be up to speed on the need and value of it,” Whilesmith said.

Acting Township Manager Neil Spidaletto said DPW Director James Zepp has been asking for a salt shed “for some time.”

One benefit of the shed would be that the township could buy salt before the winter and it would not have to buy salt from other municipalities, Spidaletto said..

“We’ve run into shortages over the years ... ,” he said. “If we have extra salt, we’ll be able to service other towns at a cost to them.”

Sam Rome, the township’s chief financial officer, said construction wouldn’t start until the spring and would take up to four months.

There have been years when Sparta paid Sussex County to store salt for it in Lafayette because it didn’t have enough room, Rome said.

“This is something that the DPW has been asking for for years,” Deputy Mayor Josh Hertzberg said. “And in the last couple of winters, we have run out of salt because we didn’t have enough storage, and townships end up fighting for salt at that point.”