A Quick History

 
Pennington is a wonderful town in Central New Jersey. Residents enjoy friendly neighbors, quality schools and the historic Main St. shopping district.

 
Pennington also has something that none of the other 566 municipalities in New Jersey have: garbage trucks on Main St. The Borough has built a maintenance facility, for the storage of garbage trucks and other equipment about 200 yards from the north entrance of town. As you enter town on Main St., Pennington’s two white garbage trucks greet residents and visitors. The Borough has made a half-hearted attempt to plant some trees on the property, but the garbage trucks and the words “Pennington Borough Sanitation” are clearly visible to all passersby.

Before the current garbage truck storage facility was built in 2007, all of Pennington’s equipment was stored on Broemel Place across the street from the U.S. Post Office. Planning for the move to Main St. goes back nearly a decade. To make a long story short the new location was picked because of its proximity to town and also because it was one of only a few locations where sufficient land was available for development.
 
In January 2009 I went to a Borough council meeting to ask the Borough to plant a fence of trees to obscure their garbage processing equipment from Main St. The council members said that they didn’t have enough money. However, at the same meeting they voted to authorize the borrowing of $170,000 for a new garbage truck!!!

 
The current situation

 So now Pennington has garbage trucks parked just off Main St. The Borough has planted a number of spruce trees on the property but the gaps between them are significant (see media section). The Borough has no plans that I know of to plant additional trees. Since the trees currently planted there have huge gaps between them and are very slow growing, by all indications Pennington will have garbage trucks on Main St. for the next several decades.