Property owners in Princeton will not have to pay out of pocket for repairing the damage municipal tree roots cause to the sidewalks in front of their homes, officials have decided.
By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
Property owners in Princeton will not have to pay out of pocket for repairing the damage municipal tree roots cause to the sidewalks in front of their homes, officials have decided.
Instead, the town will pick up those costs, a policy that had been in place in the old borough but not in the former township.
On Tuesday, the Princeton Council introduced an ordinance to that effect.
”I believe that it’s important to have a commitment to safe sidewalks. We want to be a walkable community,” Mayor Liz Lempert told reporters earlier Tuesday in announcing her support for the measure.
She said there would be a priority list and plan for how the town goes about repairing damaged sidewalks, although work will not happen all at once. She warned of a “significant” backlog.
”Just like there’s some roads that are not in great condition that we have on a list to repair, the sidewalks are going to be treated the same way,” she said. “So once we adopt the policy, it doesn’t mean that public works is going to be able to be out there tomorrow fixing every sidewalk that’s been bumped up by a tree root.”
Mayor Lempert, an environmental advocate who favors transportation alternatives to using a car, said she felt it important that municipal spending match the town’s priorities. She said it made sense that a percentage of “transportation infrastructure expense” is spent on sidewalks.
This week’s ordinance is one example of officials trying to harmonize procedures that were different in the former municipalities when it came to damage by trees in the right of way.
The township required property owners to hire a contractor and pay for repairs, which could run roughly $120 to replace a sidewalk slab. The old borough, however, paid those costs.
Repairs typically consist of raising a piece of sidewalk slab, using equipment to shave down the tree roots and then relaying the slab, according to the town. Another method was to grind down the “lip,” or raised portion of the sidewalk. The borough used to spend $25,000 to $30,000 a year on such work.
Town Administrator Robert W. Bruschi said Tuesday the former borough had sidewalks on every street. On the other hand, the township had a lot of streets that didn’t and still don’t.
”So our town, the former borough, grew up with all these big trees, had sidewalks (and) had limited areas in which to put them. So it was a problem for us to deal with much earlier on than it was the township,” said Mr. Bruschi, the former borough administrator.
Asked why the former township did things differently, Mayor Lempert replied: “Just sometimes you have inertia, and I think that’s one of the great things about consolidation is that it shakes you out of that inertia.”
During 2013, the town said the policy was to charge people depending on where they lived. Residents of the old township still would have had to pay for repairs, while residents of the former borough wouldn’t.
Town engineer Robert Kiser said Thursday that he was not aware of any former township residents who had to pay for repairs entirely at their cost this year.
Mr. Bruschi also addressed the costs that the town would be incurring by assuming responsibility for the repairs.
”We’re assessing that,” he said. “It’s not necessarily the cost of taking it on so much as having a reasonable schedule in which to make the repairs.”
Money would have to be appropriated annually.
”We have to be reasonable in our appropriations to try to take on whatever the backlog is,” he said.