By JACQUELINE DURETT
Correspondent
EDISON — Amboy Avenue was front and center at the Jan. 25 Township Council meeting.
The condition of the road surface has been an ongoing resident concern at council meetings. Township Engineer Mark Kataryniak gave a presentation about the status of Amboy Avenue and its surrounding streets at the meeting.
He said the county was scheduled to repave Amboy Avenue last fall, but delayed the work because Middlesex Water was replacing water mains. That work is now complete, and Middlesex Water had intended to repave this spring.
However, Amboy Avenue and its side streets will get worse before they get better — next month Elizabethtown Gas is slated to start a six-month project constructing gas lines in the neighborhood. Kataryniak said Elizabethtown is in the process of notifying residents affected by the work.
The township asked Middlesex Water to hold off on repaving until the gas company completed its work.
Kataryniak said that since there is about a 50 percent overlap between the project areas for both utilities, now Middlesex Water and Elizabethtown Gas will be responsible for the cost and labor for curb-to-curb resurfacing for the impacted side streets.
“I’m working with the gas company and the water company to share the load on the road restoration,” he said.
The county will handle Amboy Avenue’s resurfacing once all the work is done.
Kataryniak said that in the end Amboy Avenue area residents and businesses will have repaved roads as well as access to new gas and water mains “at no cost to the township.”
Whether the side street paving will be done at once or in stages has not been decided, but the township has little say in that process, Kataryniak said.
“I’m just hoping we don’t have to go through another winter without having the roads done again,” Councilman Leonard Sendelsky said.
Kataryniak said he felt all the work would be done in 2017, although it would likely extend into the fall.
At the meeting, the council also unanimously advanced plans to spend $50,000 on a feasibility study on constructing a parking deck on Amboy Avenue. A public hearing will be held on Feb. 8.
Clara Barton Neighborhood Preservation Committee Vice Chairman Esther Nemitz said she was unhappy with the timing of the effort, since the ordinance was a late addition to the agenda.
“You’ve managed to put this on in such a way that it falls in between the meetings of the Clara Barton Neighborhood Preservation Committee,” she said, “and your hearing is going to be before our next meeting, so we’re not going to have a chance to even discuss it or to find out about it in time for us to talk about it in Clara Barton. And I’m a little upset about that.”
She said she felt that Clara Barton residents should have been notified of the project.
“I don’t think that we’re being treated properly,” she said.
The ordinance does not specify who is doing the study.