County contract appears imminent
By Audrey Levine, The Packet Group
ALLENTOWN Monmouth County is poised to award a $6.2 million contract to a Barnegat Township firm to rebuild the Main Street bridge as soon as the township accepts ownership of the Mill Pond dam as part of a county aid agreement to finance the project, according to a county official.
And the latter action could take place tonight.
”So long as the municipality takes the dam, there will be no cost to the taxpayers,” county Engineer Joe Ettore said this week. “The mayor will accept ownership of Mill Pond (dam), and the freeholders will then make the contract as opposed to the borough having a major outlay of money.”
According to Mr. Ettore, this kind of deal often is made between the county and smaller municipalities to prevent towns from having to raise millions of dollars for necessary bridge projects.
”The county understands that smaller municipalities have a difficult time raising the money,” he said.
As outlined in original plans for the bridge project, replacing the dam and the bridge spanning Doctors Creek along Route 524 was expected to cost about $6.2 million. Under the pending deal between the county and the town, Monmouth County would pay 95 percent of the cost with the balance paid with a grant from the state Department of Transportation, according to a county press release.
The borough would be required to pay for yearly maintenance of the dam, which will cost about $1,500, according to the release.
”And the life expectancy of the dam improvements (included in the $6.2 million project) is about 50 to 75 years,” Mr. Ettore said.
Without the agreement with the county, residents would have to shoulder about $1.5 million of the project cost, the release states.
The entire project is expected to take 18 to 24 months to complete, and the design of the new structure will maintain the historic nature of the town, with lighting, rails and stone facing reused from the current bridge.
While construction is being done, drivers would use the bridge while a temporary one is constructed and, once that is done within about three to four months, the contractor would work on the replacement bridge with traffic detoured to the temporary one.
In 2008, county officials awarded a $500,000 contract to French & Parello, of Wall Township, for designing the new bridge that will have two lanes with a pedestrian walkway.
Once Allentown accepts responsibility for the dam which could take place during tonight’s Borough Council meeting the county will award a contract to Midlantic Construction, which offered to do the project for $6,191,496, Mr. Ettore said.
The starting date for the project, Mr. Ettore said, has not yet been determined.
Mayor Stu Fierstein declined to comment on the matter because the pending agreement was expected to be discussed tonight in closed session.