Bordentown City officials have scheduled a public meeting to discuss planned road work for West Street.
After municipal officials announced earlier this year that the city received a grant from the state for road paving to be completed on West Street, a public meeting is scheduled for Sept. 4, when residents will be encouraged to attend and field questions, comments or concerns about the project.
The meeting is planned to take place at the Carslake Community Center on 209 Crosswicks Road, Bordentown, at 7 p.m.
Prior to the meeting, Bordentown City Commissioner Joe Myers announced at an Aug. 12 meeting that the municipality had received funding for the project through a New Jersey Department of Transportation (DOT) grant and anticipate to host a public hearing for residents to discuss any matters associated with the road paving.
The West Street Paving project comes off the heels of additional road work, which was initiated this summer on 2nd Street. Municipal officials announced in May that the city applied for a competitive grant to the DOT and was awarded $240,000 to repave 2nd Street.
Myers explained that the scope of the road paving project for West Street is planned to include underground work, too. The road is also planned to include Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) compliant upgrades as well, according to city officials.
“Every year, we apply for roads either for resurfacing, which is what we just did with 2nd Street, and then, what we try and do is replace utilities while we are doing that,” Myers explained. “When you are ripping up the roads, the intent is that you want to upgrade the utilities too.
“If you drive down West Street right now, the pavement conditions of the road are very poor. At a minimum, we want to repave that, but we also want to improve the ADA access at the crosswalks. We also want to rebuild certain sections of sidewalks and curbs that are damaged that may or may not be contributing to flooding,” Myers said.
The City Commissioner said that the after the municipality applied for the DOT grant last year and then, received the funding for the West Street, officials wanted to be more transparent and open to the public in advance of the project.
Before the municipality completes a final design for the project, Myers explained that he wants more public participation on the matter before it is sent out to bid.
“I think people understand the nuances of road reconstruction, so what we want to do is before we even start design, we want to have a community meeting to hear from the residents about issues on the street whether it’s potholes, flooding, sinkholes, parking or striping,” he said. “Whatever it is, we want to collect that information, so that when we hire our engineer to design the road, we can give [them] that information, so that they are fully informed when they design the project, and then we would go out to bid.”
Myers also noted that the water services beneath the road would be examined as well as part of a DEP mandated Corrective Action Plan given the municipality’s efforts to address ongoing concerns of lead exceedances reported in multiple homeowner’s drinking water. Officials said that the purpose of this plan is to take an inventory and capital assessment of its water utilities.
“As part of that plan, we committed to rebuild the water main and the lateral. When you look at the roads, you want to look at the above ground conditions, which are the pavement, sidewalks and curbs, and you want to look at the underground conditions, which is basically the water,” Myers said.