By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
Princeton officials will delay completing the reconstruction of Valley Road so not to defy Gov. Chris Christie’s shutdown order for projects that get state funding from the depleted Transportation Trust Fund.
The town this week indicated it did not want do anything that might jeopardize losing a roughly $282,000 grant from the Department of Transportation for the project.
“So I think as this point, we recommend that we close the project down until the Transportation Trust Fund and the shutdown order are rescinded,” town engineer Deanna Stockton told council members at their meeting Monday.
The town this week said the last piece of the job involved the final layer of paving of the road. On Monday, Mayor Liz Lempert warned that delaying that work involved risks.
“So if we don’t do that and wait until there’s the money, which I assume would be in the spring when we’d be able to act on it,” she said, “we risk there being damage to the subsurface of the road, which would be left exposed especially if we have a really harsh winter.”
She said a delay also means running the risk of escalating labor and asphalt costs. But at the same time, officials did not want to run afoul the Christie administration.
At the end of June, Gov. Christie issued an executive order halting any state-funded road and bridge projects, given the inability of lawmakers to agree on a funding source for the depleted trust find. Princeton officials got legal advice that the governor’s edict was unambiguous.
“In reading the governor’s executive order, it’s really clear there can be no work done that involves those monies,” town attorney Trishka W. Cecil told the council at the meeting. “We can’t use that money.”
The town, however, did some work on the portion of the project that was not funded by the Transportation Trust Fund.
In terms of the impact on Valley Road, Mayor Lempert estimated there is about seven to eight weeks left in the year when work can be finished, for a project that was due to be completed in August.
Mercer County officials have filed a notice of claim, a legal first step toward suing the state, over a shutdown order that is delaying road and bridge projects. County Executive Brian M. Hughes said last week the county took that step because it believes the state “breached its contractual obligations” by not providing the funds.
