Cranbury Township officials are able to address other various road projects in town due to the reconstruction of Brick Yard Road being covered through grants and agreements.
Officials are set to hold a final public hearing on Oct. 28 on an ordinance that would reappropriate $387,840 in funds set aside for Brick Yard Road. The funds are now not needed for the reconstruction of Brick Yard Road and can be used for other road projects in Cranbury.
“The funds were dedicated to Brick Yard Road, but since we received the grants we can now use that money that we had allocated to that road for other various road repairs,” Cranbury Mayor James Taylor said. “Basically what we are doing is moving from a specific accounting line to a general roads line.”
He said the funds enable the township to address road repairs for Nicola Court and Cranbury Green.
“Nicola Court is in disrepair; we will be doing some fixes there. Cranbury Green has a variety of roads in the development that will be repaired. If we need it for the Plainsboro Road drainage project we can use the money there as well and drawn down on the money until it is gone,” Taylor said.
This past July, Cranbury was awarded a $1 million grant from the New Jersey Department of Transportation (DOT)’s Local Freight Impact Fund. The township stated that it would use the money to widen Brick Yard Road. The received grant added to a previous $570,000 grant that officials received earlier this year from the NJDOT. In total, the township has stated it has $1.57 million from grants set aside for the project.
“Getting the grants was huge. We have about $11 million worth of road repairs that are out there right now that have to be addressed from now until five or six years,” Taylor said. “For Nicola and Cranbury Green we can do those repairs that keep those roads going much longer, which means we do not have to do full road paving. We can save the taxpayers quite a bit of money.”
The township, on top of the grants, has also received $750,000 in agreements with the developer, Veridan. Veridan was the firm that also constructed the Amazon and Wayfair facilities in Cranbury.
“There are a number of roads with some big ticket road items that we could not address with the re-appropriated money. We will have to apply for a grant for those,” Taylor said. “The grants we have received exemplify what we have been trying to do over the last 10 years in being fiscally responsible. We have the residents financial interest at heart.”