Lawrence Council Decides to Keep Bergen St. Lines, Adopts Ordinance Authorizing 2-Year Mayoral Term

The new travel lane striping, other painted road markings and traffic signs installed along the recently-repaved section of Bergen Street, between Lawrenceville-Pennington Road and Cold Soil Road, will remain in place, Lawrence Township Council members decided at their meeting Tuesday night (Nov. 1).

During the meeting, township council also adopted an ordinance that amends the township administrative code to extend the term of mayor from one year to two years.

It was also noted during the meeting that the deadline for contractors to submit bids for work to remove mold and make repair to the Lawrence Road Fire Co. firehouse had passed without any bids being submitted, and that the township emergency medical services building – to which voting for the Nov. 8 general election has been moved due to the mold problem at the firehouse – will be inspected again tomorrow (Friday) by an exterminator to ensure that an earlier bed bug problem there does not pose a hazard to voters.

Bergen Street   

In making the decision about Bergen Street, township council put to rest a debate has raged since about the new markings and demanded they be removed.

The new markings – a double yellow line painted down the center of Bergen Street, white lines denoting wide shoulders on both sides of the road, pedestrian crosswalks and other lines and signage – are the result of the Complete Streets policy the township adopted last year as modeled on the national Complete Streets initiative. One of the goals of the Complete Streets program is to make roadways safer for pedestrians and bicyclists.

As happened during the meetings on and , people on both sides of the debate appeared before council Tuesday night to plead their case. Council members sat patiently through another hour’s worth of testimony from several residents – some of whom had spoken at previous meetings – who said they believe the new traffic markings have made Bergen Street unsafe and visually unappealing, jeopardizing both public safety and their homes’ property values.

One resident, echoing the comments of others who appeared at the earlier meetings, said he now feels safer with the lines in place.

(Audio of the complete meeting can be listened to from the media box above.)

Township Manager Richard Krawczun, during the Oct. 18 meeting, explained it that would cost about $10,000 to either paint over the yellow and white lines with black paint or to physically grind away the lines. To use a jet of water to “hydroblast” the lines away would cost about $20,000, he said. Each option would result in some damage and/or leave a “visual impact” to the road surface, he said.

Krawczun also noted at the Oct. 4 meeting that if the new markings were removed it is possible that the township would have to forfeit a portion of the it received to help pay for the of Bergen Street.  

After everyone in the audience wishing to do so had spoken Tuesday night, Mayor Greg Puliti asked council members to offer their opinions.

Councilman Bob Bostock, the lone Republican on the five-person council, said it was his opinion that the new markings look out of place and “were incorrectly applied” to Bergen Street. Township police department statistics – released at the Oct. 18 meeting – show no accidents between vehicles and pedestrians or bicyclists on Bergen Street since at least 2002 and “suggest the road was safe as it was,” he said.

“I think that striping this road in the way it was striped was a mistake and I think we ought to fix it. I think we ought to take the stripes up. It was not a safety issue, if you look at the statistics. Some people may feel a little safer because there are white lines there. I don’t think it provides any actual additional measure of safety. So I think this was a mistake in incorrectly applying the concepts of Complete Streets and we ought to fix it,” Bostock said.

But his peers on council disagreed, citing public safety as the main reason the lines should remain in place.

“People are speeding on Bergen Street, and that is a recipe for disaster,” Councilman Michael Powers said. “It’s been noted that nobody’s been hit and nobody’s been killed on Bergen Street. But the fact that you’ve walked through a mine field and haven’t hit a land mine doesn’t make it a safe area… My job as a councilman is to make the community safer. Will signs and road paint make Bergen Street safe so that no one gets hurt, no one gets kill? No, I can’t guarantee that. But my question as a councilman [is] ‘Does the signage, does the double-yellow line make the road safer?’ And statistically, what I’ve been told by the professionals, [is that] narrower streets slow traffic down…”

“The idea of doing of doing Complete Streets on Bergen was not something that was dreamed up out of the blue with no consideration,” Councilwoman Pam Mount said. “The Sustainable Mobility Committee went to many conferences, I went to many conferences, we talked to many experts, we went to the planning board, we had Power Point presentations… This is not just a plight for Bergen Street. This is an idea about trying to make all of Lawrence Township a place where people can walk their children to school, their kids when they are older can ride their bikes… Change is tough, I understand that. But we are trying really, really hard to make sure this town will be sustainable and livable and safe for everyone.”

“We do things as a council, as a whole, for the safety of the town. I did go up to Bergen Street tonight and I sat there for half an hour,” Mayor Greg Puliti said, relating that the behavior of the motorists, joggers, and at least one bicyclist that he saw between 6 and 6:30 p.m. Tuesday makes him believe that the lines have had a positive effect on safety in the area.

He suggested that people will come to accept the lines on Bergen Street over time. He recalled how, years ago, many township residents “hated” the speed humps the township installed on some roads; yet now the speed humps are recognized as a successful way of slowing down vehicles.

Councilman Jim Kownacki, as did the others, suggested that the township police look at ways to better enforce the speed limit on Bergen Street to further encourage motorists to slow down.

Council agreed to direct the township planning board to review Bergen Street’s status as a “collector street” – a point of contention during earlier meetings – and asked Township Manager Krawczun to obtain additional details about possibly installing speed humps on Bergen Street, including consulting with Township Engineer James Parvesse to determine how many speed humps would be necessary and where exactly they would need to be installed on Bergen Street.

Mayoral Term

The ordinance amending the mayor’s term under the township administrative code was passed 4-1, with Powers casting the lone no vote. At the Oct. 18 meeting, without council first obtaining input from residents. 

The adopted ordinance eliminates the annual reorganization of council following non-election years. Reorganization of the council is now limited to the Jan. 1 following election years, with council members selecting one member to serve as mayor for two years.

With three four-year council seats up for grabs in next week’s general election, such a reorganization will take place on Jan. 1, 2012. With no election during 2012, no reorganization will take place in January 2013. The next reorganization will, instead, take place on Jan. 1, 2014, following the filling of two council seats in the November 2013 election.

Powers noted he had consulted the Lawrence Township chapter of the League of Women Voters for its opinion on the change from a one-year to a two-year mayoral term. “The chair [of the league’s governance committee] advised that they were not taking a position on this. They felt it was in the purview of the council. They will continue to monitor,” he said.

Mold and Bed Bugs

Responding to questions from a member of the public, Krawczun during Tuesday’s meeting addressed the issues of the next door on Pilla Avenue.

With the hall of the firehouse in the 1200 block of Route 206 currently closed due to mold contamination, , which itself had a bed bug problem in late September.

 “I just want to know that they [the bed bugs] are cleared up if I’m going there to vote. I don’t want to bring these little bed bugs back to my house,” Linda Dlabik asked.  

“We have treated [the EMS building],” Krawczun answered. “The problem was concentrated to a lounge area. There was an exposure, not an infestation. There’s a difference. There was [also] an exposure in a locker room. The locker room was treated with carbon dioxide, where it freezes them. We have scheduled the exterminator to come back on Friday [Nov. 4] to make certain that there’s no evidence of additional presence of bed bugs. If there are, that will give us ample time to treat again.”

Furniture in the EMS building’s lounge that was affected by the bed bugs has been thrown out, Krawczun said.

As for the request for bids that the township put out for “mold remediation, repair and waterproof sealing of damaged exterior stucco and installation of new interior wallboard at the Lawrence Road firehouse,” Krawczun said that “three bidders picked up [specification] packages [but] no one submitted a bid.”

He said the township would be issuing a second request for bids. Should no one again submit a bid or bids come back higher than expected, the township legally can then negotiate a contract with a contractor to do the necessary work.

Other News

Also at the meeting Tuesday night, council introduced an ordinance concerning the licensing of pawn shops and other businesses involved in the purchase of precious metals, gems and previously-owned jewelry.

In his pre-meeting memo to council, Krawczun explained that the ordinance will, if adopted at a subsequent meeting, “now cause to be required: a license to conduct such business, a fee for the license of $250 for the initial application and an annual renewal fee of $50, a police background investigation of the applicant, proof of identity with a valid state or federal photo identification from a person selling regulated items to a licensed business, record keeping standards, the licensee must be bonded and that all regulated items purchased or traded by the licensee must be held for no less than 10 days from the date of the transaction or three business days from the delivery of records to Lawrence police.”

“This would be a tool to help police, to be consistent with some of the surrounding communities, so that in the event that there were any items suspect of whether or not they were stolen, of if things are stolen, this might be an opportunity to speak to these licensees to see if someone has come in and traded or sold these items and there would be a record of who that was and where they came from. So we thought this was helpful to the police department,” Krawczun told council.

Council Tuesday night also approved three bid awards:

• $11,492.20 to Traffic Lines Inc. of Farmingdale for painting of parking spaces at the municipal building, painting of warning “diamonds” associated with speed humps and painting of other road markings not associated with the “Complete Streets” program;
• $17,770 to RDA Construction Co. of Medford for the re-decking of the existing pedestrian bridge near the dam at Colonial Lake; and
• Up to $10,000 – billed in increments of $210 per hour per truck – to Armando’s Construction of Ewing for snow plowing services, if and as needed, to supplement the township’s full-time public works staff.

Council also approved the cancellation of the council meeting scheduled for Tuesday, Nov. 22. As a result, the next council meeting will be held at the municipal building at 7 p.m. on Dec. 6.