Plainfield City Council takes up road repairs, charter revisions, redevelopment Monday

Back in the day (this was Kenyon Avenue in 2007)
the city did curbs and aprons as well as mill and pave.
You can see from the 2007 list (here) that we are getting
many more roads done by skipping the curbs and aprons.

Plainfield City Council meets in a combined agenda/business meeting Monday (July 9) aat 7:00 PM.

While the agenda is not terribly long, there are three important items --

CHARTER REVISION DISCUSSION

Council President McRae has put a discussion item on the agenda concerning restructuring city government per proposed charter changes.

A charter study commission was elected by the voters several years ago and submitted its recommendations to City Council in 2014. The Council adopted them and submitted them as a petition to the Legislture that same year.

And there things sat until recently.

Since Assemblyman Jerry Green's passing things have begun to move forward.

Charter Study chairperson Mary Burgwinkle has been following the bill's progress and noted that some changes to the recommendations were mysteriously made somewhere along the line. She wrote about the matter in an OpEd in the Courier titled "Plainfield charter bill veers from recommendations" which you can read here.

Bottom line is the changed bill allows for UP TO five new departments and a total of TEN CONFIDENTIAL AIDES. (Confidential aides are most often patronage appointments; they are outside the civil service system and those employees are not union members -- though they benefit from contract provisions.)

ROAD IMPROVEMENTS

There is a Bond Ordinance (Bond 1264) calling for $4,158,000 for road improvements.

Here is a list (alphabetized by moi) of the proposed streets --

• Arlington Avenue
• Bergen Street
• Brentwood Terrace
• Charlotte Road
• Glenwood Avenue
• Halsey Street
• Hazelwood Terrace
• Hollywood Avenue
• Lake Street
• Laramie Road
• Lee Place
• Maltby Avenue
• Manson Place
• Martine Avenue
• Mayfair Avenue
• McDowell Street
• Morris Street
• Oakland Avenue
• Oakwood Road
• Prescott Place
• Rahway Road
• Reeve Terrace
• Sherman Avenue
• Spooner Avenue
• Spring Street
• Sumner Avenue
• West 3rd Street
• West 5th Street
• West 9th Street

Some of the work is already done or currently under way.

The one surprise to me is the inclusion of Spring Street. This is a very short unpaved dead end street off Lake Street with only one house on it (which I nearly sold to a Ledger reporter many years ago; she bought on Lake Street instead).

Portions of the bond issue will also be used for painting and floor repairs to the Senior Center ($108,000), facade and step repairs for the Plainfield Public Library ($200,000) and rehab and repairs at the Drake House ($20,000).

REDEVELOPMENT

The Council is directing the Planning Board to re-examine the TODD (Transit Oriented Development) plan for the downtown block bounded by West Front/Central Avenue/West 2nd/Madison Avenue and present their recommendation to the Council.

This probably signifies a developer is in the wings and ready to make a move. This block has been lusted after by various developers for many years.

City Council's combined session begins at 7:00 PM in the Council Chambers / Courthouse at Watchung Avenue and East 4th Street. Parking on the street or in the lot across from Police Headquarters.

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 -- Dan Damon [ follow ]

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