FOR
IMMEDIATE RELEASE FROM HOWELL MAYOR JOSEPH M. DIBELLA
Contact:
Joseph
M. DiBella, Mayor
1-732-938-4500
MayorDiBella@twp.howell.nj.us
www.MayorDiBella.com
September
24, 2006
Road
Improvements
Recently
former Mayor Timothy Konpoka took issue with my criticisms of how the Township
did not have a maintenance plan for or make adequate investments in road
improvements in
Howell
Township
. I regret that former Mayor Konopka took such offense to my factual statements.
I was even more disturbed when he used “Nazi “references in his newspaper
letters while complaining about my remarks. References and comparisons to the
Nazi party are inappropriate, hurtful to many and frankly inexcusable. I feel
badly that former Mayor Konopka’s administration remains under criminal
investigation related to the horrible “zoning for dollars’’ scandal that
will bring us 500 homes along Rt. 33. The
County
Prosecutor
’s office contends the matter remains under investigation and I wish the
former Mayor well and hope and pray he had no direct hand in this terrible mess.
Regarding
the conditions of our roads, I stand by my position that roads all over the
Township are in terrible shape. Not a day goes by when I am not contacted
by a resident pleading for help with their road. We regularly get complaints
about roads that have not been paved in 20 or 30 years, massive pot holes,
crumbling curbs and in some cases, sink holes. The fact is that the Township did
not have a Road Maintenance Plan (Source:
Howell Township Engineering Department)
and so as a result we had no way to determine what roads to maintain, fix or
repair and when. It is my position that because of this lack of planning and
preparation, we are now paying an ever steeper price in getting our roads up to
satisfactory condition. I am sorry that the former Mayor takes issue with this
matter, but the facts are that we need to learn a valuable lesson from this poor
planning. That is, we need to have strategies and master-plans for major matters
like road maintenance and other costly matters related to our infrastructure.
Had we had a plan for most of the mid 1990s to the early part of new Century, we
would not be so behind the way we are now.
To
support the notion that our roads were largely ignored and that we had no plan,
I did some additional research to determine how many miles of road we had
serviced over the past several years. To put this on perspective, Howell has
nearly 200 miles of road.
·
In
1997 we paved only 11 miles of road;
·
In
1998 we paved only 5 miles of road;
·
In
1999 we paved only 3 miles of road
·
In
2000 we paved no roads at all;
·
In
2001 we paved only 3 miles of road, and;
·
In
2002 we paved on 2 miles of road
(Source:
Township Engineer’s Report)
Over
a 6 year period, the Township paved less than 25 miles of road or a measly 4
miles of road per year. This was unacceptable and because we had no maintenance
plan, we are now forced to play an expensive game of “catch up”. The
Solution? Thankfully in 2003 we started to make major investments in our roads
again. We also designed a Road Maintenance Plan that addresses every road in
Howell
Township
. We did not have the manpower, technology or resources in-house to conduct such
an exhaustive analysis. So, we competitively bid the work and hired an expert
form that analyzed every road in town, taking into consideration usage,
functional conditions and other structural matters that are crucial to measuring
roadway needs. We have used that document to determine what roads to pave and in
what order. This way we can at least ensure fairness when paving roads going
forward. Catching up will take some time but now we have a plan that we need to
stick too. We also now have resources to fix pot holes and curbs as well; and
while not to the degree we’d like we have made important steps to start
finally addressing this problem.
All
told from 2003 to the present (less than 4 years) we have allocated funds to
pave more roads than the Township did for a six year period from 1997 – 2002.
Maintaining our roads is an important responsibility the Township bears and it
is one that we must remain committed too. We all pay entirely too much in taxes
in this State and the least we deserve is well maintained roads. While we have a
lot of catching up to do, I feel we now have a plan and that we’ll be much
better positioned to ensure we do not repeat the mistakes of the past.
If
I can be of any assistance to you on this or any issue, please contact me by
phone or at MayorDiBella@twp.howell.nj.us.
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