South Amboy to add parking near Broadway

SOUTH AMBOY — City officials are moving ahead with efforts to improve downtown parking.

A $260,000 Transit Village grant from the state Department of Transportation (DOT) will provide 35 new spots in the Broadway area, and the DOT has recently given the city the green light to solicit bids on the project, Mayor John O’Leary said at the June 16 City Council meeting.

“It will go a very long way in expanding parking opportunities for our residents,” O’Leary said.

Existing downtown parking spaces will be evaluated as to whether their current restrictions will still be appropriate once the new spaces are created, he said.

Anote posted on the city’s website indicates the city was looking at 25 new spaces.

“Since I posted the letter, we were able to create additional spaces,” Business Administrator Camille Tooker said after last week’s meeting.

Resident Stanley Jankowski asked where the new spaces would be located, and O’Leary said they would be on the dead-end streets that cross Broadway.

The city applied for the Transit Village grant about a year ago and announced that it had received it in January.

Officials have also held discussions with NJ Transit about the potential addition of hundreds of new parking spots near the newly expanded train station, O’Leary announced at the meeting.

Jankowski asked for more information on that parking lot, but O’Leary said nothing has been finalized.

“It’s been a long haul with [NJ] Transit,” he said.

In other council news, officials are getting closer to adopting the 2010 municipal budget.

The state Department of Community Affairs (DCA) sent its comments back regarding the introduced budget, Tooker said. The DCA asked for clarification on sewer fees and a few other small items, she said at the meeting.

The city will hold a public hearing on any amendments made as a result of those comments.

“The process at this point shouldn’t be long,” she said.

However, because the budget is still in process, the city moved ahead at the meeting with a resolution authorizing emergency appropriations for salaries and other expenses, totaling $3.3 million. Tooker stressed that it was not a shortfall situation, just a formality that allows the city to pay its obligations until the budget is adopted.

In addition, the city held a public hearing on combining the city’s zoning and planning boards. Council President Fred Henry again stressed that the primary cause for this action was because the individual boards were not getting quorums at their meetings, thus delaying actions.

However, O’Leary added that the boards also have been facing conflict-of-interest issues. In a 1-square-mile city, board members, he said, at times find that they live too close to a project site to vote on it.

He said Councilman-at-Large Joseph Connors “has been adamantly for this since he became chairman of the [Planning] Board.”

Jankowski was the only resident to speak at the hearing and asked about the cost savings. The council said the reduction in costs by merging the boards would be minimal.

The merger of the boards should take place in the coming weeks.

The council also moved ahead with the renewal of liquor licenses to city establishments. According to the resolution, “after published notice, no written objections have been received by the city.” In all, 13 consumption, four distribution and three club licenses were issued. The licenses take effect July 1 and run through June 30, 2011.