When Hopewell Borough Council meets next week two items on the agenda will focus on borough efforts to implement sidewalk and safety improvements with funds from the Safe Routes to School program.
A $775,000 bond ordinance for preliminary engineering, final design and construction support services and a $775,000 professional service agreement with WSP, which is a Morristown based engineering consultant firm hired by the borough to provide those design assistance services, is on the regular meeting agenda for Council’s adoption and approval for Aug. 10.
The professional service agreement with WSP would go towards preliminary engineering for $296,000, final design of improvements for $378,000, and construction support services for $101,000.
“We received the executed agreement from the New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT), and I have begun the engineering process with WSP. That is the firm we selected a while back to help us through this process,” Borough Administrator Jerry Giaimis said back in a Borough Council meeting in early July.
“There will be a resolution approving a contract with them formally at our next meeting. As a result of that, tonight’s meeting has a first reading of a bond ordinance for $775,000.”
Giaimis explained that the $775,000 is 100% reimbursable and not adding long-term debt.
“Just to clarify, notwithstanding the fact that we will be defeasing all of our debt, in order to make capital purchases you need capital and bond ordinances. This is fully and 100% reimbursable,” he said.
“You will see that as well with our paving program with the DOT every year. This is not adding long-term debt. It accomplishes that goal in the first part…Then this process will finally be underway.”
Councilwoman Krista Weaver added that the more than $750,000 in design assistance the borough will be receiving in funds from the state is in addition to the $1.5 million they are receiving to implement sidewalk and safety improvements.
In 2024, Hopewell Borough officials announced they had been awarded a $1.5 million Safe Routes to School grant to make safety improvements in the borough.
Administered by the New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT), the Safe Routes to School grant program is a federally-funded program to increase pedestrian safety among motorists and schoolchildren.
The projects that would be covered in the grant included filling important gaps in the borough’s sidewalk network and adding sidewalk extensions that would allow pedestrians to safely walk to places such as St. Michael’s Farm Preserve.
Other grant funded projects included rectangular, rapidly flashing beacons at multiple major crossings along Broad Street and Princeton Avenue and upgrades to other crosswalks and overhead flashing lights at Hopewell Elementary School.
“The length of time is not surprising. We knew from the outset that this could be a two- or three-year project,” Giaimis said.
“It is not something that happens quickly like our paving programs. We are moving forward. This is probably the step we are at now that is really going to catapult this to very visible results shortly.”
