The year may have just gotten underway, but that hasn’t stopped the township of Shamong from planning a variety of capital improvements and initiatives.
According to township administrator Sue Onorato, Shamong received a $126,000 municipal parks grant from Burlington County in 2013 that will be used for improvements at the Dingletown complex and Stony Creek park.
“We’ll continue to improve those parks and fields to make them safer, more accessible,” Onorato said. “It will include repaving and painting projects.”
The winter weather raised another concern for the township — the state of its two snowplow trucks.
“We’ll definitely be looking into the replacement of our two trucks this year. One truck is a 1991 model and the other is a 1994,” Onorato said. “It speaks to the great job our public works department has done in maintaining and caring for those vehicles for them to have lasted as long as they have.”
Onorato said the department has run into maintenance issues this winter with breakdowns and the trucks not starting.
The township committee has already authorized a shared service agreement with Tabernacle to obtain a grant from the state Department of Transportation. Once grant approval is received, a paving project on the west side of Tuckerton Road between Forked Neck Road and Old Indian Mills Road is expected to begin.
Improving the township’s infrastructure has been a theme of the township’s committee meetings, as the committee has held discussions in regard to other road repairs the township could afford to do under this year’s budget. Onorato said that while they appreciate community concern and suggestions on what work should be done, Shamong would be basing its decisions on the analysis of the township engineer and the knowledge of the public works crew.
“They have the best day-to-day working knowledge of what is in most need of repair throughout the township,” Onorato said. “We will be using their recommendations when figuring out what projects need to be completed first.”
The township already used a DOT grant to repave and repair Old Indian Mills Road. That project is ongoing and expected to be completed in the upcoming months.
