Point Pleasant Council Approves $127K For School Street Sidewalks

POINT PLEASANT, NJ — After making pedestrian safety more of a priority in recent years, Point Pleasant Borough officials announced a new $127,000 sidewalk project on School Street on Wednesday that will making walking safer for students and others who get around on foot around the middle and high school campuses.

The project, which is slated to begin in mid-July, will be paid for with a combination of capital money and the Pedestrian Safety Fund, Borough councilman Joseph Furmato said. Furmato, who chairs the council’s public works committee, said that the sidewalks will extend along the entire length of School Street and will include truncated domes at each end of the areas included in the project.

The project will also include a bump out that will go around the existing press box at the football field located on the school’s property. In addition, the project will add sidewalks on the east side of School Street from Moore Avenue to Whittier Drive, officials announced.

Officials said that the new sidewalks will prevent students and others walking in the areas have having to take “makeshift dirt paths” as they have had to until now in what can be a heavily-trafficked area.

The project is expected to be completed by early August at the latest, Furmato said, according to a news release posted on the borough’s website.

The Pedestrian Safety Fund was created by Mayor Robert Sabosik and the Borough council as a way of prioritizing placing sidewalks around Point Pleasant. In recent years, other projects have included placing sidewalks around Nellie Bennet Elementary School and the streets that surround and feed into that property. Sidewalks have also been constructed along Bridge Avenue and Beaver Dam Road in recent years as part of the effort to keep pedestrians safe.

In addition to the creation of the Pedestrian Safety Fund, Sabosik and the council have also made sure that capitol funds have been made available to devote to new projects.

"I’m proud of the work our governing body is doing,” Borough Administrator Frank Pannucci, Jr., said in the release. “The Borough at our founding was not designed for the population is has today, our founding fathers never imagined 100 years ago that we would have a community of 20,000 residents today. Our streets are extremely narrow and sidewalks in the past were an afterthought.

“That’s why Mayor Sabosik and the Council today have been putting such a strong emphasis on placing sidewalks where possible, starting around our schools and major thoroughfares.”

Sabosik said that the Council has been looking at adding sidewalks to School Street for some time now before the council approved the project at its February meeting. Council members said that the project could not have gained approval without the insight of school officials, who have provided guidance for the project.

Although the sidewalks will be owned by the borough, school officials had to made adjustments to facilities to make the project feasible, officials said.

“This project is a win-win for not only the Borough municipal government, but the school district as well,” Council President Antoinette “Toni” DePaola said in the release.