Denise Carey
WESTFIELD – The Off-street Parking Commission, which regulates the city’s expanding inventory of downtown parking lots, is cleaning up and trimming down.
The Commission voted at its July 16 meeting to award several service contracts, including trash collection and tree trimming contracts, using the revolving account funded through parking permit sales for the maintenance contracts.
The board voted to commit $5,600 for the trash removal contract that will begin Sept. 1, and end on June 30.
Parking administer Denise Carey said there are presently nine “overflowing” receptacles in the municipal lots, a number that will steady increase during the 2013 fiscal year as more trash bins are purchased through the revolving account and the Thomas Street lot improvement bond. Six new receptacles will be installed in the Thomas Street lot using the bond funding and the present four bins moved to other lots.
“We can only use the Thomas Street bond money for improvements in that lot,” Carey said. “We will have to buy more receptacles for the north side parking lots, Depot Square, Railroad Avenue, the Old Montgomery Road lot and the Riverwalk lot off Meadow Street.”
Carey said the “commission still needs to supply at least five to eight receptacles by next spring.”
The Department of Public Works has historically collected the trash in the past, but the number of street-side receptacles has substantially increased as a result of the conclusion of the Great River Bridge and the Main/Broad streets construction projects.
“The DPW is overtaxed with the increased number of street receptacles, so the Mayor (Daniel M. Knapik) suggested that we get a private contractor,” Carey said. “The DPW will have an extra truck during the summer when the schools are closed, and will take over the trash collection duties for July and August.”
The private contractor, for a weekly charge of $130, will inspect and empty the off-street lot trash bins “as needed,” Carey said.
The board also voted to hire a tree-trimming contractor for maintenance of the tree inventory in the off-street lots and to use the Thomas Street bond to purchase portable speed bumps to slow traffic moving through that recently reconstructed lot, which is being used as a short-cut between Main and Thomas streets. The speed bumps were requested by a City Council vote to address the need to slow vehicular movement through the repaved lot. The portable bumps can be removed during the winter so they do not impede snow removal efforts.
Carey said the board will also need to approve funds to purchase signs for the lots around the Great River Bridge project.
“Those new lots have no signage,” she said. The sign will alert patrons to time limits as well as providing directions to safely access the park amenities constructed as part of the bridge.
For a map of city lots, click here.
