Westfield City Clerk Karen Fanion, foreground left, takes notes on a computer during last night’s City Council meeting in the Westfield Middle School South auditorium. (Photo by Frederick Gore)
WESTFIELD – Mayor Daniel M. Knapik asked the City Council to approve a $2 million grant from the state Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs for the next phase of construction on the Columbia Greenway last night and two councilors sponsored a motion to make the trail crossing at Shaker Road safer for patrons of the rail trail.
Knapik initially asked the council to immediately consider accepting the $2 million grant, but Council President Brian Sullivan said that he had a conversation with Knapik yesterday afternoon in which Knapik suggested that the council send the request to committee.
The council then voted to send the grant issue to the Legislative & Ordinance Committee for further study.
The council also sent a motion, sponsored by Ward 5 Councilor Richard E. Onofrey Jr. and Brent B. Bean II to consider the installation of addition signs and signal lights on Shaker Road where the Columbia Greenway crosses that busy street, to both the L&O and the Traffic Commission.
Onofrey said that the topography of Shaker Road at the trail crossing creates a hazard for patrons of the trail attempting to cross the street. The crossing is located at the top of a knoll created when the railroad was constructed.
Shaker Road is a slope in that area to the east of the trail, then there is a significant dip just west of the trail crossing, and another steep slope. That topography limits the line of sight of motorists approaching the crossing.
“We need to put additional signs and signals at the trail to make it safer for people using the trail,” Onofrey said. “There is a poor line of sight there.”
City Engineer Mark Cressotti said Wednesday that the state has not yet released the grant money and is waiting for the National Park Service to approve the city’s conversion plan for the section of the Cross Street Playground being incorporated into the new Ashley Street elementary school.
The city, under the conversion plan, will create new playground facilities at a nearby location to replace the present playground land being incorporated into the school project.
“The City Council is being asked to accept the grant in anticipation of full execution by the state which is pending the National Park Service approval (of the Article 97 conversion plan),” Cressotti said.
The urgency is that the project was advertised and the city received several construction bids in anticipation of the National Park Service approval expected earlier this summer. Those bids will expire this fall.
“The bids were opened and the contractors will still honor those, but the clock is ticking,” Cressotti said. “The bids expire in the middle of September, but we can’t award the bid until we are in possession of the grant funding.”
Cressotti said that the City Council will be able to act quickly, now that the issue is in committee, if the state does release the money. The next meeting of the City Council is set for Sept. 5.
The Board of Public Works voted unanimously last May to conditionally award Part 2 of the South Phase of the Columbia Greenway Rail Trail construction project to ET&L Corporation of Stow.
ET&L submitted the low bid of $2,297,538 to construct the next three quarters of a mile of the trail, an effort which includes extensive bridge work. That approval is pending state funding of the grant.
The Columbia Greenway Rail Trail became a reality last year when the first 5,000 feet of the linear park were completed during Part 1 of the South Phase, extending the trail, which has been completed in Southwick, from the city line to just south of Tin Bridge.
The present project includes two bridge elements, the rehabilitation of Tin Bridge, which crosses Little River, and the entire replacement of a bridge over South Meadow Road. The cost of that bridge work is why the bids considered by the BPW last night were over $2 million.
