At this month’s council meeting, council discussed new signs that we’re placed around town and the possibility of a traffic study in the future to alleviate residents concerns about parking and traffic flow
Berlin Borough Council last week discussed multiple improvements being made or to come to the borough in the near future.
Councilman Len Badolato spoke about the addition of signs around the municipal building in coming weeks to improve the directions for residents when visiting the building.
The signs have been in the works for over a month, however first a floor plan had to be drawn up and Cindy Williams, with the Downtown Berlin Revitalization Committee, spoke with the departments in the building to better understand the layout before signs were made and placed.
Badolato also said four historical Berlin marker signs were placed at four entrances to the borough. The signs are new and painted on both sides, and, according to Badolato, were much cheaper than the previous signs that stood in their place. The signs were made by American Signs and Design.
Lastly, Badolato mentioned the borough is in the process of getting the historic district amended.
“The firm that’s doing that has basically completed it, and they have sent it to the New Jersey State Historic Preservation Office for approval,” Badolato said. “So hopefully we’ll be hearing within the next month about that.”
Badolato said this is important because the last time the historic district was drawn up may have been 20 years ago — meaning that the Berlin Hotel and historic post office were in different locations.
Councilman Dan McDonnell spoke about the addition of three speed humps across Berlin Borough going in during this year’s road program. The humps are going in front of Orchard and Jones, which are both in front of recreational parks, and then also in front of Taunton Avenue.
“I just want to thank Public Safety for working with streets and roads on that,” MacDonnell said. “We have the engineer and public safety make the decision on where the speed humps are going to go. We can only afford so many every year and we do get a lot of requests for them, so we do kind of put it on our professionals to make the decision on where they go.”
MacDonnell also noted a previous resolution was taken off the agenda regarding a no parking sign being placed in a residential part of the borough. He said council typically hears a problem and fixes it, but that might be counterproductive to actually addressing the real issue because there are most likely more problems they don’t hear about.
Therefore, he is looking forward to the engineer doing a study across the town.
“It kind of opened up a question of when was the last time we looked at a town-wide traffic plan for parking, speed limits and things like that,” MacDonnell said. “What we decided is that, moving forward, we’re probably going to have our engineer do a study and come back with recommendations so we’re painting with a little bit more of a broad brush rather than the past practice of just putting Band-Aids on things.”
MacDonnell says he hopes this alleviates problems across the borough when implemented and highlights problems areas in town that need to be addressed.
Lastly, Councilman Jim Pearce reviewed the police reports for October and year, with Berlin Borough Police handling 1,329 calls while conducting 13 drug arrests and 56 total adult arrests last month. With the current arrests for the year at 690 this is the highest arrest rate, according to Pearce, for the borough in history.
He also reported K-9 Radko with the Berlin Borough Police Department is one of 50 K-9s that was awarded medical insurance from across the country for next year. The plan is covered by the National Police Dog Foundation and will cover any injuries and normal routine checkups with Radko.
