State Provides $200K To Fix Pittsfield RoadsBy Andy McKeever, iBerkshires Staff
03:33AM / Thursday, April 24, 2014 | |
 Commissioner Bruce Collingwood said the funds will be used for line painting and crack sealing on city roads. |
PITTSFIELD, Mass. — The state has chipped in $207,000 to help repair city roads after a particularly harsh winter.
The City Council accepted the funds Tuesday night, which will be used for crack sealing and line painting this spring.
The money is part of the $30 million being released by the state's one-time Pothole and Winter Recovery Program.
Using those funds for line painting will free up some of the city's Chapter 90 allocation to repair roads the city wasn't expected to be able to do this construction season.
"This is a total surprise. We didn't expect this," said Commissioner of Public Works Bruce Collingwood.
The city has to use the funds or the state will take it back. Collingwood expects the grant to be spent before July.
Collingwood said city workers are still in the process of patching roads and then the line painting will take place. From there, the department will pick through its list of roads needing repair.
"Everything is late this year. Spring is late, street sweeping is now taking place," he said.
In other business, the city will be applying herbicides along the sides of the airport. The applications are required by the state Department of Environmental Protection as part of the massive construction project.
The state is chipping in $141,600 for the two-year application and the city is contributing $35,000 from funds already approved in the construction.
"We've got 72 conditions in our construction permits and this is one of them, to control invasive species," said Airport Manager Mark Germanowski.
Those species has to be continually monitored until MassDEP feels the city has met its obligation and signs off on it. A total of 190 acres will need the application, which is labor intensive. Workers will be cutting and applying the herbicides to specific species in those areas.
"It is really complex. We aren't sending this out to a new group of people who have to reinvent the wheel. These are people who know what is going on," said Ward 5 Councilor Jonathan Lothrop.
Germanowski added that the city's portion of these funds are in the construction bonds and the overall costs have not exceeded the estimates.
"We haven't even spent, and hopefully we won't spend, everything we estimated," he said.
The project costs $22.5 million with the funds coming from a variety of sources. The city contributed $2.1 million toward it.
The City Council also accepted a $12,000 grant from the state Department of Conservation and Recreation; established restrictions on parking on Madison Avenue; accepted a gift from Valerie Tracy to the Community Center at Dower Square and approved the installation of a utility pole on Belvidere Avenue.
Opening Tuesday's meeting on a fun note, Mayor Daniel Bianchi gave Council President Melissa Mazzeo a baseball bat as a birthday present. The councilors were all all equipped with new iPads as part of the city initiative to reduce paper usage.
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