Delmont officials are considering the best way to move forward with their annual paving program, for which the 2025 goal is repaving Greensburg Street.
Borough council members were hoping to also secure a state grant to repave Freeport Street, but it did not come through.
Greensburg Street was last paved shortly after 2010, according to council President Andy Shissler.
“My question is, will it actually last?” Shissler said. “We had two different pavers the last time we did work on both Greensburg and Freeport streets. The paving on Greensburg didn’t last very long.”
Public works director Bill Heaps said a layer of concrete beneath the street is part of the reason the paving did not last as long as he’d hoped. Council members also were hoping to address several areas along Greensburg Street — such as the entrance to the small plaza containing Fox’s Pizza — where water regularly wells up and creates puddles.
Money for most local paving programs comes largely from the state’s liquid fuels program, which also provides state transportation engineers to help prepare bid specifications for street projects.
“We can use PennDOT to develop bid specs for regular milling and paving,” said Councilman Stan Cheyne. “If we’re just worried about repaving, I think it’s a way we can stretch our dollars. It doesn’t makes sense to use liquid fuels money to pay for engineering services, and while I’m not an engineer, I think the specs for these types of projects are pretty standard.”
Cheyne said that if they wanted to address some of the stormwater issues along Greensburg Street, that money would have to come from the borough.
“There are stormwater issues we need to address,” he said. “If that’s something we want to pursue, we can do that, but it means talking with our engineers and spending money up front.”
Council agreed to have members of its streets committee meet with PennDOT to see what help they can provide. About $250,000 has been budgeted for work on Greensburg Street.
“As for Freeport Street, we can always try for the Local Share Account grant again,” Cheyne said.
Shields Farm plan
Council will also form a steering committee to develop a long-term plan for the Shields Farm property, part of its longer-term goal of creating a boroughwide comprehensive plan to help guide future development.
“When the snow melts, maybe late February or early March, we’ll do a walking tour of the property,” Shissler said.
Councilman Jeff Cunningham said it will take about eight months to create and submit a plan for the property, which is home to the annual Apple’n Arts Festival and the Delmont Pilgrimage.
“We’ll do the walking tour, then we’ll form an initial plan that we’ll seek some additional citizen input on,” Cunningham said. “We gathered some of that input already, but we’ll use this to refine what we do as we put together the final plan.”
The borough has already developed a recreation plan, which is one piece in the overall comprehensive planning process. Some of the plan’s suggestions for Shields Farm included expanded parking, a gathering area and amphitheater and a series of trails throughout the 145-acre property.