Groundbreaking talks to follow meeting with contractor Ogren
CAPE MAY — City Manager Paul Dietrich told City Council on Oct. 7 that he anticipated having a pre-construction meeting regarding the police headquarters building.
“Once we have that pre-construction meeting, we’ll be able to make an announcement of when we’re going to have our groundbreaking discussions with our contractors,” he said, adding that the contractor is looking to get started as soon as possible.
City Council awarded an $8.6 million contract Sept. 15 to Ogren Construction of Vineland for the construction of the building at the corner of Lafayette and St. Johns streets, a former part of Lafayette Street Park.
The new building will unite the Cape May Police Department, as it is currently divided between two buildings, with one operating out of City Hall and the other at the substation in West Cape May.
The process required a land diversion, with the city exchanging 6.6 acres of environmentally sensitive land adjacent to the Sewell Tract for 0.137 acres at the Lafayette Street Park that is part of the state Green Acres program.
Lead line service program
Council unanimously passed a resolution authorizing a contract with DeBlasio and Associates Engineers for planning and design services for the lead service line replacement program.
“It’s entirely covered by a grant, and the resolution stipulates that no funds will be extended by the city until the city received the grant for all the services that they work on,” Dietrich said. “It’ll cover them identifying all of our unidentified lead service lines, working on claims notifications to apply for additional principal forgiveness funding from the Department of Environmental Protection, to have a program to help replace those lead service lines for residents.”
Resident Stacey Sheehan asked about the cost of the contract. Dietrich said it was $825,000. Sheehan also asked about the procedure for identification.
“DeBlasio included a type of procedure: they’ll visit the house, and they insert a probe through the water meter that does an electromagnetic analysis of the pipe,” he said. “[It] identifies what type of pipe it is and that helps them identify for contractual process on the construction side of which ones need to be replaced or not.”
Sheehan asked if the process would require homeowners to be home at the time.
“It would be nice for them to be notified ahead of time so they can give the city the OK,” she said. “The more we tell people this is coming around, the better prepared they will be.”
Dietrich said there is a public outreach program for the process that will include mailings, website notifications and other methods.
Mayor Zack Mullock said there would be a presentation on the lead line replacement.
“We are looking at a $2 million grant, and out of that grant will come some of the proceeds of this study,” Mullock said. “It’s a really valuable process that everyone will receive and public outreach on this is going to be key.”
Beach safety study
Dietrich said a beach data collection and future needs assessment study was completed before the summer.
He said they have been waiting to present and finalize it until it was better known what work needed to be done on the beach fill template.
The study was prepared by Taylor Engineering. Dietrich said the group came back with a proposal for review. The report was shared with the city’s Beach Safety Advisory Committee.
“In order to change that beach template, we need to have an engineer study,” he said. “But to make it productive, we really need to work with our partners, the Army Corps of Engineers and the Department of Environmental Protection, and Bureau of Coastal Engineering.”
Working with the partners would allow the city to determine what the organizations need to see and what efforts it can undertake to meet the Army Corps’ need for providing protection.
“But also, to [have] a beach that is more user-friendly, a little bit gentler slope for people and [is] family-friendly to use a larger stretch of our beach,” Dietrich said, adding he planned to put the report on the city website and to be available to discuss the matter individually with council members.
Dietrich added that Taylor Engineering is proposing $12,000 to move forward with a second phase.
“To have that interaction meetings with our partners would allow them to formulate a larger proposal on what engineering effort would be needed to model our beach and come up with a better template for us,” Dietrich said. “They had several recommendations in the beach report, but ultimately, that’s really the focus of what the city should do to move forward.”
By RACHEL SHUBIN/Special to the Star and Wave
