One of the casualties of budget cutting by the Petersburg borough in recent years has been painting lines on downtown streets. There may be some interest in paying for that again next year.
Assembly member Jeff Meucci Monday asked whether that could be planned for in the future, since the state Department of Transportation brings a painting truck to town occasionally.
“We see that painting machine at the ferry terminal after they’ve done all their work,” Meucci said. “It would have been really nice if we could have piggy backed on that task. We could certainly plan on it.”
Borough staff estimated the street striping costs at least 12-15,000 dollars a year, possibly more since the borough hasn’t done that work for several years. Borough manager Steve Giesbrecht explained the elimination of that work.
“The last few years we’ve been looking for places to cut that don’t have a real massive impact on peoples’ lives and that was one that was taken out of the budget several years ago actually,” Giesbrecht said.
The borough assembly would likely have to vote on adding this spending back into the budget next year to resume this service.
The assembly Monday did vote to spend $32,800 for the consulting firm D. Hittle and Associates to do a study of rates paid by local electrical customers. That company was one of three that bid on the work. The study should be finished by the end of January. It could look at the possibility of increasing rates to pay for major repairs and replacement of equipment and infrastructure at the borough’s hydro electric power plant at Blind Slough. The borough is also studying rates for water, waste water and garbage service.
