Explanation on the Plainfield Pipe Issue

I am happy to hear from a former City employee, who after all these many years, stepped up to the plate to explain this issue dealing with the pipe situation. Wouldn’t it have been nice, when this question was asked on numerous occasions, to have Councilman Storch present this answer, being that he questions department heads repeatedly on various Council sessions? I am pretty sure these pipes costs more than $20,000, wherein the City’s UEZ funding was also used in this project.

Here is Mrs. Fox’s explanation:

The reason there are concrete pipes left over from the North Ave. Industrial Road and Drainage Construction Project is when the contractor opened the road in certain areas they found utilities in the way. The pipes had been designed for a certain configuration but the presence of the utilities required another. Our engineers had designed the project using utility maps and chose to make this discovery during construction rather than digging test pits during the design phase to see if there were utility conflicts that needed to be addressed in the final design. As none of us were engineers we had to rely on the consulting engineers' strategies. Believe me we learned a lot about civil engineering from this project. Funds for the road project were from the Feds, State of NJ and UEZ. We tried to sell the pipes to other communities and reached out to many towns. Since they were customized to our design configurations they were difficult to market. The PMUA graciously allowed us to store them at the Transfer Yard while be tried to find buyers. I don't know if this effort continued after I left the city employment. ~ Pat Fox


So I would like to sincerely thank Mrs. Fox in bringing this issue to the public eye, but also maybe Councilman Storch can explain to the public, why one of these engineer firms that worked for the City during that time, is still owed over $40,000 in fees, and has not been paid. Maybe because he was not familiar with the project, or maybe he does not even realize that the current admin is still paying of debts that were accumulated by the past admin.

It seems like it is only a matter of time before this engineer firm takes us to court to not only get their $40,000, but also interest and monies for their legal team. It seems to me that Mr. Storch is more concerned about his campaign, and talking about letters that were distributed in City Hall, wherein no one can prove, than discuss the budget, potential police and fire layoffs, or any positive issues facing this City.

He and his campaign manager spend more time writing articles in their blogs referring to me as a dog. I have no intentions of feeding into this nonsense, so that is why I will not pursue it, nor waste taxpayer’s time or money, responding to what I consider gutter politics.

Ps

I am happy that one of Cory’s supporters was kind enough to apologize on behalf of he and Dan’s friends, and I will publish his quote:

Assemblyman Green, I am not a fan of yours. In fact, I believe that your approach to politics has truly hurt our city. That being said, please accept my apology on behalf of my fellow resident(s) for referring to you as a "dog". We can disagree on the issues, we cannot resort to the dehumanization of others.