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The county road department
in my opinion
was trying to level every hill
and straighten every curve
and take away what really made Sussex County
interesting and different - the hills,
the curves, the valleys and all of those things.
We had an original project in 1993
that we had to... ah ...could never reach a consensus on with the community.
The concern of the people was not so much
the former bridge going but what we replaced it with.
When I got involved John Risko had approached the
the project
with this uh... idea of a stakeholders committee and he invited everyone who
had
literally a stake in this project.
And NJDOT provided us with courses the context sensitive design courses and
we went and we paid attention. John Risko the county engineer really took to
heart the training that the department of transportation offered
in context sensitve design. He invited everyone who had
literally a stake in this project
that included members of the school board, members of the elected body
as I mentioned I was the county planning board member ... there were members from
the historical society, there were members from the local merchants, there were
members from residents in the area and outside the area
then I met John Risko
of the county road department
and I found this man to be exceptional.
I mean this in every way that
he expressed from the start concern about the community.
He participated in designing a bridge
that was patterned very much after a very handsome bridge that existed here long
ago
rather than putting some ugly interstate cement type thing. the county
came to
us and asked if we could host
a series of meetings to develop a bridge committee - of stakeholders, really -
who had an interest in the community
and we would meet on a regular basis. Mister Risko came into town
he had his big
uh... easel he had his uh... flip charts
and he had his magic markers
and the meeting would start
with an agenda of what he hoped to accomplish and he would write this on the
uh... the uh...
with his magic markers on this uh... easel
and then he would start
turning the pages as people made comments and he would make notes and he
would go through books. We just went through every single item. every person
had a chance to be heard. We had three
evening seminars. We invited
the whole general public
to learn the history of not only this particular area but all of Stillwater Township.
Township of Stillwater is a historical treasure to not only to the people
who live there, to the county and to the state New Jersey. It's a very sensitive
issue
in municipalities we start to talk about
historic preservation
and zoning
issues for historic preservation ordinances and things like this.
The education and discussion that came out of the workshops
served to calm any doubts or local opposition to the idea of the
historicity of the village. The roads weren't designed for modern traffic. They were designed in
the seventeen hundreds
uh... looking at AASHTO standards we could get into up to a forty foot wide
structure
or to meet a design speed of fifty miles an hour.
Like I said we would uh... we would be taking down nearly the entire community.
And I don't think it's a good idea in order to
improve the neighborhood
to wreck the neighborhood. We learned from a member of the mill trust committee who brought in
picture of the structure that was in place previous to the one we replaced
through working with the state historic preservation office
that we were able to come up with it with a structure that mimicked the
original structure. all of the design exceptions
were justified and in the end
we actually have a better product and a safer product
than what was originally there.
And the result of this is
the township has formed a
historical commission.
We've been
successful on this project.
We have a lovely new bridge as an entrance to what
one day hopefully will be
uh... an historic district.
The county
has done a tremendous job with this.
You couldn't even see the mill before I call it a tin can
bridge before
You couldn't see the mill.
It's a much prettier entrance
uh... that
this community deserves.