County Slams JCP&L for Delaying Cross Street Widening

Lakewood News Network

Frustrated with the slow pace of work on the Cross Street widening project? So are the Ocean County commissioners.

At Wednesday’s commissioners’ meeting, Commissioners Frank Sadeghi and Jack Kelly ripped into JCP&L representative Robert Brice for the company’s failure to move its utility poles, which is holding up the whole project. Work was supposed to take a year; the county has been asking JCP&L to move the poles for three years. All other work is now done, and nothing can happen until the poles are moved.

The Ocean County Board of Commissioners have publicly scolded a representative of Jersey Central Power & Light for its role in the slow progress of a major road widening project planned in Lakewood.

“For the last four or five months, they’re at a standstill because they’re waiting for JCP&L to remove and relocate those (utility) poles,” Sadeghi said.

Brice blamed the delays on supply chain issues, but Sadeghi, who is a civil engineer and operates his own engineering firm, was having none of it. “I’ve noticed that once again, JCP&L has demonstrated that they don’t care about the needs of the people of Ocean County,” he said.

Brice then whined about the volume of work Ocean County has for the company. Of three “line shops” the company maintains in Ocean County, two were the busiest line shops in the company’s service area, he said. “Ocean County is — no surprise to anyone — is experiencing great growth and development on a monthly basis. We’ve put a lot of money and investments into Ocean County in the form of transition improvements, substation improvements, additional distribution improvements and smart meter improvements that are going on as we speak,” he said.

Commissioner Jack Kelly asked if JCP&L didn’t have enough poles, and Brice confirmed this. On Cross Street, 38 utility poles have to be replaced, he said.

“They’re transmission level poles,” Brice explained. “It’s not the regular poles that you see in your neighborhood. They’re thicker, they’re taller. They raise anywhere from 65 to 75 feet and they have to be hurricane rated. In addition, they have to be breakaway at the bottom. So it’s not as simple as going out, chopping down a nice tree and you know, putting it on the back of a truck and bringing—”

Kelly was not impressed. “But that’s what you do,” the commissioner snapped. “That’s your job. I don’t care how big they are. It’s your job to get those poles there.”

Kelly pointed out that the county gets blamed for the slow pace. “I don’t care how high they go in the air. That’s too long. We give you all the notice in the world of what we’re doing and we’re still not able to get what we need. And then I hear from the (Lakewood) mayor and from the community that the county is too slow: ‘You’re not doing your job.’ I can’t do my job until you help me. Buy some wood, build new ones!”

Brice replied that with a road widening project as with Cross Street, JCP&L does not order new utility poles until their own people see the design plans and specifications. Otherwise, the company would not know what specific type of poles to order.

“Yeah, that doesn’t make sense to me,” Sadeghi fired back. “You’re not dealing with a developer who buys a piece of property, wants to put in a new road, needs poles, and you’re at the mercy of whether that developer — depending upon what the market is — is going to proceed with that project or not. You’re dealing with the government of Ocean County, they’re telling you: ‘We’re going to do this work.’ So, the responsibility is on you.”

In any business, needs must be forecast and planned accordingly, Sadeghi said. JCP&L’s answer for the project delay on Cross Street is therefore “inexcusable,” he said.

“You don’t want to hear excuses, but I know you’ve encountered the same supply chain issues that we’ve encountered,” Brice said. “You’ve had trouble getting trucks, you’ve had trouble getting other equipment.”

“It never took me three years to get a truck,” Kelly shot back.

“Yeah,” Brice replied.

“Let me just say this to you,” Kelly said. “I don’t want to stand here and try to embarrass you in front of the whole audience. I would like to meet with you in my office, with the county engineer, and talk about this. And, not talk about what happened yesterday, let’s talk about what can happen tomorrow, because that’s what I’m really concerned about.”