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City clarifies King Street paving

The city of Dunkirk loves its brick roads and reminded concerned citizens of King Street between West Benton and Tenney Streets of this at the Common Council meeting and workshop Tuesday.

“We are certainly in favor of the old brick pavements whenever they are in good shape,” Director of Public Works Randy Woodbury stated at the workshop, citing a petition regarding the possible paving of the road. “I’d like to thank all the people for their community involvement in calling that to our attention. The fact that you did that effort, shows your interest in the community and I want to thank you for that and everything you did to bring it to our attention.”

The petition cites an article in the Feb. 4 edition of the OBSERVER titled “Engineer talks Dunkirk roadwork plans, grants” in which a “tentative list of roads being looked at for possible work this year” was included. Among those roads listed was this block of King Street.

“I want to respectfully encourage my constituents to call me about things like this,” Fourth Ward Councilman Mike Civiletto stated. “I could have come here and asked Randy and he could have just said ‘no, that’s a miscommunication’ and it would have been over in a couple of minutes. In the future, if anyone has any problems like that, please call me and we could have stopped you from doing a lot of work.”

Woodbury went on to discuss that city engineer did an inventory of brick streets and it came up on the inventory. He went on to say that it’s hard to discuss where the paving’s going to be until you get through winter, but said that that brick street section is in very good shape.

In other points of interest:

¯ The National Day of Prayer event being held May 2 from 6-8 p.m. was discussed briefly at the workshop as it was among the loudspeaker applications. This nondenominational event cites the issue of the separation of church and state.

“I voted ‘no’ in the past for any church events in front of city hall, as I don’t feel it’s the correct place for it due to the separation of church and state,” Civiletto said.

“The line of demarcation is the front pillars,” City Attorney Richard Morrisroe said. “Anything on the inside of those pillars is state, anything on the outside is public space and they have First Amendment rights.”

Police Chief Dave Ortolano’s biggest concern was that the group is told to keep the noise down and that they cannot be out in the street handing out flyers and interfering with traffic. Apparently that was an issue before.

The resolution passed 5-0.

¯ David Wilkinson, business manager for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers for the area supported changing the master electrician test to the industry standard.

“The ICC test is the standard in the industry, it is accepted practice for our contractors to be licensed. The contractors which I represent, which is about 50, would be supportive of that,” Wilkinson stated. “We would also support further investigation into Class 2 licensing as well. It gets the city more in line with standards in the industry.”

According to Morrisroe, people with existing licensing will be grandfathered in. The fees also won’t be changing at this time, just the exam itself. Dunkirk will accept licenses from other municipalities so long as the fee is paid and proof of testing is provided and the Dunkirk Electrical Board will be facilitating the requirement.

The law passed 5-0.

¯ La Dolce Vita’s application to open their Italian pastry shop on the Boardwalk passed 5-0 allowing Curan Waller and her family to open the new business.

¯ The building on Franklin Street that lost its roof and a west wall in a Feb. 24 windstorm is slated for tear down starting today. It was declared asbestos free.

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