Over 2K Outages Remain, But Town Progressing

As continuous clean up efforts make their way through Friday and power is slowly restored to sections of Hackettstown, some major decisions remain in flux heading into the next workweek.

As of 2 p.m. Friday, some 2,281 residences in Hackettstown were still without power, according to Jersey Central Power & Light’s outage map.

The silver lining in that figure, however, is that many business in town have begun to open their doors and offer help and services to those in need. Find out more about that here.

Also on Friday afternoon, . That effort is being lauded by the mayor.

“The Department of Public Works has been doing a fantastic job, working around the clock,” Hackettstown Mayor Maria DiGiovanni said. “Things are starting to look like we’re in good shape.”

But as Monday draws closer and the decision to open schools–which has not yet been made–and hold trick-or-treating hours is put to officials, certainty remains an unpredictable object.

On Saturday, Daylight Savings Time officially ends, and residents will turn the clocks back one hour. In doing so, the sun will begin to set much earlier–4:48 p.m., Monday, to be exact–leaving children to walk roads and neighborhoods in the dark for most of the 4 to 9 p.m. trick-or-treating window.

By Executive Order of the governor, trick-or-treating hours around the state were moved to Monday, Nov. 5.

“We’re going to keep assessing (trick-or-treating),” DiGiovanni said. “We’re just not sure yet. If it’s unsafe… we’ll have to make a decision sometime Sunday or Monday.”

While children are mostly concerned about how much candy they’ll be able to rope in, it’s those of voting age who are wondering what’s going to happen Tuesday for the General Election.

Locally, two Republican council incumbents–Scott Sheldon and William Conforti–are being challenged by Democrats Anthony Olivo and Mary Beth Maciag. The ballot, however, also includes the General Election and race for president.

Of the five polling centers in Hackettstown, just two were without power Friday afternoon. DiGiovanni, who took part in a conference call Thursday afternoon with the Lt. Governor’s office, said a contingency plan will be put in place if electricity is unavailable on Election Day.

Each of the state’s municipalities needed to alert the state by 3 p.m. Friday if it would opt into the contingency plan, which provides towns with mobile voting centers inside trailers to make up for locations in the dark, DiGiovanni said.

The other contingency plan, DiGiovanni said, would be to have all voters unable to use their normal polling center go to the municipal building on Stiger Street and punch their ballots.

Either way, DiGiovanni said, Election Day will take place in Hackettstown without any interruptions.

At the time of this post, it was unknown if Hackettstown was entering into the agreement. Patch is following this story and will alert readers when information becomes available.

For Patch’s continuous coverage in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, go here.