Modick Park Playground To Be Replaced

Hopatcong plans to replace the wooden playground at .

The borough council approved a $30,515.93 bill to Marturano Recreation Company for a new playground at Wednesday night's council meeting at the .

Grant money from one of two $300,000-plus settlements with Public Service Electric & Gas Co. over the highly-controversial —a 500-kilovolt line that would carry electricity from Berwick, Pa., area to Roseland in Essex County, passing through Hopatcong—will be used to fund the playground set, Borough Administrator Robert Elia said.

In other words, it won't cost taxpayer dollars.

The grants will also be used to fund other infrastructure and public safety projects, Elia said.

"It was starting to get a little aged," Elia said. "We thought it would be a good time to replace it right now.

"We don't want it to get to a point where it gets dangerous."

The playground will be replaced with a new set boasting mostly hard plastic.

"These playgrounds when you buy them have a certain lifespan," Mayor Sylvia Petillo said. "And then you can't repair them, you can't get the parts and they become unsafe and they become a liability. And that one is just at the end of its lifespan.

"So we purchased a beautiful, colorful playground with double slides that you can race down with all that hard plastic so it lasts and you have a longer lifespan."

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