CLARK — During Monday night’s workshop meeting, Janice Patrichie, a resident of Gertrude Street, addressed the Clark Township Council with concerns about traffic on her street caused by the amount of soccer games at Bartell Field.
Ms. Patrichie She stressed that this was not the first time she had brought her concerns about this matter to the council. She said the park has had four times the amount of traffic and volume in the area since turf was installed back in 2017.
“I was hoping that the volume of games would be lowered to the extent that it wasn’t affecting the area, but that hasn’t happened,” she said. “There’s still a lot of traffic, and there’s still a lot of gridlock of people trying to get into the park when there are multiple games or too many games.”
Ms. Patrichie also stated that there are times that she cannot back out of her driveway because of the line of cars waiting at the stop sign before entering the park. She additionally brought up issues involving people idling outside her home for 30 minutes to an hour despite the streets being permitted parking only.
The amount of “people walking, yelling, beeping, and the constant traffic,” has become a nuisance for the neighborhood, she said.
Ms. Patrichie said she had previously proposed having games moved to Oak Ridge Park, but claimed to have not received a response on why that can not be done. She believes this issue also could be resolved if the volume of games at Bartell Park was reduced.
“There is not much we can do from our standpoint. Unfortunately, this is the soccer league that runs the events,” said Mayor Sal Bonaccorso, adding that Oak Ridge Park is owned by the county.
Ms. Patrichie asked why the programs are allowed to overuse the park to such an extent. Mayor Bonaccorso suggested that the number of kids in Clark playing in the league could be the reason Bartell Park is used so often.
“I’m starting to feel that the kids playing soccer is becoming more important to the town than the residents,” Ms. Patrichie said.
Mayor Bonaccorso said the township will explore potential remediation options down the line.
“We try to do what we can to make it better for everyone, and I don’t know what else I can say at this point,” he said. “We are looking to put a parking lot there to help get some of the volume of cars off the street.”
During council comments, Councilman Brian Toal stated that he understood Ms. Patrichie’s frustration with the traffic and idling outside her home, and recommended that she or anyone on a permit-parking street call the Clark Police Department if they see a vehicle idling, and the vehicle’s operator will be told to move.
