Palmerton has approved a financing plan that will enable it to upgrade and maintain its streets.

To ensure that, borough council on a 4-0 vote on Thursday agreed to adopt an ordinance to issue up to $2.5 million of new money projects for street work and safety improvements.Council members Jeremy Barbosa, Holly Sell and President Terry Costenbader were absent.The general obligation note, Series A of 2015, comes with a five-year, fixed rate at 1.99 percent, as part of a 20-year loan through First Northern Bank & Trust of Palmerton.After the meeting, borough manager Rodger Danielson said the financing will allow the borough to focus on the central and eastern portions of the town while it continues to look at the western portion with grant funding."The (borough) engineer is doing survey work right now," Danielson said. "This will improve several ADA ramps."Danielson said the work could start in late summer, and that the vast majority of work could be done by the end of 2016."Recognizing that a lot of municipalities are like us doing the same thing," he said. "There's a lot of contractor competition."Danielson said he believes now was a good time for the borough to finance."I think it's a great rate," he said. "We felt this was a good opportunity to continue to upgrade and maintain our streets."Danielson previously said the street work won't consist of a lot of construction, but, rather, resurfacing, primarily north of Delaware Avenue. The borough will continue to use Community Development Block Grant funds for some of the other areas, he said.The borough undertook a road program in the early 1990s, at which time it resurfaced all of the roads done through a series of loans and grants that used CDBG funding, Danielson said.