Winter is in the rearview mirror, tourism season is about to kick into high gear in Jim Thorpe and borough officials plan to be ready.

Council discussed a proposal Thursday night from KRE Security for enhanced traffic management control downtown starting May 14.

Under the proposal, one traffic control employee would be stationed at the Susquehanna Street/Broadway intersection and another at the entrance to the county lot from Route 209 helping with the flow of vehicles.

“We requested the price for a year and it would cost $32,000 to have the KRE employees on Saturdays, Sundays and three Monday holidays,” Borough Manager Maureen Sterner said.

Police Chief Joe Schatz said bringing KRE on board would be one more way to get a better handle on weekend crowds that seemingly continue to grow each year in Jim Thorpe.

“This is a good tool for us because it puts additional manpower down there to help with traffic flow,” Schatz said.

“It helps us do our job with crowd management and ensuring the safety of the residents and tourists.”

Sterner said the borough could comfortably budget $5,000 for the contract, with the rest hopefully coming from hotel tax money if other organizations can’t contribute.

She said requests were made to the Carbon County Commissioners, Jim Thorpe Tourism Agency and the Reading Blue Mountain and Northern Railroad for a financial contribution.

“The county said it would not contribute as it felt it had enough staffing in the county lot, JTTA does not have the finances at this point to assist but said it will help out in other ways, and we have not heard from the railroad,” Sterner said.

Councilman Robert Schaninger said the borough should check with the county a second time, adding he felt it “hard to believe” they wouldn’t help out.

“It takes a lot of guts not to give anything to help the police,” Schaninger said. “They made all that money down there in their lot and they’re going to turn around and pave all their parking lots. They still haven’t fixed the sidewalk coming down from the bridge. It’s a real punch in the mouth.”

Traffic flow

One of the roles the KRE traffic control employee would be taking on is helping to prevent motorists from turning left from Route 209 into the county lot. The borough has used barricades on weekends to keep vehicles from turning left into the lot in an effort to cut down backlogs on Route 209.

Schatz said the barricades have been moved to allow rafting buses to make the left turn, but even that may be nixed this year.

“We don’t think that’s a real good idea anymore because when you open those barricades up for the buses, about 10 cars behind them want to turn in there also,” he said.

The borough is also looking at eliminating parking on Hazard Square between Mollie Maguire’s Pub and Steakhouse and the Carbon County Courthouse Annex, and between Mollie Maguire’s and the Carbon County Courthouse on Saturdays, Sundays and Monday holidays between May 14 and Oct. 30.

“If that happens, we could route traffic around Hazard Square, have vehicles turn left at the light onto Route 209 and establish a right turn lane for vehicles turning into the county lot and thru-traffic would stay in the left lane,” Sterner said.

Creating that right turn lane would also mean no parking would be permitted in the spots borough officials refer to as “the corral” facing the train tracks from the Reading Northern line.

Council also discussed potentially repainting the parking lines between Mollie Maguire’s and the Carbon County Courthouse to change them from diagonal spaces to parallel spaces. No final decisions were made Thursday.