East Allen Township Discusses 2020 Road Bid, Hires New Employees
The East Allen Township Board of Supervisors held a meeting on Thursday, April 23 at 7 p.m. via Zoom to conduct routine township business.
Imperial Realty Property Group’s conditional use hearing was passed.
The hearing started on January 23 and continued on February 27. Imperial’s plan is to create a one story warehouse on their Airport Road property that will have parking spots for 250 cars; there will be 115 truck loading docks, 57 on each side of the building. They also plan to remove the nearby strip mall and the vacant bank in the area will be transformed into a restaurant.
It was suggested that one of the conditions be modified in order to reach an agreement between the parties involved. This condition will be discussed between the teams and will hopefully be finalized at the next Board of Supervisors meeting.
The board is looking into drafting a resolution that would discount the base real estate tax rate until August 31, 2020; this resolution would also allow fees and penalties associated with late payment of the property tax to be waived as long as the tax is paid in full by December 31, 2020.
This does not mean that the discount rate extension and fee waiver has been passed at this time. It only means that they are drafting a resolution. However, there seems to be no objection from the board about passing this motion once the draft of the resolution is complete.
Further, the board discussed awarding the bid for the 2020 Road Program.
The issue with the bid is that it went over budget due to the type of blacktop being used is flexible and moves with frost heaving. An application of chip seal must be put over top of the blacktop in areas that hit stone at a certain depth, so the blacktop doesn’t become porous. The chip seal is what put the project over-budget.
The board decided to move forward with the base bid, which was still over the project’s budget, and apply the chip seal in areas at the discretion of the public works coordinator and the township manager.
East Allen Township’s current Zoning Hearing Board Solicitor, James Zulich, is retiring. Attorney Stanley Margle has accepted the position in his place; his appointment has been approved by the board. Margle has his own law office in Bethlehem and has a lot of experience with zoning work.
The township has also created a full-time zoning officer position. They have a candidate that has not yet accepted the position; upon acceptance, the candidate will start effective Monday, May 4, 2020.
Finally, the township hired its second of five seasonal positions; the other three are tentatively on hold with everything that’s going on.
The next Board of Supervisors meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, May 13 2020 at 7 p.m.; it was not mentioned if this meeting will be held on Zoom as well.