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Bald Eagle Township OKs loan refinance

MILL HALL — The new board of supervisors started their service to Bald Eagle Township on a high note Monday, July 24.

They gave the nod to the township sewer authority’s refinancing of a loan. The new loan of $2.45 million extends the term of the debt by three years but keeps the payments about the same. Extending the loan gives the sewer authority capital to work on keeping groundwater out of the system. This should lower the flow of wastewater — and lower the amount the township authority has to pay for sewage treatment.

The previous loan was a refinancing of the initial loan. It was for $3,130,000 at 3.99 percent interest, according to bond counsel David O. Twaddell with the firm Rhoads and Sinon. It was taken out in 2008.

The new refinancing loan is for 10 years, at 2.75 percent interest, he said, with fixed monthly payments of $23,376 and no balloon payment at the end.

The sewer authority is actually taking out the loan, but the bank had offered a better deal if the township stood behind the authority and guaranteed the payments, he said. The supervisors agreed to do that.

REGIONAL POLICE

A new study on the concept of a regional police force has been completed, Supervisor Chair Gerard Banfill reported. The study was done by the state, at no cost to the township or the eight other interested local municipalities, he said.

A bill in the state Legislature last year would have charged $155 per resident of any municipality that did not provide local police service, according to Banfill. This was proposed to help recoup the cost of providing state police service.

A new state bill this year would charge $25 per resident for the same thing.

Such a bill may eventually pass, with local governments forced to pay the fee, he said, so regional policing is one option that should be explored.

The township has already raised its local services tax to the maximum of $52 per person, he said, and in the 2017 budget, the extra money collected was designated toward some type of arrangement for local police service.

But, he added, there is no way the township could pay $350,000 for policing, which he said is the township’s estimated cost in one of the options the study outlines.

“It’s a lot of commitment,” he said.

The township’s largest area of crime seems to be retail theft, he said, and this might be a business problem, not a general taxpayer problem.

On the other hand, he said, the township has not had much in the way of code or zoning enforcement for some time. A local or regional police force could write citations for nuisances like high weeds and junk cars, something the state police do not do, he said.

In that same vein, the supervisors touched briefly on two longstanding citizen complaints, about an abandoned house on Eagle Valley Road (Route 150), and about what looks like junk or near-junk on the property at Munro and Sugarlusk Road. The township has sent multiple letters to the owners of both properties, with some results. However, no longstanding changes seem to have been made.

DROP-OFF BINS

Banfill also talked about the “Clothes/Shoes” bins that have sprung up around the township.

Donation bins owned by USAgain are well taken care of, he said. When trash is dumped outside those bins, the township simply informs USAgain and the mess is soon cleaned up, he said.

However, the “no name” bins that just say “Clothes/Shoes” are another story. Township employees must spend time cleaning up the junk and trash dumped around them, Banfill said, instead of doing other work.

When a new bin is installed on private property anywhere in the township, the zoning officer must issue a permit, he said. These permits are supposed to be renewed annually, but no one has been held accountable to that rule, according to Banfill.

Eight boxes that stood at one time between Lowes and Sheetz off Hogan Boulevard had drug paraphernalia lying around in their vicinity and a car was even abandoned there, he said. When the property owner was notified, it turned out he did not even know about the boxes. Armed with that knowledge, the township removed them, Banfill said.

The supervisors agreed to consider an ordinance banning all drop-off bins, even the USAgain bins.

The local Salvation Army does not have any bins in the township, the supervisors noted, so a ban would not affect that local charity’s current situation.

AROUND THE TOWNSHIP

The supervisors approved two privies for a proposed Amish schoolhouse at 53 Eagle Mountain Lane. The schoolhouse project will lease one acre on a 10-acre property owned by Jacob Stoltzfus, the supervisors heard.

The township planning board reportedly did not object to the proposal.

Even though there will be no running water at the structure, the schoolhouse is still awaiting approval from the state Department of Environmental Protection, the supervisors heard.

William Edwards’ request was granted to rezone the lot alongside his office building at 2332 Eagle Valley Road (Route 150), by Central Storage. The lot is zoned agricultural, and Edwards would like it to be commercial. The commercial zone ends at his office building, so adding this lot would be a common-sense extension of the zone, the supervisors heard.

The supervisors want to submit the proper documents to correct what DEP calls a violation, Banfill said. The documents are needed for the Clinton County Sewer Authority’s proposed project of replacing a force main that crosses Bald Eagle Creek.

The township does not have the numbers to fill out the documents yet, Banfill said, and will seek engineering help to take care of the matter. Banfill suggested starting with Steve Gibson who is the county sewer authority’s engineer and may already have the figures.

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