New (Former) Supervisor, New Trash Hauler, and Congratulations Chief Templin on 25 Years Service

Photos by Evan Brandt

Douglass Police Chief Barry Templin, right, is congratulated

on 25 years of service to the township by Supervisors

Chairman Anthony Kuklinski

As you have no doubt already read in your print edition of The Mercury, former Douglass supervisor John Stasik Jr. was appointed to fill the vacancy left by Fred Ziegler's resignation last month.

I'll trust you to find that news in the newspaper (although a video of the vote can be found admid the Tweets below).

But that was not the only thing that happened last night.

Police Corporal Brian Steffie was promoted to the rank of sergeant and Chief Barry Templin was recognized for 25 years of service to the department.

A local boy who graduated from Boyertown Area Senior High School, Templin was congratulated by the entire department and his extended family, as well as the Board of Supervisors.

He said the people he works with "make my job really easy, although I suppose I shouldn't tell you that."

He added that the officers in the department are "the ones who go out and bust their buns every day" and make him look good.

Although they all looked pretty good in this rare photo of the all of Douglass's uniformed personnel:

Douglass (Mont.) township's uniformed personnel.

The other significant development last night was the awarding of a three-year trash collection contract to Keystone Disposal.

The low bidder among five -- which included Advanced Disposal, which had the most recent contract, A.J. Blozenski, J.P. Mascaro and Son and Waste Management -- the cost to the township per year is $278,333.33 for the service.

The three-year total is $835,000, $72,535 less than the next lowest bid of "907,535 from Advanced.

Advanced won the contract for disposal of the township's trash at its Western Berks Landfill with a low bid of $58.65 per ton.

Township Manager Peter Hiryak said the bids were about $30,000 lower than the last rounds of bids, which the township rejected in November.

He said the November bids were higher because "we made it too complicated." Simplifying the bids brought the price down, he said.

Douglass (Mont.) will continue to use the pay-per-bag system, in which users buy their trash bags from the township as their only disposal cost, ensuring they only pay for what they use.

The township will continue to operate its recycling and composting facility. The only change as a result of the new trash hauler, said recycling coordinator Andrew Duncan, is that recycling will be collected once a week, instead of once every two weeks as occurs now.

"I expect that will increase our recycling and reduce our trash tonnage," Duncan told the supervisors in recommending the Keystone bid, which they adopted unanimously.

We'll have a little more on that in an upcoming article in The Mercury.

In the meantime, here are the Tweets and video from last night: