Township Supervisor Helps Dairy Celebrate Holidays

 The holiday celebration at Suloman's Milk Store will feature pony rides, above.

At right, New Hanover Township Supervisor Ross Snook seems well-suited to wear a Santa suit.

New Hanover Township Supervisor Ross Snook is many things. He's an elected official, a member of the environmental advisory board, a veteran.

But on Nov. 23, he will be something everyone recognizes -- Santa Claus.

Snook will help Suloman's Dairy, located at 2782 Leidy Road in Gilbertsville, with their holiday celebration from 1 to 6 p.m.

The family-owned dairy will have pony rides from 2 to 4 p.m. as well as holiday cookies, egg nog, ice cream, Christmas trees and holiday wreaths for sale.

At 5:30, Santa will turn on the dairy's holiday lights.

In May, 33 acres of the dairy's property was permanently preserved with a $700,000 conservation easement funding by the township's open space fund.

The retail dairy store, on about 1.16 acres, was not part of the preservation.

The farm was identified in the township's Open Space and Recreation Master Plan as a property worthy of preservation and consists of a total of five parcels.

New Hanover's (Town) Center of Attention Explored

Photos by Evan Brandt

As currently proposed, the New Hanover Town Center would construct 793 homes and apartments and 170,000 square feet of commercial space on 209 acres bounded by Swamp Pike, Route 663 and Township Line Road.

A roomful of residents got the latest on the massive Town Center development proposal during last night's board of supervisors meeting.

Developers from Select Properties, doing business as Wynnestone LP, were before the board seeking clarification and guidance as they prepare their latest submission in pursuit of a preliminary site plan approval.

The project, which has been around in one form or another for 12 years or so, calls for the construction of 793 dwelling units, some apartments, some townhouses and some single family homes, along with 171,000 square feet of commercial space -- at least as currently proposed.

A near-capacity crowd listen to plans about New Hanover
Town Center project.

The New Hanover Town Center, as its officially named, has gone through numerous variations over the years. It is proposed on 209 acres bounded by Swamp Pike in the north, Route 663 in the east and Township Line Road to the west.

First up Thursday night was the question of whether the roads in the project will be private roads or public. Either way, they will have to conform to township standards, said township= traffic consultant Sandy Koza.

Supervisors Chairman Charles D. Garner Jr. said he would prefer the roads remain private, so the township does not have to maintain them, and the other supervisors agreed.

However Planning Commission Chairwoman Sue Smith warned that private roads create a problem for school buses and she did not think it would be safe to have so many potential school children trying to board the bus on such busy roads as those surrounding the project.

The question of parking on "major roads" in the project was also raised, but soon devolved into a discussion of what makes a road "major." Evidently, the engineers and the lawyers will settle that one.

Marc Jonas, the attorney representing the developers, also pointed out that during one of the projects iterations, it received preliminary approval in 2007 under a clause called a "unified development," which has since been removed from the township's ordinances.

That gives the developer certain rights, but Garner, himself a municipal solicitor, said the developers cannot "pick and choose" which parts of the township's land development ordinances it wants to use.

Perhaps most central to last night's discussion was when the project's commercial portion will be

Yellow lines separate the five proposed phases of construction.

built.

According to the phasing plan the developer has put together, the first two phases to be built would construct a total of 351 homes, as well as much of the infrastructure for the commercial portion, which includes a "big box" space for a supermarket, or similar large store.

But Benjamin Goldthorp, who represents the developer, said "market conditions" would determine when the actual commercial properties would be built.

He said market studies show that 20,000 people need to live within three to five miles of such a store in order for it to be successful. New Hanover currently has about 15,000 people, Goldthorp said.

Some of the people who will live within the new development will help boost that number, but it may be some time before the 20,000 threshold is reached.

And that would leave the township, and the Boyertown Area School District, will lots of new homes but no commercial development to boost the tax base.

When one resident asked about the impact on the schools, Jonas said the developer is only working within the zoning the township created.

But the assertion that the township drew up the zoning unassisted drew a sharp rebuke from Smith who said the previous developer, THP Properties, worked with the supervisors to draw up the zoning before going bankrupt in the recession.

Either way, "a previous board decided a town center was something we wanted in New Hanover and created ordinances to allow it and we're seeing the result of that now," said Garner.

He said the new homes being built would be on public water, not on individual wells.

Ultimately, Garner suggested and the developers agreed, to have a special joint meeting with the supervisors, planning commission and developers to work out the remaining questions -- which is primarily the matter of waivers being sought by the developers.

Then it was time for residents to have their say.

"This is supposed to be a small town, not a shopping center,"

said New Hanover resident Linda Weaver.

One resident said she had moved to New Hanover from King of Prussia, "because it was too crowded there," and worried that with all the development occurring in New Hanover, the same problem would follow her.

"If this is built, Swamp Pike will have to become a four-lane road," she predicted.

Swamp Pike resident Linda Taylor said "I can't get out of my driveway right now as it is."

"I share your concern," said Garner. "I drive on Swamp Pike all the time." Koza explained that a a traffic study will determine what road improvement are required due to the increased traffic and that as each phase of the project begins, the developers will be required to implement specific improvements.

"This is supposed to be a small town, not a shopping center," said resident Linda Weaver.

And with that, here are the Tweets from the meeting:

New Hanover's (Town) Center of Attention

Crowd Balks at Swamp Creek Trail/Greenway Plan

Photos by Evan Brandt

One of many speakers at last night's public meeting on the possibility of creating a Swamp Creek Greenway and trail from Schwenksville to New Hanover Square Road suggests Sunrise Mill should be restored before any thought is given to building a trail.

The meeting room of the Lower Frederick Township building was a tough place to be Thursday night if you were facing the crowd.

A presentation on the kick-off of a feasibility study looking at the creation of a Greenway and Trail in the Swamp Creek Valley, stretching across 5,000 acres from Schwenksville to New Hanover, drew a capacity crowd to the Lower Frederick Township building Thursday night.

Michael Stokes, assistant director of the Montgomery County

Planning Commission outlines the plans so far.

Not too many of them were there to support the idea of a trail, if the comments were any indication.

Michael Stokes, assistant director of the Montgomery County Planning Commission, doggedly tried to field questions and comments as residents spoke over him, and each other, in their effort to express their skepticism about and outright opposition to the project.

Many said the stream, which empties into Perkiomen Creek less than a half-mile from the township building, the surrounding woods and the wildlife that lives there would be best preserved by leaving it alone.

"There's a conflict between conservation and preservation when you say you want to bust a trail through it all," said Jim Rupert, a 15-year resident of the stream bank and one of the few speakers who took the time to give his name.

He said he has seen quite a bit of wildlife along the creek and those animals are "very sensitive to human activity. It's 100 percent untrue to say putting a trail through there would not be affected."

A resident of Delphi Road says it would be dangerous to put a 

trail along the curved street where there are many accidents.

Others said Montgomery County has enough trails, while many others questioned what their property rights are and whether the county would be taking any of it.

"I won't lie to you, government has the right to take your property for a public purpose, but that is not our intent," Stokes said.

The intent of the meeting was to get input from the community and to outline some very early concepts for what the county is considering. He added that the county already owns about 60 percent of the property that would comprise the greenway and host the trail.

Since 1971, Montgomery County has owned the Sunrise Mill property and it is a key element in the greenway and trail plan.

A photo of Sunrise Mill was used as the first slide in the presentation.

Not currently open to the public, it was built in 1767 and is structurally sound, but it has not been restored inside, said Stokes.

Several speakers suggested public money would be better spent restoring the mill and opening it to the public, rather than conceiving of a trail that is designed to bring people to a historic building they cannot tour.

"You're doing it backwards," said one speaker.

There were a few who spoke favorably about the idea.

One Limerick resident said she uses the Perkiomen Trail regularly and that 77 percent of Montgomery County residents polled view trails favorably, although it seemed evident not too many of those poll-takers were in the room Thursday.

Geoff Creary, from the landscape architecture firm
Simone Collins, 

listens to input from a resident about
the map showing the 

proposed Swamp Creek Greenway
prior to the start of Thursday night's meeting.

Dulcie Flaharty, a member of the Montgomery Planning Commission Board, employee of Natural Lands Trust and longtime open space advocate in the county, said fears about eminent domain are common when a trail is first-proposed.

"Look at where we've done trails already," she said, noting that all but a few of the 200 private property purchases necessary to create the Perkiomen Trail were negotiated sales, and only one lawsuit.

But that did little to convince the crowds and at one point, a voice int he crowd said "it's theft of private property."

Finally, one resident asked Stokes pointedly, if the majority of residents speak out against it, "what are the chances really, that it won't happen?"

"That's why we're here," Stokes replied.

Subsequent public meetings are planned for March and June.

Here are the Tweets as they happened during the meeting.

Regional Traffic/School Impacts are Cumulative

Photos by Evan Brandt

Montgomery County Planner Donna Fabry outlines aspects of the New Hanover Town Center proposal, involving more than 200 acres and more than 750 homes, during Thursday's meeting of the Pottstown Metropolitan Area Regional Planning Committee. 

Whether its the number of children packing a classroom or the number of cars jamming Route 73, the cumulative impact of impending residential development is something planners should examine regionally, not on a town by town basis.

That was the apparent consensus among regional planners Thursday as they considered not only the traffic impact of a proposal to build more than 750 new homes in New Hanover Township, but also the cumulative effect when combined with projects in neighboring towns.

A proposal to have the Montgomery County Planning Commission contact the Delaware Valley Planning Commission and consider the implementation of a regional traffic study -- as a way to gain leverage to force intersection and road improvements -- passed unanimously.

New Hanover Township Supervisors Chairman Phil Agliano

outlines the specifics of the proposed Town Center plan.

And although no vote was taken Thursday night, two members of the Boyertown Area School Board -- John Landino and Clay Breece -- said the building projects proposed in New Hanover and Douglass (Mont.) townships will have an impact on the school system as well.

"Nobody wants to build a new school," Landino told this blogger. "And every parent wants their child to go to the local school."

Boyertown has held off on a re-districting proposal for elementary schools, Landinso said, but noted that all of the growth in the district -- which incorporates part of two counties -- is on the Montgomery County side.

"The Berks side is not growing," Landino said. "So we keep pushing everybody (students) west."

In addition to the impact of Boyertown schools, the traffic these new residential projects in Lower Pottsgrove, New Hanover and Douglass, "will all be funneled ultimately to Route 100 and Route 422, after turning Route 73 into more of a parking lot than it already is, the planners observed.

Which is why they agreed, once again, to pursue the idea of a regional traffic study as a way to measure and hopefully, mitigate the impact of all the residential development.

And here are the Tweets from the meeting.

Out of 11 Applicants , New Hanover Supervisors Chose Only Woman to Apply to Replace Muller

Photo by Evan Brandt

Phil Agliano, vice chairman of the New Hanover Supervisors,

congratulates Marie Livelsberger on her selection
as the newest township supervisor.

From a surprisingly long list of 11 candidates to replace Doug Muller on the board of supervisors, the remaining board members Monday chose the only woman to apply.

Marie Livelsberger, who two years ago worked for the township and is on New Hanover's Board of Auditors, was their unanimous choice.

The North Charlotte Street resident, who now works in the human resources department at the Tredyffrin-Easttown School District, said she wants to give back to the community in which she has lived for 40 years.

Livelsberger didn't get the appoint without some confusion, as it became apparent during the special meeting held Monday that the application and resume of one of the applicants, Jim Butler, was never provided to the supervisors.

Luckily for Jim Butler, he attended the meeting and alerted the supervisors to the oversight.

Attendance at the meeting was a strong selling point for some of the supervisors, but resident Celeste

Other than a notice in the Town & Country, this sign was the only

public notice of a special meeting held Monday to choose

a new township supervisor to replace Doug Muller. 

Bish pointed out to the board that a notice in the Town and Country newspaper was the only way anyone would have known to be there in the first place.

"What if they don't subscribe to Town and Country?" Bish asked.

She pointed out that the special meeting was not posted on the township web site and, as Supervisor Andrew Kelly noted, the township did not reach out to those who applied to let them know about the meeting.

Nevertheless, the supervisors moved forward, partially by process of elimination, and partially by stating their preference.

The vote to appoint Livelsberger was unanimous.

It was unclear to this reporter, who had to dash off to a Pottstown School Board meeting, if the supervisors also chose to re-organize and name a new chairman Monday night or not, given that one supervisor, Charles D. Garner Jr., could not be present for the regular meeting.

Anyway, here are the Tweets from the roughly hour-long special meeting.

Discharge, Distrust and Polluted Groundwater

Photo by Evan Brandt

What remained of the crowd by the time it came for the formal public haring for the renewal of the NPDES permit for the Gibraltar Rock Quarry in the auditorium of Boyertown Junior High East Tuesday.

The public hearing Tuesday evening for the renewal of the discharge permit for the proposed Gibraltar Rock Quarry was part town hall and part formal hearing.

It began with a presentation of the reason everyone was there (which I missed) and then a parade of residents, officials, layers and experts talking about the wisdom of beginning operations of a rock quarry near to a site where groundwater contamination has been found.

It was broken into three parts.

The first and third parts were question and answer period, with residents asking questions and actually getting answers on the spot. But it was "off the record."

In the middle was the formal public hearing, with folks testifying, the court recorder taking it all down and officials from the Department of Environmental Protection saying "thank you for your comments."

Throughout it all, no one from the public came to speak in favor of the quarry, or the potential its operations have to discharge groundwater polluted with a dangerous alphabet soup of chemical pollutants into a stream that empties into Swamp Creek.

Photo by Evan Brandt

The Gibraltar Rock quarry maps to which speakers and experts referred.

Mostly, what people seemed to be trying to determine, was how bad the pollution is, what DEP is prepared to do about it, and the potential impact the quarry operations would have on the contamination seeping through the groundwater at the former Good's Oil site off Layfield Road (Route 663).

What was also clear is that the experts do not seem to agree.

While the expert from EarthRes, the firm hired by Gibraltar to study the area assured residents and officials the contaminated groundwater from Good's is moving away from the site, the engineering firm and consultant hired by New Hanover Township asserted the opposite.

And, not surprisingly, it also became increasingly clear how the entire issue has been compartmentalized within DEP, so that only certain aspects of the proposed quarry and its proximity to the contaminated site are considered at any one time, by any particular agency.

So while resident after resident came to the microphone to talk about their concerns about the potential contamination and impact of the quarry operations, they were repeatedly told something like: "we're only here to discuss the NPDES permit, please confine your comments to that issue."

FYI, NPDES stands for -- ironically perhaps -- the National Pollution Discharge Elimination System and is a federal permit, administered by the state, to protect the nation's rivers and streams from too much pollution.

Nothing was resolved, the state insists it is still undecided about renewing the discharge permit, or the mining permit.

What was learned, however, from DEP official Ragesh Patel, that the state plans to reveal its plans for cleaning up the Good's Oil site by the end of the year, or early in 2017.

So without further ado, we present the Tweets -- and mostly the preserved live video from the hearing's various parts:

5,000 More Cars Coming to Route 73

Photo by Evan Brandt

This map shows the sprawling New Hanover Center proposal that stretches from the intersection of North Charlotte Street (Route 663) and Swamp Pike west to Township Line Road and the border with Douglass (Mont.) 

A massive development proposed in New Hanover that will take more than a decade to complete will have impacts outside the borders of the township, not the last of which is the addition of as many as 5,000 cars per day through Gilbertsville.

The potential traffic impact from New Hanover Center was the issue of primary concern Monday when the developers -- American Real Estate Development -- outlined the project for the Douglass (Mont.) Township Supervisors.

Supervisor Tony Kuklinski pressed the issue, resulting in the revelation that currently, Swamp Pike, which becomes Philadelphia Avenue in Gilbertsville, currently sees about 10,200 vehicle trips per day.

This project, which has already received preliminary approval from the New Hanover Board of Supervisors, calls for 760 housing units -- 509 of which will be townhomes; 124 of which will be single family homes, and 130 of which will be senior housing.

It also plans for about 200,000 square feet of retail space, including a new grocery store, which is seen as a primary generator of traffic.

"I am going to be able to walk to Spring City faster than I can drive there," said Kuklinski, who is the police chief in Spring City.

There is not much Douglass Supervisors can do given that the project is not in their township.

And there is not much traffic engineers can do given that Gilbertsville was developed with homes up to the sidewalk, so there is no room to widen Philadelphia Avenue.

The plans do call for improvements to the intersections with Gilbertsville Road, Township Line Road and North Charlotte Street.

Another impact, observed Henry Road resident Bernie Sell, is the impact on Boyertown area schools.

After Kuklinski noted to the developers that "Douglass doesn't get anything out of this, other than the traffic," Sell added "oh yes we do. We get to build new schools."

Here are the Tweets from the meeting.

Going to (Geo-Hydrology) School in New Hanover

First of all, allow me to wax on a bit about what a charming locale was chosen for a municipal meeting, the old historic schoolhouse in New Hanover.

It had the two things I most appreciate in a historic site -- authenticity and air conditioning.

(During a recent visit to FDR's historic home in New Hyde Park, we entered the mansion only to be told the air conditioning had broken down. It was hard to appreciate history when your glasses kept fogging up.)

Secondly, bravo to the township supervisors for saying they don't know enough about the science of  potential contamination being released by Gibraltar Rock';s quarrying. (It's not often you hear a politician say they don't know enough.)

Thirdly, a second bravo for saying they need to learn more, and then inviting someone who knows more to teach them. (They just moved from "politicians" to "concerned public officials" in my playbook.)

And fourthly, congrats to them for voting Monday night to have solicitor Paul Bauer write to the DEP and essentially ask "why aren't you doing more about this."

During last night's meeting, Bauer opined that the DEP should have stepped in when Gibraltar Rock bought 18 acres of land from the owner of the contaminated former oil site in December.

We'll see where it goes from here people.

Here are the Tweets from the meeting.

New Hanover Quarry May Release Contaminated Groundwater says Geologist, Hyrdologist

Sometimes it pays to hang in there until the end.

This was certainly the case for the four-hour township supervisors meeting I attended Monday night.

What I didn't know going in was that there was an appeal of a code enforcement action at the top of the agenda that ended up taking almost two hours.

The interesting thing about it was that the person making the appeal was William Moyer, a sergeant with the New Hanover Police Department.

A water drain he put in year sago, with the verbal OK of the code officer at the time and in order to protect his already water-logged neighbors from getting ever more of his run-off, was suddenly declared illegal because it was causing an icy condition on Reifsnyder Road.

Rather, said his lawyer, the problem was caused by the settling of Colonial Drive.

Anyway it was long and painfully dull, except, of course, to the people whose lives are affected by it.

And then, aaaaaallllllll the way at the end of the meeting, Ross Snook of Sanatoga Road, a geologist, hydrologist and waste expert, told the board that the groundwater contamination beneath the former Good's Oil site is being held back by crystaline bedrock.

That bedrock will be fractured by blasting for the neighboring quarry fighting for approval for more than a decade, and when the quarry draws groundwater for their operation, it will suck contaminated groundwater into the rest of the aquifer, compounding the pollution problem, Snook said.

We'll be following up on this, of course.

For now, here are the Tweets.