Wednesday, September 05, 2007

Borough Council Workshop Notes

For those who were on vacation last week and not reading NOC, you may not have noticed that I missed last week’s Council Workshop. I was not away, but doing a little home improvement project that resulted in my forgetting about the meeting.


Fortunately, Borough Secretary/Treasurer Paul Kokolus included at the September Business Meeting an informational packed, Workshop Musings that indicated several of the items discussed or of interest including:

  • The annual recycling grant for 2006 was received in amount of $10,912 compared to $11,974 in 2005.

  • The Ambulance company will change its name to Nazareth Ambulance Corps from Nazareth Volunteer Ambulance Corps due to a lack of volunteers. The change means that a lack of volunteers will allow the Borough to drop its volunteer coverage which should result in lower premium in the future.

  • The Budget workshop is the last Wednesday of October.

  • Discussions are on-going with the NASD concerning the collection of Earned Income Tax and EMS Tax. More info will come in the future.

  • Skate Park information related to costs and donations was indicated as follows:

    • Private and Corporate Donations: $7,373.

    • Northampton County Council: $15,000.

    • Upper Nazareth Township: $15,000.

    • Bushkill Township: $10,000.

    • Tatamy Borough: $ 3,500.

    • Nazareth Borough $, 30,000.

    • Total donations and contributions: $81,171

    • Ramp Equipment: $64,118

    • Fencing: $ 7,575.

    • Hwy Materials: $7,901.

    • Signage: $ 99.

    • Keller Consulting: $7,605

    • Total costs of materials and construction: $87,298

    • Deficit: $6,127

  • Received a request from Bill Brackbill to hold a “Quarters for Families” event on either 10/14 or 10/21 in Nazareth in which Main Street from the Circle to route 248/191/Easton Road will be closed to allow people to place quarters on the center line of the street. Money riised will go to military organizations and Keller Consulting Engineers will be asked to verify the distance of the line of quarters to provide for a Guinness Record. The event would be from 1 to 4 p.m.

6 comments:

John Huber said...

How can you place quarters on the centerline of a street with no centerline for a good portion of the street

johnson said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
RossRN said...

Johnson,

Again, this comment is not appropriate as it is not consistent with site standards. Please keep the comments focused on the issue, not the individual.

RossRN said...

And to John - I actually thought of the same thing. I believe the only streets with center lines are PA DOT streets excepting Green Street where it was redone last year and painted shortly thereafter because cars where driving down the middle of the 's'.

John Huber said...

Ross, I would love to see what others had posted....

Other things about meeting....

Costs for the skate park are a little hight I think... of course all in retrospect.... over 7k for fence? over 7 for macadam?

RossRN said...

John,

If you are referring to the deleted comment here it was a personal attack on an individual which was not appropriate and didn't contribute to the conversation so I deleted it. The same individual made a post elsewhere that was questionable and I mentioned it wasn't appropriate. In fairness the two were made very shortly after one another and the same person had a post later that was no problem.

I try to keep this site 'squeeky clean' so sometimes you're not missing much when you see comment deleted.

In regard to costs at the Skate Park (and I'm not expert in the area of hwy materials or fencing), I believe that the bids that were accepted were much lower than the competitors. However, that is not to say they are good prices, only the nature of what you get given the system the borough must follow.

Purely observational, but it seemed that Herbst was completely caught off by the bill from Keller and that raised his objection to the bill at the meeting.

It was discussed and noted that Council should see itemized bills so they can understand the totals, which is fine, but they should also be sure to either cap or get estimates on work by the engineer or any other party that is being hired without a set price tag. In this way they won't go over budget.