Council meetings can often be mundane, with a small handful of engaged residents and media members in the audience.
But on rare occasions, a noteworthy issue comes to the forefront and citizens come out in droves to make their voices heard.
Thursday night’s College Township Council meeting was one of those occasions. Residents of the Stearns Crossing neighborhood, just off East College Avenue’s intersection with Manor Drive, came out to protest a proposed street extension.
The latter street is a hill leading to Mountainview Avenue, a dead end lined with houses and apartments. That hill is a disaster for residents to navigate during rough winter storms. As a potential solution, the council is discussing an extension of Mountainview that would connect it with Ivy Hill Drive, a residential dead end off Houserville Road. To put it mildly, residents aren’t thrilled with the idea.
One of those residents is Christopher Cessna, who says he already has significant issues with storm water draining into his lawn causing soil erosion. He says the proposed street extension would essentially create an additional path for water runoff pointed directly at his home.
Barbara Johnson, who lives on Ivy Hill, doesn’t think the extension is a great idea either.
“My main concern is the traffic volume increase in our neighborhood,” she says. “My one question is: Have all the other road options been evaluated?”
She proposed a couple of alternatives to the current proposal, including a connection of Mountainview with Commercial Boulevard or a more angled extension that connects Ivy Hill closer to Holly Ridge Drive. Township manager Adam Brumbaugh says some of those options were explored a decade ago.
“We did look at making a connection from Mountainview onto Commercial and it’s probably been 10 years ago since we took a look at that,” he says. “The grades tend to match up but the problem is primarily with Hoag’s Catering. That is an issue that quite frankly from a monetary standpoint, I don’t know how the township could solve it.”
After a long line of residents took turns at the podium addressing council on their issues with the proposed road extension — ranging from traffic increases to storm water — Brumbaugh offered a solution.
“Without any cost to the township, we could work with our consulting engineer to get estimate on a number of things,” he says. “We could look at the connection currently proposed, traffic counts, storm water considerations. We can ask for pricing of possible modifications to Manor Drive and revisit the connection with Commercial Boulevard.”
With that in mind, Brumbaugh made a motioned to have township staff obtain pricing estimates on the various options for the neighborhood, which will be presented for council’s consideration at a later date. The motion passed unanimously.
Council also heard a brief presentation from PennDOT representatives on the impending Slab Cabin Run bridge replacement project.
“The intent is to not keep anyone in the dark and that’s why we’re here today,” design project manager Rob Jaconski says. “We’re making an effort to get out into the community and let people know what’s going on.”
The $1.5 million project will be completed during the summer of 2016. It was originally planned as a three-month project, but PennDOT will instead operate on a three-week schedule with construction essentially taking place around the clock, with two 10-hour shifts each day.
The final design needs to be submitted by the end of January. PennDOT will then bid contractors, and select one for the job by mid-May. Construction will take place a month or two after that.
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