Lehigh County Executive Phillips Armstrong gave his farewell speech at the Heidelberg Township Board of Supervisors meeting, April 17.

“This is kind of my farewell tour if you will,” Armstrong said. “I’m hoping whoever replaces me will keep this idea going forward to get out to the different municipalities. I think it has been very worthwhile.”

Armstrong said he is very proud of this area nationally.

He said when you talk about farmland preservation he is proud this area is now number two in the state as far as acres persevered versus how many acres the county has and the list of preserved farms keeps expanding.

Armstrong said the big hot issue this year is the state forcing the counties with this new radio system and it is expensive.

“I’ve actually been to Washington and met with representatives from the White House and begging them if they were going to give out some grants, which don’t seem to be coming at all right now. That would be a real blessing to help these municipalities out,” he stated. “I think the Lehigh County Board of Commissioners have done a nice job of saying we will buy them, we will give them to you and we won’t charge you interest for five years if you pick the five-year plan, which I don’t think there’s been a municipality yet that hasn’t decided that they’re going to go with the five-year plan. We want to do this is as quickly as possible because it has to be in by 2026 by state mandate.”

Armstrong also discussed the issues of Municipal Bonds which have been taxed exempted and is now on the table to be taxed, the county paying to do an extensive study on housing in the area to know what kind of housing is needed and where and selling one of the parking lots in downtown Allentown to be a sustainable housing project, the addition to Cedarbrook, the upgrades to the Lehigh County Water Authority and the funding for the Rails to Trails.

“We’re starting our next year’s budget next month,” Armstrong stated. “We’re going to try to come in again with no tax increase, it’s getting a little tougher with everything going up.”

Another item on the agenda was the Buckery Road Bridge project.

Dawn Didra, township manager, said she met with the Lehigh County Conservation District about the extra funds for the project.

“They’re going to give us about an extra $28,000 but the money that’s coming from them we won’t be getting that until after the bridge is completed,” she stated. “They also stressed to me that they (contractor) have to be at specific milestones during the construction or we won’t get the money.”

The board also discussed the schedule of what payments are going to be due and when on the project as well as taking out a loan.

“We’re definitely going to have to get a loan because the first payment is going to be due May 25th and it’s going to be about $252,000. We do not have enough in our kitty for that and the next payments is going to be almost $274,000 and that’s due in June,” Didra said. “Most of it will get reimbursed. But just how long is that going to take for us to submit the bill and for them to get us the money.”

Chairman David Fink comments.

“We have to pay for it up front and then we’ll get reimbursed through the grants so we’re going to have to take an interim loan for six months maybe,” Fink said.

The board approved a motion for Didra to shop for loans to cover the upcoming payments.

Geoff Dean, engineer with Keystone Consulting Engineers, during the discussion on the project said he is anticipating construction to start on or about May 5 and hopefully by middle to end of summer the township will have a completed project and it will be able to be reused.

In other business, Randy Metzger, deputy fire chief with Germansville reported he had been working with the deputy chief from Emerald Fire Company, Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency and the Air National Guard on holding a helicopter rescue drill along the Appalachian Trail from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. on May 17.

He said the helicopter would arrive around 10:30 a.m., landing pretty much in the area of Church Road, between Bake Oven Knob and Mountain Road, Heidelberg Township.

“We are going to have to do sort of rolling closures because of having the black hawk helicopter hovering at treetop level,” he said. “There are some dangers involved there so we want that trail sort of blocked off during those intermediate periods when the helicopter is close to the ground.”