Lehigh County Executive Phillips Armstrong gave his final farewell speech at the Weisenberg Township Board of Supervisors meeting, May 12.

“It’s my farewell tour. This is in fact my last meeting. I said I would come every year and I wanted to make sure I did. I wanted to thank you very much for the cooperation we’ve had in the last eight years,” Armstrong said. “I really think that Lehigh County is one of the best. I brag about us all the time. The thing is how we work well together. I think coming out to these meetings every year has been really important.”

He said this year he has been getting hit with a lot of questions at the meetings about the radios.

“I was in Washington a little while ago at the White House and met with two people. They asked what we can do for your area. I said money for radios point blank. Of course nothing happened but I asked,” Armstrong said.

He said everything has gone well and the County is starting their budget process now.

Brian Carl, township manager, comments about the township working with Armstrong.

“Good job with everything and it was great working with you,” he stated.

“I’ll tell you it’s been a pleasure and I’ve never enjoyed a job more than this. It’s term limited and I kind of believe in that. I wish it weren’t and some other things too, but I’m not going to complain. I’m not going to try to rewrite the Constitution,” he stated. “I’m going out in January but I’m still going to be involved. in June I’m up to be second vice chair of the National Association of Regional Councils which will make me the chair of that in 2027.”

In other business, the board discussed the community center construction contract award.

Carl began the discussion.

“So, I have been working with Conestoga. As you recall we did bid out the project twice and we didn’t receive any bids. The lowest bidder changed his mind and didn’t submit a bid, so Conestoga was our second lowest bidder,” he stated.

He said the bid package for the community center is $1,739,750 and looking for a motion for him to sign the contract.

Peter Lehr asked to make a couple of comments.

“What we received from Conestoga is actually a written price quotation not an actual contract. So, I can state a motion to authorize Brian to sign the price quote. Obviously in order to actually award a contract we need to have a contract which would likely follow the issuance of this quotation, but if you’re comfortable with the quotation I don’t see any issue with authorizing Brian to sign it,” Lehr said.

“So, I’ll say the motion if somebody would like to make it and that is to authorize the township manager to sign the written price quotation from Conestoga dated May 6, 2025, for the Weisenberg Township Community Center and to negotiate and present to the board of supervisors a contract from Conestoga for the design and construction of the community center consistent with the aforementioned quotation. Township manager shall have the authority to issue payment to Conestoga for any design related work necessary to finalize the contract,” Lehr stated.

The motion was approved.

Carl comments on the funds.

“Just to point out again we have $1,184,284.38 in the bank plus interest and we have another $1,200,500 in pledged contributions which gives us $1,186,784.38 all in private donations towards the community center which will give us a balance of $447,026.38. Over half of that will go towards the sports flooring, turf, and asphalt but we will still have a little cushion,” he stated.

He added the site work is nearly ready for the contractor.

I’ll have a schedule but it sounds like tentatively they’ll get the design rolling and they should be able to start construction in June. They were thinking of a 6-to-8-month construction window,” Carl stated.

Under subdivision and land development on the agenda, Carl briefly spoke about the Lehigh County Authority 537 plan review.

The length of the plan was emailed out to everyone (board members). The 60-day comment period is open right now so you could just review it. It’s just LCA’s system, the upgrades that they are proposing,” he said. “We left enough EDU’s to use for 15 new single-family houses. We’re not asking for any other additional flows and that takes us out to 2035. We actually will have to adopt the plan in July/August.”

Under old business, the board approved a motion to adopt Ordinance 2025-5 an animal control ordinance on exotic animals which was previously discussed at the boards April 14 meeting.