Geoff Dean, township engineer, with Keystone Consulting Engineers, provided an update on the Buckery Road Bridge project at the Heidelberg Township Board of Supervisors meeting, Aug. 21.

“So, if you’ve been out to Buckery Road, you’ll see that we have a bridge,” Dean stated. “Most recently PPL set a new pole earlier this week, I think to raise the low hanging overhead wires to solve that issue.”

He added the work that is left to be done is guardrail work, paving and restoration and wrapping up utility wire clearance issues.

“I think paving is set to happen right after Labor Day,” Dean stated. “So once we get past the holiday we should be in a position to pretty much pick an opening date.“

Dawn Didra, township manager, during her monthly report told the board in their books there is a report that there is a cost for Buckery Road bridge.

“So, it looks like we’re going to have about a $25,000 shortfall that won’t be covered by grants but we’re also going to have $125,000 that we’re going to have to put out for costs that will not get reimbursed until the very end, until it’s approved and ready to drive on, so that’s going to eat up a lot of our funding,” Didra stated. “I wanted to make sure the board was aware of that.”

Keith Strohl, township solicitor with Steckel and Stopp Law offices said during his monthly report he had one update, the accessory dwelling unit ordinance which was on the agenda to be discussed under unfinished business.

“We did get back comments from the Lehigh Valley Planning Commission. They had no proposed changes to the ordinance, just positive comments with regards to the township proactively approaching that,” he stated. “So because of the timing and having to advertise multiple times with the zoning ordinance and making sure we didn’t get any proposed changes from LVPC we didn’t advertise for this meeting, but we’re ready to advertise for the September meeting, so we can have that on the agenda next month.“

Strohl added the board authorized the approval for advertising a couple of months ago, it was just getting through the formalities of getting LVPC’s notice, it’s always tough, but they got their comments back to us quickly. “Again because of the timing with having to do two advertisements, having to have the last advertisement at least a week before the meeting, we could have aggressively pushed it through but then if there’s a comment that requires a change, if you get a substantial change and you have already advertised, you got to go start from the beginning and we didn’t want to waste costs for advertising and then advertise again,” Strohl explained.

“Because it wasn’t something that’s super urgent I’d rather just wait for us to get confirmation from them (LVPC) that they didn’t want any proposed changes that we would have to take back to the board at this meeting before we went ahead and advertised.“

Under unfinished business on the agenda, the board approved a motion to approve the advertisement of Ordnance 2025-2 Accessory Dwelling Unit.

Also, under unfinished business, the board approved a motion to adopt Resolution 2025-24 to appoint Mary Caye Vargas as an alternate voting member of the planning commission.