The Penndel town Council recently voted to waive the $1,500 escrow fee that homeowners would have to pay before being compliant with sidewalk and curb requirements. These requirements are necessary for the reconstruction of nearly a mile of the borough’s roadways.
“I’m supposed to hand you a $1,500 check for four months,” one resident asked prior to the vote. He continued, “are you going to give me interest on that?”
The decision to waive the fees came after Penndel homeowners berated civil designer of Gilmore & Associates with snarky and rude comments, at the town council meeting on Oct. 3. According to the engineering company’s assessments, it’s the homeowner’s responsibility to fix their own curbs and sidewalks. When in fact, the council actually made the specific requirement decisions for inspections that the engineering company was to follow for this project.
Council President Kali Sodano said that a lot of the professionals she had spoken with agreed that the $1,500 escrow was a little steep. “If we can do anything to make it easier on them, I’m all for that,” said Sodano.
Residents were upset at the previous meeting due to the six-month deadline that they were being forced to meet. This clash over curbs and sidewalks stems from a grant the borough has received to fix several of its streets, which is projected to begin in April of next year.
The Community Development Block Grant Program (CDBG) provides the annual grants to counties such as Bucks County, who then begins accepting applications from eligible municipalities and the County Commissioners divide and award the money as they see fit. Penndel Borough was awarded $355,460 for the complete reconstruction of Cynthia Avenue, in 2015.
“In 2016, under the guidance of a newly appointed engineering firm (Gilmore & Associates), we submitted an application requesting funding for a comprehensive road improvement program,” said Sodano.
While Penndel was not awarded any extra funding in 2016, the county did allow modifications to be made to the work submitted in the 2015 application. “We expanded the number of streets to be repaired based on the borough engineer’s opinion of probable cost,” said Sodano.
Since this grant has already been extended, it is vital that the borough completes this project revision in a timely fashion. “It would not reflect well on the borough to request an additional time extension seeing as we’ve already extended the 2015 round of funding through 2017,” Sodano said. Any changes made to the accepted timeline require formal requests to be sent to the county.
Residents left the borough hall in a better mood than they had two weeks prior. Councilwoman Beverly Wolfe didn’t understand why homeowners were so hostile. “It’s a part of borough code,” said Wolfe.
The ordinance was adopted in 1911 and amended in 1994. Chapter 350 Article II of borough code pertains to the issue of curb and sidewalk construction.
All residents required to make repairs have been notified as to what needs to be done. The issue of how the “tripping hazards” were to be marked was a topic of itself.
Rob Schafer, of Dehaven Avenue, exclaimed, “Do not spray paint my sidewalk! I don’t want to stare at spray paint for eight months.” Schafer continued, “I’ll call the police for graffiti.”
“I also don’t want spray paint on my sidewalk,” added another resident.
To calm the heated emotions, Civil Designer Sean Nagy, who represents Gilmore & Associates at the town council meetings, agreed to use chalk. “It was later determined to use spray paint on most properties that didn’t request specifically otherwise at the council meeting due to the anticipated rain that weekend,” said Nagy. He did not comment on the hostility of the attending residents.
It is written into borough code that fines can be imposed upon homeowners who fail to adhere to the April deadline. Sodano said, “there is a whole process that we can go through,” but she feels confident that residents will comply in a timely manner.
“They’re not all complaining,” said Sodano jokingly.