YOE BOROUGH PG. 1
150 NORTH MAPLE STREET
YOE, PA 17313
The regular monthly meeting of Yoe Borough Council was held on September 6, 2011 at the Yoe Borough Municipal Building, 150 N. Maple Street, Yoe, PA. The meeting was called to order at 7PM by President of Council Sam Snyder beginning with
the Pledge of Allegiance.
Council members in attendance:
Sam Snyder
Seth Noll
Tom Allar
Barry Myers
George Howett
Wendy Coble-Tyson
Others in attendance:
Sandy Sterner, Secretary-Treasurer
Dana Shearer, Maintenance Supervisor
Steve Malesker, Engineer
John Baranski, Acting Solicitor, sitting in for Solicitor Ehrhart
Connie Crull, Resident
Deb Crull, Resident
Chief Gross, York Area Regional Police Department
Lt. Redifer, York Area Regional Police Department
Minutes
Councilman Snyder asked if everyone had an opportunity to look over the minutes from the prior meeting, any additions or corrections. Let the record reflect that I will abstain
since I wasn’t here, I can’t comment as to their accuracy. A motion was made by Councilman Allar to accept the meeting minutes of August 4, 2011 as presented.
The motion was seconded by Councilman Howett. Those in favor: Councilman Noll,
Councilman Howett,and Councilwoman Coble-Tyson. Abstaining: Councilman
Snyder.
Introduction
Councilman Snyder said before I get into visitors I did want to point out that we have a
stand-in for Nicole Ehrhart. John Baranski from Blakey and Yost, welcome. Mr.
Baranski said I work with Nicole. Councilman Snyder introduced the members and
those seated at the council table. Welcome, if you have any questions or we are going
to fast, feel free to stop us or ask for help.
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Councilman Snyder said on tonight’s list, first on the agenda we have Chief Gross.
Chief Gross passed out a report for all to review. Chief Gross said what I handed
out there, is a couple of things. The reason I am here tonight is I believe that Mayor
Sanford asked that a take an opportunity and review the police service with council
and some of the upcoming items. Of course, cost is always an item, that is on top
of everybody’s mind and so, and the amount of police service the borough gets so.
So I brought a couple of documents along I have Lt. Redifer with me. If you don’t know
Lt. Redifer, he is the second in command of the police department, the operations
commander and oversees all the patrols that pretty much all of operations, except for
the detectives which is under Sgt. Blair. What you have here, I just wanted to kind of
review with you, that we do give you an annual report, but this is more of a summary
of what the activities are in the borough. First page that you have here, I’m not going
to read every item on there. There’s two different charts, one is the top chart, is what
we call a uniform crime report. What I say, UCR stands for uniform crime report.
We are required to report to the FBI, all the crimes that are committed in the municipality. They designate these categories. For every municipality, we identify
the crimes in the municipality, and report that every year. There is actually two
categories. If you look down at the second chart, you’ll see it says Part I and Part II.
Again they are defined by the FBI. The Part I crimes are the first seven or so there.
Homicide, rape, robbery, assault, other assaults, burglary, theft and motor vehicle
theft, those are what they call the Part I crimes. I kind tell people, the more serious
crimes, the most serious crimes and then the less serious crimes, although they are
all serious. Part II crimes are the rest, fraud, criminal mischief, sex offenses, drugs,
DUI, liquor/public drunk and disorderly. So looking at the bottom first, you can
see in 2010 there were eighteen Part I crimes, which are the homicides down to
the motor vehicle thefts. Then there were forty three Part II crimes. One of the things,
that I think about Yoe, and we see this pretty consistently, is that there is not a
real wide variation. If you look at that history there, for seven years, you’ll see
you had a high of twenty six Part I crimes in 2005 and the lowest was sixteen. It really doesn’t vary very much. I think what that means, is that number one is that our reporting
is pretty consistent and number two, that there is not an alarming growth in crime but
on the other hand there is a steady number of those more serious crimes. Then the Part
II crimes, you see that there were forty three in 2010 and again its fairly consistent over a
period of years, when you look at it. Crime spree there in 2005, looks like. Under the
miscellaneous column, that just means those of calls where we were sent to an incident
maybe somebody reported something but it wasn’t a crime, like maybe a family fight,
a family argument, or a maybe missing person, something that we don’t identify as a
crime but we still took a report on, would be a miscellaneous incident. You can see
that history of the accidents over a seven year period, again there were 18 accidents investigated in 2010. The calls are 911 calls. So those vary a little bit again, I don’t know
there was a pretty high number in 2008. Again 439. That means every time we get a record that someone called 911 needed a police response in Yoe Borough, that would
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be one of those numbers. The traffic citations and actual arrests that were made, that includes juveniles and adults. So I think kind of portrays what that kind of activity is,
if you look at the specific offenses, again looking back up at the first column, there
pretty consistent over the years. A lot of things are hard to really prevent or predict,
robbery and rape are probably two of them. Really the drug offenses aren’t very high,
the DUI’s, I think the one year we had 12 there, I think that was from a DUI check point,
because its much higher than the average, which looks like six or seven. And you can
see there were 18 vandalism, criminal mischief in 2010. Looking back over here, I only
went back over five years in the crimes and I only went back seven years in the other
statistics but I think that is a very consistent number. The second hand out I gave you,
I just wanted to show you where the borough stands in comparison to the other municipalities, and again, we have the two townships and the six boroughs. You’re
comparable in the number of units that you received to Jacobus Borough, you are
a little under Windsor Borough and you can see there, obviously York Township
has the highest number of units. And a unit represents ten hours per week, so if
you get 2 units that represents 20 hours of service a week. That varies, we keep
track of that, you may ten hours one week, you may have 40 hours the next week.
We try to balance that out as we move along. We also look at, I’m going to
have you turn to the next document in a few minutes, we also show you how that
translate to the number of officers. So essentially what you receive right now is
a half of an officer for what is budgeted, one part time officer. One half time officer.
We also show what the number of officers, the ratio of officers per 1, 000 residents.
That varies quite a bit, from municipality to municipality. You are actually at
.49. you are at one half of an officer per one thousand. You can see that some,
the highest is Red Lion Borough, is .95 per thousand, the lowest is actually
Felton. Any questions about that? The last document that you have there, that I handed out is just a summary of how we calculate because, a lot people ask, how many
police officers did my municipality have. I can tell you that New York City has about
30, 000 police officers. Well, what does that tell someone in Yoe, absolutely nothing,
why would New York City have 30,000 officers and Los Angeles had 10,000. But one
the things we can look at is that ratio of officers per 1,000 of population. There is a rule
of thumb in law enforcement that has been kind of one of the guidelines that has been
pretty recognized over the years and that is a good goal is to have one officer per 1, 000.
But that varies widely, in a small borough I think one half of officer per 1, 000 is not
necessarily a bad thing. In a city, I had put some of the comparisons there, for the City
of York has two and a quarter officers per 1, 000, so obviously the City of York is
denser, probably has more transient housing, has more issues with crime, therefore
they have a higher ratio of police officers. As you see, our overall regional police
department had .8 officers per 1,000. And we’re operating pretty well, which means
we are trying to use our people as efficiently as possible. We’re lower than any of those
other police departments with the number of officers per 1,000, Northern York,
Southern Regional, Northeastern Regional, Spring Garden, Springettsbury, they all
have more officers per 1,000 residents than we do. So we’re aware of that, I’d say
we’re pretty lean in the number of people that we have. Going on down there, Yoe
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Borough has about .5 officer per 1, 000. If you would want to get up to the ratio of the
overall regional department, it would take .82 officers if you want to get up to one officer
per thousand, it would take 1.0 officers, if you would want to get up to one and a half
officers per thousand it would take 1.5 officers. Its pretty easy for Yoe because you are
about right at 1, 000. Pretty simple math. The next page has a different method of
calculating police service and again this is a method that is recognized by the Commonwealth, the Department of Community and Economic Development, its
recognized by the IACP, which is the International Association of Chiefs of Police and
it’s a formula where you take either the estimated number of incidents or the actual
number of incidents and then you can calculate what the number of officers should be
for that particular number. There’s two ways of doing it, if you don’t know the number
you can just use a standard factor of .55 incidents per one thousand residents or if you
do the number of incidents you can use that number. I calculated it both ways, if you
use the population method it comes out to say that is actually a little bit over one officer
per thousand required. One officer per the population of the borough. If you use the
actual number of incidents which you have, its not 4973, a mistake, its number
856 so you might want to cross out that 4973 and put in 856 in there. The number of
incidents in the borough in 2010 is 856. That comes from that first page where you add
up the total calls, the total traffic offenses, the total accidents and the Part I and Part II crime. You add up everything except the miscellaneous and the arrests. We simply use
that formula 856 times .75, and the .75 is an accepted average that we normally would
take three quarters of an hour to handle any incidents. Sometimes it takes twenty minutes,
sometimes it takes two hours. So the average comes out to be ¾’s of an hour per incident.
You multiply by .75 and get 642, the 642 times 3, means that we want to try to have
at least three times as much preventive deterrent response type patrol that we do
responding to incidents. That gives the 1926, we divide the number of hours available for
each officer, which is 2080 and then multiply that by the factor of what they actually need to accomplish the services of a full officer because of training, vacation time, sick
time, days off, supervision and so forth. And that comes out to 1.6. So really both
those formulas, and I’m not coming in here and saying you need to double police
coverage in Yoe Borough, but those formulas with just black and white numbers that
we use anywhere we go, say that, an acceptable number of patrol officers for the borough would be one or even as much as 1.6 and that doesn’t even include the detective and the
supervisory time and so forth. So you can see, that I think from those numbers, that the
current .2 at least looking at the amount of incidents that we are getting and the accepted
formulas for considering those incidents is something the two units, that we’re pretty
lean as far as operation. The last two things I want to talk about is cost. Unfortunately
I do not have the budget for 2012, the commission is required to submit a draft budget
by October 1st. Normally I send that to the mayor and I think, I don’t know if Sam gets a copy of that. The mayor is the one we normally communicate that too. I do have to
say unfortunately doing the preliminary work on the budget, its probably going to
go up. I think yours could go up, I’m hoping it doesn’t go up more that a couple
thousand, could be four or five thousand. I don’t like to say that, we’re kind of a victim
of pensions costs, gasoline costs, health care costs are really the biggest driving
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factors. Salaries, that we expect in 2012, we’re hoping that they will not increase much,
the officers have been receiving a 4% increase previous because they have a binding
arbitrating contract under the law. But that’s what I can tell you about costs, its not
going to stay static, its probably going to be a fairly big increase this year. I’m hopeful
this is going to be a hump year, we do have several retirements, we have six retirements
in 2012 which will replace some officers that are at the top end of the salary scale,
with some officers who are at the bottom of the salary scale. And that should bring
our cost down a little bit, we’re trying to negotiate and make some improvements with
the officers of what our health care costs are. So that’s where we stand at costs. I know
at the cost end there’s not much I can say. I can’t raise revenues for any municipalities
to pay for this. But I think that as you look at any other comparison, if you went to
a comparable size borough that has their own police department, if you went to, I often
point out, that if someone went to Springettsbury Township and looked at what they
pay compared with York Township, it would be through the roof. I would just guess,
at least 25% more for their police coverage, having their own police department. If
you take that out over a number of years, it really does amount to a lot of money.
Sometimes, I am sure, you probably say, I’m looking at this, we don’t have much
crime but in all reality, any time there is one rape, one robbery, I don’t like to
bring up bad news. In the past twelve years we have had two murders in the borough,
which again is unfortunate. I don’t know how much the police can prevent that, but
when you do have that, you want a good competent response from a police department,
we have trained detectives, we have forensic investigators, we have CSI if you will trained individuals and we’ve had pedestrians killed in traffic accidents in the borough.
That is a horrible situation, but traffic enforcement does reduce the likely hood of
those kind of traffic. That young girl that was killed, we can’t prevent everyone of
them, but we want to try to do as much as we can to be visible and present. I think
people overall know that there is some traffic enforcement that goes on, on these
highways. So. So that’s it, I don’t want to take up a whole lot of time at your meeting.
I’m glad to answer any questions or give you any other thoughts that I have. I know when
it comes to budget time, we’re a big chunk of your budget. I don’t know the overall borough budget is. This is coming from a police officer, I’ve done this for thirty eight
years, I always feel that the first thing that any official has to do that is elected is
to cover. The federal government has to provide an army, the state has to provide state
police, we have to provide law enforcement. Sometimes other services, like fire
services. I’d be glad to answer any other questions you have, really just wanted to make
myself available. I do know that we don’t come to the meeting very often, we try
to do good reporting. If any of you ever have an issue to bring it to the attention of
the mayor to contact us, or if its really urgent to contact us directly feel free to do that.
We have a crime prevention officer now, makes a lot of public presentation, with our
van unit, we got some grant money for that sort of activity. Over the last two years,
we’ve actually had some foot patrols in the borough, you may haven’t seen many of them but we did get grant money over the last two years, it wasn’t much and I don’t think
the federal grant money is going to last too much often. How often would that be?
That wasn’t charged against the borough’s time, because what we had was grant money
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to pay hours of overtime to specifically target areas where we wanted to have an officer on foot patrol. So it was essentially, no cost to the borough, because we had this grant
that was awarded to the entire regional police department and we would put foot patrols in Red Lion, Yoe, Dallastown and we put some in the Pauline Drive and Cape Horn
shopping centers, the Dairyland shopping center. We were able to do a little bit of
that, overall there has been a couple hundred hours that we were able to put into
that. We do feel we will be able to continue that at least through the next year, while
we haven’t been able to do many of them, when we do that, the officer is not assigned
to answer 911 calls, they’re not assigned to go anywhere other right there on the foot
patrol. Get a chance to stop in a talk to a couple of people, they’re not rushed off to
an emergency, unless God forbid there’s a bank robbery or something like that.
Any questions I can address? Councilman Allar said I was going to ask about the
foot patrol if you were going to continue that? Chief Gross said we definitely have
the funds that I see through the summer of 2012. After that its, whatever the federal
government does, this money did come, its called a justice assistance grant. I don’t
know what the federal government is going to do, but we have enough in our
current grants to run through that. Councilman Allar said you’ve given us the figures
in Yoe, do you see any trends in our society, major trends, drug activity, things
that may be blowing this way? Chief Gross said we see a couple things, and I hope
it doesn’t spread to communities like ours, but we see these flash mobs, its been
horrible, in cities like Philadelphia and Harrisburg has had some incidents. They
get together through public media or social media, these kids, before they were
looking for a hang out now its on the internet. They say everyone show up at Main and
such and such, hang out, next thing you know, you have a big problem there. Hundreds
of kids come. We are seeing more crime related to the internet for sure. Not only
the flash mobs, we see a lot more fraud, I would say some of the fraud cases I’m sure, we only investigated two. But if I had to stand here and guess, out of those that were
investigated in Yoe, they were probably internet. We get a lot of internet fraud, that
we never had before. The other thing that is never seen in public, that I see diminishment
at all is family crimes, particular child abuse and sexual abuse. Just today we had
man that for child sexual abuse,we have a high number of those. So that I don’t see, unfortunately, discontinuing. The violent crime is not really going up, I don’t know
how long this economy is going to stay this way, before it will. We did have a spike
in 2008, and in 2006, 2005-06. Overall our robberies went up, our bank robberies went up, fortunately we don’t have any bank robberies in Yoe. Those are the trends.
Councilman Allar asked what about drugs? Chief Gross, said drugs, probably about
the same, the little bit that we’ve had in this borough, again we don’t publicize but
again we have had deaths, investigated here in the borough. Again, designer drugs,
overdose deaths from prescription drugs, oxycodone. We do see an increase in the misuse of the prescription drugs. The other thing we continue to see is volume of traffic,
the volume of drunk drivers and the volume of drug drivers. We have trained officers,
now, we have more than any other department in the county, officers that are trained by
the National Chiefs of Police, to be what they call drug recognition experts. They go
through training, where they can administer training similar to what I doctor can do.
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Show indicators of drug influence, and we can test for that. Our number of drug
related driving arrests have sky rocketed. Its kind of scary, that weren’t detected
before are driving under the influence of prescription drug, improper prescription
drugs, marijuana. It is pretty much a concern. Councilman Noll asked what is the
borough’s ability to say our time, goes toward specific activity, like traffic control?
Chief Gross said we have some flexibility there, in the contract the mayor can
ask for specific patrols, he has done that on occasion. He is also on occasion said
that you are getting a little aggressive in a certain area. We’re fine with that.
The other thing that we do have is again, I did mention, we have grants that I
think will continue more than 2012, for aggressive driving enforcement and for
seat belt enforcement, and again both of those grants are for overtime hours that
don’t go against the borough’s time. We’ve done that in the borough as well.
Those are activities and again the mayor, we have a pretty good relationship with
the mayor, if he has a concern he gives us a call, if he has a traffic concern he
gives us a call. Councilman Snyder said I only have a couple questions. Of course
you are aware there is some talk, that we may lower our PPU’s, I think the mayor
looked into it and we have to notify the department by December 31st if we were
to do that. That’s an economic thing. Nothing personal against the department,
actually if you compare what we are paying for police coverage, 24/7, is just
a little bit higher than what we are paying for garbage collection which is once a
week for four hours on a Monday. In that respect I think the police coverage is
awesome find. However, we have to look at the bottom figure. Now I just have one
suggestions and maybe it can be done, maybe it can’t be done. So because, there is
a reason, why I wouldn’t want to see us lose any coverage, at the same point, maybe
we can’t afford the coverage we have now, so its back and forth. Don’t tell my son
that I mention this, because he would kill me. But one thing that I noticed, in our
instance, we have so many service hours, like this particular month, we had 84 service
hours and then 40 administrative hours. And you may know where I am going with this.
And then back here on this other calculation, the total number of hours per year available per officer is a .60 but then you have that multiplier of 1.75, because of days off,
vacation, sick time, training, holidays, supervision. Is there any way, especially in a
small municipality like ours, the department could hire part time officers, where
you’re not paying those benefits, you’re not paying the overtime, you’re not paying
the days off. So we would get the benefit of having an officer at our same hours, not
have the overhead associated with all these administrative hours. Again don’t tell
my son I said that. Chief Gross said the short answer to that, unfortunately is that,
by the nature of the history of the last thirty, forty years, the laws that apply to police
and fire contracts, state laws are pretty rigid. These officers, they’re not dumb, their
contract prohibits part time officers. So, in other words, our contract does not
allow it. Councilman Snyder said I do know that the contract is up for negotiations.
Chief Gross said I guess, totally out of question as a negotiating item. Councilman Snyder said I would hate for the municipality to cut hours because we’re really need and
I think we are getting a good bang for a buck for what we have. Same point, I see
a small municipality that’s only getting two PPU’s, so much of the time is being ate up
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in administrative hours, that I’m trying to say, is there any type of, through like
a part time officer, then we don’t have have all that administrative hours eating
up our hours. Chief Gross said there are a couple of other things that we do
in that regard, the number that I just jotted down that I always like to point out,
that I didn’t mention is if you look at current cost per hour is $63.00 per hour.
The comparisons are wide spread, you sure can’t get a lawyer for $63.00 per
hours. But a couple things that we are doing, it really took off this year, and I
should have mentioned it, we have started a voluntary policing program,
a VPS. And we have only been operation two months with that program, and
we’re averaging over 300/400 hours a month of volunteer service. People
coming and doing things like shredding documents, taking our cars for
service, we have a retired police officer who is helping us review evidence on
a complicated investigation as a volunteer so, 300 hours a month is a lot
of hours. We think eventually that is something we should see hopefully to
diminish our administrative time. We are only of one or two departments in
the county that has started to think of volunteer programs and its just taken
off like wild fire and we are excited about that. But I did make a note about
the part time, I’ll say something to think about that. It doesn’t hurt to mention
anything. Councilman Snyder said well yes, I was just thinking from a smaller,
when you look at a smaller municipality like ours, we get ate up in the overhead.
And again its not that we’re not getting a good bang for our buck now but,
we always are getting complaints about traffic enforcement and its like, its
a shame, this was unusual month, if I go back to last month and I pull out the
police report, again 45.50 service hours with 30 hours of administration. That’s more
than double, I just keep thinking if you didn’t have to pay the benefits with it,
part time officer in the municipality. Chief Gross said some of that administrative
time will always be there. Councilman Snyder said yes, because you still have court,
training, I’m just trying to think, I’m trying to give you ideas to say if we all work
together, bring down the administration hours. That is something that could be
negotiated out, not being privy to that end of it, if you had something to bargain with.
And if the officers know we are looking at trying to balance at both ends, if there
is a give and take there. Chief Gross said there has to be. Councilman Snyder asked
any other questions? On behalf of council thanks for coming in, you do an awesome job,
your officers are very well trained very professional and I hear nothing but good
reports back. Chief Gross said two things that you reminded me of, we are accredited,
one of only three regional departments in the state that is an accredited agency, this
means that, like going to a hospital, school, university, its not, Joe Schmoes university, or Joe Schmoes police department, its an accredited, standard requirements. I invite any of
you to visit our website, which I feel, we got an A from the Daily Record. It’s a pretty
good website, we keep a lot of information on it. And if any of you want to do a ride
along, contact us. Thanks. Councilman Snyder said thanks for coming.
Councilman Snyder asked any other visitors that would like to be recognized?
Connie Crull of 263 W. George Street said first I’d like to say I am glad something is
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being done at Yoe Parts. We still have weeds. We still have properties that
are being done with. I don’t know what the follow up is. Yoe Auto Parts
took more than three months to get something done. Councilman Snyder
asked do you want to update council as far as what is going on with the
code enforcement officer? I did read the minutes, I couldn’t comment on them because
I was not here, I saw you were here. Its been an ongoing issue, we’re trying to address
it. I had a conversation with Deb there a couple weeks, explaining to her what we’re
up again as a municipality and enforcement. And then of course, we have an enforcement
issue with trying to find a new enforcement officer because Red Lion just wants to
do the zoning. One thing I had plan to do, for our upcoming newsletter which probably
won’t be going out now, I come to find out. Won’t be coming out until the spring
of next year. Mrs. Crull said that doesn’t help. We need the snow reminders to be sent out. Councilman Snyder said she had a personal problem and she won’t be able to
get it out until November for the fall newsletter, so we will be working on a spring
newsletter. I did want to send to her, to inform residents on what transpires on our
citation process. That even if we send out citations, we can’t enforce someone to
do the work. The only thing you can do is continually cite them and they pay their
citation, and you send them another citation, its very frustrating on our end. One thing
that I wanted to bring up, which I forgot to ask Nicole about, but in attempt to help
educate the population and let everyone know that we are serious about it. When it comes
to our zoning officer report and the citations that are filed, is there anything legally that
would preclude us from putting that information in a public newsletter to publicize this
address this person was cited over the past six months, to show people that this property
received ten citations. Like the property next to mine, literally had ten citations and eight
arrest warrants, but the property still wasn’t mowed. All people ever see is that the
property wasn’t mowed. They don’t see, that arrest warrants were issued, citations
were issued, and all of that. I’m thinking if they see, at least, see doing what we
can under the law, and its part of our communication efforts within the newsletter within
the last six months. Here’s a list of properties that were cited and for what. And if
they see that their neighbors were cited for weeds. Mr. Baranski said I don’t see that
any different than the publication of the tax record. You wouldn’t want publicize
things like phone numbers, social security numbers. Councilman Snyder said I was
just thinking of putting in the property itself. Just like, if 100 S. Main is issued a letter
for weeds, we just put 100 S. Main Street. Mr. Baranski said that’s a public record.
No problem of just listing the address, reporting seven citations there. Councilman Snyder said I had to wait until I heard from the solicitor, but that information won’t get
out until the next newsletter anyways. That’s an ongoing thing. Councilman Noll said
Tom has brought in that there was a gentleman that works part time in Windsor Borough,
we made contact with him, unfortunately he has his irons in too many fires, he declined
our offer. We are basically looking to break our zoning officer and code enforcement
officer into two separate responsibilities, keeping Red Lion more as our zoning and
someone who is educated in those types of things and the legalities of plan review. And
hiring in an as needed basis an independent contractor to do code enforcement officer.
He unfortunately could not do it. Sam and I had talked more about that, one thing
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we wanted to bring up tonight was our enforcement who does the wildlife, Jerry
Pickel who is an enforcement officer. We would like to see if he would be interested
in something like that, we had various preliminary conversation with him to see
if he would be willing to hear us out. He is interested in doing that. So. That is
something else we are looking at. He does understand codes and ordinances,
he does enforce some of them currently for us. So another avenue to explore.
Mrs. Crull said when I collect the taxes, I get a lot of complaints and I forwarded
them to council. I told them they have to come here and make their complaints known.
Councilman Snyder said the letter I have for the next newsletter, explaining how the
citation process works, people will at least understand, there’s only so much we
can do, you can’t force someone, you can whap them and keep whapping them with
a citation and that costs money and then they still have to pay it. You still have to
pay for the legal aspect to go after them for it, which would be an arrest warrant.
But I think if people know that, and start publicizing that we did cite. Another instance,
230 S. Main, that has been turned in, notice to vacate was posted. I mean, its one of those
things, which I now found out he ripped off the notice, Code Administrators is going
after them. Its an ongoing process. I think people would be happy to see that we see
the same thing that they see. Councilman Noll said we really have two levels of enforcement. One if complaint driven for most part, get a code enforcement officer
to go around look and pursue certain things. That is why we are looking for someone
to do that for us. We would like to get one area done this year, so we can cost for that,
so we can go through the whole town in the next twelve month cycle. We want to make
sure that we are doing it in a way, that they don’t feel targeted. That it comes down
that the whole town is being looked at, not just one property. From the legal standpoint,
no one is being picked on, everyone is being looked at, its more judicious. Standard
where we would be more winning. We have started bringing in Code Administrators in
when we get into habitation problems as far as structure concerned. It goes into a new
level, the state level versus what our codified ordinances have. We brought Code
Administrators in who has the ability to condemn houses. We don’t have the ability
to do within our codified ordinances. Its giving us a second layer of enforcement.
I don’t think we truly understood that, but we are more and more, they have rules
that they can use. The one we did before was four to five hundred dollars, did
inspections. We start doing five, six, seven houses are year, we start looking at
$2500.00 to $3500.00 and that’s if they comply right away. If we have legal wrangling, then you get into bigger buck then. We are trying to figure out a way to do this, we
all agree the biggest problem we have is the personnel to do it and the costs. You can just
imagine if we tell everyone in this town, that we are going to raise their taxes. Councilman Allar said in fairness to Dan, you may want to read the three to four address
for property maintenance. Councilman Myers read the addresses, Main Street, 107 W.
Broad Street, 72 N. Main Street, 2 E Pennsylvania Avenue, 230 S. Main Street. There
were some citations that he took to Teyral’s office: 187 S. Main and 45 W. Pennsylvania Avenue. He sent the notice, he has until October 19th to deal with it, the water cut off.
Then after that he will have to go to Teyral. Councilman Allar said the letters there
for property maintenance, I’m concerned that they are correctly written, they’re going
Visitors(cont.) Page 11
have legal issues, especially with the grass cutting. If they are not written right,
we are going to have a complicated issue, review the letter. Councilman Noll said
like I said to you Tom, what we have to come up with is a form letter, that you
fill in the citation. Legal minds can take a look at it, something that maybe we
will be looking at this fall. The other thing that we need to look at with the citation
letters and other things, getting it out on a timely fashion. We can call Dan and depending on what he has to do for Red Lion Borough, it could be three, four days because he has
his schedule, can’t drop everything to go and enforce that. We are also going to have to,
and talk to Barry a little bit, we have to put together a better way to do all our inspections
from property maintenance on down, because some of things that are coming from the
state we are going to have to better organize ourselves. Some things are coming with
the storm water management, anything new that is done on the property has to be
checked on a yearly basis. Management, easements that need to be filed. A lot things
on the record keeping side of it. Councilman Myers said the bad thing this is going to
cost the borough money. Councilman Noll said all of this is going to cost the borough money. Councilman Myers said there are a lot of people upset about that because they
know its going to cost them money, taxpayer money. Councilman Noll said its another
one of those unfunded mandates, nobody wants to do. Councilman Myers said they
make these rules up in Harrisburg, but they’re not thinking about how it comes back
to the municipality. Mrs. Crull said contact your senator or your representative.
Councilman Myers said definitely, Seth and I, the meeting that we were at, if you
put a Black Bear structure at your house, that is a $1,000.00 to buy the structure, its
going to cost you like $2000.00 to do the planning. Mr. Malesker said more than
that. Councilman Noll said this new ordinance which is 62 pages, if you do to the
letter of the law, if you want to put a structure on your house, you have to file a
land development plan, stormwater management plan, you have to mitigate the
water that is developed by the shed roof, you have to an approve retention pond,
seepage pit, once that is done. You will have to go and file an easement, so you
can’t put anything in that area, you can’t build over it. After that is done, on a yearly
basis it has to be inspected. Councilman Myers said you have to hire someone to
inspect. Councilman Noll said its not a state thing, its by the right of federal
government and DEP to enforce it. If you want the money for liquid fuels and other
things. Councilman Myers said Harriburg is going broke, what about all these other
municipalities. Its not good. Councilman Noll said its becoming a matter of survival for
small municipalities, the amount of federal and other regulations. Mrs. Crull said
they want us to become county wide, that’s the biggest thing especially in Pennsylvania,
that is the biggest things I hear from foreigners. I live in Maryland and I go to
Baltimore County to pay my taxes, my water bill and my sewer bill. I don’t have
to send one here, and one there. That is what everyone wants. People are unhappy.
I even had one lady ask about the zoning officer, I said he’s standing right here ,
he came in that day, he’s right here and she walked out the door, she wanted to
know about something around town. I don’t know. Councilman Snyder said that’s
one thing we don’t have a zoning officer going around town, like we do the
police officers looking for violations. We are looking into changing that, there’s
Visitors(cont.) Page 12
going to be a cost involved. I think its necessary. Which is why we were.
Mrs. Crull said it would be good to get the town looking the way it was, not
like a slum town, that is what we are starting to look like, a slum town, more and
more. I just got another one that they moved out. Councilman Noll said unfortunately,
this problem is well beyond Yoe too. I go to municipal managers meeting, its hitting
the boroughs first but the townships are starting to see this, because of the economic
situation. Let’s face it things are not going to get better in the next 6 months,
we’re talking about the next 5, 6, 7 years. This problem is going to be here.
Councilman Myers said the only part that is better about the rentals, is that we
have more rules that we can make them work on equipment. Mrs. Crull said
I had more complaining about what is going on. some renters. I heard that one
renter is filing a civil suit against a landowner. We’ve had some nice rentals,
Dennison has how his rentals for 10 to 15 years. Councilman Allar said what
Barry is talking about is, we have enough for renters. We are going out and
inspecting them anyways. Councilman Myers said at least they are paying for
that. Mrs. Crull said they’re paying for it but I’m sorry I think inspections are
running behind, I think we need to hire someone to help him. Councilman
Myers said I do agree with that. Mrs. Crull said I just wanted to let you know,
yes, Yoe Auto Parts is finally doing something, that took three months of
my complaining. That to me is unacceptable. Councilwoman Coble Tyson asked do we still have head tax so we know who the renters are? Mrs. Crull said all we have now
is real estate tax. Councilman Noll said we use to have that, but until we paid the
late fees, fees to send the notices it didn’t work out. Mrs. Crull said I still get
notifications to keep records up. Councilman Snyder said it’s like I said once
we start publicizing that in the newsletter, these people, say yeah we see the
same thing. Mrs. Crull said we have council members, driving through town, living beside some of these and I think nothing is getting done. Councilman Snyder said
hey, you just have to look next to me and say. Mrs. Crull asked how do you stand it,
both sides? Councilwoman Coble Tyson asked do we have something here that
has the rentals and renters of these properties? Mrs. Crull said I think Sandy forwards
everything to me. Mrs. Crull said I try to keep it up, I’d say its about 90% accurate.
The secretary said every year when they get the letter for the property maintenance fee, they get the form that they should fill out with the tenant information. You get a lot of
them at the beginning of the year with their check. I give a copy to Dana and I give
a copy to Connie. Mrs. Crull said my other question is on the garbage collection, I know
you have four properties on Denton Terrace, has any one ever checked that they
are the only four properties being picked up. I know some people that put out
garbage out up there the same day. That are near is York Township. Councilman Snyder said I can’t say that anyone has checked to see if they only pick up for. I know I get
numerous complaints that the four up there, don’t get picked up, I would think its
the other way around. Mrs. Crull said I was just curious on that. Councilman Snyder
said I am getting at least once a month from the Youngs up there. Mrs. Crull asked
why them, you would think they would pick them up. Councilman Snyder said
its not just them, but they are the ones that call. Ms. Crull asked I was just wondering
Visitors(cont.) Page 13
if anything was said to the people that live beside you, notices were sent there?
Councilman Snyder said citations were issued. Ms. Crull said okay. Mrs. Crull said
after the citations are issued and they’re fined, what is after that? Councilman Snyder
said an arrest warrant. Mrs. Crull said and then what happens? Councilman Snyder
said an arrest warrant, that is why the people on the other side, there is eight
outstanding arrest warrants. Councilman Myers said what happens its going to
cost more money. Mrs. Crull asked can we lien their property? Councilman Snyder
said we liened the property because we waited until the end of the year to mow it,
it was a matter of principal there. We can’t afford to mow every property that
needs to mow. We follow it to the letter of the law. Councilman Noll said it
costs us about $400.00. Councilman Snyder said about $400.00 to mow a property.
I have in the little article, it would cost us another ½ of a mill to do just 20
properties a year in town. So therefore, we do that citation thing, hopefully
they’ll pay them Teyral sets up on a payment plan, like the lady next door,
she is paying $12.50 a month. She could be cited again now, that is all we can do.
She may or may not mow. Councilman Noll said our district magistrate, who
has not taken not a strong stance on those types of things. Hopefully that will
change. Councilman Snyder said what I tried to say to people in that article,
its no different than people out there driving. You get someone out there that
is recklessly driving, threaten you, threaten me, our property and the state
can’t do anything to them, except cite them and they are caught again what
can we do, but cite them. They’ll do it again, what can they do, well maybe
after so many points they can pull their license, but pulling their license still doesn’t keep them off the road, they’ll still drive even without a license and the only thing you
can do is cite them again this time for driving without the license and you hope they
didn’t kill anyone in the meantime. You just can’t force people to take care of the
properties, it’s a problem. Councilman Noll said its not cheap. Councilman Myers
said it’s a losing proposition sometimes. Councilman Snyder said its that balancing
thing, my idea is you cite, the majority of the people will comply especially if you
cite them enough, if they aren’t planning on moving. Those people like up there at
230, literally you have to force them out. Councilman Noll said sometimes the banks
come out and mow. Councilman Myers said if we do the citations, we have our
ordinances but can we charge them for our time? Mr. Baranski said you can charge them a reasonable administrative fee, I’ve seen as high as $100.00. The paperwork needed to
do this, yes you can as long as your ordinance says that. Councilman Myers said
so we have to say, if we spend a lot of time on one property, we don’t collect that money
back. Mr. Baranski said right, not unless you are adamant. Councilman Noll said
we may need to look at what those costs are and see. That’s why we can’t have people
volunteer to mow the grass. Councilman Snyder said if they screw something up.
Engineer’s Report
Mr. Malesker said Sandy sent me the check from DEP for the flood impoundment
project.. That was the last payment. That project is closed.
Engineer’s Report(cont.) Page 14
Mr. Malesker said I did ask Jake for an update on the wetland mitigation. He did
said the DEP permit has been submitted and they are waiting on approval from
that. Not whole lot changed from last month. Seth had mentioned that they
did get an extension on their grant. Councilman Noll said as soon as they
get that DEP permit, I have a feeling its going to be next spring to get it going.
Councilman Allar said they figure that DEP will get something back to them
in October, construction in November. The wetlands will be planted in late spring.
Mr. Malesker said on the CDBG applications, there is a meeting on September 21st.
Memo was sent out to the York County Citizen Advisory Committee, Terry Myers
at our office is a member of that committee. So they will be submitting or discussing
the 2012 annual action plan and funding plan at that meeting. Its at the county
office building at 7PM. I can leave this memo here, if anyone is interested in
attending that meeting. At that time we should find out what is find out what is approved for 2012 and short list for 2013 and 2014. We had for 2012, the zoning update and
one of the bridges, Church Street. They should have some things that I can make a pdf
and send it out. There is an opportunity for public input at that time.
Mr. Malesker said the big thing for tonight is the storm water management ordinance.
After the last meeting I sent a pdf version of that. It is sixty some pages. There is
another update one. That incorporated the suggestions that Nicole had. I attached
that correspondence to the engineer report. Councilman Noll had the update one.
The secretary said the updated one will be on the council table for review.
Discussion continued. Rate control and volume control is essentially the same. The
biggest thing that changes is, your exemptions and enforcement. That’s where you’ll
see the biggest amount of change, than you had before. You have to go through
about $9,000, to put a $1,000 shed on your property. A lot of municipalities
have an issue with that. One of the provisions that we have, that is not included
in that, you essentially have to do it. The eight items. The correspondence is
attached to the engineer’s report. One of the provisions that we have, Item 12, No. B,
under the old storm water ordinance, you had a sliding scale of the size of the property,
what was allowed exemption, with this there is no such thing. There is a provision,
if you so desire to put it in, puts you in non compliance with the ordinance, its
for residential structures/uses including accessory structures, rated activities
that include areas less than 500 square feet are exempt from the peak rate control and
the storm water management site plan preparation requirements of this ordinance.
We can’t recommend that you put it, if you want that in, you can make that decision now,
and we can include that in the ordinance and it has to be drive by the borough. Those
eight items caused the most concern. The following changes may result in the borough’s ordinance not being compliant, Act 167 plan. These changes are in response to municipal
concerns. Councilman Noll said my thought is very simple, we go ahead and adopt
these changes. We can modify later. Incorporate these into the ordinance. Discussion
continued. Mr. Malesker said the county conservation district can fine. Councilman
Engineer’s Report(cont.) Page 15
Snyder said once you incorporate all the recommendations into the ordinance
forward to the solicitor for advertisement. A motion was made to have the ordinance advertised with the recommended changes and have the ordinance advertised
by the solicitor for the next month’s meeting, adding that the ordinance number is 2011-03, and have it to the solicitor by Friday September 16, 2011 to ready for advertisement
by Councilman Noll. Councilman Snyder said let the record reflect this is not the engineer’s recommendation to include these recommendations, all the engineer was his duty to counsel to fully inform the ramifications of passing the model as is and giving
us alternatives if we so choose to alleviate ourselves of those alternatives. The motion
was seconded by Councilwoman Coble Tyson. All in favor. Councilman Snyder
said motion carried. Mr. Malesker said we’ll get those in.
Mr. Malesker said I did send Nicole a sketch, drawing of a proposed easement for the
Claycomb property. We weren’t sure what he wanted, we started somewhere. Sent
it to Nicole. Not sure where it stands. We are waiting to hear back.
The secretary asked if we got a copy of the signed MOU. Mr. Malesker said
its on the agenda for 9/8/11, then he will send. I’ll ask him to send it to you.
Councilman Allar said the information on the wetland mitigation, the CAD file
that was sent over. That will be updated and amended by Aquatic Resources
either this week or next week. And then going to Rettew. Some good news,
you all remember that cease and assist order from a couple years ago, with fines and so forth, I had a conversation with Mike Danko quite awhile ago, I hope he remembers
it. He expressed that he was willing to aleve us of that cease and assist once he
got the DEP application of approval. I’m going to go back and verify that. Then maybe
be as early as next month we may be sending a formal letter asking for that release.
See what happens.
Councilman Snyder said looking over in a round about way, the minutes from the
sewer authority from the last quarter. There was discussion that was brought up
about the agreement to the Mill Creek Users agreement, there was an addendum
to the agreement back in 1999. When reading over their minutes, they were under
the assumption that everyone signed the addendum back in 99, they weren’t sure
why we were being charged for these upgrades for the Honey Valley pump station.
They were going to look into it. I called Mike Craley and said jog your memory,
Yoe Borough was the lone hold out on why that didn’t get signed. I explained
that to him. He said yes, he does recall that. I went to the sewer authority meeting,
and explained what our position was. He said but we addressed that, we took your
concerns, he drafted a new addendum incorporating those concerns and then
sent it back. That addendum is what never got circulated among the Mill Creek
Uses. That is what is going back to the Mill Creek users at their next meeting, next
week. He sent Yoe Borough a copy. I said Yoe Borough never knew that you
redid that agreement and basically the same agreement that we had back in 1999,
except they now added in section 8, 9, 10. Which says the elimination of the segment,
Engineer’s Report(cont.) Page 16
on the exhibit as set forth, shall be solely for the purpose of removing operation
and maintenance costs from the shared cost provisions of the agreement and
number 9, the methodology used for calculating treatment and transportation
shall not be changed by this amendment in any way based on the totality of
EDU’s for each user. That takes care of our concerns, so. I wanted to bring that
to everyone’s attention. This is probably going to be come back up. They’re going
to circulate among the other users to find out why it was never taken care of, and
hopefully have it passed before 2012 and York Township starts working on the
new pumping station. I don’t have a problem with the way that its now written.
So. Here is the borough copy. Councilman Noll said if this is signed does it extend
our involvement. Councilman Snyder said it won’t take of the authority as far
as their deadline, to exist. Councilman Noll said I was always told that this agreement
is the reason why we would not be part of the sewer authority, in 2013. Because
we didn’t sign it. Somehow set a date in motion that the authority would have to
disband, time period. Councilman Snyder said that shouldn’t have anything to
do with it. The problem is that the sewer authority is a lease back authority and
by law, the way a leaseback authority was set into motion, there only good only
to the point that their bond is paid off. They are only put into place to pay for
the bond and motion the sewer. Once that is paid off the sewer authority was
suppose to cease to exist and then the borough was suppose to take over the
responsibilities. There was an option for an extra twenty year extension if the
two parties agreed, which according to Mike Craley that was agreed to. Which then gave us to 2013. That’s where as now been, the status of the sewer authority after 2013.
Will they cease to exist or can we extend them again. Mike is actually looking into this but that doesn’t have anything to do with the Mill Creek Users. Just so the Honey
Valley trunk gets taken off our calculations for maintenance costs. The reason we never
signed on to that, and I explained that to him, yes, it was a valid point, you take off
all the EDU’s you don’t account for the I & I, the remaining users get whapped with
extra I & I which now has less users, which means we now lost all our capacity.
He said it’s a valid point. Councilman Noll asked so what do we need to do, make
a motion. Councilman Snyder said they are going to start circulating that among
the other users. Councilman Noll said I am talking about the set date for this authority.
Councilman Snyder said he’s looking in on that. Councilman Noll said we need to look into this early next year, if we need to do away with it. Councilman Snyder said I’m
getting a consensus of council, when that comes around to us, we will be willing to sign that. Do I see a consensus of council? Okay. I can email him and let him know, they
do have a meeting coming up on Thursday. Hey look, you need to extend the
leaseback authority, start the wheels. Councilman Noll said I was talking to York
Township, they don’t seem to be under the impression that, that same 2013 date
applies to the users. Councilman Snyder said its just to our authority. Councilman Myers
said its my opinion, they do a good job, if we don’t have take over the authority.
Councilman Noll said why does it only affect Yoe Borough? The secretary said
Dallastown sewer is all under the borough. Councilman Snyder said which is what
screwed them up, when it came to that, they were never keeping the borough in the loop
Engineer’s Report(cont.) Page 17
on changing the users agreement, so they had to get the sewer authority to sign off as
well as the borough. So both entities have to sign off on any changes to the users
group. I can let Mike know about that then. Councilman Allar asked what contact
does Grove have, on that same issue, he said Craley was looking at that. We should
really have an answer. Councilman Snyder said I didn’t see anything in the minutes
of where they even, only that they were looking into it. Discussion continued.
Councilman Snyder said another thing for the engineer, which can transfer into
the solicitor too. A question for council to think about, we have this project up
here, which is not going anywhere because we didn’t get our H2O grant money.
That doesn’t mean that the work is going away. The work still needs to be done.
One thing we are looking at is the CDBG for the bridge repair. What I was
thinking of, since we already have the ½ mill money accounted for, which
we implemented last year, that gives us $15,000.00 a year to play with. Without
kicking in DCED and whole bunch of legal nightmares, we can borrow up to
$125,000.00 without bumping into DCED hoops and hollars and all that kind of
stuff. So, my question is two fold, one for the solicitor and one for the engineer,
can we start this project and break it down into $125,000.00 increments where
we are moving ahead with the project, we are getting something done. We can
afford the loan on $125,000.00 because we are already collecting $15,000.00
a year, you do that every three to four years, its paid off and you go to the next
cycle and start the next phase of the project. In the meantime you are still out
there looking for monies for the rest of the project, whether its CDBG money or whatever, but we’re doing at least something to get that project up and going.
Now the two fold question is, since we can borrow up to $125,000.00 without
kicking DCED requirements, can we go to a bank or a lending institution and
get what I would refer to as, a revolving line of credit for $125,000.00. So that
we can get this up and going, for two or three years, our $15,000.00 a year,
three years we have $45,000.00 paid back and then Steve says hey look the
next phase you need $50,000.00 and we can start on it because we’ve already
got a line of credit. Discussion continued. Mr. Malesker said Dallastown this,
you do an equipment bid every year so you have a contractor that you have to
put out a bid, you have a low bid contractor. That’s looking to do work.
Some of that inlet work, you can call the contractor and tell them what you
need. The preliminary sizing is done already. You could find out if
you could go in with Dallastown, that gives you the opportunity to do paving
too. Discussion continued. Councilman Noll said I think it would be a good
opportunity to have Steve do a break down and also have an equipment bid done.
Councilman Noll asked if you could have the template that Dallastown is using,
at least look at it next month. Mr. Malesker said we can get a copy of the
equipment/materials bid document. Councilman Noll said he will talk to
Connie to see if we can join in with them, maybe a lower price if two
municipalities join in. A motion was made by Councilman Snyder to have
Mr. Malesker to start and do a break down of storm water work and to work
Engineer’s Report(cont.) Page 18
on that equipment bid list. The motion was seconded by Councilman Noll.
All in favor. Councilman Snyder said motion carried.
Councilman Myers said Dana was called to the apartments beside the tennis
court on Philadelphia Street. We had an issue with the property line. Dana and
I called Steve on a Sunday. He actually came down to confer with what Dana
and I thought. The landlord wanted a tree taken care of right a way. When
we talked to the landlord before we called Steve, I can get someone in, but
on Monday or Tuesday when we find out whose property is, if its your
property you pay, if its ours we pay. Today we got the blueprints and Steve
came down and confirmed, I want to thank Steve for doing that. Its not
our property and the tree is still there. I just wanted to thank Steve for doing
that.
Solicitor’s Report
Attorney Baranski said Nicole asked me to discuss, we covered some of it.
Attorney Baranski said we have the motion to advertise the storm water
management ordinance.
Attorney Baranksi said we talked about the Claycomb easement.
Attorney Baranski said she wanted me pass along that the Bowser land
use was withdrawn.
Attorney Baranski said the secretary asked to take back the 2012 SPCA
agreement and 2012 animal enforcement agreement for review.
Councilman Snyder said the knox box agreement needs to be signed with
Windsor Township. A motion was made by Councilman Myers to sign
the Knox Box agreement with Windsor Township. The motion was
seconded by Councilman Allar. All in favor. Councilman Snyder said
motion carried.
The secretary asked about the Act 32, the paperwork on the council table.
Councilman Snyder asked about it with Attorney Baranski. Attorney
Baranski said I know everyone is adopting it. Councilman Snyder said
the ordinance has to be adopted by December 1st, just so she is aware of
that.
Councilman Snyder said Nicole has looked this over. Everyone should
have gotten a copy of this in their packets. Resolution 2011-05. It was
brought to my attention that the amount that we put into retirement
Solicitor’s Report(cont.) Page 19
has not been increased for the last five years. The board of the Pennsylvania
Municipal Retirement Board needs notified by October 7th, about next
year’s funding. This is committing us to $20.00 more a month. A motion
was made by Councilman Noll to resolve 2011-05, whereby the borough council
hereby sets a rate for municipal liability under the agreement to be $180.00
per quarter to each member’s account effective January 1, 2012. Further
resolve that the borough secretary is to forward and file a copy of the resolution
to the board of the Pennsylvania Municipal Retirement System as outlined
in section 13. The motion was seconded by Councilman Allar. All in favor.
Councilman Snyder said so be it resolved.
Councilman Allar asked Attorney Baranski if Nicole mentioned anything
about the land owner access agreement between Yoe and York Township.
Attorney Baranski said no. Councilman Allar said she should what she needs
to get with Steve Hovis. If there is anything more she needs, to get back
to Jake Romig. No real rush on it, no work or construction can take place
on the wetland mitigation until DEP gets the agreement. I don’t know
how long its going to take. Attorney Baranski said I made a note to talk
to her about it. Councilman Snyder said the last email, I had, I know she
has had two emails that she has copied me on. Steve Hovis is not returning
her calls, getting back to her. She was copying me, saying hey Steve I just
wanted to remind you I haven’t heard from you yet. I do remember seeing
that, so she was having trouble getting a hold of Steve. Councilman Noll
said this is DEP requirements for the money that they will be giving us.
Councilman Allar said it is part of the contract, we can’t actually set foot
until that is in place. I don’t know how long its going to take. Councilman
Noll said put a note on there that she should cc Elizabeth Heathcote, the
township manager along with us.
The secretary said I wanted to let everyone know, I gave him a copy of the
changes for the ordinance book that we received. Plus the disc and a copy
for the Law Library so the ordinance book can be updated.
Councilman Snyder reviewed how to place the revisions to the ordinance
book.
Maintenance Report
Mr. Shearer said he has been cleaning up after all the rain events. We had a limb fall down at the ballfield and ruin the fence, will probably go to Lowes to repair fence.
Mr. Shearer said I did make time and got caught up and sent a letter of authorization
to proceed for 53 Church and 109 W. George. They had no action on the letters
that they sent. Codes had asked us for authorization to proceed. I did get the letters
Maintenance Report(cont.) Page 20
sent out for the rest of the fees, circulate file has copies.
Mr. Shearer said I did order material for the park walking trails, trail mix.
Mr. Shearer said I did get the signs in for the no trespassing for the ballfield,
three of them. Side note, I did mention to Sgt. Dunbar from YARPD, to keep
on a eye on some activity at the ballfield, young gentlemen spending a lot
of time up at the dug outs with lighters.
Mr. Shearer said I did get a rented a mower, bush hog mower for the front of
Red Lion’s tractor, for use at the bottom of the dam use. Its $450.00 for a week.
I did put a call in to Maurice that works for Jake, we haven’t had a lot wash in
at one time, but the sediment trap is filling up. Discussion continued on the
maintenance of the dam.
Councilman Allar said he parked his car across from the borough building entrance,
and the lady that lived there said that he can’t park there, so he moved it.
We need to know where our parking area. I always thought you could park there.
Mr. Shearer asked about the boundaries of the alley. Looking at the area on the county
assessment, its not totally accurate, that area showed to be part of the alley. I was always
under the impression it was part of the alley. Councilman Myers said I will pull up the
deed. Councilman Noll said it should indicate on there. The secretary already gave
Councilman Myers a copy of the deed for the borough building.
Councilman Noll wanted to thank Dana for cleaning up the park. The park looked good,
the brush was removed, the trails were maintained. The park looked great.
Zoning Officer’s Report
Councilman Snyder said we went over that. You are getting with Jerry Pickel. Councilman Noll said we want a vote from council to appoint myself and probably
Sam, and maybe Tom be involved. Sit down and talk to Jerry and come to some
kind of agreement with him. I only talked to him, to see if he would be interested
in sitting down with us, I said I can’t promise you anything until I talk to council.
Have a meeting with him, show him what exactly we want him to do. The big
thing is going to be cost. Discussion continued. A motion was made Councilman Noll
to have Councilmen Snyder and Noll to talk with Jerry Pickel about interest
in becoming code enforcement officer for the borough. The motion was seconded
by Councilman Howett. All in favor. Councilman Snyder said motion carried.
Emergency Management Report
Councilman Snyder said we got the latest update for the school watch from WGAL.
Emergency Management Report (cont.) Page 21
Councilman Snyder said the only other thing was the York County Quick Response
Team is asking for money. Mayor Sanford voiced his opinion, he didn’t support that,
we give through other avenues, through York Area Regional.
Councilman Snyder said there is other correspondence here, with Department of
Transportation.
Councilman Snyder said I did see an email, they monitored through Hurricane
Irene, no damage was seen, the creek never rose above half way up through
the night. I did want to express congratulations to the fire department, ambulance
service and the mayor for their diligence in keeping an eye on things in town
throughout that. Except for a couple transformers that blew out, over the course
of the night, things went pretty smooth. Kudos to everyone that was involved.
Mayor’s Report
Councilman Snyder said we are cordially invited to a winter partnership meeting
to be held on October 18th from 1PM to 3PM , that is the communicate readiness
plan for winter traffic services. Its going to be held York County Department of
Emergency Services at Davies Drive in York.
Councilman Snyder said the mayor’s written report will be part of the record.
The police report, they responded to 32 calls, 38 traffic citations, 4 summary
citations, 2 juvenile arrests. Total 84.75 service hours, 39.93 administrative
hours.
Secretary’s Report
The secretary did not have anything to report
Councilman Snyder said we received the minutes from Yoe Borough Sewer Authority.
Councilman Snyder said we received correspondence from Insurance Services that
they will be contacting the borough for information about prior insurance classifications.
One thing I noticed they will be studying the water supply distribution system including
hydrant flow tests. Councilman Myers said that is already done. I think we did okay
number wise. They look at a structure fire numbers. We went over each report. We went
over other things, training records, insurance, what equipment we had in the borough
to respond to structure fires, high risk areas, inspections, pump inspections. We don’t test
our hose. We got a grant to get new hose. Did he meet with you? The secretary said
I never remember anyone being here. Councilman Myers said he met with 911. They
are independent agency that insurance companies hire, there is a membership, what they
do is, they’re a non partisan group. So what they’re doing is, in the letter it’s a category
Secretary’s Report(cont.) Page 22
six. That’s the rate per hundred on your house. If you say your house is worth $200,000.00, that’s how they establish the rates. That way insurance companies
are neutral, they have no say in what category number. The agency tells them what
it is, that is then what they can charge people. He actually did the study. He picked
hydrants. He met with the water authority. I think we did okay. We always have
a good response for a structure fire. Discussion continued.
Councilman Snyder said we received notice from York County Solid Waste, they
are in the process in updating their 25 year plan for the delegation between the authority and York County.
Councilman Snyder said we received notice from York Adams Tax Bureau, of the new
changes on the payments that are going to be coming in monthly on actually amounts.
The first one that we received for July we received $6683.00.
Councilman Allar said we received a letter from PSAB about a survey of unfunded
state mandates. PSAB is trying to do something about it. Seems like York County
Boroughs Association, if they are not doing, they should be doing something.
Has John thought about that? The secretary said John use to be an officer, but I don’t know if he attends anymore. Councilman Allar said these things shouldn’t be ignored.
PSAB has some power, they are trying to represent us. They need something to come
from the grassroots. YCBA may be able to add something different. Councilman Snyder said I can ask him.
Unfinished Business
Councilman Allar said I wanted to recap on the intern program. This is a list of all
the different companies we looked out. On the left column, these are the ones we
surveyed. Discussion continued. We went applications to ten on the list. Coca Cola has
come back as a no. The other nine are still pending. Even if they all say no, this is still a
valid approach to try to get money. Discussion continued. I think the program should
continue. If we had gone in May, a month or six weeks to approve for 5013C, I could have gone in for money for the storm water project. This might pertain to you too Barry,
with 5013C, I was talking to a IRS guy, I ask him about this $10,000.00 for a 5013C.
He said that didn’t sound right and looked into it. There is a $10,000.00 is for a user
fee. The user fee for us, gross receipts that we would get is $850.00. Its possible to
apply or appeal to get that reduced. If we used cyber assist, the web based program
it would be only $200.00. There is an application. Mainly have to put in your ID number, charter and financial documents. I’ll leave it with Sandy. Councilman Myers said
thank you for trying.
Councilman Myers asked whatever happened with the electric stuff? Councilman Snyder
said that will be discussed at budget time, I still haven’t seen any savings.
Unfinished Business(cont.) Page 23
Councilman Allar asked are you still trying to get with Yorkana Fire Company?
Councilman Myers said yes. Councilman Allar said to let me know I still have
questions on that. We are looking at solar energy, I want to see how it works.
We have a fire company out there, Yorkana, installed it, they are using the
same company I am working with. I’d like to bring them here sometime. Councilman
Noll said we need to check on that, because we are finding things out in our
industry, about a ten to fifteen year life on those, the next big thing, when you
yank these things off the buildings, they are going to be considered hazardous
waste. Councilman Myers said I was told in 20 to 25 years that they are going
to be considered hazardous waste.
New Business
Councilman Noll asked what do we pay for our police? The secretary said
its $16,520.50 per quarter, so you would take that times four. Councilman Noll said and that’s for 2 PPU’s? The secretary said yes. Councilman Snyder said its around
$30,000.00 per PPU.
Payment of Bills
Councilman Snyder said we have additional bills as attached. A motion was made
by Councilman Myers to pay the bills as listed along with the attached additional
bills. The motion was seconded by Councilman Noll. All in favor. Councilman
Snyder said motion carried.
Adjournment
Councilman Howett made a motion to adjourn the meeting at 10:12PM. The motion
was seconded by Councilman Snyder. All in favor.
