News And Notes From Schwenksville Borough Council Meeting

Moving on

Borough councilwoman Maureen Giacomucci gave notice that effective Aug. 15, she will no longer be able to serve on council due to an upcoming move that places her beyond the borough's limits.

Giacomucci will continue her role on the activity committee, and council is in the process of removing her name from November's ballot.

New appointment

Chief Jim Keyser of the was officially announced as the borough's representative on the Joint Board of Appeals.

"He has the prerequisite experience in building, as well as the other things on the list," said council President Arthur Fairclough.

The appointment is effective immediately.

Over budget

The Main Street Parking Plan is ahead of schedule, as borough Engineer Dave Leh stated that the PennDOT portion of the work may be completed by month's end.

"We received the final approval from PennDOT for the proposed striping earlier this week," said Leh. "The next step is to coordinate with the PennDOT stripers to get the actual work done."

PennDOT will work on the new double-yellow lines, as well as white lines to establish travel lanes.

The borough has split its portion of the work into two separate projects. The first is the removal of the current double-yellow line on Main Street. The second portion involves painting the stalls for each parking spot.

The estimated cost for the project is $10,300. Council had previously set aside $4,000 for "cleaning and marking streets," of which $2,400 has been used to date.

A motion was made and approved to cover the $8,700 overage, though there's a possibility that the borough may use its liquid fuels reserves to cover the gap.

Paving project plight

Though the Second Street paving project wrapped up a few weeks ago, the final product leaves a bit to be desired, thanks to one vehicle and driver in a hurry.

"Unfortunately, a beautiful job of paving was destroyed by one person in a dump truck," said Leh. "If you go up there, they had to cut out the damaged pieces and repair them."

After the project had been completed, the contractor placed multiple orange traffic cones on the street as a barricade to prevent drivers from traveling on the freshly paved roadway. 

One driver was undeterred.

"A fully loaded dump truck came down Perkiomen, made a left turn over the cones, and went all the way down through the new paving, putting two indentations through several different areas," said Leh.

The contractor ate the cost of repairs; the driver is still unidentified.