UPPER POTTSGROVE >> It looks like the township is getting a little help from its neighbor to the north when it comes to building a new highway garage.
Monday night the township commissioners awarded a bid for the design of the new building that is not to exceed $20,000.
And, in fact, it may cost less.
The bid was awarded to Larry’s Home Design which, as it turns out, is also the firm designing a similar pole barn-type public works facility for douglass (Mont.) Township.
“Really, we’re just tweaking the design for the Douglass building, so the firm thinks it may be as little as $15,000,” said Township Manager Carol Lewis.
Another $4,500 has been saved off the cost of the $650,000 project as a result of the reversal of a split decision made back in February, Lewis said.
That was when a majority of commissioners Elwood Taylor, Herb Miller and John Bealer voted to spend $4,500 to get an “expedited” NPDES permit from the Montgomery County Conservation District.
NPDES stands for the National Pollution Discharge Elimination System and is a federal process being administered by the conservation district to reduce and eliminate sediment run-off from the construction site.
Rather than wait months, the $4,500 fee would get the permit in five days.
“But in conversations with the Conservation District since, they said we would get the permit in June and we aren’t even going out to bid in August, so we decided we didn’t need it,” Lewis explained.
Construction will begin in September or October and the township hopes to have the new highway building completed by the end of the year, she said.
As for the building the highway department occupies now, an ad hoc committee put together to tackle that question has recommended that the use of the entire building by the police department – which now occupies half the building on Heather Place – be further explored.
“The chief and I have been tasked to report back on best practices for a police facility to look at the best way to make use of that space,” said Lewis.
