August meeting of Friends of Laurel Wood

The next Friends of Laurel Wood meeting is:

August 12, 2014

Laury's Station Fire Hall

7 PM

Friends of Laurel Wood June Update

I recently contacted both the North Whitehall Township office and (at a member’s suggestion) the Lehigh County Authority to discuss the Strawberry Acres Over 55 Retirement Village.

What's going on with the Township:

• There are no official proposals before the Township at this time.  In fact, the developer will need to start over again and take any new proposal to the Planning Commission for action prior to talking to the Supervisors.  
• Since the Supervisors have turned down developer's special request, the Planning and Zoning boards must first perform their duties and recommend an action to the Board of Supervisors before they will take up the question again.  
• The Supervisors are standing behind their prior decision that only an established authority will be allowed to operate the sewer system.  That places key actions in the hands of the Lehigh County Authority as the legal authority in this area to operate a sewer system.

Discussion with the The Lehigh County Authority:

• The developer has indeed been in touch with them, and working on “legal questions” at this time.  These discussions and any negotiations that they might have are not publicly released yet. 
• The working body of the Authority must present a recommendation to their board before any decision can be taken.  The Board discussions are public, and an agenda is posted on the before each meeting.  The public is invited to attend the board meetings and make comments before the decisions are made.  
• Visit http://lehighcountyauthority.org to see the posted agendas and minutes.  On the right side of the header banner is the item “About LCA.”  Click on that to bring down a menu and select “Meeting and Minutes.”   If the text of is in blue you can click on it to read the full information.  
• The gentleman I spoke to stated that he understood our concerns about the sewer system and if we could not stop its installation that we wanted the Authority to assist us in making sure that the system is designed, installed and operated to the highest of standards.   He stated that the Authority shares the goal of good design, installation and operation to avoid costly issues in the future.

Please join me in continuing to show our concern by attending both the Township Planning and Supervisors meetings, and the Lehigh County Authority to raise our concerns and request that they follow the ordances of the township, county, and state in considering these matters! 

Current information on the progress, meetings and needed actions will continue to be posted to this site.