Dear Editor and Perry Township residents:
At the Monday, March 13 Perry Township board meeting, trustee Dusty Smith brought up an issue with the Knorr property located on Washington New Martinsburg Road in New Martinsburg. Trash is being hauled onto the property and then periodically burned. The large accumulation of trash has become such a concern to neighbors that the county health department investigated and recently issued an order to the property’s owners to clean up the property within 30 days. The health department has requested that Perry Township also send a 30-day clean-up order to the property owners and the trustees passed a resolution to do this.
The trustees looked over the county engineer’s bids for 2017 road projects and after some discussion, approved four of the projects for present and said they needed clarification on others. I was notified the next day that our trustees called a special meeting for Thursday, March 16. At this special meeting the trustees again discussed the road projects, and if I understood correctly, disapproved one project that had been approved Monday, kept other approved projects and added a project. I think the following are the approved projects:
– Pave Barrett Road from State Route 41 to the first bridge ($27,308).
– Replace a large culvert that is rusting out on Zimmerman Road ($33,600). This is probably the oldest culvert in the township and has been a mess for several years.
– Replace a culvert on Barrett Road near the radio tower ($12,397). Initially a farmer expressed concerns about the narrowness of the road over the culvert. When the county inspected the situation the culvert itself was found to be in bad shape and in need of replacement. The replacement will be a large, 30 or 36 inch culvert.
– Crack seal Bonner Road from Barrett to Ghormley ($4,500).
– Widen two feet on the north side and pave Barrett Road on the 300 foot section where it runs contingent with Bonner Road, from Bonner south to Bonner north ($3,545).
J. Cavner, whose property is adjacent to the Bonner and Barrett Road section, strongly objected to the widening and paving of this road section, and a several minute exchange on this occurred among Ms. Cavner and the trustees. Ms. Cavner believes that the pavement is in perfectly good shape and does not need repaving. Repaving it, according to the resident, would be a waste of taxpayers’ money.
Trustee Tom Creachbaum stated that the intersection was widened initially for a school bus. Trustees went on to inform that this section of the road now needs widening and repaving to help with the mud situation on the road. It was Ms. Cavner’s opinion that all it is is customization for a private individual who runs a feed lot there and that many roads in the township are in much worse shape. The township has only x amount of money and it is put in there by the taxpayers. Trustee Smith told Ms. Cavner that the majority of the road fund money comes from the gasoline tax and that everybody in the state pays. And if the trustees don’t spend it, they won’t get anymore. Meeting was adjourned over this discussion.
Janet Anderson
Perry County resident
