Safety and sanitation were the main topics of discussion at Tuesday night’s North Lewisburg Village Council meeting.
Mechanicsburg Police Captain Scott Bodey presented his monthly report on traffic and criminal activity to the officials and mentioned a particular issue involving an alley. Mechanicsburg is contracted to provide police services for the Village of North Lewisburg.
Bodey said an alley running behind the municipal building has many vehicles parked on the street, despite being very narrow. He said school buses have trouble navigating the narrow street, often being forced to back out after picking up students because the parked cars make turning at intersections impossible.
Bodey said if a school bus has trouble navigating the alley, fire trucks will also have difficulties if ever called to the area. Bodey asked if on-street parking on the alley could be restricted.
Village administrator Robert Yoder said the houses on the alley have off-street parking available, so it would be possible to enforce a parking restriction. He suggested eliminating parking on the west side of the alley.
Council asked if the restriction would be for certain hours, but opted to leave the parking ban for all day because the occurrence of a fire could happen any time. Council approved the parking change and Yoder said he would notify the affected homeowners and order street signs noting the change.
Mayor Cheryl Hollingsworth discussed the upcoming village cleanup week, running May 10-17. She noted that the village is fortunate to be able to host the event for an entire week as many village have reduced the program to one day or eliminated it all together.
Yoder said the plan is to have five large receptacles at the village park which will rotate out when filled. Some of the containers will be for recyclable material and will accept scrap metal.
Only village residents are able to place items in the dumpsters.
The village will also host a free village-wide yardsale on the weekend of May 10-12, to coincide with the cleanup week. Yard sale application fees will be waived for that weekend.
In other, business, council:
-Learned that the village has contracted with a company for summer mosquito spraying.
-Discussed that some alleyways and the bike path extension will be targeted for resurfacing as part of the county chip/seal program this year. The village’s portion of the cost will be $9,000.
-Learned that the village is working to upgrade its utility billing program as the current program is outdated.