On May 16, Macungie Borough Council postponed a number of items on the Cotton Street renovation project, which included eliminating the mill and overlay, eliminating the sidewalk and guide rail from Bridge East on and reducing the sidewalks to four feet wide.

On June 6, council reinstated all of these cuts back into the project detail.

The hasty decision to postpone indefinitely the aforementioned projects stemmed from an anticipated early start date of the Cotton Street project. The contractor originally asked to start construction May 23. Borough Council President Chris Becker was concerned there would not be enough funds in the allotted budget for the project and urged council members to cut costs, saving nearly $45,405.50.

Since that meeting last month, the start date of the Cotton Street project moved to June 16 and council reassessed the budget. Council members unanimously passed the motion to add the postponed items back into the renovations, because sufficient funding is available for the project as it first stood. There will be a mill and overlay, the sidewalk and guide rail will extend past Bridge East and the sidewalks will be the standard five feet.

Becker was apologetic over his hasty decision, saying it was an unintentional mistake. Pressed with an early start date at the last meeting, he felt it was a necessary precaution to make. Council is happy to have the items back in the project and Borough Manager Chris Boehm informed the contractor of the decision made.

Parking passes were distributed to citizens affected by the Cotton Street closure prior to the start of the project.

The Main Street Streetscape plan is still slated to begin in early November and remains on schedule.

The SW Lehigh Comprehensive Plan held a meeting May 24 to discuss further the goals of each municipality’s land development plan. The plan has eight separate themes it is trying to uphold and council vice president Roseann C. Schleicher commented the current plan is “fairly done… [it] touched on the needs of all municipalities.”

Members from the councils of each East Penn municipality will meet again June 21 to talk about the policies needed for implementation of the land development plan in place. The hope is to have the plan started by June 28 on which date a meeting will be held in the Lower Macungie Town Hall 7 p.m.

The public hearing for the vacation of Creek Street is slated 7 p.m. Aug. 1 at the Macungie Institute. An engineer will be present to talk about further details for upcoming SCARP projects.

Borough solicitor Patrick M. Armstrong, Esq., was in attendance for the council’s meeting. He discussed the current state of the amendment to the alcohol policy, which will be going into another round of revisions upon guidance from council.

There are currently two committee vacancies the council is looking to fill, including a seat as a Macungie Institute trustee and a place on the zoning hearing board. Interested parties can contact borough hall at 610-966-2503.