By MICHAEL HIRSCH

Special to The Press

An open burning ordinance introduced by John Frantz, certified fire and explosion investigator, building code official and fire marshal, was discussed at the South Whitehall commissioners meeting on Oct. 5.

Pennsylvania’s Department Labor and Industry adopted the 2018 versions of the International Code Council Construction Codes as the ruling codes for the Uniform Construction Code for the state on Feb. 14.

The board’s intent was to update the international Building Code from 2015 to the 2018 code year edition.

Three items are being requested to be added.

·Added verbiage to address the prohibition of burning recyclable materials in accordance with commonwealth law.

·The three sections are being modified to remove bonfires from the types of allowable open burning. Prohibiting bonfires will limit the size of fires to those allowed by recreational fires and in portable outdoor fireplaces.

·The exception that allowed portable outdoor fireplaces to be operated without any separation distance requirements to one-and two-family dwellings has been removed. With the exception removed, portable outdoor fireplaces may not be operated withing 15 feet of all structures.

Commissioner Brad Osborne asked what open burning is.

“I know it’s commonplace or at least not unusual for homeowners to have equipment that provides them the opportunity to do what they like to do with their equipment, but I’m wondering whether that’s considered part of open burning,” Osborne queried. “I think of open burning as something that’s open, not contained.”

Frantz responded to Osborne.

“I’d say so. In other words, you’re talking about, for instance, a portable outdoor fireplace, or perhaps a chiminea being something that you may not consider to be open as opposed to a fire ring,” Frantz said. “Yes. All of those fall under the definition of open burning. It’s basically burning outside of a structure.” Commissioner Monica Hodges asked another question.

“There is no prohibition about quality of wood? Just like in a house,” she said. “There is no prohibition about quality of wood that is burned. There is no moisture criteria anywhere in any of the codes related to that?

Frantz responded to Hodges.

“As was discussed previously, our code not being a quality-of-life ordinance,” Frantz said. “That would be better addressed in other ordinances outside the fire code, which is strictly life safety.

“Now I have had this discussion with (Code Enforcement manager) Tom Harper. I believe he’s going to look at if the board desires to have some sort of verbiage added to the conduct ordinances to make that better enforceable.”

This discussion continued, and the issue was scheduled for the Oct. 19 agenda.

In other matters, there was a resolution to implement Act 57 of 2022 Property Tax Penalty Waiver Provisions.

Director of Finance Tricia Dickert explained Act 57.

“On July 11, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania amended the local tax collection law to try to address some issues they have seen when property ownership changes hands,” Dickert said. “Currently, what happens is when a property ownership changes hands, those taxes are typically paid with settlement of property.

“But when a real estate tax gets billed, it does cause some confusion in the event the title company does not make that payment and perhaps it’s the new owner’s responsibility to remit payment for it.

“What happens in most cases is because the deed isn’t changed timely by the county, the old owner gets the bill, then the deed gets changed and the new owner is sometimes unaware the bill hasn’t been paid.

“What this bill attempts to do is give the new property owner an avenue to request a waiver of penalty that’s assessed on the base amount of the real estate tax bill.

“We have been in discussions with the Tax Collector Lynn-Anne Kocon, and she is aware that Act 57 has now been put into law.

“She’s confident that during the next real estate tax collector’s convention, this will be a topic of conversation.

“But this resolution before you tonight is to just make sure we as a township are following the avenues for relief that are granted to the new homeowners through this act.”

A motion was made and unanimously approved.