Hanover Township, Lehigh County, officials are celebrating a decade with the municipal building on Grove Road. Township Manager Melissa Wehr announced construction of the municipal building reached its 10-year anniversary Dec. 12.

The township has accomplished a lot in this last decade, and the room felt somber with the idea of that much time passing by.

Chairman Bruce Paulus said he will celebrate when the building is paid off, which should be in the next five years.

Wehr also mentioned the River Central draft plan is live and can be found at planrivercentral.org. The River Central project has a multimunicipal planning committee that aims to determine common goals and objectives for areas of land use in the boroughs of Catasauqua, North Catasauqua and Northampton and East Allen and Hanover townships.

The project is currently in part two, phase four, of its schedule, and the group is beginning to plan the policy framework. The next River Central Steering Committee meeting will be 7 p.m. Jan. 10, 2023, and can be attended remotely.

For more information, visit the website for information.

In other business, council gave Wehr the authorization to release the first payment of the Allendale Sanitary Sewer project in the amount of $89,939.18. The project is still ongoing, but township Engineer Al Kortze gave his recommendation to release the first payment.

Kortze also requested authorization to advertise bids for the Catasauqua Road improvement project. This concerns Valley Plaza on Catasauqua Road, and the engineer is looking to establish a new pedestrian crosswalk, new signals and new LANTA bus shelters.

Kortze mentioned this project was funded through a grant, but Pennsylvania Department of Transportation recently approved all of the plans. Council agreed to move forward with the bids, which will go live Jan. 17, 2023.

The meeting closed with a discussion surrounding a radio antenna for the public works department’s radio system.

The radio antenna for the signal has always been stationed on top of the UGI Utilities Corporation building free of charge. However, the company recently notified the township the antenna will need to be relocated. It was quickly moved to the Two-Way Tower, which is where the township’s fire department’s radio equipment is located.

Wehr requested authorization to sign the tower lease agreement with a yearly charge of $1,200.

Paulus said he had some concerns about the yearly payments as there was no charge for this item previously. He requested Wehr look into alternative options, such as mesh network radios or a possible contract with Lehigh Valley International Airport.