Burrell Township supervisors are thinking spring as they opened bids for road materials to be used to help erase some of the damage done by harsh winter weather.
The supervisors Feb. 18 accepted low bids from the following: Compass Minerals of Overland Park, Kan., salt, $85.45 per ton, delivered; Derry Construction Co. of Derry Township, super pave, $55.85 per ton; Hei-Way, LLC of Sarver, patching material; Suit-Kote of Cortland, N.Y., asphalt oils; and Hanson Aggregates of Torrance, for various stone materials.
Hauling of all stone and materials from the suppliers was awarded to Davis Trucking of Coral.
Most of the prices were as expected, according to Larry Henry, supervisors chairman, though the bids for super pave came in lower than normal because of reduced oil prices.
Marshall Heights and Susan Drive are pegged to receive some attention once the weather improves, but most of the road repairs will focus on mending the damage resulting from rough winter conditions.
“A lot of this is just going to be fixing the roads that the winter destroyed,” said Henry. “This winter has been tough, with the swinging temperatures, the ups and downs.”
PennDOT informed the supervisors that it will be performing traffic data collection on five randomly selected township roads — Country Lane, Turner Drive, Old Indiana Road, Bells Mills Road and Palmer Road.
The collected data is sent to the Federal Highway Administration and used in a formula to help determine federal funding to the state.
PennDOT noted in a letter to the supervisors that the traffic counters are not associated with a speed trap or a road project. The five roads are among 7,200 locations that were chosen to get an overall representation of traffic counts on the state's 78,000 miles of municipally owned roads.
Supervisor Tony Distefano suggested calling PennDOT district officials to advise them that the roads selected for the count wouldn't provide a good indicator of traffic volumes in the township since most of the roads chosen are not well traveled and several aren't even paved.
“If it truly is random, that was just the luck of the draw,” Distefano said.
The supervisors viewed an independent accountants' report on the Burrell Township Library prepared by McCall Scanlon & Tice, LLC of Pittsburgh.
According to the report, the library had a total of $41,476 in assets as of December 31, 2013.
The firm informed the supervisors in a cover letter that the review has less scope than an audit and does not offer an opinion on the financial standing of the library.
The township office will be closed April 3 in observance of Good Friday. The next township supervisors' meeting will be held 7 p.m. March 18 in the township building on Park Drive in Black Lick.
Gina DelFavero is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. She can be reached at 724-459-6100, ext. 2915 or gdelfavero@tribweb.com.
