St. Lawrence Moves to Join Mt. Penn Water Lawsuit

St. Lawrence Borough Council voted to step into the legal fight over the Mount Penn water system that supplies much of the borough. At the same August meeting, the council raised the fees residents pay to bring a zoning case and signed onto a long-range growth plan shared with three neighbors.

The actions came at the council's regular meeting on Thursday, August 13, according to the borough's approved minutes.

Joining the Mount Penn water fight

The Mount Penn Borough Municipal Authority has run the water system that serves St. Lawrence, Mount Penn, Lower Alsace, and part of Exeter Township since 1941. The Borough of Mount Penn, citing its own finances, is moving to take over the system and dissolve the authority, and the two sides are in court. St. Lawrence residents make up close to a quarter of the system's customers, so the outcome affects what they pay for water. Our report on the water dispute lays out how it started and what is at stake.

At the August meeting, a resident asked the council to make sure the borough was doing everything it could to keep the system from being sold and rates from climbing. After a closed-door discussion of the litigation, the council voted to authorize its solicitor to file a petition to intervene in the mandamus action Mount Penn Borough has brought. A mandamus action is a lawsuit that asks a court to force a party to carry out a required duty. To intervene means to ask the judge for permission to join a case already underway as an official party, so St. Lawrence can argue its side rather than watch from the outside.

Zoning hearing fees go up

The council adopted an updated fee schedule that raises what it costs to ask the borough's zoning hearing board to consider a case. The board hears requests such as variances and special exceptions, which let a property owner do something the zoning rules would not normally allow. Under the new schedule, a special hearing now costs $1,500 for a residential request and $3,000 for a commercial one.

The same resolution added back a $400 recreation fee on new construction and folded in a sewer-rate increase the council had already adopted in June. The fee changes take effect under the August fee schedule.

A shared plan for four towns

The council held a public hearing and then adopted the SEAD Joint Comprehensive Plan, named for the initials of the four communities it covers: St. Lawrence, Exeter, Amity, and Douglass. A comprehensive plan is a long-range guide for how a community wants to handle growth, and where housing, business, open space, roads, and services should go. Pennsylvania municipalities are expected to keep one, and it sets the direction that later zoning decisions are supposed to follow. The plan itself does not change any zoning rule.

The county's earlier on-file plan for the area covered only Amity, Exeter, and St. Lawrence; the SEAD update adds Douglass. Each of the four communities adopts the plan on its own. Amity Township took up the same plan in August. The borough advertised its hearing twice in the Reading Eagle before the vote, and no one spoke for or against the plan.

Also at the meeting

The council voted to apply for two state grants to buy public-works equipment: a John Deere Gator utility vehicle for $29,381.50 and a sub-compact tractor with attachments for $41,171.32. It also approved a 10-year agreement with Met-Ed, the local electric utility, to replace the borough's street lights with LED fixtures at the utility's expense, and chose a bright-white light over a warmer tone. The borough's engineer reported that St. Lawrence won a state Green Light-Go grant for work on its traffic signals and will owe a local share of about $69,670. The council also learned that the camera processors on the traffic signals at Prospect, Bingaman, and Elm are failing, with repairs estimated at up to $12,000 per signal, and the borough manager is weighing lower-cost options.

To find your own borough or township's meeting schedule, see our guide to Berks County meeting schedules. For how local, county, and state governments split up land-use and other duties, see how Berks County government works.