Bradford City Council members handled various points of business, including raising rates for garbage pickup service within city limits, during the regular City Council meeting Tuesday.
“The rates have gone up at the landfill and we have been able to keep the rates the same for nine years,” noted Mayor Tom Riel. The increase will be $1 a month for residential households.
Chip Comilla, the city’s Director of Public Works and Parks, confirmed that the rates for the landfill have increased three times in the last two years while City Administrator Teri Cannon noted the rates for the landfill have increased at a rate of more than seven percent. Both Cannon and Comilla also noted that, while it has not been confirmed, another increase in rates for the landfill is “more than likely to occur” in the near future.
The rates are to be as follows: $6 per item for disposal of large furniture items; $21 per month for residential housing, commercial lodging (including all hotels, motels, beds & breakfasts and rooming houses) and for commercial accounts, for an average of four bags per week. For more than one weekly pickup, the rates will be $42 per month for two, $63 per month for three, $84 per month for four and $105 per month for 5.
The amendment is set to take effect Jan. 1, 2020.
The council also approved free parking for the downtown area during the holiday season, with a reminder to those business owners and employees who normally park in parking lots to avoid using the parking spaces in the business district, leaving them open for holiday shoppers. Riel noted that if the parking situation becomes a problem, as it has in years past, then two-hour parking will be enforced.
Council also approved the appointment of Evan Piganelli as temporary firefighter, effective Nov. 23, for six weeks or for as long as a full-time firefighter is absent due to illness or injury or long-term absence.
In other business, council approved a building permit for Don Britton, owner of 15 Barbour St., to install new windows and a front door at that location and also to paint the brick surface and install new vinyl railing on the balconies for the second and third floors; approved a payment of $5,000 to Brandon Whittemore for facade improvements to 10-16 Kennedy St. under the Main Street Facade Improvement Program for storefront painting and repair, with a vote of 3-1, and approved payment of $4,947 from the Office of Economic and Community Development’s 2017 CDBG account for the purchase of 42 new winter banners, hanging from the light poles in the downtown historic district as part of the Main Street Streetscape Project.
Riel informed Sara Andrews, director of the OECD, that the new banners look “awesome” and other council members agreed.
A motion to partially approve and partially deny a certificate of appropriateness for Michael Fitzpatrick, the owner of 101 Main St., received two votes of approval and two of denial, with Council Member Terry Lopus absent from Tuesday’s meeting. The motion noted that, while the Historic Architectural Review Board approved the installation of a new awning and gooseneck lighting, the portion of the application where Fitzpatrick applied to install new signage would have been denied until a rendering of said signage was presented to the board.
During the correspondence portion of the meeting, Cannon read a letter, received by the City of Bradford Tuesday, from Pa. Department of Transportation (PennDOT) representative Thomas Zurat, District Zone 2-0. The letter thanked the city for its cooperation on the construction of the Forman Street Bridge and noted that the ability to detour traffic not only made construction less difficult but also shortened the duration of the project. Zurat mentioned Comilla specifically, thanking him for his help in the process, and thanked the city again for helping to rehabilitate a bridge that was in poor condition in a manner that “exceeded expectations.”
