Lansdale: Sites being discussed for electric vehicle charging stations

LANSDALE: With grant money now awarded, details are coming into focus on where Lansdale Borough will set up several charging stations for electric vehicles around town.

Electric committee chairman Rich DiGregorio reported recently that staff are already considering sites for those charging stations.

“The borough has received 100 percent funding from a rebate for five electric chargers throughout the town. This will pay for the equipment and installation, totaling $43,265,” said DiGregorio.

“The locations, we were talking about were: one outside the borough building, possibly one at one of the parks, possibly Whites Road Park or Stony Creek Park,” on Whites Road or Hancock Road respectively, DiGregorio said.

In January, both Lansdale Borough and the North Penn School District announced they had received a new round of state grants to help buy cleaner vehicles. In Lansdale’s case, the grants for charging stations come from the state’s Department of Environmental Protection, DiGregorio said, and will cover costs once they’re incurred locally.

“The borough is actually putting the money out up front, and once the charging stations get installed, we will get reimbursed,” he said.

Other options for the sites currently being considered are near public parking spaces on Madison Street near the former Madison Parking Lot, and within the Susquehanna Avenue parking lot near Susquehanna and Vine Street.

DiGregorio said staff reported on those grants during the electric committee’s Feb. 6 meeting, and are still investigating details but could make the charging stations free for users, at least at first.

“Right now we’re in the early learning stage. Right now, it’s going to be free, until the borough gets more information, and figures out what we need to charge for that,” he said.

“But it’s moving in the right direction, in having electric cars in the borough,” DiGregorio said.

A second grant was announced at the same time, for roughly $22,500 to cover the cost differential of purchasing three electric vehicles for the borough’s fleet. DiGregorio said staff are still evaluating which types of electric vehicles would best meet the borough’s needs, but for now the vehicles look likely to be Chevrolet Volt models, and more details will be announced in future months.

Savings possible from demand drop: DiGregorio also reported on a borough-wide effort to cut down on electricity usage during a snowstorm on Jan. 31.

“We saved three megawatts, which is huge,” DiGregorio said.

On that day, borough announcements asked local customers to try to cut their consumption as much as possible between 4 and 9 p.m., since part of the town’s electricity contract with wholesale supplier AMP-Ohio charges more for supply during high demand periods.

According to DiGregorio and electric department Foreman Joe Green, the impact on the borough’s bills is still being calculated, since the peak was predicted to fall within that afternoon but ended up being the following morning.

“We get charged the following year based on what usage we used, so us, as the borough, conserving that electricity is going to save us money next year on our electric bill,” DiGregorio said.

Food truck code ready for vote: Council’s code enforcement committee heard an update from staff on a new code spelling out rules and regulations for food trucks looking to set up shop in town.

“It’s not to ‘not allow food trucks.’ It’s to be able to regulate the food trucks as they come in,” said Code department building code official Jason Van Dame.

The code committee has discussed possible food truck codes for much of 2018, as local operators asked if the town had any licencing or inspection requirements, or restrictions to certain areas. A draft has been refined over the past several months, and Van Dame told the Code committee on Feb. 6 that a final version could be up for approval on Feb. 20.

“It actually permits food trucks in the industrial areas. It doesn’t give them permission to operate in any right-of-ways, so we don’t have to worry about the food truck showing up on Main Street or Madison Street,” he said.

The new code only covers those food trucks that decide to set up on public property, so those that currently operate near or in conjunction with private businesses are already covered, Van Dame told the committee.

“We didn’t want to add restrictions when we already have regulations that cover that,” he said.

Food trucks that operate under the aegis of certain special events like First Fridays are also currently regulated under the event permits for those events, Van Dame told the committee, but the new code “gives some enforcement capabilities for food trucks that show up, unregistered, for those special events, which we did not have in place before.”

Code committee member Denton Burnell said one of his concerns in earlier drafts is that the ordinance spell out what permits and inspections, such as certifications from the Montgomery County Heath Department, a food truck must have.

“There’s language in here that does that now,” he said.

The code committee voted unanimously to recommend the draft be considered by full council on Feb. 20, and committee Chairman Jack Hansen said the latest draft addressed all of his prior concerns too.

“We’ve been talking about this for several months, getting more and more information, and what has been brought to us, I think, is a very good ordinance,” Hansen said.

Interviews underway for next parks director: Council member Mary Fuller said the search is still ongoing for the borough’s next full-time parks and recreation director.

“We are still in the midst of a director search. I think I reported last time that resumes were received — there was a list of eight; those interviews are happening now,” she said.

Longtime parks and recreation director Carl Saldutti passed away in October 2018, after more than four decades working for the town and shaping its current parks programs and facilities.

Fuller said council’s parks and recreation committee, which she chairs and the director reports to and works with, has been getting regular updates from an internal staff committee charged with choosing from the roughly three dozen candidates who applied, to select fewer for council to consider.

“Those eight will be whittled down, and the goal is to have somebody in place by mid-March, and it sounds like their committee is on target to do just that,” she said.

Lansdale borough council next meets at 7 p.m. on Feb. 20 at the borough municipal building, 1 Vine St. For more information or meeting agendas and materials visit www.Lansdale.org or follow @LansdalePA on Twitter.

Source: thereporteronline