Borough Council - Regular Meeting

I call the Columbia Borough Council regular meeting to order June 9th, 6th and 7th PM. We are following. Resolution 202616 on. Uh. Uh. So anybody hasn't signed the sign up sheet wants to sign up or not agenda items. Please sign up now. Here.

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Here. Thank you. Is there anybody like to give an indication? We don't rise from other sides. Keeping your hearts and minds. We lost his boy last week to police around. I'll make a motion for the agenda as published this evening I have a motion by councilman Murphy seconded by councilman Cooper to approve in favor say aye aye oops none assistant comments our first commenter is edwin letts at 7 0 30. hello my name is edwin lentz i live out on franklin street i've been out there now 35 years i've been in town here 48

Last weekend, I mean, the other week when we had the meeting on the AI Center out there, there was a lot of facts there that were presented that were good. If you watched this morning, um before you go to sell that property i would think that you'd sit down with the community and try to put some ordinances in place that they have to follow as far as sound because if you've got someone getting arrested in town for a loud boom box you're going to have a center out there it's going to be worse than it out there and if uh for a while you won't like me and and and that's not the intent the intent is try to keep this community and get it together and get it going um as it's been doing with everything else and with ollie here i'd like to congratulate you i've talked to you a few times i know you don't know who i am but this town needs to move on and we need to do it in a respectful way and stop everybody you talk to, everybody I know that's outside of town. Where do you live? I say, Columbia. Oh, God. No, no, it's not that bad. We have the same problems you have, except we don't make as much money as you. We don't do things like you do. And as far as that airfield out there, I've been listening to what and how much money was spent there. 6.5 million dollars isn't going to cover that expense out there okay i'll go over some things with you how much you paid for the property 1.5 okay how much it was owed in back taxes we have to pay because now when you were at a meeting before that not too much before that he was saying he was a million dollars Okay, well, we'll say $1.5 million. Did we do the field?

We did it.

Then how did it get done?

Not with that much money, no. We paid about $1.9 million.

See, there again, somebody put out information that was supposed to be $5 million, and it didn't get cleaned up. All they did out there is move the dirt around.

Ed, let me stop you there for a second. It did clean up. They did. They removed a lot of dirt from the site as well.

I see. I didn't see him moving any dirt. No, they didn't. We did not take dirt. The dirt was removed and replaced. None was exported. The goal of the project, as you stated, the dirt was moved around. The goal of the project was to stabilize the dirt because the fill that was on site was loosely placed, which was fine for an airport at the time. But it isn't suitable for construction of any hardscape improvements out there, whether it's a

Whether it's a large building or a house. Excuse me? That's why you dug 40-foot deep holes?

That's correct.

I was looking at that going, they don't have to invest more money. We have a pool.

The holes were roughly, I mean, again, I don't think we went down any further than 25 feet in any area. But the goal of the project was that was the original grade. So we had to strip that much earth to get down to the actual historic grade of the property where it was stabilized. So what you saw out there was... Yeah, and I've worked with chemicals and I've read what they do. I know.

Okay. Yeah, I've been around chemicals most of my life, but in jobs that I've done. Chemicals? Yeah. Hazardous chemicals, hazardous waste, it's all the same.

And I don't want to take up your time. Okay. One other thing I do want to note, though, is there was a number, we received a grant loan from bios for approximately nine million dollars not not quite nine it was close okay we never used that whole thing as heather said we're in the 1.9 of that whole project okay so all right

Because maybe that's what I was seeing. Because I come up with like $9 million with the other properties you bought. They're running in and out. And let me ask you another question. I talked to somebody the other day. And like I said, this is someone telling me I don't know if it's true. But the street I live on, Franklin. I live where Franklin and... yeah no no i didn't have to do that at one time okay um no it comes out where i don't know if your relatives live on the other side of the street there ice cream furnace yeah they're saying they The bridge isn't, 4.41 access would be wonderful, but the bridge. Yeah, hinders that.

Yeah.

So, and that's what I'm saying. And we need so much to look at what's going on. Everyone's saying our school, I pulled up the statistics of the graduating class of 2.25. um we have a graduating class at 225 and i pulled up other schools with number 22 out of 50. um our graduating class uh 24 percent efficient in math 43 percent efficient in reading if you're graduating 100 kids most of them are coming out not even gene here if you need help doing something ask the community to jump in and come you know we'll help you get facts we'll help you run things we just can't say oh it's got to be this way right we got to look at our whole community i mean it's a very diverse community and we are human don't make mistakes live up to your mistakes and Thank you.

Our next presenter is Kathy Hamilton at 712.

Good evening. My name is Kathy Ambleton. I have lived in Columbia since 1995 and raised my daughter here. She attended our public schools and is now an English teacher at the high school. I purchased my home in 2009. I spent hours preparing a fact-based 10-minute presentation with links to support all the information provided to address the zoning of the McGinnis property, the proposed data center ordinance that, in my opinion, falls well short of protecting residents, the need for transparency, and potential problems with the RFP. The presentation was emailed to all council members days ago. I have almost completely scrapped it. i still need to briefly address the rfp as council evidently intends on using the same one they used in march and will be voting on advertising it tonight i decided it's imperative to spend most of my time addressing the glaring problem facing this borough the real possibility that council will push through the sale of the mcginnis property to a developer intent on building a data center first to get the rfp issues out of the way remarkably there were two different versions of the rfp on two different pages of the columbia borough website when advertised in march the one that was approved by council did not state that the full purchase price was to be paid within 60 days of bid acceptance the other one did this should not happen again but to be clear the one that is being voted on tonight is the same one approved by council without the 60-day requirement saudi holdings evidently has some financial concerns pertaining to pending lawsuits and a resident at the may 26 meeting asked why our rfp didn't ask for that information it seems to me that is a reasonable request if we're accounting on 850 000 per year in tax revenue shouldn't we be reasonably sure that the developer will pay the property taxes I'm a retired credit manager. All credit applicants were asked to answer the following two questions. Has the applicant or any of its associated entities filed for bankruptcy protection in the last seven years? If so, please provide specific details. Does the applicant or any of its associated entities have any open judgment suits or leans against it? If so, please provide specific details. Wouldn't and shouldn't the answers to these two questions substantially impact our decision on a sale? Additionally, the RFP is materially different from the legal notice posted to advertise the last RFP. This creates a lot of confusion and potential conflicts. The Columbia SPY did a good job pointing out the discrepancies. They include the bid opening date, the award timeline, the payment instrument for the deposit, the full payment deadline the bid withdrawal restriction closing cost and the borough's right to reject council should adopt a new rfp consistent with the legal notice and requiring more financial information before voting to advertise the rfp again now back to the main issue at hand While I understand the financial need to sell the McGinnis property, I believe Columbia Borough residents have made their voices heard loud and clear in their opposition to a data center being built in our community. Approximately 600 residents showed up in the May 26th council meeting, nearly all opposed to the sale to Saadia Holdings, citing concerns about plummeting property values, noise, increasing ambient temperature, water usage, increasing electric bills, damage to the environment, altering borough character, and the limited number of permanent jobs created. a petition to stop the sale garnered every 1500 signatures. I may be wrong and I apologize if I am, but I believe the plan to sell McGinnis for use as a data center began last year when council enacted ordinance 957 of 2025 in August, adding data centers as a permitted use by right in the light business and light industrial general industrial zones. The McGinnis property is on light business, enabling a developer to erect the data center on the property. interestingly warehousing in the same ordinance is listed as special exemption for the mcginnis property making it easier and less costly for a data center to be constructed on the parcel than a warehouse this is from the lancaster county planning commission's guide any data center permitting should not align with long-term municipal land policies municipalities wishing to encourage such development or redevelopment could streamline approvals by permitting data centers by rate in contrast those seeking to limit data center development especially in environmentally sensitive areas should require special exception or conditional use permits this process enables municipalities to evaluate site-specific impacts require facility design standards establish environmental performance metrics and set operational requirements that are generally acceptable to the local community permitting data centers by right we are actually encouraging such development completely opposite to the express desires of the residents of this community there is a misconception propagated by council at the june 2nd meeting that the borough can't do anything about keeping a data center out of the mcginnis property because there is a state law stating that we can't ban data centers through zoning council is not telling us the whole truth while it is true that columbia cannot completely banned data centers through zoning we are not required to make currently available parcels permitted that for that use if data centers are permitted either by rate or special exception for at least one other property in the borough that property is the asc parcel which is zoned general industrial with data centers permitted by rate It is interesting to note that the Lancaster County Planning Commission held a meeting on May 11th, 2026. I believe Heather is a member of the commission and attended the meeting. The McGinnis property was conspicuously absent from the county's data center map of suitable locations presented at the meeting and in the commission's planning guide. County official explained that the parcel is not located along electric transmission lines and is considered too far from adequate electrical infrastructure. however a parcel abutting malleable road and which i believe is most likely the afc property does appear on the county map and was noted as being near transmission lines a key factor in data center site selection it would be possible if council has the will to completely prevent a data center from being built on the mcginnis property it should change the zoning for data centers to not permitted for light business mcginnis and permitted with special exception for general industrial asc thus addressing our immediate need to prevent a developer from building a data center on the mcginnis property protecting as much as possible the asc property for the future and also satisfying our legal obligation but this needs to happen before advertising and rfp for the property again have serious concerns about what may happen if we redid the property without changing the zoning heather was quoted in the lmp article published this morning under state law if council puts the property out for bid two times and either one draws an acceptable offer it can negotiate directly with buyers without the 60-day requirement the sadia deal may be right back on the table now council is telling us don't worry it won't be a large data center well I'm sorry that I don't trust the developer and I don't trust council to protect us from the negative consequences of a data center I don't believe the residents of this community do either we don't want a data center period what about the council's goal of creating jobs in the community that was again reiterated in the LNP interview that is a pipe dream if we sell the property for use as a data center I believe we are marching forward but with devastating consequences awaiting us the residents weren't paying attention when the zoning was changed last year but we are now and before anyone on council tries to convince us that this is our only option since we have only one interested party let me ask why we can't reduce the minimum bid do we really need to clear 3.2 million dollars are we willing to sell the soul of the borough for a little extra cash tom has already publicly stated that he cannot support the data center being built on the mcginnis property i am calling for three more council members to do the right thing and respect the wishes of your constituents i would like to see a vote tonight on amending the zoning ordinance passed last year so that data centers are not permitted in the light business zone is anyone willing to make that motion thank you thank you kathy first up at 7 20.

First of all, I would also say this woman is very, very, very good. I had reason to call her to my home one time, and she responded very quickly and politely and listened, which was a nice change of pace. I'm here to say that I'm opposed to the AI Center. for a lot of different reasons all of them have been stated but I moved here about 30 years ago and it was a very nice little community I'm originally from Brooklyn and I taught over in Eastern New York and I moved here because it was close to school but there was a river separating me from my clientele so it was a nice buffer and i've had a very nice experience here and i think in the period i've lived here there have been a lot of nice changes made to columbia a lot of them down at the river a lot of them in town a lot of nice stores are moving in places that you could eat restaurants you know all kinds of updates and all of that is good if we get this data center in here nobody's going to want to live here it's my brother lives in new york state they built one of these centers in a very nice community near his home and the the value of the of the homes plummeted the water quality farmers that had been farming land for generations could no longer farm their land animals were getting sick i'm not a scientist And one of the things that I watched the meeting from home last time because I was not able to come to the meeting. What's obvious to me is that we need to study this a lot more than we have. I don't know anything about the McGinnis property except that it used to be an airport. I have to say I've been very lax about keeping up on this stuff. And after I listened to what was going on, The other day, I thought, well, I can't be critical unless I show up myself. I'm happy to see tonight that people are being much more polite. I taught eighth grade. And when I retired, after 35 years, I didn't think I would ever see the debacle that I saw at that meeting last time. We can disagree without being ugly to each other.

Thank you.

one of the things and this goes on with what kathy was saying but in a much less technical manner there are things that i'm not a lawyer i'm a retired school teacher i know enough to say that i'm not an expert at this i don't want to hurt anyone's feelings here but i don't think any of you are experts either and i think that you need to get some experts involved to safeguard the community you know you walk around some of the suggestions that were given last time didn't seem plausible you have to make money on that land I get that there's an impact no matter what you do I get that but it seemed very obvious that the people in Columbia most of the people living here do not want this center in our midst and it's going to be up to the borough to make sure that that can happen so I would implore you before you make a decision do exactly what she said redo what's going out for bid get some experts who do know about this involved and protect the town because it's not going to be the same if you do this no one's going to want to live here thank you thank you our next speaker is robert thompson

7.4.

I'm Robert Thompson. I live at 832 Bunsen Street. We bought our property about 10 years ago. Well, now I guess. First off, Holly, I still very much owe you a very public apology. I have been very critical and very loud about your department. I still actually owe you a legitimate and public apology that is not going to happen. I actually thought you guys were going to limit us to like four minutes or something like that. All of that to say.

Robert, can I stop you for a second? I've been associated with some of these emails. I appreciate your thoughts. Thank you. Thank you.

However, we have had enough. The citizens of this borough have borne the burden of drivers, the inattentive drivers, and just the ridiculousness that our streets are. It's dangerous to walk out there these days. I'm gonna take my glasses off and give you a, I'm gonna read this speech because I'm a little nervous now. Thought I wouldn't do that. We're tired of feeling unsafe in our own streets. We're tired of being treated like we are the obstacles in the street. Parents should be able to walk their children from one end of this borough to the other and back without having a constant fear of a driver who's not paying attention, doing something dumb, just being weird. Or simply just doesn't care. But right now, that's not our reality. That's not a reality in this town. We're not safe on these streets. Right now we have to remain constantly vigilant just to move through our own neighborhoods. That's not right. That's not fair. Columbia is a walking town. Many of our, I'm sorry, all of our children are required to walk or be taken by their parents' vehicle or whatever. Some of them are as young as six years old. In this borough, as a parent, when my child turns six, I can sign off on him walking to school by himself. That means we have six-year-olds out there that are crossing Lancaster Avenue with no help. That is unacceptable. This has to start with a change in attitude. We need to change the way we perceive our streets, our sidewalks, and our responsibilities to one another. Columbia has broad avenues and incredibly wide streets. In some places, they looked designed to accommodate a four-lane highway. Why? If anybody wonders, it's trolleys. I didn't know that. Why are so many of our streets built around the convenience of vehicles instead of the safety of pedestrians? Why are we so unfriendly to walkers in a town where walking is part of daily life? I walk everywhere. Most of these people walk everywhere in this town. Jesse walks every block in this town. I'd like to see you guys start walking this borough too. Speaking from experience, unfortunately. Twice now I've been struck by a vehicle in this town, in this borough. One time I was crossing Cherry Street. And I was recording the driver. He was making the legal U-turn from Cherry onto Bethel, backing out, coming down the street, accelerated towards me, swerved to hit me. I have it on video. I gave this to the police department. Do you know what the police department did to me? Threatened to cite me with criminal mischief. You did, however, respond. You saw the video. You recognized I was a witness. You gave me the case number for that incident. And then the borough shut me down, would not give me the driver's information, which I am entitled to legally if I'm struck by a vehicle in this borough. The driver of that vehicle is required by law to stop, render aid, and provide me with his insurance. You guys have denied both of my FOIA requests now for his insurance information. I know the guy's name. I know the guy's address. I have his phone numbers. I know everywhere he's ever lived. I have his insurance information. You guys are required by law to give it to me, and you won't. I digress. Sorry. This guy hit me two weeks after I had shoulder surgery. I had my rotator cuff repaired. A lot of you guys probably saw me walking around one week with one shoulder in this thing, and the next week with another shoulder in this thing. That cost me another eight months of rehab. I paid for that, and you guys still won't give me his insurance information. The second time I was struck, I was walking back from Wise's with my kids. I was crossing 16th Street in a crosswalk. I got struck by a blue truck that then followed my wife and my kids home. He crept down Lancaster Avenue at about three miles an hour. When your force showed up, they didn't stop him and question him and bother him. They stopped and questioned and bothered me. Why? Again, you're really new into this, so it's really hard to hold you truly accountable for what is probably that gentleman's bug up. I'm sorry, apologies, I apologize. Moving on. The most recent time, 16th Street, I was wearing a body cap. So I have that on camera. I've offered it to you guys, but I don't think you'll do anything about it. So yes. absolutely need a change in perception here we need to stop treating pedestrian safety as an inconvenience we need to stop treating people walking through town as if they're the problem and that change has to include the police department the little faith this community has left in this in their police is hanging by a thread i swear to god it is and you don't want to listen they need to be better you need to do better that brings me to staffing Our crossing guards are horribly understaffed. Our police are horribly understaffed. Our schools are horribly understaffed. So what I'm asking for i ask here is that the borough reconsider a certain code that you have in place this is borough code 207-4 it gives specifically police officers the right to cross traffic to act as as traffic directors out there but because of its word where police officers have that that capability and that authority uh institutes like our fire department won't show up they read that as the police have the right and they do not so what i'm asking the borough to do is either have to request the mayor because you have the authority to simply say yes the fire department can cross track that is flat out part of your authority if he won't do it i'm asking you guys to just amend the code to say hey when we don't have enough crossing guards let's go ahead and call the fire department let's get one of those guys down there have them cross I don't think that's a difficult ask.

Trust me, you and I talk about a lot of things.

I don't necessarily need you to keep on track of every single one. I'm an information guy. I like information. Right now my wife has created a, it's not quite a non-profit, Columbia Walks. We are trying to create a system where you guys can report back to us the condition of our sidewalks, unsafe streets. If you see, I don't know, police officers blowing through town, running red lights without their lights on, those are things we would love to see come into us so that we can report back to the proper authority so we can tell the Borough Council these are where your safety issues are. We have gone so far as to attempt to address major trip hazards on sidewalks, minor trip hazards on sidewalks, and over-addressed trip hazards on sidewalks. And we would like to present the information to the Borough that you guys can act on where you don't necessarily have to be punitive on anybody who is actively taking measures to protect us to make their sidewalks better but ultimately this all comes down to us just needing to be better people to each other stop driving like there's a fire you have to get to these are kids crossing the street i don't even want to talk about scooters because that's a whole other issue however that was what i had to say i do have a couple of questions if anybody might mind answering them real quick am i out of time Real quick, clarification on the first gentleman's numbers. Were those accurate for our English scores and our math scores? lot of bad information out there i know that there's discussion about a possible data center as an insider i can tell you there are no major companies looking to put a data center here they don't want 40 acres they want 4 000 acres that's all i have to say about data centers thank you hey robert the code you brought up 207-4 207 here i'll give it to you guys i actually have it here 2074 is uh the police officers correct yeah that's true officers do cover whenever they can and there is the project that's right for the record fire police or what we what they call them when they're trained by the state to direct traffic a funeral director also has a hard time they never ask you to do that but these are weird rules that we have we might as well exercise them if we are so horribly understaffed give this woman the power give him give her the help she needs if she's if she is actively taking measures to protect us out there it's your responsibility to make sure she has the resources to do that

Our next speaker is Jesse Slider at 7.36.

Good evening, everybody. How is everybody tonight? Thank you. Thank you. I just have a few questions. I'll make it really short. Number one, are you guys confiscating scooters yet? Are you able to confiscate these scooters when people do a violation and you catch them? because i heard that you can so are we going to start confiscating scooters do you need to get permission from your boss to confiscate scooters can she confiscate scooters thank you okay second question i see lancaster newspapers just sitting over there along the wall in that paper is that is that a designated press spot jack like can we dose it over there too if he's not there So we could sit over there if we wanted to where he's at, right? Okay. Okay. Two more questions. This is for the council. Can council clarify whether zoning changes will be considered to prevent uses like data centers that don't align with Columbia's identity as a river town?

Council is looking at it.

Council is actively working on legislation related to data centers. We're actively working on a zoning change, a zoning ordinance to incorporate the guardrails for a data center and also to change the table.

Thank you, Heather. Next question. The very last question, I won't waste any more time. Okay. Is a tax increase being considered this year? And if so, when will residents be told?

Anybody? I'll answer that. Thank you. We are going through a reassessment this year. So taxes will automatically go up next year for everybody close to work. At our current financial state, we may have to talk about taxes. Taxes don't start, the budget doesn't start until July, budget talks. So in July, down the timeframe, there's one more act you sit down and start talking about the budget. Yes, we are up against the wall financially.

Thank you.

Thank you, Jesse.

contradict you however the reassessment does not mean that taxes go up automatically when the reassessment happens we are required to lower the village to be tax neutral right what we can do is then add a second um tax village by no more than 10 percent over the previous over the current year so it doesn't mean it is a given just because of the reassessment yes if you would your taxes would go up if it was kept in the current village but we are required to lower the knowledge to be taxed

Frank Galtryk at 7.29.

Thank you all. You've probably heard me say different times, come as going to the dogs. I use some different language, but that's really, I'll just use that in place of it. I'm wondering why not one person mentioned Lisa Brown passing away.

What?

yes that's my point we had a meeting i don't know when she passed away but it was before the last meeting i found out when i was on facebook today i know what they just did tonight but it's after the fact why couldn't somebody have said that that she was a good employee worked for the burr i don't know how many years i i i seen the the thing that they had in on her all the the data on her But I would have gladly went to the General. I thought she was a very good person, a good employee for the borough. But anyway, I wish somebody would have done that. And that's why when I see things like that, when I say Columbia's one of the dogs, why didn't somebody pick up on that? We have smart people here that could have brought that out. Also the question to Eric, why did you take the summer tree and that the quorum off the agenda?

Well, uh, because it's a public statement. It's available for everybody. Say that again. It's published. Everybody can see it. Everybody go online and read the statement. This resolution is available to everybody.

But you had that on going back when that was put on. It was easy to hammer Frank Douser.

My goal is not to hammer people.

Whatever your goal is. but you know how bad that last meeting was and you didn't have that you didn't follow it you did it was and i brought this out at the last meeting i'm not going to go through the whole thing again but it was a terrible terrible meeting and what this symmetry and decorum is it it would keep the people in line and we had police there to do this And that didn't happen. But anyway, I said, it ain't going to be like this tonight because I can't take two of them meeting. And I looked over at Mr. Ziegler, our solicitor, and there was another person who had a suit on. I was sweating and I didn't have a suit on. And I felt bad for them. And the mayor had a suit on, I believe. And just to let that go like that, I'm really surprised, Eric, that you're still sitting in that seat. But anyway, my question is to Derek here on Walnut Street from 3rd to Front. They're redoing that street and they're making it one way going down to the river. So when you come off of the river, you come over the railroad tracks, you can go left or right, you can go north or south. You can't go straight up the street. If you go north, you've got a wide swing. You have a trailer on. You can make that. Now, how are you going to keep making that left? You have a wall there. You have the signal light post there. And how are you going to do that with a trailer on? What do you have planned for that? You know what I'm referring to. Yeah, you come out, and now you're going to make a right turn.

they're going to make a right turn to go south and and you feel that's going to be okay now that you can't go straight up walnut so i would rather have someone make a right-hand turn to go south while opposing traffic is stopped in a red light than I would having to make a right-hand turn on 3rd Street at a stop sign with no traffic control, which is where our current situation is. So I view that as an improvement to vehicles traveling south than what's currently happening because we studied that intersection at 3rd and Walnut pretty heavily. There's quite a bit of crash data on that intersection, which is only stop controlled in two directions. That really led into the decision for which direction traffic should move. It should be away from that intersection in town. The lack of the traffic light, the grade of the street, and the site distance from the buildings. So that's a PennDOT designed intersection. That was a PennDOT designed traffic light. So it's currently approved for all turning units.

I have a quick question.

traffic coming from New York, is the line back a ways for them from life?

is there are the only modifications proposed for that intersection is some striping that deals with carrying the bike lane from travel i'll say down towards the road if you're traveling on the bike lane or traveling on the new one way we're redoing the striping to clarify how you can cross the street on a you're on a bike you'll be crossing with traffic at the light not up on the sidewalk over the handicap ramp with that button so there'll be better striping there'll be better directions for how a bike can traverse that that intersection but otherwise there are no different there are no modifications proposed otherwise so we're not moving stop bars uh we're not timing aside from you know looking at cutting that one lane traffic off PennDOT, again, PennDOT designed those improvements down there with the ADA ramps. They designed the signal, and they determined where all those stop bars would go when the bypass project went in. So it's not a scope of our project to change anything that PennDOT would i would just note if anyone if they would feel more comfortable you're more than willing you're more than able to use heritage drive and turn on 441 at union or go straight across at the union street intersection that's an option as well heritage is now a open borough public street so

I didn't think about going down. My only concern was before they had three ways to go, north, south, or straight up Walnut. But we don't have Walnut now, so that puts more traffic on north and south. and i i still question that them turning right on there being that there's going to be more traffic foot traffic i i wasn't looking at that i don't know about that but i'm looking at the driving end and some people said some things to me that made me think about it and i don't have a boat it's not going to affect me but i'm speaking for other people it's hard to change that there because you have the light standard there

so i thought maybe you said something else in mind and that's why i brought it up now again because that was a 10-dot designed intersection on a 10-dot route that's why you'll see our limit of work aside from paint and we're going to have to we're going to get up there to the light pole and actually move the traffic lights a little bit so they line up with lanes aside from doing that and painting lines our work stops before the ada ramp so you'll see Okay. We'll see what happens. Yeah. I'm not saying there's an unwillingness for us to look at it, Frank. It's just not in scope right now. And I'd say if it becomes a problem, it's something we can talk to Penn about.

Okay. These people all know how I complain about the e-bikes, the scooters. Sitting here just now while the meeting was going on, a bike come down, come up over the pedestal where you're walking the door, straight down, right alongside. I know you've got to be at the right place at the right time, but what are we doing to fix this problem? I feel like I'm in another country. I did spend a couple months over in Vietnam on vacation, and I've seen a lot of things over there, but what are we doing to make our town, the mayor says, safe streets. I'm sorry, I disagree with him on that, but what are we doing? Is anybody working on the problem? I don't see none of the kids get hurt. I don't see none of them get killed. But when school lets out, of course school's done for the summer, but when it lets out, it's terrible uptown.

Or get me there. They can tell me, but my time's up.

I had one or two more issues while I was on the Guinness thing, but respectable. Thank you.

Our next citizen comment is Joe Powell. Can you say that again?

Mayor Lutz and borough council members, thanks for allowing me to speak today. I own a property on Popper Street. I own the property in the corner of Fifth and Walnut. I was mowing my grass there on May 6th and a locksmith pulled up on my sidewalk parallel to the road to fix a lock to the property beside mine and when he seen my parking lot there he decided to park in that and when he did he knocked over a pillar of cinder blocks and uh you know did minor damage okay he pulled in my lot i was there i said could you please at least put those back up he told me to go f myself okay so he went fixed a lock which didn't take long all we had to do was left in a few minutes. And on his way out, he was pretty, I can't even describe this, what he did to me with his body, but basically told me to suck on something and got in his truck and left and said, you're lucky I don't effing knock over all of those pillars. Okay. So I called the police. The police took them an hour and a half. they did show up um oh i did have time to get his license plate so i gave the license plate number to the officer and i told him a story that i just told you the people that he fixed their lock were there i do have a witness to all that in his abusive language and everything that he did there um officer left I called a friend of mine that's in the police department and said, hey, I had this situation happen. What do you think is going to happen? He says, well, if it's in Columbia, we can expect nothing to happen. And that's exactly what happened, nothing. The officer that came out, like I say, gave me that information. I gave him that information. I never heard from him. I called back to the police department after two weeks. They acted like they didn't even know about the situation. And then they shipped me over to records because I wanted this guy's name and insurance information because I called my insurance company, okay, and they said they don't want to get involved. You call his insurance company and tell them to send him to Just Around. okay as the gentleman mentioned earlier i cannot get his name or the insurance information from our police department so that i can do anything basically you're telling me so yeah so basically i'm stuck and that's why i'm here tonight i feel that I feel that this guy, one, should be charged for trespassing, because I have a sign up in my parking lot. The other thing he should be charged for is leaving the scene of an accident without providing his information. And the other thing, he should be charged for disorderly conduct. It's not only my opinion, but I have a witness for that. And the other thing is, is basically it's reckless driving. And none of that. Why isn't he charged? There's no charges with that. and the thing that disturbs me the most is the reason they don't have insurance that they can't don't know what the insurance information is if the officer never checked that license plate so i agree with what's been said before nothing's being done mayor lutz i do want to congratulate thank you i called you on friday you did We missed each other. I called the borough manager. I never heard from them. So, yeah.

Okay.

just want you to know that that officer did call me today because he obviously doesn't know that you're working on it okay so he so you know the message he left me he left me a message and said that that's on private property we can't do anything about it we do not have any insurance information for you and i'm leaving for vacation so i won't be back for two weeks

minutes for approval consider approval of the council meeting minutes for may 26 2026. so moved second i have a motion by councilmeyer seconded by councilmenuzzi to approve council meeting minutes for may 26 2026. All in favor say aye. Aye. Consider approval of the Borough Council meeting minutes for June 2nd, 2026.

So moved.

Seconded.

A motion by Councilman Murphy, seconded by Councilman Cooper to approve the Borough Council meeting minutes for June 2nd, 2026. presentation 9-11 national world trip

Good evening. My name is Jeff McCauley. I'm the president of the September 11th National Memorial Trail Alliance. 2026 marks the 25th anniversary of September 11th, and the alliance's goal is to connect the three memorial sites to a multi-use recreational trail. The informational, and I apologize if I don't have enough for everybody, information being passed out to you the alliance is seeking council approval for the installation of wayfinding signage will be four new signposts a total of eight new signs to guide users along the designated 9 11 memorial trail route the crowd itself was together from a 2015 statewide Pennsylvania Environmental Conservation Natural Resources routing study throughout the entire state of Pennsylvania. And so the alliance is, as I mentioned, is seeking the approval from council for the installation of signage. The alliance is looking to do this throughout the state of Pennsylvania. We already have the approval of, I believe, PennDOT District 8 covers the borough. And so we already have all the approvals of PennDOT for state roads. And we are very close to having throughout the state of Pennsylvania. Municipalities on the title page package that I passed out have already offered their approval. And if council is desired, we can enter into a license and maintenance agreement for the Alliance to take care of the signage and I can provide a template to your solicitor for their approval. i'm happy to take any questions uh page 10 is the page in your signage county-wide signage plan packet that corresponds to where would you be going it would uh would be coming off i believe state report 22 maybe a square As I mentioned, the alliance is doing this throughout the state. The alliance is about to hire a contractor to get started in other counties that have full approval and uh we're hopeful that uh columbia borough will also provide the installation of the signage profession will you be uh installing them yourselves Mainichi Contracting, the alliance has funded to pay a contractor to do this throughout the entire state of Minnesota. Mainichi Contracting, it was the contractor that wanted to bid and we were in the process of getting the agreement signed. The notice of award went to them today. So we'll have new signs, new poles, new 10-foot poles, new poles, breakaway posts. The contractor will be making one massive 811 call for all the signage locations. And while I can't give a schedule of exactly when we'll get to the borough, but I assume it'll be shortly after 811. designed to be permanent, which is why I had mentioned the license and maintenance agreement. If desired by council, I can provide a template to the manager which can be forwarded to the solicitor. yes um it looks like two signs are going to be on water street which we just had a discussion about on the construction so is this something you're looking for a short date we were hopeful to have the entire state installed or have all the signs installed across the state uh by september 11th the time of the 25th anniversary but you know construction you know route changes things happen i'd be happy to work you know i could just issue a change order to our contractor

yeah i wouldn't mind the opportunity to review the proposed locations as far as walnut street goes that that project will technically still be underway more of a contractor you know within their work period but i would suspect probably within the next month and a half, the concrete work there is going to be done. So far, the contractor has been very accommodating, so we could likely accommodate an installation somewhere on that street. Again, it would be nice It's really not. I mean, again, you're going to... You know how wide the sign base is?

It's a standard 10-dot sign base. It's a 10-foot pole, and then the sign base is 2 1⁄2 and 2 1⁄4, which is...

i mean it honestly it's not that big of a deal to take a core drill and install a sleeve and do it that way so let me take a look at this though i can advise the borough and we should be able as i mentioned i don't have a construction schedule based on the

massive nature of how many one calls have to be placed but you know if the alliance has enough new polls to go throughout the entire state if i don't know if the borough has extra polls but if the current contract you're wanting to leave space you have the polls installed the alliance can you know replenish your street polls from higher that we have to install, if that makes things easier from what the work you already have. That is correct. Yep. On page two of your technical specifications, it states all of that.

Looks like it's going down.

It looks like it'll come close to 462. If you're right, the judge may look them down and think, oh, at least it's coming down, won't it? Those directions aren't helping.

Can I get your name one more time? My name is Jeff McCauley.

And actually that's a good route because that actually corresponds with what we're trying to do when the bridge is redone with our signage directing people across the bridge and to the trail so it fits perfectly.

That's good to hear. Thank you.

Yes, if you could, again, I can send a template over for a license and maintenance agreement tomorrow at some point to the manager. If it's possible, if the solicitor has a card with him, I can just email him directly. And then if it would be possible to vote at the next meeting, that way we would be able to have permission secured in time for the That would fit well within the alliances timeline to have this stuff Well, we've got a second jacket magic problem.

Let you know Okay, thank you, thanks Thank you There looks First good

I have a proclamation I want to read, and it's designating Pride Month the month of June, 2026. And it reads, whereas this nation was founded upon the principles that every person is created equal, that each has the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and that each shall be accorded the full recognition and protection of law, and whereas Pride Month is a time to recognize and celebrate the impact of LGBTQA plus individuals locally, nationally, and internationally. And whereas our community is strengthened by the rich diversity of our residents, LGBTQA plus residents and visitors should feel valued, safe, and empowered and supported by their peers, educators, and community leaders. AND WHEREAS IT IS ESSENTIAL THAT OUR LGBTQA PLUS YOUTH BE ACCORDED THE FREEDOM TO BE THEMSELVES WITHOUT FEAR AND LIVE FREE FROM REPRISAL AND DISCRIMINATION OR BULLYING. SO NOW THEREFORE I LEAD THE MAYORSBOROUGH OF COLUMBIA TO HEREBY PROCLAIM JUNE 2026 AS Now, I don't know if anybody else was going to report on this, but I will. I'm rather upset about it. Recently, we've had at least two, I'll say two new, two recent instances of vandalism in Maple Park. The last picture I saw, someone threw a lawnmower up on the kid, one of the kid areas. on the on the play piece of play equipment this stuff has to stop a lot of money was spent in that park a lot of work was done we have been controlling that regularly we're even going out to the tune of what do you think it is jack uh several thousand dollars to install new cameras in there $15,000 plus several thousand dollars in tree removal that we made over the past week to try to cut down on this. Someone's seen this happen, but apparently they don't care what's happening to their community and to the park. And we try to create something beautiful and usable have it ruined by individuals. And these aren't little kids that are in there playing on that equipment. These are adults. I consider them adults. They may be young teenagers, but to me they're adults. And what I'm going to say tonight is I'm going to offer a $100 reward for any information leading to the arrest of an individual doing damage to Michael has to stop and as i said earlier we have to shut that park down we will shut that park down if you'd like to see the pictures i did post them online so you want to see them over there and i know a number of people shared the post

we recently had applicants do their oral interviews before so we will start doing background investigations on them hopefully we can get one or two off of that list we had the fireman's parade on saturday it was a great event um i just want to thank the fire police we had over 26 fire policemen there and women helping out so it was phenomenal it was cool to see all the old fire apparatus um you would have to ask the expert joe um there was a lot i know by the time i got to the end of the parade i was able to get back to the police station and watch some of the parade so it was nice that i got to see some of it um also the columbia car show will be june 20th from 10 to 2 and the lions club has over 515 cars registered for that event so that's exciting that's all i have

make a motion that we authorize the bill payments as presented in tonight's packet second i'm sorry second by councilman murphy

Do I understand this $51,656, is that what we have left to work with, or what don't I understand here?

No, that's the total of the checks that were written in this check run.

So where does that leave us once you pay them?

Our current balance, fund balance, is around $3.9 million.

After this was made.

That's correct.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Any other questions, concerns?

I'll go check.

I think the last time I saw that was like 2.3 million. Is the new number based on taxes that we brought in? Okay, thanks. That's it.

Yes, Jesse. Hey, Holly. Jesse, look. Oh, we're off.

We're off.

Please. Is there a motion? No comments. A motion by Councilman Murphy, seconded by Councilman Sink. We've made the bills. authorized staff to re-advertise the bid proposal of the Guinness property. Second. I have a motion by Councilman Zek. Second by Councilman Murphy to authorize staff to re-advertise the bid proposal of the Guinness property.

I have a question. In light of the fact that we are marching forward with changes to the zoning ordinance, are we able to make a note in the RFP to that effect to say, you know, because I do have, I mean, we do have the section in there on zoning.

Is it possible just to put a note and say,

requirements for the white business district to possibly change or to add requirements for data centers like something to that absolutely is possible to do that um frankly I would be a lot more comfortable putting something in there like that if you had authorized you know staff to send that to the Planning Commission in the Lancaster County Planning Commission for their so that way it's much more comfortable if we were at that stage putting that in there but you can put a note in there to um to say that

because of the law but my second concern is if we don't at least alert people that the zoning ordinance is changes are being considered even though we don't know what they are that someone could make the argument that i didn't know you were changing you were considering changes so to or to say you are legally bound to honor the current zoning because i even though i mean that would be a legal fight because they you know exactly yeah with the those legalities i would rather be up front that we are in the process of enacting changes you know even something as simple as we don't have those exact you know what i mean i don't know how anything to the Planning Commission. We haven't sent it to the County Planning Department. However,

are you saying that even though we started an amendment to the draft that it doesn't hold order until we get to the point where it's visiting the planning commission it actually the pending ordinance doctrine is state law um but that that basically says until you have advertised it somebody could submit an application for um for something under the old zoning whatever the previous zoning was um but obviously you guys are in control of that think by the time you if we could get because kelly he was going to talk about this but you have you know you've sent over that kind of the final draft of what you'd like to see in that that um ordinance if we could get that to the point where you guys would feel comfortable authorizing that to be sent to the planning commission's next at your meeting on the 23rd then i think you would you would be well on your way by the time any bids were open and certainly nobody's coming in on whatever project ends up out there project of that size you're not going to have plans or anything until significantly further away than when you have the

to hold up a rebid

may have something a little bit more concrete than we are considering amendments to the ordinance, but I think either way, I think you'd be okay.

So that process would look like waiting. So like for instance, at our next meeting, we send that direct staff to send that to the planning commission, that amendment, then we would re-advertise with that language in there having already sent it to the planning commission. I mean,

of the language yeah not all of the language but saying that it's yeah yes yeah changes yeah that way if somebody was considering bidding and they ask you for say hey what what changes are you considering then you could hand them that document so i just have that i'll say council i'm sorry i can't ask that question right now council council speak

I have another question to make. Banking commission. How long will it take once we say it's as good as we want? What's the timeframe? Let's assume we pay something next. Yeah, the 23rd of May. Yeah, yeah.

commission and we can advertise at the same time you could i prefer to wait to advertise until you get the comments back from both your local planning commission and the county planning commission because if they propose major changes to the ordinance then your advertisement may not be correct and if it is materially different than what you would advertise then you've got to advertise again so i like to get those comments back from both of those before we advertise um i don't know what heather do you know how long like what the deadlines are for lancaster county planning i'm just looking at that if we if we uh vote on the 23rd to send it to our planning commission so the planning commissions um the local planning commission

would have it on for july 21st and we would be looking at the august 10th meeting for county planning commissioner is your first meeting in august after the 10th yes because the first thing would be uh yes the first voting meeting in august is august 11th okay so it's the day after and i'm not i'm not sure that might actually be one of those i'm not sure if they're going to want to kick it

but you're not saying we should you're not saying that we should wait until we advertise you're saying you just want to get it sent over to exactly yeah that way we have i'd like to have a an ordinance so that if you send out a bid that has a line in there that just says hey we're considering amendments to this this is likely what it's going to look like you can then hand that to a potential bidder to say here's what we're looking at that's all i think either you don't want it to be amorphous where they don't know what those potential changes correct until the 23rd. That would be my suggestion. I think there were some good points made here tonight.

the document that was included in your packet was not the same document that we

dates so i mean if we could talk about

there are also two changes i wanted to i think that delaying the re uh advertisement could benefit from one being we were talking earlier about the situation with edc from last year about why they decided to no longer sell the project but in talking with uh the manager earlier today it seemed like they were interested in helping

uh like as of two days ago is that right jack yes i was in a meeting at the crossings with johnny

willingness to assist with the sale so i'm wondering if potentially something has changed in their minds about if they do want to work with us to have it sold rather than going through the sealed bid but you know they are not able to do that they are not they will they will not act as a pastor their attorney will not let them act as a pastor so they're willing

spreading the word advertising getting things out there not we're willing now to act as a counselor yeah um and the other reason that could be beneficial is after speaking with evan earlier tonight tom and i we were talking about how we can make the process more transparent once bids come in and we were discussing that there is wiggle room for us to form of an executive summary after the bid unsealing. I've put together a quick little thing that we can obviously take more time to if we delay re-advertising by two weeks. That would basically define what becomes public after the bid unsealing. And it would be similar to the fact sheet that Evan had sent us two weeks ago for the previous bid review. And as far as we're aware, we are allowed to release information as long as we are specifying what information we're releasing and it's not any privileged information that they included in the bid. So not the entire bid, but information that way it's not just here's the name and number, it's also some information about what they intend to use it for, floor area, job creation, stuff like that. I'd really like to get that included in this big packet before we re-advertise, just to help inform the public and avoid some of the confusion from the last time where it was just what is being built and we can't really say anything.

either you're looking at me let me understand that yeah i'm confused because why does why does it have to be in the big packet what we're going to do after that that doesn't

specific idea was putting language in describing saying by submitting a bid for consideration you approve of the following information to be made public in an executive summary after all bids have been unsealed just so they are aware yeah just just to make it aware that so that way there's no confusion and they know that if they

What I have listed here is name, price, proposed land use, floor area, job creation figures, construction cost, estimated

value and tax revenue per year at project completion and project timeline and milestone summary that last one might be a bit too much information so i can understand if we want to cut those last one with those last two but i think even at the very least including the proposed land use is helpful when we discussed this ethan and we were talking about

releasing that possible information as we're getting the bids?

No, so at the unsealing. So yeah, they get unsealed. And then later that day, ideally, the municipal office releases a summary for each receiver date with this information.

Let me just go back to our timeline is You've got to advertise at that point. Right. So, with that being said, this is a hot topic right now. until july 13th that gives us a july 6th work session now before discussion with everybody it still needs the columbia bank commission timeline and still be such a consequence how far in advance does lancaster county need it that's my concern if lancaster county does not get the submission i believe it's

I think this month, it's taking a lot of time. Especially this time of year, there's no way you're getting anything through in an emergency, anything like this through, because the amount of land development itself is huge. The amount of things going through are huge. This month we had 18.

So let me ask this question. You talked about

about how to do this. And everyone says right off the bat, we'll just make it a special exception. But in the zoning, with a special exception, you have to spell out the requirements for that exception. And if all those requirements are met, it's allowed by right. So thinking about this, I think it makes more sense first of all conditionally lot of heat and everything else also a conditional use requires a conditional use hearing at a public meeting and that conditional use hearing would allow us to ask questions that we may not To me, that makes sense. It was kind of an outside the box and was like, wait a minute. Everyone's saying special exception, but I think conditional use is the way to go.

When I heard you talking about conditional use, I think this makes way more sense than special exception.

It might, yeah.

for your timeline i looked up the county submission requirements it's 45 days for an ordinance which puts you at june 26th so if you approve on the 23rd and submit by the 26th it will be heard at the august 10th planning commission meeting thank you now again i'm not sure you're sure if you're going to have comments back from the 11th or heather you could tell me did they release comments this

likely have the comments from the planning department prior to that meeting um but i'll at least in our office we will they'll send them to whoever submits that request um but i will also see them in my packet when i get my packet

it's a lot safer because they must, you could have someone purchase the property and then tell you later on, this is what I'm gonna build it. This prevents that because you will grant the conditional use based on the condition. Whatever conditions we set. You set. The other thing I believe, But a conditional use, if the property is, if it's sold, if the business is sold, that use goes away.

Not necessarily. No, it still follows it as long as it remains exactly the same.

That's what I mean. As long as it remains the same, it stays there. Someone could

otherwise someone could sell the property and you could end up with something there you don't want right and i think if i remember correctly from the npc if you do a conditional use and the property is sold it's i think the the period for that used to continue like if that use stops

yeah there's many protections in the conditional use versus yes there are any other comments

So they're our matrix.

Financing is one. Financing is, do they pay their bills? That's our job. Yeah, that's our due diligence. So that's what we do.

Unfortunately, we only have one grade. So...

i just wanted clarity on something so uh sure it's missy stein um considering that there is a conflict of interest between you guys approving the sale of this the land and changing the zoning are you saying that the new zoning that you're putting into effect will be locked in before it's put out yeah exactly not exactly it'll be kind of a current timeline almost yeah um however it will be obvious losing and what they will be balancing you understand my concern is that someone could then say well because of this conflict of interest and that's why we have a discussion yeah well because you're the ones approving the sale while changing the zoning we did that last time too yeah but but to to me a like person it's you're making

you're selling it and you're also making the rules that they have to follow so there is um somewhat of conflict of interest if you're in control of the way it comes and the way it goes no no that's that's the we're still bound by um the state laws and the municipal planning code and the municipal planning code gives us the ability to do this and I mean it's no different than we're trying to sell the wastewater treatment plant if we wanted to change zoning down there we could

understand I'm saying from like the company doing the bidding standpoint does that open us up to a live yeah yeah we are changing I just wanted to understand that that was being like yeah I mean technically we would not even have to do that however for transparency and

kind of potential liability that's why i'm suggesting adding that line in there copy that i'm sorry if i was no no no i i just don't want of interest because you're selling property and making rules for that property. But it's no different than any other property owned by any municipality across the state. And that's just the way it works. Okay.

I will clarify that we specifically want to get this process started officially, like even if it's not finished. to specifically because it feels bad to just change the zoning on somebody without giving them any sort of warning while they're preparing bids and that's my worry is that then that opens them up to say well we can do it yeah so that's yeah that's what we're trying to avoid yeah and that's what i wanted clarity on thank you so much

i just had a question um we've been having discussion about special exception and conditional use um but is there any reason that we can't make that property not permitted for data centers since there's already a property in the borough that is coded that would be a possibility why are we not considering that if the goal is to keep data centers out of that property

I mean, we could continue to consider it between now and the 23rd when we make our vote. It's definitely something that we can consider. It's just sort of weighing the options of what is the... I think part of it is going to come down to the draft legislation that Kelly and Heather are putting together of the limitations of what any data center in Columbia could have as far as like minimizing and eliminating as many negative elements as possible in conjunction with changing the zoning. I think what I'm trying to say is, yes, we can consider it.

Yeah. but making it even more difficult would be changing it to not permitted.

think the concern would be if that other property that you mentioned does get sold then there is no longer an acceptable location for it um for one to be built in general industrial um well because then we would not have a valid one in another uh zoning would that be correct or am i yes um you have to be careful if you for instance just as an example right let's say you

you didn't want them anywhere but you wanted to say that you followed the law so you allowed zoning data centers in the you know medium density residential where there's nothing but quarter acre lots with houses on them. That's exclusionary zoning. You have to allow it in a place that it could potentially be exactly. Yes.

And so if that property, for instance, that you mentioned in general industrial no longer became available, the only other alternative viable site would be potentially McGinnis, in which case we do have to zone to allow it somewhere in the town.

could happen to because that's c so to change it from not being a suitable location well like if somebody purchased it and used it for like an entirely different purpose if that if that property no longer became available for use in that case but even if it's sold and even if they change the purpose of afc to something else it would still be zone permitted for data center

that I'm misunderstanding, my mistake.

All the questions about data centers go from this parcel to this one.

the the pennsylvania municipality's planning code says that you have to allow for every use somewhere or else it's allowed everywhere in your municipality by special exception so you can't just ban a specific use and say it's not allowed at all because that's what would happen just as an example the one you see a lot is adult bookstores or things like that people would like to ban them entirely but you you cannot

now an additional step we could do we could also put it under conditional use in general industrial as well we could do it in both locations but you could also change mcginnis to not permitted and the afc property to special exception to

future but that doesn't mean that you can so mcginnis not permitted completely yeah it's something that we'll have to consider before the next meeting when we submit that document what i said is the problems that is that is bringing to light now they've seen problems that exist on the other side

but we can make that special exception or conditional use. Right, but that's in the future. I think our immediate need is to keep McGinnis free from the data center. If something happens and AFC is sold in the future, then we can have the either special exception or conditional use to protect AFC as much as possible if that location is sold.

So if you make this a not permitted use and you only make that one area one, I know what you're just saying. You're kind of like kicking it down the road. So what happens? Five years from now, somebody comes in and wants to put one in there. You're not going to be able to say no.

You're not going to be able to say no because it has to be permitted. I think you'd want that anywhere.

I think you'd want that in anywhere. And everybody in town would agree they would want it anywhere, not just at McGinnis. They would want it anywhere you would want to put something.

i wanted to just go back to the rfp just for a minute and it was my understanding that the council vice president heard the rfp for the set correct yes and will you be doing the next one for the bid or using the same or well i'll be updating a few things but yeah i mean i can do that unless I wanted to know why, if we have paid employees, why council would be writing RFPs, especially for a project of this scope? How did that fall to you? How did that fall to me? Because at the time, we had a manager that was also acting as a police chief, staffing his type. And frankly, i actually i used the framework of a lexer city project that they that they did i used the framework and i just sort of um you know changed some things and and made it applicable to the guinness i then sent that out to um john b miller lexer ec i sent it to derrick i sent it to evan you know send it to jack to get comments and that's how it came to be

Okay, so there were a lot of other eyes on it.

Oh, there were a lot of

doing something of this magnitude i've never done it before well that's what my next question was going to be if you had done any before because i just feel like if we as taxpayers are paying paid employees to do this it doesn't seem right that it would fall on a council person the reality is none of our staff has ever done this either okay all right thank you we do this all the time

well right but no one's ever written you know what i'm saying they're important oh yeah there are yeah how does what we're doing here doing as far as fast tracking tax credits and stuff that's up in the air right now does that impact anything no no it would be his yes he is i love him yes he is and he's the one that declared pennsylvania is open for data centers and is now causing all the individual municipalities to be scrambling to put things in place. trying to be rude or anything, but this is the reality. Just because something is in our zoning ordinance does not mean it's open season. There are still things that need to happen. If someone came in and they wanted a data center, it's not like they proposing in the fast-tracking is fast-tracking on the state level additionally river anything they would have to get their approval from there similar to the way like when they're talking about TMI reopening they have to go to the SRBC to get approval for that kind of stuff and just fun fact at the height of the TMI it drew more water per day than any data center in Pennsylvania is going to remember that stuff. But yeah, so, I mean, there's a whole lot of different steps. I'm not in this. I mean, there's a whole lot of steps. So what he's doing is the stuff at the state level, we're trying to put the guardrails on for our local level, but we're also fighting, and this is another layer to it, and something we're going to address a little later on in the meeting, is there are state legislation that is attempting to be pushed through that would negate local zoning officials, zoning ordinances, so we would not be able to control it. So while we can still control it, we want to control it. no no and honestly that would also be good honestly our zoning ordinance does not allow any institutional uses in that district that's terrible the regs that the governor wants to put in only apply to receive state funding right that so

If the local municipality approves it, and then they go to the state and want some funding, then they have to meet that criteria.

Our criteria?

No, no, our criteria across the states in order to get the money. So what he's saying is, what he really is saying is, if you want our money, then you'll follow these rules. But you're all, but he didn't come back and say, but you also must follow what the local municipality says.

just kind of understood but you know people forget people forget that fact but yeah there are so many layers to this and and they're the information being put out is being put out in bits and pieces and you know it's our job to see how this all fits together because of what's going on at the state level they're supposed to be doing

Any month now.

Well, I will tell you, last week, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, Jean and I attended the Pennsylvania State Association of Birds conference in Hershey. And I don't think there was any session that I was in that the term data center was not part of the conversation. It's an issue everywhere. I was in two different legal stuff and there was extensive discussion on initiative.

That's fine.

can we talk about where we're going from this this vote that you're taking is almost a given that you're going to re-advertise am i correct the motion on the floor is to re-advertise okay so most likely that's going to go because that's the second time your business No, but let's say that it is. If you don't vote yes, how do you know what's out there that maybe wants to come in here other than a data center? If you don't vote for it, you don't know what's out there. So I don't know how you can not vote for it. But will that go, the 45 days, then that goes in effect, then you apply for it? But you had 45 days to the next time that you re-bid, is what I understood. Maybe I'm wrong.

Maybe that's why we decided to keep it open for 30 days.

Okay, that's good. And when I come to these meetings, I always learn something. The gentleman that was up there that had the pink shirt on said that you said that after the second bidding, then you can open it up to the public. How would that work?

Not open to the public. It means we can work directly with a realtor or I would just say directly with a buyer, a purchaser.

other real estate transaction i will note that it has to be two times with no bays received not not a bid that you didn't that you rejected but two times that there is no bid received then it can be sold essentially as you would a private party sale so let me ask something is it no business no business you're talking about it has to be responsive like i believe it just says no bids yeah i will i will double check on that obviously but i that my understanding is it's no bids having been received yeah so when you do when you do this can you change your rules in the game

whatever specified when you would bid it can you do you have to stick with that when you deal with individuals if you if you get a another bid from a realtor or whoever do you use them same rules the selling of the property everybody has to it has to be the same the same rules ever for everyone um Well, I'm asking that if they go and get a lawyer or whatever to deal with other than rebidding it the way you've been doing it, can you do that with the same rules that when they rebid it is what I'm asking?

When you say rules, do you mean like the things that were in our bid specifications that say you need to provide this?

Yeah, what you're making these people do that just bid on it, you might change them a little bit, but you've got to use them.

Correct. You're going to use what is essentially the same thing, yes. Okay. Yeah, absolutely.

Okay.

i thought we did get this and he was representing one of the bidders yeah

Because we got those sealed bids and we said how much they were, it turned into a bidding war and Jeff Seiber was representing one of the purchasers. I apologize. Yeah, no. It just felt like that. Right, I get it. So I apologize. No, that's okay. I just like to say I was sitting up there I would not know how to vote on a data center I would like anyone

It's in Montana or Ohio or wherever it's at. Get the right information. Come back and tell us. I talk to the officials. I talk to the people. Here is how it's run there. Then I would have something to go on. I hear so much information. And believe me, like I said, if I sit there, I wouldn't know how to go for it. I know nothing about it, but...

I will say, Frank, that's something that Jack and I were discussing earlier is the possibility of having professionals and researchers come and do potential presentations at council meetings so we can better understand the issue. Especially if it's conditional use, especially, then that kind of extends the timeline on when that final decision can be made and we can have more of those discussions with professionals before a decision.

My only thing is somebody going there and talking to them people is direct. You have somebody that studied this and heard what happened over there. I want somebody that goes there and talks to the officials, the people. Then you've got good, true information. Now you have something going on.

But I don't think that'll happen. Well, maybe they have already. Frank, you don't know. There are local ones in Lancashire County that you can go see.

one more question the last bid proposal there was a bid it was considered not responsive so are we in a situation where we are now

in the first bid um that is what yes i'm just looking at that now the way the language is written in the law it is no bids received but that doesn't mean that courts haven't interpreted that a little differently i will absolutely look at that yeah yeah so we can by the certainly by the 23rd if not before i'll make sure that council knows what the correct answer is for that yes

tony dastro um tony dastro um i checked that i'm sure that everyone in this room has some level of vision for what they may like to see at this mcginnis site um i just wanted to comment that i think that the current light business zoning as a whole is very restrictive to bidders and it may be in the borough's interest to not only update the zoning ordinance to accommodate more restrictive data center regulations or conditional uses, but maybe even change the entirety of your light business zoning to maybe call it mixed use zoning, something that would allow for residential uses as well as other uses like a grocery store or whatever. It may be to your interest, especially as the holder of the property, it could increase your value of the property. um that's not spot zoning because you're you'd be considering the entirety of the district and it's all in that small area of the south of the borough so it's i think it's worth your while to investigate that and consider expanding upon the uses allowed in general and maybe even as part of your bidding process consider that you'd be open to combination bids where there's a subdivision of the property so two different or three or four different owners could each take a piece and develop their own little part. Personally, if I was in your shoes, I'd be fighting to keep the property in borough control, but I understand it's an albatross around the neck right now, and so there's a windfall that can come from developing it privately.

We addressed all that last year, and we're sending coordinates updates for this. We addressed the lot sizes, the setbacks, the ability to subdivide it, sizes are the only I mean I think we have in there because the bursary store was one of the things I specifically wanted to make sure we put in there I mean it's pretty we're never going to get it Because grocery stores are looking for high traffic counts and Manor Street does not have a traffic count to support any sort of grocery store or anything like that.

Sure, and that's valid reasoning, but I think the point I'm really trying to make is not only Columbia, Lancaster, the whole country's going through a housing shortage right now, and the zone doesn't allow for, I think, any residential uses. Correct.

So the rationale for that is that we want to increase the tax base without putting an added stream on our existing social services. to attract because that's all over, you know, police officers are, you know, difficult to hire or even more difficult because of the constraints we're under. It would put a strain, housing would put an additional strain on the school district. Parts of that property are within or outside the one mile limit for busing. which would increase the school taxes. Sure.

which are property taxes. And I think the heart of all this is that Columbia is in a unique position right now. And I respect what you're putting down. In such a short time, you can't address all the concern. You're doing enough to just handle the data center concerns right now. But I think it's worth Columbia Borough taking a wider look at this. And your points about the infrastructure demands, the taxing concerns are valid. And maybe even opens up this whole dialogue you might want to have with residents about, well, what if we went to a home rule charter? because Columbia Borough does overlap the school district of Columbia completely. So if you went to a Home Rule Charter instead of raising property taxes, much like the city of Lancaster has been doing you go to an income tax approach and furthermore because it overlaps you could fund your school district through income tax increases as opposed to property tax increases and slowly eliminate property taxes so I didn't come here to have a little diatribe about like taxing powers and whatnot I just wanted to encourage you that as you go through this next process that you should choose to go through it you should consider the value that you can add and the opportunities you can add by not just

amending the data center regulations but changing the entirety of your light business and to be more appealing to developers thank you thank you the whole point of this project was to increase the tax base and you can't you can't restrict can't put a deed restriction on that stipulates tax exempt status the majority of the 55 plus communities and and retirement communities are tax exempt so allowing we can't say do that so if you allow that you're opening yourself up to having a huge parcel that is tax exempt and therefore we've increased the need for police fire ems and all of those things but we've not added any taxes to the roles so i mean that's the problem it's anything that any 501c3 any non-profit is is tax exempt i'm sorry i've heard 55 plus is in a community like a lot a lot of people are similar a lot of elderly people yeah a lot of elderly communities uh are 55 plus are also tax exempt for example in trinity we have st john's herb And we can't we can't state this property I would like to

My question

Does council have any idea of what can go in there that will benefit our tax structure for the borough? Do you know of anything that will work at this point?

Are we aware of anybody interested?

I can bring up the zoning table of allowed uses, and I can send that over to you, because that would be the full list of anything that would be allowed there.

Yeah, I didn't hear any of them. All I heard was the negatives that came from it.

It's about the ordinance. It's not on the agenda. Yeah, that'll be at the next meeting. It'll be at the next meeting. Oh, it'll be on the 23rd. It's substantially done. So currently right now, we shouldn't talk about this because it's not on the agenda. Our solicitor gave our best legal team a rough draft. They are rewriting it to present to council. That's what that would be when it's going to be. All right. We have a motion on the floor, the table, to re-advertise another bid proposal on the Dennis property for June 23rd, 2016. All in favor say aye. I just wanted to say that my head is a little bit different. New business. Consider authorizing staff to send letters to State Senator Malone and Representative Miller urging them to oppose the proposed legislation regarding this is the topics that we talked about the legislation that they're trying to It's all the preemption.

I would request

this this letter would go as this body yes that's what that's what my group is i do i we probably need a motion before we discuss it right i will i would like to make a motion that we um authorize that we direct staff to send letters to state senator malone and state representative miller to oppose any and all

state legislation limiting local zoning control second motion on the floor councilman Zink seconded by councilman Murphy to authorize staff to send letters to Senator Malone

yeah so I just have a comment that so the way this is currently set up is sending it as an entire body so even in the case of if it was like a split boat that still passed it would still be the entire body Could we, and this is just because I have not had the time to fully go through these bills here. And so I don't feel comfortable voting to send a letter in opposition if instead it could be a letter that individual council members sign on to after it is proposed, because I could like- We already bought it.

Sure, but. So, whether it's a vote for a property sale, it's a vote for changes, it's a vote for leadership, it's a vote for anything.

Columbia how to manage our own land development.

I understand that. I'm just I currently do not have I feel like a fully formed enough opinion and my my thought was just you know it feels unusual if there is a split vote to then send an entire letter saying the council supports opposing this legislation for instance I just think that that seems a bit well if there was I mean well split vote isn't like four to three is what I mean like that's that's all I'm saying I just was wondering if that is an alternative option that we can take just as a note I've already sent

a letter from me personally to miller and malone urging them to oppose these because i think it is our duty as a council to manage our own zoning we know what's best we don't want them to stay with us

So, you know, you are not comfortable with a letter because you have not read each of the listed.

Yeah, I mean, the, and I know that that is a good point.

No, that's fair. Yeah. As I'm suggesting. Yeah. We kind of take out that.

that i am yes i'm more comfortable with that as opposed to house bills this is just a point i wanted to bring up considering that was the initial thing as a body i want to be able to

the motion is to direct staff to send letters to state senator malone state representative miller urging them to I was going to stab to advertise Mill Street Shawnee Run. Stormwater structure repair. I'll make that motion.

I'll second it.

That motion by Councilman Murphy, seconded by Councilman Beebe. First question. Are we paying for any of this?

We did. Again, if it comes in at the $60,000 estimate, it will be 100% granted. this is the remaining money from the riverfront dcd grant that we got transferred to this project you'll have to pay ahead of time to be reimbursed yes no it's not not a hundred percent there's there i think i'm sorry i don't have the exact numbers there's about 80 000 that's transferred of that you're going to take 10 of the project cost to pay for the engineering which i assume you will and should so whatever is left will go towards the project so it's probably a little closer to 70 that you'll have for it

um but my hope is that the bid will come in a little closer to 60. if we get a bit of 150 then we probably need to talk yes so now i know this sounds horrible but it's right we have a financial position too they want us to 70 000 constantly i would say we can handle

it comes down to what it comes down to is when the contractor is paid and ultimately then we managed it we managed the reimburse so your track record if you want to research this would be the riverfront storm sewer it's the same grant right you've been reimbursed for that project right and that's what i'm saying is your office providing that service is that part of the kind of cost as well um you could charge that against engineering um we're not talking about a large cost talk about yours right now this is this is a grant that cs davidson acquired for the borough we managed it through the riverfront we successfully got the grant funding the remaining grant funding switched from the riverfront reallocated to this so it would be my intention to manage this with my staff and getting closed down

I have a motion by Councilman Murphy, seconded by Councilman Guthrie, to authorize staff to advertise the no-straight stormwater line, stormwater structure, and family replacement. All in favor say aye. Aye. Staff reports, comments?

I don't have much I think it's going to be a busy week and a half here coming up but we will get everything ready for that 23rd meeting so that way we can move things forward just as you've all probably seen around town both the Union Street project and the Walnut Street project are currently in full swing both going well

at the last council meeting vice president zinc inquired about the audit and i wanted to let council know the audit has been completed so they are looking at a date a future meeting to make a presentation i'm assuming the next meeting is probably not the best no okay we also have another police okay yes we do what about the workshop the first week of july um that's a good place for discussion do you need much notice i think we can too yes that reason i'm saying hey i'm concerned that our last meeting i think it's categorical um if we have a heavy load for some reason we can postpone the audit recently thank you that's all right yes thank you boards commissions and committees upcoming meetings our meeting has been canceled seek that june 10 2025 that is held at 5 30 at the clock in washington Parks and Rec will meet June 11th. And Planning Commission, June 16th. Shade Creek Commission, June 22nd. And for Men's approval, class approves. It votes 2026. Borough Council comments. Ethan.

Yeah, so I just have two things. Between now and the next meeting, there's, so first of all, next Wednesday, the 17th, there's going to be a Juneteenth celebration to not overlap on actual Juneteenth with the 300th events that are occurring. That'll be at Lancaster Distillery, I think at 6 to 8? Okay. um a juneteenth event uh next wednesday um other than that there are two things that i'll be attending first of all tomorrow uh will be the lancaster county municipals and large load event basically talking with ppl about the electric draw of uh you know things like data centers but not just data centers and specifically talking about how they manage that and the impact that it has locally so i'll be going to that tomorrow and then i was also invited to a pride reception at the governor's mansion um on june 15th at 5 30. so if you guys have anything you want me to yell at josh shapiro um i probably still won't get to meet him but i'll be attending that next monday

I don't know.

Saturday was the violence break. The fire company didn't have a job with volunteers. I believe I heard 51. 51 or 71 volunteers came out without help. The traffic people go supplies everything else which is excellent um and on that note parkland still has shirts available they dropped somebody on the fire company and they have 300 five great shirts available um this coming friday no next friday june 10th uh the lawrence club will have hosts the band capital city orchestra uh that will also be the start of the 300th celebration so there will be dignitaries uh being there um and other people there to start the meeting but uh that will be we will have uh some people speak and then uh the lion's this saturday while it's not 300th related but this saturday morning is create columbia's annual art

announcement of next meeting at 7 p.m on tuesday june 23rd 2026 council will arrive with me um after this meeting council will have executive second on personnel issue