Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

right all right folks welcome to the dauphin county planning commission meeting of february 2nd 2026 we have let's see we have uh myself josh first we have bob spandler john kirschner brian pomeroy for nar gary linker mary gayski And are we missing anybody? Christopher Dietz. Christopher, you're here now. Is that right? I think, yeah, I don't think he hears us.

He's here, but he was just coming on.

He just, okay. So maybe just double check. Can everybody hear us too? Christopher is here, at least virtually. I can hear you.

Okay, perfect.

Thank you. All right. The only ones that... commission members that i do not see yet is taryn morgan and joe robbins okay so okay so we have one two three four five six seven uh yeah one two three

have a quorum yes we do okay very good we have a quorum thank you everybody uh treasurer's report i'm sorry minutes i have new glasses excuse me minutes the meeting of last month january 5th uh are there any comments on the minutes motion approved minutes Thank you very much. I'll second that. Brian Palmer. Thank you, Brian. All right. We have Gary and Brian. All right. So we're going to call. Anyone opposed? All in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Minutes approved. Thank you very much.

Dan Robinson. Okay.

mr robinson mr robinson you've joined us thank you and there's joe yes dan and joe very good all right i'm in a listening capacity for some reason my uh video won't turn on but i can hear you all right thank you we can hear you that's good that's all we need perfect all right now we start with the treasurer's report jerry

Yes. So if you see in your numbers there, the amount of money that we received this month for fees is $3,658.50. As this happens, the money is made out to Dauphin County Planning Commission. And then because the funds go to Tri-County for operation, it's just a transfer of the funds over and etc.

to be approved. Any questions? Okay. We need to make a motion.

Mary Geiske moves to transfer and accept.

Thank you, Mary. We have a second? Yeah, Bob Spanner. I'll second that. Thank you, Bob. Any questions? Any nays? All in favor?

Aye.

That passes. Treasurer's report is done. Now we go to number four. Reports. We have Middle Paxton Township.

Go ahead and make the announcement. You want to make a change to the agenda.

Yeah, we want to make a little change to the agenda just to help things move along here. On the meeting agenda today, we have number four, Middle Paxton Township. Many storage warehouses in mixed use district.

uh and we want to bump that up just because i think there's somebody with us or wants to be with us correct we have uh mr chris narr has signed on and has indicated to staff that he may want to uh uh be uh add some information possibly if not that's the case but in order to uh following our standing policy if there's a guest and to have that done beforehand so that we can move that Mr. Nair and whoever the guest is doesn't have to sit through the rest of the business.

I appreciate that.

The floor is yours, sir. Well, no.

Yeah, I'm happy to speak on behalf of the application, but it was more of, you know, just offering any insight or answers to any questions regarding it. But basically, our client is owner of the Dauphin Mini Storage Facility in Middle Paxton Township, and it's currently in the mixed-use district. and the use is not permitted in that district. So we had talked with township staff about possibly proposing an amendment to permit the use in the mixed use district so as to accommodate possible future expansion onto two of the adjoining lots that the client owns as well. So we had worked with the client to come up with some standards for mini storage. The zoning ordinance currently permits those in, I think, the commercial industrial district, but they don't have any specific criteria associated with those. So we, based on our experience and input from the client, we were able to come up with some standards to help the use blend in a little bit better with the adjoining uses and in that mixed use area because, you know, generally in those mixed use areas, kind of the village areas, there are smaller lots, narrower lots that don't have a lot of extra space to store materials and personal materials and recreational vehicles and things like that. And knowing that this municipality is along the river as well, so there's opportunities to store recreational vehicles and things like that at the offsite on the mini storage facility. So With that, I'll turn it back over to the commission if there's any other questions, comments, concerns, I'm happy to answer them.

Any of the commission members or staff have any questions for Mr. Knorr?

Jerry, you want to explain where we are? Yeah, as Mr. Renard has indicated, we received this request from the township. They have put together, again, the supporting information provided to the Planning Commission as the last page. So if anybody wanted to see the ordinance, there is a link to it. We have reviewed it with our staff, and we do not have any major concerns with it. We're not recommending nor are we against it, but we do have a couple provisions that we're thinking that may provide a little bit more clarity, and that's in our comments. It's in the letter, the draft letter. So our recommendation is to provide the comments of which in essence not to necessarily go over them all but is to provide a little bit more clarity and or kind of ask the township to maybe look to clarify a couple items prior to final adoption of the ordinance okay anybody have any questions for jerry or mr knorr on this okay hearing none uh we need to have a motion to approve the staff comments person or so approved

This is a Pomeroy. I'm actually going to abstain because I can literally see this almost from the window that I'm looking out now. And I'd rather have a private conversation with Mr. Narlater on items, but I'll let it at that.

All right. Thank you. So we'll mark you down as an abstention. Thank you, Brian. Yep. All right. So we have a motion. Any nays? We have one abstention. Brian Pomeroy. All in favor of approving the staff comments, say aye. Aye. Hearing no nays, passes. Okay. We now report. Go ahead. Sorry.

No, no. Just said thank you to the commission and staff.

Thank you very much. Thank you for being here. We appreciate it. Okay.

Report of officers. Any officers have anything to report?

I do not. Hearing none. go ahead sorry it said no report no report okay thank you i'm i'm trying to get into swinging things here people bear with me i tend to move a little faster than technology uh you know would uh help so hearing now we go to 4b communications and staff reports

Yes, I just want to indicate that we had a communication from the city of Harrisburg asking or notifying us of putting together a grant application or a build grant application to the US Department of Transportation. It's for multimodal planning and final design for Division Street, North 6th Street, Market Street, and South 17th Street. Instead of actually having a uh intergovernmental on this because of timing and everything we were just uh preparing a letter from our end of things from the commission to have it okay to give our uh a view on the application of which we're in favor of and having that by consensus uh sent off that's all right so just generally asking for consensus to send this letter all right so anybody have any questions on this uh letter harrisburg

but can you explain again if you don't mind i don't mean to delay the meeting he's named like four different locations or so but they're all different parts of the city so what are they what are they trying to do they're going after federal grant money to do some design for multimodal improvements along jerry can read the those quarters again but basically redesigning those four streets This would be the funds for design. I don't think it's for construction.

Okay. Thank you.

Joe, this is for basically our support of good planning. That's all that we're being asked to do.

Just ask for general consensus. If anybody has an issue, let us know.

Anybody have an issue? Jerry just moves my mouth. I do whatever Jerry tells me.

Yeah, don't do that. He's a public announcement.

That's right. So anybody have any issues? Joseph, you asked your question. Anybody else has any questions? Okay. That's it.

Easy enough.

Steph, you want to mention, are they hired?

Yeah, I guess this is a good time. We hired a new transportation planner in the office. His name's Brian Snyder. He comes to us from Pike County and he spent, I think a little over 10 years in their county planning department doing a variety of things. For us, he's gonna at least now do transportation planning, but he's got a wealth of experience through all kinds of, all the different things we do, he's got a little bit of experience with all of it. So you may or may not be running into Brian in a variety of capacities moving forward.

So he's moved from Pike County to Dauphin?

Well, actually, I think he, I don't even know what county, he's thinking it's in Pine Grove, where is that? I don't even think that's County. Yeah. So not quite.

Right. He just drive down 81 then.

Yeah.

That's right.

Okay.

Okay. Any other communications staff reports, Jerry?

andrew none okay we are on to program progress report that's me that's you uh january uh in terms of transportation planning um i'll keep this kind of short and sweet uh we're working on our human service transportation plan uh we have two planners in the office doing that they're doing it that's a a plan that specifically looks at the transportation needs of disabled and senior populations. So they're doing a lot of outreach right now to a variety of different stakeholder groups. They're going to have some listening sessions, just trying to get as much public input and feedback as possible. We're wrapping up or getting into kind of the formal portion of TIP development. So, you know, every other year we update what's called the Transportation Improvement Program. That's the four-year construction program for federally funded PennDOT projects that kind of comes through our hats, our MPO office. kind of done the actual development of it now we're moving into all of the required review steps so that'll take about another six months by next uh by by this june that'll be adopted uh the other thing i'll mention is we have we did uh receive a another grant through the federal safe streets and roads for all program uh in which we'll be able to do some Well, we adopted a safety plan in September of 2024. Within that safety plan, there were five locations in the region, two in Dauphin, two in Cumberland, one in Perry, identified as kind of localized safety needs. this funding will provide us some additional support to do not, it won't be for engineering or construction, but it'll be to do basically everything we can do up to that point. So looking at different alternatives, getting more input from the neighbors and the communities they're in, kind of developing the projects in general so that it can then kind of smoothly move on to the TIP. Jerry, do you have anything for REP?

uh to cover here for cap yeah uh the uh two things with rep i guess one thing with rep we are uh moving forward with a bmp assessment program uh which all different uh all the 11 municipalities who have signed on have been given a fee of what it's going to take to do for the next two years This project is hard to do it. We're looking to finish it up probably later this year, moving into next year. That would be the step to help them with their MS4 permit requirements, but also to start looking for that next big project, the big Conoagra project that everybody's looking for. everybody meet their permits and have better water quality and help with flooding. So that's going to be happening this next year. We'll give you updates on that if you want to be part of any. So data gathering is going to start occurring soon. With CAP, we recently got our total amount of like one point $1.9 million from the state for the four county region. Each municipality or each county is getting about $600,000 to do on cap projects. There's three of them that are going to be in Dauphin County. One of them is actually on the Conowaga Creek again with some enhancement with that area. Also the Ned Smith Center is another one and there's a stream I think in Halifax Township that's getting done as well. Last year we got almost $900,000 to two projects in the Hanovers, East Hanover and West Hanover. So they're tied closely with all the projects we're doing with REP. So that's, you know, as we move forward, REP projects and CAP projects are going to be overlapping, partly because of this study that REP's doing as well. So we're getting money. We're doing projects and things are moving along.

Excellent. Anything else, Jerry or Andrew, let's move to number number D yet. No, 4 D LPA report.

Can I ask a question?

Yes, Mary, of course.

Yeah, just for just for clarification under dolphin county, enhancing our communities on page 9 there. Discussed with code enforcement officer for several upper Dolphin communities on various enforcement issues and related to various township codes and regulations.

Yes.

Exactly. Does that mean?

If you know the code enforcement guy, he's with Blaine Heigl, Marty Sowers. Marty calls me on a couple of basis every once in a while seeing how things are being handled in other municipalities and how their code matches up and things that he can talk to the municipalities about improving their codes in order to assist them with understanding how to do things and also how to possibly seek resolutions and problems that he's incurring on the ground basis. That's me and Marty chit-chat. And also, too, with that, on WIC and NISCO and the other township of the borough right next to it, they're talking about the possibility of totally redoing their ordinance, and we would be assisting them because all their stuff has been written in 1970s. So again, that's all part of that. So that's a short version of saying me and Marty are trying to figure things out to try and help the Northern Goffin.

Well, there's transparency for you, Mary. How about it?

Yeah. Okay. No problem.

Thank you, Mary. Thank you, Jerry. Anything else when we go to LPA report?

We've been going to meetings. There's some things going ordinance-wise with a couple of townships that's probably related to that last item on the agenda as well. But some of the hours we see there with South Hanna, some of the things, not so much this month, but we've been talking with a number of these municipalities about the data centers.

What's the kind of sense of things on data centers? There's so much. There's so much heat, not a lot of light everywhere across the country with these data centers. What are we hearing?

Well, I think a fact of Mr. Robinson's on the, Dan Robinson, I don't know if he's part of the, Commissioner Hartwig is organizing a trip to go down to Loudoun County next week or two weeks from now. I think it's to go and visit these data centers to get a little bit more information. We're starting to put together possibly a model ordinance that people can look at to do some of the regulations type of thing because we're seeing it very scattered. In fact, you'll see later on there's a couple from Londonderry that are kind of back and forth type of thing to help them have inconsistency. I think with data centers, there's two sides of the coin. One is they have a great economic advantage for places, particularly with communities that are looking at struggling with dollars and cents, and particularly with the school districts, because that's a great entity of providing value to the land, but not necessarily providing um children to educate right or cars on the road or cars on the road yes in terms of a land development type of thing it has a lot of positive sides uh two things in terms of economics and such the flip side is these things are big they're unknown they're they can be loud and they can suck up energy they will suck up energy and they suck up water so uh and i think that's where in terms of the municipalities and people who are concerned about it is that you know what is going to be over the over to the municipalities to the uh to their infrastructure uh related to those items um particularly with in neighborhoods where if they're going to be somewhere near residential there's going to be that background noise and also there's the uncertainty

So, right. Interesting. Good synopsis. Thank you, Jerry. Any questions for Jerry? All right. We go to four E committees. Any committee reports? Any committee anything? No. Hearing none. We now go to five new business. Five A subdivision land development matters. First one is review and comments January, 2026. 11 plans and the ask is that we ratify staff comments. Go ahead.

Yeah, there are a variety of plans. They're mostly just a single-family residential, smaller residential. However, there are a couple of ones of note, the Hershey Lodge and Spa. I think there was an article in PennLive. They've got a couple of additions going on, so everybody gets involved with looking at that. Also, the Harrisburg City has a storage unit. uh that's on uh cameron street just off i believe it's right off cameron street yes it's uh developing uh industrial use into a uh or maybe it's an office use that's going into uh providing where storage units all around it um those are the main kind of uh say larger developments type of thing if there's any other questions on it we can take a look at individual ones any questions from anybody about these uh these plans um there is also one other one i guess it should bring up too is the uh there is the steel plan Yeah, that's a lot of acreage. Well, it's a lot of acreage, and I think those are all those warehouses that's in three different municipalities, Lower Swatara, Swatara, and Steelton. This one is, in essence, just subdividing a piece of land so that they can get right away in order to make a better turning movement on one of the roads. So it's not like we're re-reviewing all the warehouses.

Oh, that's good. Yeah, that would be a lot of work. okay are we we're having a vote on this year to approve uh ratify staff comments no hearing no questions can we have a uh motion to ratify staff comments person or some moves we have a second three seconds thank you john and mary any nays hearing none all in favor

passes thank you very much we now go to number two approvals we start in williams township which is way up north uh yeah the williams township's one of the townships that the planning commission has approval with uh responsibilities for uh yes yes uh this one is really uh it's it's it's uh it's a lot add-on so in essence it's a lot moving a plot line that's moving between two different properties so it's not necessarily going to be i've already started looking at it i've talked to the township there doesn't appear to be too many concerns about it it's just a matter of making sure all the eyes are dotted t's across but we we think that uh i'm pretty confident next month it'll be an approval so this is just this this is going away it's not a big deal it's not a big deal okay um this so we would need uh under the procedural actions everything is now complete there was some uh taking some time in order to get some of the digital files to make sure we had everything uh it's not complete so what we would do is ask for your accepting the plan for review and starting the 90-day clock.

Okay, no questions for Jerry on this? Okay, can I have a motion to accept the plan for review and begin the 90-day period?

Motion. Chris?

Thank you, Chris. Do we have a second? Bob Spandler, I'll second that. Thank you, Bob. Any nays? All those in favor say aye.

all right all right thank you very much it passes okay we now go to number two which is millersburg uh millsburg again is a municipality that's uh under the stockton county planning commission review responsibility and approval responsibility this is a changing of the bank i think it's Again, it's accepting the plan for review. We've started making sure all the information is there. And with the action today, we'll start our process of doing the actual review and moving it forward.

Okay. Any questions for Jerry on the bank? Where's the money?

This is actually, correct me if I'm wrong, this is actually a, This is actually going to tear down, remove the original Millersburg Trust Company that later became Midpen Bank. It's a very huge building. And I understand they're going to tear it down and build a more modern state-of-the-art branch. This was the original corporate office of Midpen Bank for many years, and they have moved to Susquehanna Township for, I guess, in the last six, seven, eight years.

Yeah, I know that we haven't started the full review. I know our person in the office, who's the LPA, Tanner, has started talking and looking at the plans, but I understand it's the tear down, build tear down.

Yeah, I think that may be the long-term plan. I think this specific submission is just for this parking lot for them to build an operations facility.

on a temporary basis? That's where the permanent facility will be once they tear down the, okay.

No, they're building a new building on the corner of Center and Ray Street, so not on Union Street 209. They're building a temporary, well, it's to temporarily operate, but it will become a facilities maintenance building afterwards.

Right.

The structure will remain. Its use will change when the project is done.

Thank you, Chris. You're welcome. Chris, you say it'll face on Race Street, not on Union.

On Center, and it's beside Race. I'm not sure where the – but the drive will be north-south through it, so it'll be parallel to Race Street. will be how you would drive through it. And I think it's designed to be a drive-through building.

Gotcha. So, Chris, are they showing the right parcels on this plan?

I believe so, yeah. So if I'm on... Yeah, you can see center and... So that's the overall, right, site. And then if you go to the next page, There you're at center and race. And then if you continue to scroll down, that's the proposed building facility. Okay.

So it's a subdivision. And again, I'm not as familiar because we haven't started looking at all this yet. Thank you, Chris.

You're welcome.

Okay. Any other questions or comments? okay hearing none we need a motion to have the staff recommendation that we accept the plan for review do we have a motion don't move gary thank you gary do we have a second right palmroy will second mr palmroy thank you very much and josh i'm going to need to abstain because i've had conversations on this project mary is abstaining thank you mary for telling us All right. Hearing no nays, one abstention. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion passes. We now move the plan ahead for staff review. Thank you, everybody. We are now at B, zoning amendments. Jerry, did you want to do these individually? Yes, please. Okay. We're going to do these individually. Sometimes we do them all together. But, Jerry, let's start with number one, Hummelstown Borough.

uh yes the uh homestown borough is uh there they have a historic demolition overlay district it was established in 2004 the original ordinance did not establish the limits of it so physically it wasn't as clear so this uh ordinance is to basically clean that up And it's to show the map, the limits of the district, and then also provide a couple of clarification points for the for the actual language. So we're in support of what they're looking to do because it's cleaning things up and making it clear. So we support the adoption. Thank you, Jerry.

Any questions for Jerry? Okay, hearing none, we need to have a motion to approve staff recommendation of support. We hear a motion.

Kershner, so moved.

Thank you, John. We have a second. Yeah, Bob Spandler, I'll second it. Thank you, Bob. Any nays? Hearing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Okay, motion passes. Number one, let's support your recommendation to move forward. That's great. Now, you want to do number two and three separately, even though they're related.

Well, we can talk about the two together, but we're going to have to take an action separately because at the request of the township that they're considering these two items under separate applications.

Very particular. Quite exact. Okay. Let's reward them with their exactitude. All right. Number two, Swatera Township.

Yeah. there is a couple pieces of property that's located on in switzerland township they're located on um yeah why don't you bring the map out pleasant view drive And there currently is a single family house on one of the lots, and there's another lot that is in essence vacant. It's a zoned single family residential right now. However, adjacent to it, to its north, is a property that's zoned residential median density.

Yeah, where's that part?

If you want to look at the parcel, it's 63-023-085. That's right. That is true.

to basically get there.

Okay, on the screen right now.

Yes, right.

Yes, that's correct. If you see the one is kind of the flag lot is 085. That's the property and the one that's a little bit that is adjacent to this to the south 084 is the also the same it's not pork chop and fried fish correct you can call it flag yeah so uh those two lots right there like i said are zoned um in the single family residential district The adjacent property to the back, the 069, is zoned multifamily. The petition that has been brought forward to the township is to change those two lots that are right there, the 85 and 84, and make it into multifamily. And what they want to do is put a duplexes on it. So in reviewing it, This one is very, very kind of close. I don't know how else to put it. Our policy right now, as we stand, we're not necessarily in support of doing that. It says not support. Correct.

We're not in support. We don't have to be that politic, Jerry. When you don't support something, you'll have to say, we don't necessarily not support it. We can be talked out. Okay, good. Well, I mean, one of the benefits of duplexes is higher density. So more efficient land use. Go ahead. I'm sorry. I'm stealing your thunder. No, no. Go ahead.

That's fine.

I've said my part. Thank you.

So in the not supporting category in terms of why we came up with that way is because we're concerned about the nature of the properties along the street, the fronting of the street. As it's done, it's probably the way the development will be is that there will be multifamily homes and amongst single family homes. We generally go with supporting, keeping neighborhood character. And therefore, whenever you do something like that, you'll be disrupting that neighborhood character. So that's why we've come up with the recommendation not to support it for that reason.

How big is the fish fillet? How many acres is that? how many is that a half acre um that's 0.22 acres thank you that's not very big and which property is zoned this um the way that they're trying to

converted into.

I think both of these proper. This is multifamily housing back here. And then this is also zoned multifamily, correct, Jerry? Correct.

But they front on a different street.

Yes. Front on a different street. I would think it's sort of a continuation of that district. The opportunity of the park right next door. know it's not necessarily going to be spot zoning per se if they do that but it's it's sort of the you know they're taking they probably should look at it for more of a holistic area uh to the adjacent properties the ones even further down you know kind of take a whole overall view of that whole neighborhood determine whether they want to look at doing it a bit more rather than just piecemeal two lots based upon a petition right i just wonder if there's you know if you can divide if it's 0.22 of an acre it's not very big so just it looks bigger relative to everything around it now and the other concern we have is that it's you know they're showing something as duplexes putting a couple duplexes in so basically four units But that opens it up to everything else that's allowed within that district. So do you want to allow more or such to having that within that single family residential district? So I mean, we're really, it's a hard kind of, that's why I said, are we really strongly, we're, we're, we're, we have been discussing this this is real land use policy debate right here it's classic actually and you know this is all kind of the township's going to have its own discussions on it as well and we're just one of them the components of it anybody from swatara township have anything to say about this yeah jerry it looks like 85 already has half a double on it

it does it's close to it they're very small units i mean they're small okay yeah now i have any other questions i support the staff i'll make a motion to ratify the staff comments thank you john anybody else have any comments if not can we have a second to john's motion second joe robinson thank you joe hearing uh any nays no all right uh all in favor please say aye aye aye Okay. Motion passes to support the staff not support.

We're supporting the not support.

Okay. And now that applies to number three. It's the same thing. Do you mind if we just jump ahead and take a vote on that? Yes. Thank you very much. It's all the same thing. Okay. So now this is number three on our agenda. This is B3. This is 5B3. Yes. uh same thing same question same issue uh can we have a motion to uh support the staff uh comments first nurse thank you john i i know jerry look don't look at me jerry threw this curveball jerry and andrea through this curveball It should have been taken together, but they didn't want to. Difficult future. We'll blame the township. Hearing no further questions, we have a motion on the table. Is there a second on this? Don't move.

Mary Geist.

Thank you, Mary. Thank you, Mary. Okay. Any nays? Hearing no nays. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Okay, thank you very much. I admit, everybody, it's kind of confusing. Don't look at me. I'll wait till we get this next. All right.

Could I ask a question before we move on? Yes, of course. And this is like a zoning, probably an MPC question. When you have something like this, that there is a development proposed, can the township or the planning commission approve a zoning change conditional upon only that proposal being implemented so jerry you said that this opens it up to other things if it wouldn't be the duplexes it could be something else but when we get a request for a zoning change and we have a plan uh proposed for that is it possible for us to say yes but only if it's that that plan so is it possible for you to do that the answer is no okay

i thought that was probably the answer but i wanted to double check that is technically that plan was not kind of formally submitted that that's just kind of in there for information purposes and what that called is contract zoning

Some states do allow contract zoning where you basically say, yeah, we're going to like just what you described, Chris. We're going to do it based upon you doing that. But contract zoning, conditional zoning is not permitted in Pennsylvania. It's been turned over a number of times. It's not in compliance with the NBC. All right. Thank you.

Chris, you get the gold star for the smart kid question today. Thank you. All right. We have done number four. We move to number five, Londonderry Township.

All right, as I mentioned before that this last one was confusing, this one is, we're also falling into the level of confusion as well. This, as Josh asked about data centers, these two, even though we're gonna talk about them separately, or we're gonna vote on them separately, sorry, but they're actually quite different, but they're quite different in a nuanced way. The first one, Londonderry Township, has developed some new regulations for doing data center and their accessory uses, and they're putting it together as an overlay ordinance. They have passed an ordinance or they have developed an ordinance in the past but did not adopt it. Now, we've provided comments. They've taken comments that we've given in the past and they've looked at it as things are changing or whatever and have developed a brand new ordinance. Their ordinance is quite thorough. We did do in some of our looking at the ordinance itself, come up with some provisions and things that we think that may be a little bit problematic. We also think the things that should be done in terms of being clear that there what they're asking for in terms, particularly in noise regulations. Also that some things in terms of how they have it related to water consumption and the public services. So we feel the ordinance that they have come up with is a pretty good ordinance. However, we're not going to necessarily support it as per se, but we're just going to provide comments. Now, jumping to number six that's fine number six is actually the curative amendment there is a developer who is out there who has filed a curative amendment against the township in light of the actions that the township does not have an ordinance and therefore they feel there's a major flaw in the township's administration and their zoning code and therefore they have put together their own ordinance in which uh under the curative amendment act and provisions that the township also has to consider What is unique is they have developed some provisions out of this new ordinance and some of the provisions out of their original ordinance and have come up with their curative amendment ordinance. so we have reviewed both of these separately um we do not have comments again that are saying no to the curative amendment but we don't support it but we also have comments and they're very very similar to the things that we have said a in the past to the original one that they have pulled out of and things that we have also pulled out of here so so if you look at those two letters and you put them side by side and put ai they're probably saying hey these things are pretty darn close Yes, they are pretty darn close. But again, we're making comments in order to try enhance both ordinances to make them a little bit better to try and resolve the problems or the concerns that everybody has about. Okay.

Thank you very much, Jerry. Any questions? i i think we're going to get a lot more of this stuff before we get any less of it this uh this data center stuff is just it's taking every every corner of the country forgetting dolphin county or pennsylvania's everywhere so this stuff's just going to keep coming up okay no further questions uh do you mind if we take a motion to approve both if it's a it's fine okay can i have a motion to approve five and six staff comments on both of these issues in Londonderry Township.

Yeah, Bob Spandler, so moved.

Thank you, Bob.

Mary Dicey will second.

Mary second, thank you. Any nays? Hearing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Okay, thank you very much. Motion passes. Jerry, you have your support for your bureaucratic letter. Okay.

Just to confirm, the motion was to take both and to support.

Support, yes, to support your comments, which you said were the- We're just sending comments. There's no support.

Right. Right. Right. If we're us, Mary, the commission is supporting the staff in their comments.

Right.

Right. Okay.

Okay.

I guess a better word would be a better way is to authorize. We're authorizing. That's right. Okay. Number seven, Lower Swatera Township.

Okay. And then out of all these, the one that probably has the most changes is Lower Swatera Township is doing significant changes to their subdivision and zoning ordinance. We have looked at it and we have given some comments to it. We have some administrative things that we think that they should probably take a look at to kind of enhance it. Do we think it's 100% perfect? No, not at this point. And our main concern is that we think that they should separate these from a subdivision ordinance they combine them now as a subdivision ordinance and zoning ordinance and one action because subdivision and zoning are two different actions or two different things we think they should have separate actions so for separate orders so that's our main comment to that but we also have some uh definitional things they need to change or think they should look at they also have some things about zoning hearing board, allowing the zoning officer a little bit more control than we think that the MPC allows, but also some of the things in the subdivision ordinance to make sure that they're okay in terms of how they're doing their improvements and construction requirements for bonding purposes. So we don't think it's perfect. We think it's good, but we have comments. Correct.

Any questions for Jerry? okay hearing none we'd like to get a motion to approve staff recommendations can we get a motion motion chris thank you chris any second second jerry thank you gary we have motion second hearing any nays any names none all those in favor please say aye aye aye motion passes jerry you have your approval for the long authorizing letter confusing things. Number eight. No. C. Gosh, I need new glasses. And yeah, I left them. That's the problem. Sewer modules.

Yes, this is in West Hanover Township. It's for actually a larger development, the Oakville Plan Community Development, 253 units located north of intersection of North Hershey Road and Allentown Boulevard. 39 and 22. 39 and 22. They're looking to build a sanitary sewer gravity main and a lift station. and connect to the system that's on Ruby drive. So our role is not necessarily great in this thing. All we are is indicating that the application has been filed and pretty much all the thought we do with sewer modules did we ask if if there's sufficient capacity yes and they have shown that they have letters in here saying that there is okay sufficient capacity very good okay so in this case you're just ratifying the comments we've already made all right any questions for jerry hearing none i need a motion we need a motion to approve staff comments

Mary Geiske, so moved.

Thank you, Mary. We need a second. Chris, second. Oh, sorry. Don't matter. Chris. Chris. Thank you, Chris. Okay. We have motion. We have a second. Any questions? No further questions? Any nays? Anyone opposed to this? Hearing none. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Passes. Your staff comments have been ratified. All right, now we go to D, intergovernmental reviews.

And we can do those together here.

Yeah, let's do them all together, unless anybody has any opposition to that.

The first one is Millersburg Borough is seeking $500,000 to fund a comprehensive multimodal transportation project within the borough. It's the Millersburg Streets Revitalization Project. uh paving roadway surface rehab uh located within the borough streets and they're going for that money through pen dots multimodal modal transportation fund grant application and the second one is capital region water riverfront park they're seeking uh they always seek a lot of money motion to approve staff recommendation on the intergovernmental reviews

Hey, you took the words out of my mouth. First or second? Thank you, John. Okay. Any nays? All those in favor of passing these two together, please say aye. Aye.

This is Chris. I'm going to abstain from that one.

I figured at some point we'd hear that. Chris abstains. Thank you, Chris.

Yep.

Okay. We now move on to seven on the agenda, additional items, Dauphin County's comprehensive plan. You want to go to the last page there?

All right. On your packet, you'll see a QR code. We currently have put out there a brief survey for the comprehensive plan and the idea behind this is to get our general feelings of the residents of the people of what's important planning the approach we're taking for the comp plan itself getting public input is we're going to guess general questions initially kind of get the ballpark type of ideas and then we're going to go and do more public outreach, more one-on-one interviews. We're developing a list of people who are going to be part of an advisory group, an overseer group above and beyond you guys, because you'll be part of, this is your plan, Planning Commission's plan. And we are going to kind of have a follow-up later on in the fall as we put some things together and kind of have a more detailed survey of public outreach. The idea is to have our plan finished with a draft format by the beginning of next year or mid, like this time next year, and with adoption being by mid next to 2027.

Wow. Ambitious. Great. I like this QR code thing. We joined the 20th century. It's a big deal.

So what we've also asked, we've sent this out to every municipality within Dauphin County. We asked them to either place this in their newsletter or little article we gave them to put in there. So their spring notices that they sent out to the residents that they will also submit. And we've been getting good feedback from the municipality saying they will do that. didn't you already have like a hundred we had so far just with the the release uh uh the bird put it in on their social media one of them television stations did somebody else i think did too and we've already gotten 120 some responses back we've been getting we got a lot in the beginning and then uh we get about four or five a day right now so that's a lot so that's amazing and we're also uh the regional growth management plan did a similar survey and we're going to be using a lot of the information they did in that both together to to use all the outreach that we've been doing for as andrew indicated in the earlier part of the meeting and we're going to consolidate thorough understanding of what people want.

Excellent. Any questions for Jerry? Any other comments? Any other last words?

have one one comment real quick just uh off the top of your head because i know we've done this before in the county is there any one thing that sticks out from prior surveys that actually guided the direction the county went with this land use is there one example that that overwhelmingly the population said the last time what came out of it was the water quality thing

the water issues the flooding and that what led to a lot of our concerns about the rep and putting the rep the program together okay all right thank you thank you joe for asking that question i just want to sing the phrases of the staff uh i don't want to spoil them but you know dolphin county has done an amazingly good job with the that that runoff storm water management issue A lot of the surrounding counties that tackled it had fits and starts and a lot of unhappiness. People brought a lot of sticks to the process. Jerry and Andrew's predecessor, Andrew's continued on, a lot of carrots, a lot of how can we all work together without anyone feeling like they're being punished? And it's worked. I think it's worked really well. Could it be better? Okay. There's a lot of government programs that can be better. This is a really great example of how, you know, working from the ground up, singing kumbaya, whatever you want to put it, it worked. You guys deserve credit for making it work because a lot of other counties did not have it work. A lot of angry and unhappy people about it. Okay.

Thank you, Joe, for your question.

uh no further comments from anybody on the commission i'm going to take a motion please to adjourn don't move motion second thank you chris joe and chris any nays better not be okay all those in favor thank you thank you very much folks we'll see you next month march 2nd thank you take care everybody i promise you when the weather breaks i'm coming down to the office

Good to meet you. Take care.