Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

good evening welcome to the july 14th 2026 meeting of the northampton township planning commission let us stand for the pledge of allegiance and a moment of silence for the men and women of armed forces and first responders tonight's meeting has to agenda items uh... one is a consideration of the hope i say this rate that's been lot line change l l twenty six dash one in columbus circle and the second one is consideration of the preliminary final plan of subdivision land development for holland middle school s t l twenty six dash to east holland road Before we get started with those, though, we have the meeting minutes from April of this year. Were there any questions with those meeting minutes? Do we have a motion to accept?

I make a motion to accept.

Second? Second. All in favor? Aye. So be it. Let's start with the lot line change. Mike, you're going to just give a quick...

I am. The applicant is proposing to adjust the lot line between the properties at 16 Purdue Drive and 7 Columbia Circle. As a result, the combined individual lot areas of the two parcels will remain unchanged. No new construction is proposed, and there are no engineering issues. The applicant is here this evening. but this matter is pretty straightforward, so I recommend approval of the draft motion that's in front of you.

Do we have a motion? I'll motion. You're on.

I move that we recommend to the Board of Supervisors preliminary final approval of the Vetsman Line and Lot Change, LL26-1, subject to compliance with the Township Engineers Review Letter dated May 13th, 2026. All in favor?

Aye. So passed. Okay, the second one is the consideration of the preliminary final plan of subdivision for the Holland Mill School addition. And please identify yourself as the presenter.

Yes, my name is Terry DeGroote. I'm with Terraform Engineering representing Council Rock School District. With me tonight is Mark Adamiak with Schroeder Group Architecture. Chris Haller and Sandy Szabo, who are with Boyle Construction. They are the construction managers on the project. Jessica Binderishow couldn't make it with us tonight. She's at the All-Star game. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I know. I know. Our application is also pretty straightforward. We're putting a six-classroom addition to the rear of the Holland Middle School. Mikey, I don't know if you have a drawing up there, if they want to see that or not. For those of you familiar with that, that would be, there it is, okay, the little gray area in the back. And then we're gonna relocate the pedestrian path where students walk from neighborhoods to the south to the school. So that's pretty straightforward. We're gonna have a couple of temporary classrooms out there during the course of construction, because we will have to occupy some classes inside the building. But those classrooms will be removed. upon the completion of construction. I know in the past, years ago, there was a lot of temporaries that stayed for a long time. But these are definitely going to go. The parking spaces that they occupy are spaces in excess of what is required. So we don't believe we have any issues there. We did get review letters from Gilmore dated July 2nd, from Bowman on the traffic for July 2nd. We also got a review letter from the Bucks County Planning Commission All of that is the township reviews. All will comply. You can check with Mr. Rigg there, but I think we're pretty clean. We did do a resubmission to get that cleaned up for you. And we are requesting some waivers as well, which are in our waiver request letter of June 9th. which should be included in your packet. There are eight waivers, most of which are very typical. I can go through them if you like. Let me know if you want me to walk through them.

If I don't, for the record, you just review them.

Sure, okay. And I'll go right through the letter here. Requesting waiver from Chapter 22, Section 304.5B requires tax numbers and zoning distance within 2,000 feet of the property. Requesting waiver to allow the information as presented. So it is not 2,000 feet, but it is less, and we believe it's adequate. We're asking for a similar waiver from Section 304.5E3 with respect to existing features 200 feet from the property. We request that the plan be accepted as submitted with the adjoining information. We're also requesting a waiver from Section 304.5 requires all storm and sanitary within 400 feet of the site. Again, this is similar to the previous two. We are requesting that the information shown be acceptable. Number four, a waiver is requested from Section 403.1 , which requires minor collector streets and major collector streets which would include East Holland and Buck Roads, to have a 36-foot wide pavement width. We respectfully request a waiver for widening East Holland Road, which has a minimum pavement width of 22 feet, and Buck Road, which has a minimum pavement width of 28.5 feet. This waiver was previously granted when we did the major renovations in addition to Holland as well as Hillcrest. The waiver is also requested from Section 403.2A1A, which requires curb along all existing right-of-ways. We do have curb on East Holland, but not on Buck. We're asking that that condition remain. And again, that was previously granted for the last Hillcrest project and the Holland major additions. Going on to number six. 403.2b requires sidewalks installed along all existing streets, requesting a waiver to install sidewalks along Buck Road. We do have a pedestrian path that goes through the site, which provides much safer access to the school for students. We did do some major sidewalk improvements and pedestrian signal improvements with the PREVIOUS HOLLAND MIDDLE SCHOOL JOB WAS ABOUT 10 YEARS AGO, SO THE PEDESTRIAN IMPROVEMENTS AT BUCK AND EAST HOLLAND ROADS WERE DONE AT THAT TIME, AND THE SIDEWALK WAS EXTENDED FROM HOLLAND MIDDLE SCHOOL ACROSS HILLCREST TO THAT INTERSECTION. Number seven, requesting a waiver from Chapter 23, Section 30110 requires storage facilities completely drain in not less than 24 hours and not more than 72 hours. A dewatering time of 15 hours is proposed, which is less than what that section requires. We believe that's appropriate. We're also requesting a chapter from a waiver from chapter 23 section 501.2L which requires three foot of cover over all pipe that is not RCP. We do have some shallow cover over the pipe which is HDB, a plastic pipe. This is in line with the recommendations of the pipe manufacturer for adequate cover for that pipe. This will be pipe that will be excuse me, directly behind the addition for an access driveway. So that covers all the waivers that we are requesting. In addition to asking for your recommendation on the waivers, we will be asking for your recommendation for preliminary and final approval for the plan, and we will address all conditions in the review letters.

Any questions from the board? I've got a couple of questions, but I can hold that till anybody have any questions they want to bring up?

Yeah, just out of curiosity, you're just putting six classrooms on. Is that just to look at? There we go, sorry about that. And the grade schools that are feeding into Holland Middle School, I know of a couple of instances where a child couldn't even get into Hillcrest in the middle of the year last year and had a new addition to the district. And, you know, it seems like probably the schools, elementary schools feeding Holland Middle School are jammed to the gills. And right now you're looking to put six classrooms on if you're gonna do an addition. I was just curious about the thought process about making it bigger.

And I'll be honest with you, I am not part of the entire thought process for redistricting everything. But recently, how many did we add at Ridgeborough, 10 classrooms?

10 classrooms at Richboro.

So we added 10 elementary classrooms at Richboro, which might mean that a student who used to go to Hillcrest would now be redirected to Richboro. So because there is a need to expand the elementary population, like you're implying, there's also a need to expand the middle school capacity as well.

Yeah, that's my thought, that six classrooms with the... with the population increasing so dramatically?

Six classrooms will give them a capacity for 1,100 students.

No kidding.

And that's as much as the core of the building can handle. The cafeteria, right, the central services, that is... Is that a size to handle 1,100 students?

I didn't realize that six classrooms could handle an additional 1,100.

Well, that's the whole school. That's the entire school.

We're just adding six. We'll bring it up to 1,100.

And quite honestly, the additional classrooms were discussed at the time we did the last addition. Yeah. And at the time, they decided, well, that's too far in the future. Let's not do that now. Yeah. We're in the future.

We're in the future. Yeah.

If I could hop in here. So in 2024, the school district did commission Trader Group to do a capacity analysis for the entire district. And that's the results of that capacity analysis are what is dictating the extra six classrooms on Holland Middle School. And the goal here is to get us down from like a 95 or 98% functional capacity back down to 80%. So we'd like the schools to operate at a lower than functional, like 100%. When you deal with your year-to-year demographic changes, you have some room to absorb those changes, and that's what these six extra classrooms will be doing.

Are they anticipating the school population to continue to grow, or does it level off as population gets older?

It appears to be leveling off. I can't speak to too much details of the analysis, but it was... done from 2024 and then all the way up to 2034 was the reach. And the goal of doing these six classrooms was to keep this. It levels off at the 98%, but we didn't want to run Holland Middle School at 98% for the next 10 years. So we're doing these classrooms to drop it down.

One question about the location of the temporary trailers. I assume they're going to be there over the winter months, more than likely?

They would be there for the duration of construction.

And given that, how are they going to get the kids from the trailers to the school for lunch, gym, whatever happens? There's not going to be any covering? Yeah, there will be a canopy.

There will? Yes, from the modulars to the building. Okay, there is an entrance on the west side of the building that the students would come and go. And obviously, when the students were coming and going between the classrooms, there'd be a teacher out there.

So there will be some protection for the kids?

There will be some protection. Okay. So that southern portion of the parking lot where the modulars would sit, that would be closed off to traffic, okay? So that canopy will go across the driveway and currently the student drop off queue goes around those modular trailers that are proposed and then across the front of the building.

And there also were, there's a little bit of a play area behind the school now where the new addition is gonna go. I'm assuming that that will get relocated somewhere. I don't know whether there's a soccer, a small soccer field there or something.

There is a large soccer field there and there's also a playground for Hillcrest Elementary. Right. That playground will remain. It will be right next to construction, but obviously we're gonna fence things off. So the playground itself will not be affected.

Okay.

There will be a short period of time where the path is going to get relocated. But that is probably going to be done first summer. We'll get that relocated, secured, and then continue on with the rest of the work. The soccer field that you referred to behind the school, that will be used as a staging area for construction trailers, materials, that kind of thing?

And I was actually thinking between the edge of the existing building down to where I guess the trees start, where the actual addition is going to go. There's some kind of a minor play area back there I noticed when I was wandering around there.

Yeah, there's like a soccer field back there. And that soccer field will be taken during the construction period and then restored when we're done.

Okay.

We are putting an additional detention system. There's currently a detention system on the south side of that field underground, and we're going to put a supplemental system adjacent to that to deal with the additional impervious surface. We are taking down a few trees to the left of the playground and the south of the school to make the addition work and to work with the grades in there. This addition will have a basement in it. It's strictly going to be for district storage, not for students or access.

Any other comments from the board? No? Any public here? I don't see anybody out there.

I guess I have one. Just out of curiosity, construction timeline, how long are they estimating this project to take? Chris? About a year. Yeah.

Okay. That being said, do we have a motion?

I'll make a motion. I move that we recommend to the Board of Supervisors preliminary final approval of the Holland Middle School Land Development SLD 26-2 subject to compliance with the Gilmer Review Letter dated July 2nd, 2026 and the Bowman Review Letter dated July 2nd, 2026. It is also recommended that the requested waivers be granted.

All in favor? Aye. Any nay? No. It passes.

Okay.

Thank you very much. Thank you. Do we have any other business? Good luck. Thank you. Do we have a motion to dismiss?

Motion to adjourn.

Adjourn. Dismiss. Whatever.