Vote on truck plan angers neighbors
LIMERICK >> Two controversial developments that drew a crowd of more than 70 to the Dec. 18 Limerick Board of Supervisors meeting were back on the agenda Tuesday night for crucial votes.
But while opponents of the TP Trailers and Truck Equipment plan to build a manufacturing and service facility on 10 acres at 181 Limerick Center Road were out again in force, no one showed up in opposition to the Restaurant Depot proposal at the corner of Buckwalter and Township Line roads.
More than a month ago, about half the crowd of 75 were there in opposition to the Restaurant Depot plan, saying it would add too much traffic to an already dangerous intersection.
But Tuesday night, no one spoke, no one objected and the board of supervisors quickly and unanimously approved the preliminary site plan for that project.
The same could not be said for the second vote.
Although the end result for the TP Trailers project was the same — a unanimous vote to approve the
preliminary site plan — the path to that vote was strewn with public objections and even some spirited defense of the board by the supervisors themselves.
Township Solicitor Joseph McGrory Jr. kicked off the deliberations by explaining that, as per instructions from last month, he had prepared two resolutions.
One approved the truck project without conditions, and another imposed the condition that the trailers (or shipping containers) be stacked no higher than two.
One of the primary objections raised by neighbors of the proposed project is the potential to stack steel shipping containers as high as three, which they say poses a danger should they tip over. The developers have said they cannot predict how often that will be necessary, if at all, but have steadfastly refused to voluntarily limit the stacking.
The problem, McGrory said, is that the township has already determined that existing ordinances allow structures to be as high as 35 feet tall and three stacked shipping containers are below that height.
It’s the fact that the plan meets the zoning ordinance in every way — no waivers, no variances — that left the supervisors with few options but to approve it.
McGrory said that despite “trying every trick in the book,” he could not convince Tom Perkins, owner of TP Trailers and Truck Equipment, who owns the parcel with his sister, to agree to the stacking limitation condition.
To approve the plan and place those conditions, however “reasonable” they may seem, would simply result in Perkins’ lawyer, Mark Kaplin, seeking to overturn them in court, McGrory said.
Kaplin has said his client would accept those conditions if the township, and the opposing neighbors, will back his client’s intention to seek a zoning variance to allow him to sell vehicles at the Limerick Center Road site, which would allow the trailers to be stored at his other location on Ridge Pike, but the supervisors have not agreed to that.
As a result, supervisors were left essentially with the option of voting to approve the preliminary plan without imposing any conditions, or vote no, which would violate the class two township code and open them up to an expensive lawsuit.
“If it were in my neighborhood, I would still have to vote for it,” said Supervisor Elaine DeWan.
To vote against approving a plan that meets all the ordinances would not only open up the township to a legal action they would likely lose, it would also likely mean the township’s liability insurance carrier would not cover legal costs, Township Manager Dan Kerr told the supervisors.
It could even make the supervisors themselves personally liable, the supervisors
said. “I am not going to risk my home for a vote I know to be illegal,” said Supervisor Patrick Morroney, “and neither would you if you were sitting up here.”
But for several of the project’s opponents in the audience, that argument did not wash.
“You can never convince me your personal assets are at stake,” said Bernard Enright of Bayberry Lane, who said he has worked in the insurance business for 30 years.
Kevin Messerle of Hickory Grove Road said while he understood the position the supervisors were in, that voting against approving the plan would have been “the courageous choice.”
“Breaking the law is not courageous,” said Supervisor Kara Shuler. “I am not breaking the law for this township.”
When resident Preston Lutwiler said the supervisors had taken the “path of least resistance,” Supervisor Thomas Neafcy called the comment “a cheap shot.”
At one point, resident Darren Thompson asked Supervisors Chairman Ken Sperring to recuse himself from voting because he has a business relationship with Perkins.
Sperring says as a business owner himself, he has purchased parts from Perkins but since, as McGrory confirmed, he has no financial interest in whether Perkins plan is approved or not, there is no conflict of interest requiring he recuse himself.
He said if the other supervisors want him to recuse himself he would — they didn’t — and said it would not be fair to them to “escape” from having to take would looked like an unpopular vote.
McGrory said residents have the right to challenge the approval in court, as well as the final site plan approval, when and if that makes its way through the process, past the planning commission again and back to the supervisors for a final vote.
He and DeWan also suggested that residents show the same interest, and participate, in any hearings the zoning hearing board may hold if Perkins applies for the use variance which, McGrory said, “is very hard to get.”
As the meeting wound down, Shuler said she and other supervisors were getting “brutally beat up in emails by people who don’t understand our responsibilities. We have to think of everybody, not just the people who live on a particular street or development.”
McGrory said when he took the township solicitor post 12 years ago “we had 32 legal actions against us and our insurance carriers were going to drop us, and that was with a different board over just four years of supervisors ignoring the law. We were almost uninsurable.”
All those lawsuits, and the loss of insurance, posed a financial risk to all township residents, not those neighbors of proposed developments, said Sperring.
“If we had voted no, we would have exposed 19,000 people to a multi-million lawsuit,” he said.
“Nothing about tonight made any of us happy,” Shuler said. “We are the courageous ones sitting up here taking the beating. We get that you were upset about tonight’s decision. We get that. Just cut us some slack. We have to take everything you throw at us and still try to protect you.”