BETHLEHEM TWP., Pa. \u2013 The Bethlehem Township Board of Commissioners appointed a new township manager Monday night.<\/p>\n
The board appointed Edward Hozza to the position. The vote was 3-2.<\/p>\n
Hozza served previously as Lehigh County’s director of administration and as mayor of Whitehall Township. He will begin his Bethlehem Township tenure on May 18.<\/p>\n
Culvert deal made for Farmersville Estates<\/p>\n
The board also approved an agreement involving a proposed housing development.<\/p>\n
The deal involves Farmersville Estates, a proposal offered by Jaindl Land Co., which calls for single-family homes, twin dwellings and townhomes on 190 building lots on 290 acres by Nazareth Pike, Farmersville Road, Butztown Road and Green Pond Road \u2014 north of Route 22.<\/p>\n
The agreement finds the applicant, Kay Builders, offering the township and Bethlehem Township Municipal Authority a $300,000 payment in lieu of designing and building a culvert after a culvert was required by the township as an approval condition.<\/p>\n
The deal resulted from planned capital improvements designated for the general area. Given this, township officials said it would benefit no one to have Kay build a culvert and then tear it down because of the authority’s planned general improvements in the area.<\/p>\n
St. Luke\u2019s retaining wall settlement nixed<\/p>\n
Also on Monday night, a settlement agreement involving a medical office building was rejected.<\/p>\n
On July 17, 2023, commissioners granted final land development plan approval for a St. Luke’s University Health Network medical office building, located at 3311 Farmersville Road. During site development, a retaining wall was not constructed at the location where it was approved to be built. As the wall was constructed at the wrong location, it does not comply with zoning requirements.<\/p>\n
The applicant’s request for three dimensional variances involving the wall were denied by the township’s zoning hearing board last Oct. 29.<\/p>\n
On Monday night, project officials attempted to procure a deal with the township acknowledging the error, but arguing where the wall was erected meets the ordinance’s “spirit” and would create “no harm” to Bethlehem Township to “leave the wall as it is.”<\/p>\n
Commissioners did not agree.<\/p>\n
“We’re losing something here,” Commissioner John Gallagher said of the proposed deal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BETHLEHEM TWP., Pa. \u2013 The Bethlehem Township Board of Commissioners appointed a new township manager Monday night. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":184092,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154,1994,82131,66900,66899,82132,2760],"class_list":["post-184091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-bethlehem-township","tag-edward-hozza","tag-farmersville-estates","tag-jaindl-land-co","tag-kay-builders","tag-st-luke"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184091"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184091\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/184092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}