The Bellwood Borough council was thinking about summer at last night’s meeting as park and recreation talks led the discussion. The new playground equipment and the Bellwood pool were both talked about in detail.
“The Tyrone Y is going to take care of the pool again, and manage the pool and take care of everything over there, which they do a fine job. They have the grass cut around the playground and around the fields,” said council member Tom Lechner. “The equipment for the playground, the new equipment coming in, we should hear from them in a couple of weeks. It’s going to take some work to put it in.”
With both the pool and the playground equipment, money will be needed for some additional work.
“The pool is going to need a new liner. It won’t be this year, possibly next year,” said Lechner. “Over with the new equipment, we’re going to have that top soil taken off and there’s going to be holes dug for supports, and the DEP was going to use what Antis Township shreds down there for the fields. We found out we can’t use that. We have to have a special mix to put in over there, and believe it or not that special mix costs $7,000.”
The board approved $3,500 for Lechner to proceed with the needed plans to update the playground with the materials.
As the borough was thinking of summer, the citizens of Bellwood were thinking of winter and of snow removal. A few concerned citizens appeared at the meeting to discuss the issue with council members.
A resident of Logan and Fourth Street said, “Just the bulk of the snow and with such a huge storm like that… there’s not that many of us, but there’s a lot of sidewalk.”
The issue is that most of the residents in the area of Logan and Fourth streets are elderly and can’t keep up with a heavy snow storm or pay to have someone remove the snow for them. The citizens said this causes them to receive a fine for not removing the snow. Also, residents said the PENNDOT trucks plow the snow back onto the sidewalks, which makes it impossible for them to keep up with snow removal.
Another issue for that same street is the residents would like 25 mile-per-hour speed limit signs posted so it would curtail people from speeding. After the weather gets better, council is scheduled to place two speed limit signs in the area.
In other business, council accepted the resignation of police lieutenant Timothy Shafer for March 22. He served 13 years on the Bellwood police force and will be accepting a different position in another state.
Council also approved a motion to create an ordinance for a combined emergency plan for Antis Township and Bellwood Borough.
“I’m the emergency management coordinator for Bellwood and Antis Township,” said Tom Whiteford. “Whether there’s any type of disaster, whether it be man-made or a natural disaster, and our biggest fear is right out here our railroad and wheel-travel hazardous materials. Terrorism’s not a big problem for us. We started with the council to create a cooperation agreement between the two. Instead of meeting all the paper work for the township and the borough that means exactly the same thing, I wanted to create one emergency plan- The Bellwood-Antis emergency plan.
“We had to make an inter-cooperative government agreement between the two sides. This is where we fell into a problem. We need an ordinance that states we agree to work together.”
The council also discussed plans to coordinate with the Altoona Curve to have a Bellwood Night for one of the baseball games at the Blair County Ballpark in the summer. This issue is scheduled to be discussed further at the next meeting.
