Summary of June 13, 2018, Meeting of the Newtown Board of Supervisors

You may not have the time to download and read the entire minutes from meetings of the Newtown Township Board of Supervisors (BOS), or the approved minutes may not yet be available on the Township website (here), so I created this summary from the June 13, 2018, public meeting. I also included some links to related information and embedded video clips from meetings. This is not a complete list of items discussed.

Technology Committee

Josephine Vlastaris, Chair of the Technology Committee, presented a summary of accomplishments of the Committee. The following is a partial list of the Committee’s current agenda items:

• Emergency notification system (researched/proposed Nixle)
  • Proactive Township notification of urgent events
• Analytics
  • Committee recommended setting up Google Analytics account to monitor traffic and bounce rate for the township website, and make changes to pages as needed.
• Parks and Rec
  • Committee recommended using geolocation technology to assist residents with park navigation.
  • Committee proposed use of drones capturing footage of parks and trails to post on website to familiarize residents with recreational options.

View the Powerpoint presentation submitted to the Board:

Swamp Road

Jennifer Brennan and other residents of the Knob Hill community made comments regarding trucks on Swamp Road. You can listen to her remarks in the video below.

Ms. Brennan mentioned an online petition calling for re-routing of quarry trucks off of Swamp Road. The "Re-Route Trucks Off Swamp Road in Newtown, PA" petition states in part: “We are a group of residents who would like to express safety concerns as a result of quarry truck traffic which starts very early morning and continues until evening on Swamp Road. The quarry trucks drive much faster than the speed limit and are extremely aggressive toward passenger vehicles. Swamp Road is a winding, hilly, two-lane road with limited visibility in both directions. This road just does not seem like the right route for these quarry trucks, for the safety of other motorists. Although this has been an ongoing concern for many years, there have been several quarry truck accidents just this year… These trucks need to be re-routed to a state regulated road.”

As of June 19, 2018, over 300 people have signed the petition.

However, Swamp Road is a state-regulated road and outside the purview of the Newtown Board of Supervisors. However, as mentioned by Township Manager Kurt Ferguson, the town is planning to speak with PennDot about having a fundamental evaluation of the long-term needs of Swamp Road (see update below):

First National Bank

The board voted 4-1 (John Mack voting “nay”) to approve a motion for the extension of time to file plans (see article below).

Gun Safety Resolution

The board voted 4-1 (Kyle Davis voting “nay”) to pass a non-binding “gun safety” resolution. This is the same resolution passed by other municipalities, including Yardley Borough (more here...).

The resolution (here) states that as many as 116,225 people are shot each year in America, and that 35,141 people die from gun violence in “murders, assaults, suicides, suicide attempts, unintentional shootings or by police interventions.”

The resolution was passed after testimony from several Council Rock students (see video below).

May 2018 Police Report

Chief Pasqualini presented the Calls Report for May 2018 at the June 13, 2018, Board of Supervisors meeting. In that month, the Newtown Police Department responded to 1,414 calls, 231 (16%) of which were in Wrightstown Township (Newtown Police provides services to both Newtown Township and Wrightstown). See a summary of Chief Pasqualini's report here.

Posted on 20 Jun 2018, 01:46 - Category: Board of Supervisors Minutes