DUBOIS – Budget season nears for Sandy Township with a public workshop to be held on Monday, Oct 21.

Starting at 6 p.m. before its regularly-scheduled meetings, the board of supervisors will go over a drafted budget for the upcoming year.

If all goes as planned, the final budget will be publicly released at the Monday, Nov. 4 board meeting, the supervisors said Monday.

Approval will occur at a later date.

According to Township/City Manager Shawn Arbaugh, the current audit has been completed with no discrepancies found in the township’s financial statements.

Solar Ordinance

Changes to the proposed Sandy Township solar farm ordinance were also discussed Monday.

The drafted ordinance is available for public viewing on Sandy Township’s Web site with the direct link here.

There were three main areas of concern, with the first being soil condition limitations.

Depending on the soil conditions, a property, which is properly zoned to permit a solar farm, would not be fully usable to a solar farm. The Supervisors were in favor of changing the draft ordinance to permit waivers.

The second issue involved the zoning types that would permit the location of solar farms.

The draft ordinance is modeled after another municipality and has a broader scope than what the township prefers so it plans to reduce the permitted zones to just Residential-Agricultural, which still makes up the majority of Sandy Township.

This is being done so to avoid the areas Sandy Township has been developing for industry and commercial businesses, including the building of new roads and sewer systems.

The third concern was to not only make sure the ordinance “had teeth,” but also that panels are replaced or removed as the equipment reaches the end of its life.

Infrastructure and Development

It was noted Monday that the Maple Avenue project is running behind scheduled dates but is still ongoing.

Sidewalks are undergoing work, and some issues arose related to ADA ramps; however, a “good batch” of those were still completed last week.

Anti-skid bid requests will also go out soon. The bids are expected by Oct. 31.

It was noted that Sandy Township voted to close a paper road, Third Street, which hasn’t been publicly usable in 21 years.

Over the years, it was converted for parking and now it has a utility pole in the middle of what was once the roadway.

Final payment was also approved to Suit-kote for its tar and chip project this past summer. The final cost of the project was $260,000, which was about $20,000 less than expected.

The Kiwanis Trail sewer project is ongoing, with plans for work to continue until snow falls.