BACKGROUND:
The Oak Hill subdivision is a single-family residential neighborhood located in the southeast corner of the Township, with resident addresses on Carpenter Road, Merritt Road, Ruby Street, and Diamond Street. The Oak Hill subdivision has submitted a petition to the Township with eighty percent of property owners’ approval that requests the Township to provide curbside vacuum leaf-collection services, with the recommendation that the services be provided by TJ’s Services, Inc.
Prior to 2011, the Oak Hill subdivision had been allowed, as an exception within the Township’s open burning ordinance, to open burn leaves and yard debris due to the many mature trees that drop large amounts of leaves each fall. However, in an effort moving toward elimination of open burning of yard debris in residentially zoned areas entirely, the Township removed the Oak Hill ordinance exception in the 2011 open burning ordinance revision.
However, after the 2011 revision, the ordinance had not been strictly enforced in the Oak Hill subdivision, until repeated complaints of open burning and excessive smoke were received by the Supervisor’s Office in the fall of 2019. Since then, the Township has hosted multiple public forums and undertaken multiple communications with the neighborhood in an attempt to find a middle ground between those who strongly advocated for the Township to continue to allow Oak Hill to open burn yard debris and those who opposed the same.
At this time, the Township's proposed compromise solution of providing a curbside vacuum leaf-collection service for the residents of Oak Hill subdivision has finally received majority support. The Oak Hill subdivision conducted a petition drive in the fall that led to the submission of eighty percent of Oak Hill property owners recommending the proposed leaf-collection service from TJ’s Services, Inc. The petition was verified by the Township Clerk's office.
The proposed solution allows the Township to fully enforce its burn ordinance while addressing the unique needs of the Oak Hills neighborhood without adding a cost burden to residents of that neighborhood. To implement this solution, the Township agreed to take the lead of finding service providers for the curbside leaf collection. TJ's Service, Inc. was the only company that quoted curbside vacuum leaf-collection service for the Oak Hill subdivision.
The quote includes four (4) total leaf-collection dates for 2021, two for the spring and two for the fall – $500 annual cost per participating residence, if all four collections are utilized. Although, based on the petition signatures, the participating number of property owners is anticipated to be approximately 40, the proposed maximum cost includes the possibility that other remaining Oak Hill and adjacent property owners (those with parcels directly connected to the Oak Hill neighborhood) may seek to participate, for a total of 54 properties, so the proposed maximum cost will not exceed $27,000.