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UPPER POTTSGROVE — The public got its first look at what the proposed new $5.5 million municipal building might look like — a month after the township commissioners publicly resolved to build it.

At the end of Monday’s meeting, Commissioners’ Chairman Trace Slinkerd unveiled a drawing of the proposed building in a farm field at the corner of Evans and Moyer roads — a property that the township purchased for $450,000 from Thomas Smola to be preserved as open space.

The drawing was unveiled a month after the commissioners voted 3-2 on a resolution selecting the site, the Bethlehem architecture firm Alloy 5, and giving Slinkerd broad authority to move the project forward.

The unveiling came four days after site drawings were released to The Mercury in response to an Aug. 17 Right-to-Know request. The Sept. 15 response from the township also indicated it would not release architectural renderings for the buildings “that create a reasonable likelihood of endangering the safety or physical security of a building.”

What was not evident in the image unveiled to the public Monday is that the township has had possession of the drawing, at the specified open space site, since Dec. 21, 2020, the date that appears on the Alloy 5 drawing provided as part of the Right-to-Know request but missing from the image displayed publicly.

In all that time, the township’s Open Space and Recreation Board, which secured the property in 2009, was never consulted or even informed of the commissioners’ intention to build on the site, said Dennis Elliott, the committee’s longest-serving member and its former chairman.

“We gave our word to Mr. Smola that would stay as an open field,” Elliott said at Monday’s meeting. In 2006, he said township residents voted to impose on themselves a .25 percent earned income tax to purchase open space “so that it would be preserved in perpetuity.”

“People are very upset that this new municipal building is going to be built on open space,” Elliott said.

He also noted that Montgomery County Open Space funding may have been part of the funding for the purchase, which could create legal complications by using it for another purpose. “The Open Space Committee was never consulted,” he said.

None of the township commissioners responded to Elliott’s complaints other than to thank him for his comments.

After the meeting Greg Churach who now chairs the open space and recreation board said he “wants to look into” the matter and added he intends to put the matter on the agenda of the next open space meeting.

That meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, Oct. 4. at 7 p.m.

Earlier that evening, Churach received a “battalion medallion” from Slinkerd in thanks for serving as the township’s interim public works director for the last three months

Although the township’s response to The Mercury’s Right to Know request indicates it has architectural renderings it will not share with the public, it evidently does not yet have any engineering done for the site.

The board voted unanimously Monday night to issue “requests for proposals” from engineering firms “to see what’s entailed with the building itself,” Slinkerd said. Whichever engineer is chosen will work with Alloy 5, who is not yet “on the clock” with the township, Slinkerd said  — this despite the fact that the resolution the commissioners adopted last month “selects the general design of the township municipal building as presented by Alloy 5.”

It is not immediately clear if the “general design” is the one presented Monday night.

The township responded to an Aug. 23 Mercury Right to Know request for a copy of its contract, or any bills or invoices from Alloy 5 by writing a “search found no township records which would be responsive to your request.”

Slinkerd said Monday the township would soon be issuing a letter to all residents explaining the township’s reasoning. He noted that the township undertook a building study in 2019 — which was also conducted by Alloy 5 for $8,000, an invoice the township could not locate until its likely existence was pointed out by The Mercury.

Slinkerd said the study showed it would cost $4 million to fix the township’s existing buildings, but only $3 million to build new buildings whose “operational cost would be half the older buildings.”

The resolution the commissioners adopted last month set a cost cap at $5.5 million.

Slinkerd said, “this is going to be a long process and we are going to take it slow and be as diligent as we were with the sewer sale.”

It is the $13.7 million the township obtained from selling its sewer collection system to Pennsylvania American Water that provided the funding to make the building possible — after using $7 million to retire all the township’s debt, including the debt incurred to buy open space, which gets paid back from the earned income tax.

Slinkerd said the property on which the township intends to build was “purchased with bonds.”

Regardless of the particulars of the financing, Commissioner Cathy Paretti warned “there is going to be opposition to the site that we picked.”

As if on cue, at the public comment period at the end of the meeting, resident Keith Kehl got up and said “open space in Upper Pottsgrove is off limits!”

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