Published: January 06, 2009 10:45 pm         

Plan approval could re-establish border

SALIX — Action expected today on plans for a new residential subdivision could formalize the realignment of the Adams Township border with Richland Township.

Adams Township Planning Commission will consider site plans for Watkins Glen, an 81-lot development straddling the township line. Representatives of both townships say approval hinges on recognition of the border surveyor Frederick Brown laid out three years ago.

“There shouldn’t be any problem as long as what they submit follows Fred Brown’s line,” Adams Township Solicitor William G. Barbin said after Monday’s township supervisors’ meeting.

“The Fred Brown line is the line,” Adams Supervisor and planning commission member William “B.J.” Smith said. “The line has never moved.”

Brown’s survey was initiated after a Naugle Road bridge was damaged in a traffic accident, Smith recalled.

“The two townships got together and said ‘It’s your bridge.’ ‘No, it’s your bridge.’ That kind of thing,” Smith said.

Brown’s survey revealed several homes thought to be in Richland Township are actually in Adams, and a couple of Richland-taxed homes are in Adams Township. Smith believes those who laid out those lots incorrectly estimated the border’s location, and no one bothered to check. Neither township intends to require existing homes to change tax or school district status.

“We’ll go forward from here on out using the Fred Brown line,” Smith said.

Watkins Glen plans originally showed the border several hundred feet east of the surveyed line, but it was labeled “approximate location,” planning commission Chairman Ronald Young said.

“They would need to move that line (on the plans) to where our township engineer says the line is,” Young said.

Although Watkins Glen developer Samuel Carpenter wondered aloud if the townships can accept Brown’s survey without a court ruling, he said the developers will not take it to court.

“We have no reason to fight it,” Carpenter said. “We think Adams Township is a great community and it has a great school system. When we market it, we just want to let people know where they are buying.”

There is little difference in tax rates. Richland residents pay 54.45 mills in township and school real estate tax. Adams Township and Forest Hills School District taxes total 55.324 mills.

With lot sizes of one-half acre and up, Carpenter expects the development to attract middle- to upper-income families – if the economy improves.

“It’s slow right now, but it could pick up,” Carpenter said.

“If we put out a viable price, we shouldn’t have any trouble.”

     

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