During their council meeting on Wednesday, Lansford council was asked to authorize President Martin Ditsky to sign a Memorandum of Understanding allowing the Coaldale-Lansford-Summit Hill Joint Sewer Authority to prepare an Act 537 sewage plan as has been requested by the Department of Environmental Protection of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

The memorandum was read aloud. Council members Samantha Yasson, Mary Soberick and Rosemary Cannon voiced concerns about wording in the agreement.Their concerns are regarding the statements of "pay for the preparation of the act by user fees or any other method as approved by the authority," and "the borough will be responsible for uncovering manholes."Soberick and Yasson asked about "any other means possible" regarding seeking funding, such "raising our user rates."Regarding the manhole issues, Yasson said, "it will be their system, why should we be responsible for opening the manholes?"Council member Thomas Vadyak made a motion, seconded by Ditsky to authorize the agreement. This vote failed on a 3-2 vote, with Cannon, Soberick and Yasson opposed and Vadyak and Ditsky in favor. Council members Joseph Butrie and Colin Jones were absent.In other matters, with the recent change in code enforcement and zoning to Lehigh Valley Inspection Services, council revisited the issue of having or joining a Uniform Construction Code board. In the past Council opted not to pursue this matter, as pointed out by Soberick.Vadyak said, "Tamaqua has an established UCC Board and were willing to have us before."Council unanimously voted to take two actions. One is to advertise to receive applications from qualified, interested Lansford borough residents to form their own UCC board. Secondly, if the past holds true and the applications are low, council moved to approach the Tamaqua UCC board to find out if they are still welcome to join their board and what the details of this joint effort would be.