Whether a traffic signal is ever installed at the intersection of Bridge and Ninth streets remains up in the air, but Lehighton Area School District approved an agreement last week acknowledging it would be its responsibility to pay for it.

The agreement essentially upholds a memorandum of understanding signed by the district’s board of directors in 2017 when Lehighton’s new elementary center was being completed, accepting responsibility for installation of the signal when and if the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation deemed it necessary.

“We may never have to put in the traffic light,” LASD Director Barbara Bowes said last Monday. “PennDOT may say it isn’t necessary or we may have to share the cost now because there are other businesses down at that intersection like St. Luke’s. At the end of the day the agreement we approved tonight is basically the same agreement the board signed in 2016 because we were obligated to follow it.”

The traffic signal agreement was the only item holding up Lehighton Borough’s issuance of a certificate of occupancy for the elementary center to the district. In the days since last Monday’s meeting, Jack Corby, acting Lehighton superintendent, confirmed the district had received the certificate.

“With this agreement tonight, we can now receive that final occupancy permit,” Corby said during Monday’s meeting. “As far as the actual installation of the light, PennDOT will have to advise us on that and what has changed since 2016. The price back then for the installation was $183,000. I’m sure that isn’t still the case, but we don’t have a crystal ball and can’t predict until PennDOT does some refiguring.”

According to the MOU signed in 2017 and the agreement approved Monday night, the district is to place $10,000 in an escrow account at a bank chosen by the borough. The borough would then draw from the account to pay for electricity, operation, maintenance, repair, restoration and/or replacement of the signal. After the $10,000 from the district was spent, all future costs would fall on the borough.

Should PennDOT decide the traffic light is necessary, LASD Business Administrator Ed Rarick said the money would most likely be pulled from the district’s capital expenditure fund.

“There is money in there, it wasn’t necessarily set aside in there for this purpose, but there is money there to do this,” Rarick said.

The area south of the Ninth and Bridge intersection is going to look dramatically different from the way it did when the original MOU was signed in 2017 due to Penn­DOT’s current reconstruction of Route 443.

“The one thing we made clear from the beginning,” Rarick said, “is the district wanted no other financial responsibilities down there other than putting in this traffic light.”

Corby said there is no timeline for any type of decisions or actions regarding the traffic light.