At a recent meeting of the Eastern Schuylkill Regional Planning Board, representatives from the four participating municipalities - Walker Township, Rush Township, Schuylkill Township and Tamaqua Borough - met to discuss the changes to the zoning ordinances.

The board will meet again on Tuesday evening at the Schuylkill Township Building.

The Auditor General’s office had sent letters to the four municipalities suggesting possible legal ramifications if select zoning change are not made.

“We left the meeting with the understanding that the four municipalities were going to proceed with the Attorney General required changes to our zoning ordinance,” township solicitor Chris Riedlinger explained. “And, any municipality that wanted to would be able to throw in some additional desired changes that could be drafted quickly and met with the approval of all the other members.”

The board can vote down any of those change requests, and those requests will then be pushed back to a second round of zoning change suggestions.

There are seven desired changes that were proposed:

Rush Township requested one change: to allow roof-mounted solar panels to be a permitted use rather than a special-exception use in R4 zoning districts.

Tamaqua Borough requested two changes: they also want the change of roof-mounted solar panels, but in region R5; and to add the “GC” district to the section 1507, subpart H, which is currently a list of four districts where certain signs are permitted.

Schuylkill Township listed two changes: to redo the definition of “accessory use” in the definition section of the ordinance to allow an accessory use not only in the same lot as the principle use is on, but an adjoining lot as well; and the second change is to take motor sport facilities, which are currently a special-exception use in the Gi2 district, and move it to a Gi1 district instead.

Walker Township suggested two changes: changing the side yard setbacks for R1 districts from 50 feet to 25 feet, and the second change involved changes requested by the Attorney General’s office.

It will take approximately three months of meetings, advertisements and voting before the changes are put in motion.