A federal mandate is forcing a Bucks County township to dish out a large sum of money.
The mandate requires that West Rockhill Township change its street signs. West Rockhill's signs contain letters that are all caps and four inches. The mandate requires that the letters change to six inches with the first letter being uppercase and the rest lowercase. The change was enforced in order to make the signs more readable to workers responding to an emergency.
“I think that’s stupid but if it has to happen, it has to happen,” said resident Robert Schlauer.
While the township isn’t too thrilled about the change, the real issue is the amount that it will cost to replace the old signs, a total of $12,000.
“It’s wasted money,” said township supervisor John Mann. “We’re having a tough time now making our end’s meet and now we have this and it’s going to cost all this money.”
“That’s going to hit our wallets for sure,” said Jen Dura.
For now, the town has until 2015 to have the signs converted. Until then, they’ll have to figure out methods to pay for it all, which could include raising taxes or cutting out services. It’s a tough task however, given the fact that many township residents are retired.
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“We could fix bridges (with the $12,000), we could buy more cinders for winter,” said Mann. “We could just do so many things with it and keep the taxes down.”
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