On the evening of September 20th, while resident objectors were presenting their case against this warehouse, one of the supervisors made the announcement that Route 222 would be closed from Richmaiden Road to Route 73 due to an accident. The Fire Alerts of Berks County FB page posted that there had been a bike accident which might have been fatal.

Right after the supervisor’s announcement, resident party objectors attempted to admit evidence on the number of accidents that had occurred at the Schaeffer Road roundabout that year. We obtained this evidence from the Northern Berks Police Department based on our Right to Know request.

(These are incidents attended by police on this very stretch of road in our community.)

The developer’s attorney objected to the relevance of that evidence. To our surprise, the hearing officer determined that the accident numbers were only “marginally relevant.” We made it clear that accident numbers are certainly relevant to us!

As we sadly learned later, a young Mennonite husband and father was killed in that accident.

At Save Maidencreek, our Mennonite neighbors are always foremost in our minds as our roads become increasingly more hazardous. We fight this fight for them as well. Our hearts go out to the Burkholder family and the Mennonite Community. And we certainly hope that accident numbers matter to the Board!