South Annville board approves zoning changes, reviews DHL building plans

This article was funded by LebTown donors as part of our Civic Impact Reporting Project.

At the Feb. 11 meeting, the South Annville Township Board of Supervisors unanimously moved to approve Ordinance 02-11-26, which rewrites Section 306: Proposed Uses Not Covered to include new standards and criteria.

The vote follows the Dec. 10 meeting in which supervisors unanimously moved to authorize township manager Jeanette Henning to present the proposed zoning ordinance to the Lebanon County Planning Department and the South Annville Township Planning Commission, and to advertise it for the Feb. 11 meeting.

The proposed zoning ordinance came about when township solicitor Josele Cleary, who also represents Cornwall Borough and has been in the process of updating the borough’s zoning ordinances, reviewed Section 306 and found it to be in need of an update.

As part of the engineer’s report, Allison Garner reported receiving submissions from DHL, with tenants for Building 1 and Building 2. In a follow-up interview, Garner told LebTown that DHL does not include who the tenants are in these submissions but designs the buildings with a rough idea of who the tenants might be and makes the necessary adjustments once the leases are finalized.

“If you looked at [it], you being somebody who hadn’t already looked at it, you probably wouldn’t notice any difference to one of the buildings,” Garner told LebTown. “The other one has a little change to it, but it’s nothing … that changes anything. I just check and make sure that they still have all of the vegetation that they need and trees and parking is a big one.”

Garner will review the submissions. Cleary advised Garner that as long as there are no major changes within the submissions, DHL will not need to come to supervisors for approval. But if there are any changes to stormwater management, DHL will need to seek board approval to amend the stormwater agreement and re-record it.

Garner told DHL that after the changes to Building 1 and Building 2 are concrete, they will need to submit a full plan so that it can be re-recorded.

Also part of the engineer’s report was Garner receiving the Southgate phase 2 final subdivision and land development plans for review.

In other news, supervisors unanimously moved to:

• Approve the secretary’s and treasurer’s reports.
• Approve the police report, which included 222 incidents for township and 33 for regional and a total of 328 hours for township and 43 for regional.
• Approve the payment of the township’s bills.

There was no public comment. As part of the updates portion of the meeting, assistant township manager Heather Mesko reported that Garcia Garman & Shea PC completed the 2025 audit the previous week. “Everything looked great. There was nothing of importance that needed to be redone,” Mesko added. Garcia Garman & Shea will also submit the DCED report, with final copies anticipated to be ready by the April meeting.

Also part of the updates portion was a note that winter maintenance costs have increased due to rising expenses and the unusual amount of snow, and a thank you to the team that takes care of South Annville Township’s roads. The township also received a thank-you letter from the Lebanon Valley Conservancy for its annual donation.

South Annville Township supervisors meet at 7 p.m. on the second Wednesday of each month. Meetings are held in the township building at 1042 Horseshoe Pike, which features an ADA-accessible ramp and an on-site parking lot with ADA-accessible spaces, and are open to the public. Next month’s meeting will be held on Wednesday, March 11.