The Chadds Ford Township budget for 2026 is now being advertised, and supervisors are scheduled to vote on the matter next month. The good news for township property owners is that there is no increase in township property taxes.
Taxes will remain at 0.6247 mils in the hydrant district and 0.5577 outside the district. Overall, the budget is balanced with $1,638,835 in anticipated revenue and $1,622,254 in expenses.
The budget earmarks $10,000 for the Rachel Kohl Library and $200,000 for the Concordville Fire Co.
Other business
• Township engineer Mike Schneider gave a brief update on traffic signals along Route 202. He began with the intersection of Routes 202 and 1, saying Rhythm Engineering will be optimizing the system to improve the traffic flow.
“All the firmware and software have been updated to make sure the cameras are operating better,” he said. “I can tell you they’re not operating perfectly, but they’re operating better.” He added that Rhythm is working on the progression between signals to get vehicles through. “There’s more to come on that.”
Schneider said PennDOT has fiber optic cables that connect all the intersections along the two routes, and there are a few signals that aren’t communicating.
“PennDOT and our signal maintenance contractor are both reviewing all the fibers to try to find the breaks and get them working again.”
The light at Route 202 at Brandywine Drive had a problem with one of the detection cameras being down, which backed up southbound traffic there. Schneider said the light was giving excessive time to traffic turning left from northbound 202 to Brandywine Drive.
“That left turn was getting 60 seconds of green time in the morning when it probably needs about 10. So that since that was getting all that green time, there wasn’t enough green time for southbound,” he said.
Rhythm Engineers has made a temporary fix with the hope that the camera will be replaced within the week.
Schneider also updated the supervisors on PennDOT’s plan to improve the intersection of Routes 1 and 202. He said PennDOT is getting into the final design and looking to start construction in 2027.
He said PennDOT is planning for a double left-lane turn lane from northbound 202 to westbound Route 1. There will be an extended through right-turn lane from Route 1 to the southbound Route 202 by the Sunoco station. The extension will take the right turn lane back as far as Dickinson Drive.
Schneider added that the plan calls for additional left turn lanes at Brandywine Drive and State Farm Drive, where they intersect with Route 202. Right now, the left turn lanes are shared with straight-through lanes.
The project will also cut off left turn lanes into and out of Dickinson Drive at Route 1.
“However, PennDOT only wants to do that once the loop road is built…So, they’re not going to pursue that at this time,” Schneider said.
• Chuck Ullman, the curator at the Sanderson Museum, said they are working on a project to digitize all the photographs that are at the museum.
“We have about 5,000 photographs that have never really been seen because we have them filed. They were all organized by the late Tommy Thompson, the founding curator. We’ve been planning to do this for the last four or five years, but surprises keep popping up,” he said, indicating that Hurricane Ida was one of those surprises, and there was an air-conditioning situation in 2024.
This year, the grinder pit alarm had to be replaced. The money that had been earmarked to digitize the photos went to take care of that.
Ullman said he’s hoping they’re through with all of those types of surprises and can get to the photo project in 2026.
About Rich Schwartzman
Rich Schwartzman has been reporting on events in the greater Chadds Ford area since September 2001 when he became the founding editor of The Chadds Ford Post. In April 2009 he became managing editor of ChaddsFordLive. He is also an award-winning photographer.
