All provisions of this chapter shall be administered by the Board of Commissioners or its officially designated representatives. All matters relating to this chapter shall be submitted to the Township Manager who will handle the matter in accordance with current Township policies, procedures, and guidelines established by the Board of Commissioners.
The Township shall keep a public record of its correspondence, findings, recommendations, and actions relating to plans filed for review, in accordance with the policies, procedures, and guidelines established by the Board of Commissioners and Planning Commission.
A. 
No application for preliminary or final plan approval shall be filed and processed until the fees and/or escrow deposit, as set forth below, shall have been paid.
B. 
The Board of Commissioners shall adopt and amend by resolution a schedule of fees, payable by the applicant to the Township, for the filing of preliminary and final plans.
C. 
The Board of Commissioners shall adopt and amend by resolution a schedule of escrow deposits to be paid by the applicant to the Township at the time of the filing of an application, sufficient to pay all Township expenditures anticipated in the course of its review and disposition of plans.
(1) 
Costs incurred by the Township in excess of the escrowed amount shall be paid by the applicant prior to the granting of approvals or permits.
(2) 
If costs incurred by the Township are less than the escrowed amount, the difference shall be refunded to the applicant following disposition of the plans.
D. 
Township expenditures subject to escrow as in Subsection C, above, include but are not limited to the following:
(1) 
Engineering and other technical services performed by landscape architects, geologists, planners, and other professionals during the plan review.
(2) 
Construction inspection and the testing of materials.
(3) 
Services of the Township Solicitor in reviewing and/or preparing documents related to the plan reviews.
(4) 
Actual costs of recording.
(5) 
An administrative charge of 15% of the total costs described in the previous four subsections.
E. 
Escrow accounts for fees to conduct the necessary inspection and review services provided by the Township during the construction of improvements approved in the final plan shall be established as part of the developer's agreement required in § 260-99.
F. 
Disputes. In the event that the applicant disputes the amount of any such review fee, the applicant shall, within 45 days of the billing date or the notice of withdrawal by the Township of an amount held in escrow, notify the Township and their consultant that the fees are disputed. In such case the Township shall not delay or disapprove a subdivision or land development due to the applicant's request regarding disputed fees. The applicant shall within 30 days after the transmittal date of a bill for inspection services or 45 days of the date of transmittal of a final bill for inspection services, notify the Township and their professional consultant that the fees are disputed. The fee dispute process established in the Pennsylvania Municipalities Code generally includes following steps:
(1) 
In the event that the Township and the applicant cannot agree on the amount of any review fees which are reasonable and necessary, then the Township and applicant shall jointly by mutual agreement appoint another professional consultant serving as arbitrator to examine the disputed review fees and make a determination as to the amount thereof which are fair and reasonable within 50 days.
(2) 
Appropriate payments or reimbursements shall be made within 60 days following the decision by the arbitrator.
(3) 
If the Township and applicant cannot agree on an independent professional consultant to serve as arbitrator within 20 days of the billing date, then upon application of either party, the President Judge of the Court of Common Pleas of the judicial district in which the municipality is located shall appoint an engineer who shall be neither the Township Engineer or any professional engineer who has been retained by, or performed services for the Township or applicant within the preceding five years.
(4) 
The fee of the appointed arbitrator shall be paid by the applicant if the amount of payment required in the decision is equal to or greater than the original bill. If the amount of payment is less than the original bill by $5,000 or more, the arbitrator may require part of full payment from the applicant or professional consultant. In all other cases, the consultant and Township should each pay 1/2 of the fees of the professional engineer.
A. 
Preventative remedies.
(1) 
In addition to other remedies, the Township may institute and maintain appropriate actions by law or in equity to restrain, to correct or abate violations, to prevent unlawful construction and/or demolition, to recover damages and to prevent illegal occupancy of a building.
(2) 
The Township may refuse to issue any permit or grant any approval necessary to further improve any real property which has been developed or has resulted from a subdivision in violation of this chapter. As an additional condition for the issuance of any permit or approval, the Township may require compliance with the conditions that would have been applicable to the property at which time the applicant acquired it.
B. 
Any person, partnership, or corporation who or which has violated the provisions of this chapter shall, upon being found liable therefore in a civil enforcement proceeding commenced by the Township, pay a judgment of not more than $500 plus all court costs, including the reasonable attorney fees incurred by the Township as a result thereof.
C. 
No judgment shall commence or be imposed, levied, or be payable until the date of the determination of a violation by the district justice.
D. 
If the defendant neither pays nor timely appeals the judgment, the Township may enforce the judgment pursuant to the applicable rules of civil procedure.
E. 
Each day that a violation continues shall constitute a separate violation, unless the district justice determining that there has been a violation further determines that there was a good faith basis for the person, partnership, or corporation violating this chapter to have believed that there was no such violation, in which event there shall be deemed to have been only one such violation until the fifth day following the date of the determination of a violation by the district justice and thereafter each day that a violation continues shall constitute a separate violation.
F. 
All penalties collected for such violations shall be paid to the Township.