Turkey Creek Township Advisory Board Monday, June 12, elected John Heckaman to replace Kimberly Cates as fire board chairman.

Cates was compelled by operation of law to resign Thursday, June 8, when she was sworn in to replace county council member Bob Sanders, who passed away in May.

Her membership on the advisory board was also automatically terminated Thursday.

“I felt like I made a difference,” she said. “If they need help with anything in the community I would be more than happy to step up and donate my time.”

The board also approved a $286,080 bid to purchase a 2018 tanker with a vacuum pump for the fire department.

The tanker will replace the 1999 tanker currently in use by the fire department.

Fire Chief Mickey Scott presented two bids, but requested approval of the higher bid because the lower bid contained unacceptable exceptions to the department’s specifications, making the new equipment incompatible with existing department apparatus.

Township Trustee Barb Griffith requested transferring $20,370 from the township’s rainy day fund to the general fund to pay for cemetery remediation.

The invoice for remediating Union and Cable cemeteries amounted to $62,870, which “was quite a bit higher than the original bid,” said Griffith, “We expected about $22,000 less, but that bid was four years old. The rainy day fund has $73,027 and is to provide for unexpected expenditures.”

The board unanimously approved the request.

Griffith also requested $8,000 for mowing and $1,000 to replace a memorial stone.

“I don’t foresee any other expenses, so we should be good until the end of the year,” she said. Five of the township’s six cemeteries have been remediated.

The remaining cemetery, Mock Cemetery, is the township’s smallest and oldest, said Griffith. She has not made a decision whether to remediate that cemetery.

Many of the 48 grave sites have been lost to posterity, with stones missing and trees overgrowing the plots.

Tombstones date from the 1840s through 1899 and the cemetery is essentially landlocked.

“No one visits there anymore,” she said. “There really is no public access.”

The board also accepted the architect’s bid for renovations to stations 1 and 2 “with clarifications.”

Township attorney Andrew Grossnickle specified the clarifications. “The architect wants to cap the work at $15,000 rather than $14,250 and wants to include state permit fees in that cap.”

The board next meets at 7 p.m. Monday, July 10, at Syracuse Town Hall.