MIDDLESEX TWP — A longtime township police officer will retire in April.

Ron Perkins will give up his badge after 25 years with the police force.

The township supervisors voted Wednesday night to advertise for a new officer.

Perkins was not at the meeting, but his co-worker for his entire tenure with the force commented on Perkins’ contribution.

Randy Ruediger, the department’s sergeant in charge, had worked on the Middlesex force for one year when Perkins was hired.

“He was a very good coworker,” Ruediger said. “His focus was public safety and traffic enforcement.”

He said the township will lose a talented officer come April.

“He was a dedicated employee,” Ruediger said. “We are going to lose the commitment he had to the township, and his overall concern for the citizens.”

Also at the meeting, the supervisors heard Harbison Road resident Ellen Flemma ask if they had met with officials from the state Department of Transportation regarding the Ball’s Bend widening project for Route 228.

The project drawings, which remove three curves from the highway, show the new, widened Route 228 cutting through the farm of Flemma’s family as well as several homes on Allemande Drive.

Flemma told the supervisors that she is interested in seeing how PennDOT engineers plan to connect the existing roads to the new Route 228 given the proposed location of the road and the slopes that will be created.

“I’m not sure how they’re going to address those connections,” Flemma said.

The supervisors said PennDOT officials had said they would meet with them in April.