Please 'Grease' Their Palms

It's been a few years since Pottstown High School staged a musical but, they're staging one this year -- the classic 1950s drama "Grease," made famous on the big screen by John Travolta and Olivia Newton John.

The show is not until Feb. 27th and 28th at 7 p.m., and March 1st at 2 p.m.

But there's a way you can help out right now.

As a high school student I both acted and spent time in the lighting crew for the shows at Pleasantville High School and I can tell you from experience that not only does it require a lot of work, and a lot of dedication; it also requires a lot of money.

So why not make a donation in exchange for an ad in the show program?

"As you know, this will be a great opportunity for our students and will help them broaden their horizons," high school math teacher Robert Decker wrote in a letter to local businesses.

"In an effort to make this year a success we are turning to our community in support of this great
opportunity. We are asking for your donation in exchange for an ad in our program this year. This ad will also be put  on our Facebook page as well as Twitter to show your generosity and support, he wrote. 

"You are able to purchase a quarter-page ad for $20, half-page page ad for $30, and full page ad for $50."

You can send a check made payable to “PHS Musical” and the ad that you would like printed in the
program as well as seen Facebook and Twitter. 

These items can be mailed to :
Pottstown Musical
ATTN: Robert Decker
Pottstown High School
750 Washington St.
Pottstown, PA 19464

I know its late notice, (My bad, but I really can't manage more than one blog post a day folks) but they would like the materials by Feb. 9th.

"We feel that every contribution provides a positive outcome for all involved as many of the students and their families have supported the community and surrounding area businesses through patronage over the years and will continue to do so as residents of the community. Together, we can offer a great show for our students as well as the community," Decker wrote in his letter. 

If you have questions or need additional information please email: phsmusical@pottstownk12.org.

No Urge to Merge

Photo by Evan Brandt

Many members of the Phillies Fire Co. turned out for

Wednesday night's borough council meeting.

Pottstown Borough Council made its way through a fairly hefty agenda Wednesday night with relative speed.

The first big item on the agenda were a presentation from Higher Ground Church International regarding their application to open a boarding house for veterans in the rectory and convent of the former St. Peter's Church.

But his presentation was similar to the neighborhood meeting held last night in the rectory and, as faithful readers of this blog, you already know most of what is relevant because you read about it in yesterday's post.

If not, you may have read about it in today's Mercury.

The other big item may not have been on your radar screen is the pending consolidation of the fire companies and the Phillies refusal to take part.

As a result, as of March 31, the Phillies, with about 50 percent of all the borough's volunteer fire fighters, will not be permitted to fight fires in Pottstown.

Look for your fire insurance costs to increase.

We covered the story live, so you may have seen it in today's Mercury.

But if not, I have embedded a video here of some of the comments made by local attorney Doug Breidenbach who spoke on behalf of the Phillies, who showed up silently in force in the audience Wednesday night.



In brief, he told council that the reasons provided by the borough for consolidation are not adequate and that although it may be necessary in the future, it isn't now.

Not only are there currently enough volunteers, but keeping the current system as long as possible is staving off the potential necessity of a paid fair company and every year the current system remains saves taxpayers money.

Neither Borough Manager Mark Flanders not anyone on council responded to his remarks.

Anyway, here are the Tweets.

Getting to Know the Neighbors

Photo by Evan Brandt

The former St. Peter's Church, has been purchased by a 

Conshohocken church named Higher Ground International.

The pastor and members of Higher Ground Church International, which has purchased the former St. Peter's Church and school on South Street, met with neighbors Tuesday night to assuage fears that the Conshohocken-based church plans to open a homeless shelter or boarding house.

Well actually, they do want to open a boarding house, two in fact; one in the former convent and one in the former rectory.

But rather than house homeless or random people off the street, the plan is to have one-year leases and specialize in housing veterans, Pastor Steve Martin told the dozen or so neighbors who accepted the church's invitation circulated Sunday in the neighborhood.

A Frequently-Asked-Questions sheet answered many of the neighborhoods questions before they were asked, but the group kept Martin busy answering questions for about 90 minutes nevertheless.

Most of the answers to those questions can be found in the Tweets below.

Of Bridges and Highway Garages

If there was a word to describe what was discussed at the Douglass (Mont.) Supervisors meeting Monday night, that word would be "infrastructure."

To be sure, it was not a long meeting, 30 minutes by my count, but during that time they managed to discuss the replacement of the County Line Road bridge over Swamp Creep -- for which they've been awarded a $595,500 grant (minus their $118,000 contribution); taking over the Henry Road bridge from the county; and beginning the process of replacing the "disgusting" highway garage on Municipal Drive.

The board also discussed PennDOT's plans to re-pave Route 100 from Farmington Avenue to the Berks County line.

The only other subject of discussion that merits note here is the second meeting of the newly formed Emergency Services Board.

It intends to seek more funding for the services of the Gilbertsville Ambulance Company from New Hanover Township, as well as pursue an ordinance that will require insurance companies to reimburse the fire companies for the cost of responding to motor vehicle accidents.

Here are the Tweets from the meeting.

Why Do We Need Wards?

This map, made for The Mercury when the wards were last re-districted, hangs on the wall by my desk for easy reference. Do we really need to be any more divided than we already are?

We have a saying in the newsroom, that often-enough Pottstown gets trapped in a conventional kind of thinking we describe as "that's the way we've always done it."

We understand this, because we often find ourselves thinking the same way at The Mercury.

But something shook me out of my conventional thinking last month and I began to ponder the question above...."Why do we need wards?"

What prompted this rumination was the recent announcement of two Democratic candidates for the Fourth Ward seat being abandoned by Borough Council President Stephen Toroney.

Two well-qualified candidates -- one a Pottstown native and Pottstown High School teacher, the other a former candidate who serves on several board ran for mayor and regularly attends council meetings -- announced their intention to run.

(I received an e-mail Sunday from a candidate who has announced his intention to run for the Republican nomination in the Fourth Ward. Look for that story in Tuesday's Mercury).

Ross Belovich

Dennis Arms

So as I wrote the articles announcing the announcements by Ross Belovich and Dennis Arms, I thought to myself: "Boy its a shame we couldn't have both these candidates in the race in November. After all, half the time candidates run unopposed in some wards."

And that's when that final word caught in my mind.

"Wards" are what is preventing Pottstown from enjoying a campaign with both these candidates.

So I began to wonder what purpose they serve.

The obvious answer is to ensure even representation.

But how different are we really? We all pay the same tax rates, we all (presumably) want to see the borough revitalized and getting its fair share of public monies; to see our roads paved, our streets safe and our community desirable.

Is Pottstown truly so wildly diverse that a council person from Ward 7 can't understand the problems of someone who lives in Ward 1?

Now look at those two wards and recognize most people would consider Ward 1 to have a higher African-American population and so they might argue wards ensure a voice for that demographic on council.

And yes, previous occupants of that seat included Alison Hunter and Mark Gibson, one a Democrat, one a Republican; both African-Americans both independent thinkers.

But Ward 1 is currently represented by a Caucasian fellow named Ryan Procsal, who ran unopposed.

And Ward 7 (the "Rosedale" ward) is represented by Joe Kirkland, an African-American who not only ousted a Caucasian incumbent; he then, four years later, beat off a a challenge from another Caucasian ... twice.

So perhaps this is the right place (and time) to consider whether those racial markers matter any more. Wouldn't it be great if they didn't?

February is Black History Month and much of that history is devoted to Black Americans fighting to be considered nothing more than Americans.

Are there still differences? Of course.

Do we need to keep working at these things? Of course.

But maybe one way to do that is to do away with the idea that whites and blacks are so different in Pottstown that we need to encode representation for each in how we elect our representatives.

Pottstown is not the deep South, where laws are needed to ensure voting access for African-Americans.

Yes, Pennsylvania tried to enact a Voter ID law which, intended or not, disproportionately disenfranchises poor and black voters, but a judge thankfully tossed it, largely for those reasons.

And consider that our mayor, Sharon Thomas, is African-American and she defeated a Caucasian incumbent who had upset Thomas's incumbency four years earlier.

And the mayor is a post that is elected borough-wide.

Why isn't everyone else?

The school board is elected borough-wide and lord knows the taxes levied by that body tower over those levied by council.

Each election cycle, we see activists and politicos bemoan the difficulties in finding people with enough time, talent and will to run for public office. Why are we limiting the pool of candidates?

Two excellent candidates might be next-door neighbors. Currently, we could only have the benefit of one.

What if we increased that pool of candidates by a factor of seven? What would we lose?

When people think of Pottstown, this is all we should

want them to think of.

How often have we heard the lament that we have to "find a way to bring the town together?"

Indeed, the first obstacle might be said to be that we are officially and permanently cut into seven different pieces.

What better way to engage the entire community in a discussion of unity than to have a community-wide discussion about making us unified?

Then consider the matter of re-districting.

We're now five years late on the 10-year cycle of re-districting that is supposed to follow every Census.

Do we really have the time and resources in Pottstown to fritter them away on that exercise in futility while we face a host of other more important issues?

I mean come on people, we're 5.5 square miles. We're not Nebraska. What's the point?

It is probably too late to change the election framework for the current election cycle, but perhaps that's better.

After all, although current candidates brought this issue to mind, you can't change the rules of an election in the middle of an election.

But we should consider changing it for the next one.

In the coming year, I feel certain The Mercury is going to address this question, to find out how we eliminate wards and to ask you if you think they should be eliminated.

Tell me what you think, either in a comment here to be shared with other readers, or in an e-mail: ebrandt@pottsmerc.com

As it stands, the only good reason that seems apparent for keeping the ward system is "that's the way we've always done it."

After all, we're one school district. Why can't we be one town?