Welcome Signs and Pottstown Council Goals

Photo by Evan Brandt

An image of the Welcome to Pottstown sign a group of local artists would like to paint on the concrete on the vacant lot on the southeast corner of King and Manatawny streets.

Borough Council President Dan Weand wants to start council's Wednesday work sessions on a positive note.

So he began with a group of students in Andrew Bachman's engineering class who have built a hovercraft.

Unfortunately, the craft would not fit in the elevator, so audience and council members had to satisfy themselves watching it being handled in the main lobby on the way in. The four students, and Bachman, all said the efforts were teaching valuable skills and helped the students get into their first college choice, which for three of them, is Thaddeus Stevens College.

An example of one of the decorated squares.

Also on a positive note was a group of local artists who have four projects they would like to undertake to beautify downtown and the western gateway as well as promote art on July 4th.

Marie Haigh spoke about all three.

They include a Welcome to Pottstown sign you can see in the photo above.

The second project would involve a banner made up of decorated or painted cloth squares that would be strung along the hand rails of the King Street bridge over Manatawny Creek as was done for the past two Halloweens.

Thirdly, also as was done on Halloween, the group wants to create and mount permanent banners for the street lights downtown.

And finally, plans are now underway for a series of art related events around the July Fourth holiday tentatively named "Go Fourth."

Also on a positive note was the revelation that in 2016, Pottstown enjoyed a 14 percent drop in serious crimes, known as "Part 1."

Another items of interest from the meeting include the fact that the Evans Street and Moser Road bridges over the Norfolk-Southern rail tracks may be structurally deficient and suck up any money that might have been planned for street paving this summer.

And then of course, there were the goals.

Last year, Weand had each member of council articulate a goal for 2016 and last night, we found out how they did. The answer is mixed, but you'll have to watch the video embedded in the Tweets below to find out.

That same video also has council's goals for 2017. So, have at it!