Boyertown Parents Seek Answers to Stadium Woes

Memorial Stadium at Boyertown Area Senior High School is currently closed to the public due to potential structural problems, with the exception of the track team, which uses the two inside lanes to practice.

A standing-room only crowd packed the school board facilities committee meeting Tuesday, filled with people who wanted answers about when repairs will begin on Memorial Stadium.

More specifically, they wanted to know whether it will be repaired in time for the fall sports (football) season.

They didn't get all the answers they sought, largely because those answers don't exist yet, but those that do, they received.

On Feb. 26, the board hired Barry Isett & Assoc. to complete a structural analysis of the stadium and present options for the repairs. That is the same firm that in January reported the stadium may have structural problems and should be closed to the public.

Tom Slowik, the firm's senior forensic engineer, will give an update on progress to the school board at its April 10 meeting, according to a timeline handed out by Facilities Committee Chairman David Lewis. The deadline for presenting final options is the week of April 23.

As things stood Tuesday, those findings will be presented first to the facilities committee at the May 1 meeting, and the full board will vote on a course of action on May 8.

After that, a bid must be prepared and after a month the bids will be opened and work can begin.

The parents who attended thanked the board for what information was prevented and urged them to understand the importance the stadium holds to high school athletes in the community.

The possibility of special meetings to get started sooner, as well as option for night work, were broached.

Athletic Director Nick Palladino said he has several options for the fall sports season, the selection of which will depend on how long the repairs will take.

Here are the Tweets from the meeting:

Is a Pottstown School Tax Hike Pending?

What's more fun than attending three Pottstown School Board committee meetings? Having a two-hour executive session right in the middle of it all of course.

One nice thing about the Pottstown School Board scheduling the facilities, personnel and finance committee meetings all on the same night is, its all on the same night.

So last night, my Twitter followers learned about some great bids for masonry work around the district, work on replacing the flat roof on the administration building and, most importantly, a first look at the 2016-17 school budget.

Work on the administration building flat room has already begun.

Given the chaos of the state budget process in Harrisburg, which continues as I write this, Business Manager Linda Adams gave her "best guess" about where state aid will land for the budget year we're still in.

What the picture will look like for the budget year she has started to plan for is anybody's guess.

Nevertheless, something are known at this point.

The preliminary $59,583,669 proposed budget for 2016-17 calls for spending almost $2.5 million more than the $57,136,928 2015-16 budget.

And of that increase, more than half that increase -- $1.6 million to be close to exact -- is due to salary and PSERS (retirement) increases. PSERS by itself is $1 million more.

Add in the fact that Gov. Tom Wolf's proposed budget had called for a charter school tuition reimbursement of more than $700,000 which the budget finally adopted in March did not include and next year's cannot be expected to include.

Another more local cause is the continuing collapse of Pottstown's property tax base. Assessment challenges in Pottstown -- more numerous than anywhere else in Montgomery County -- will strip another $393,000 off the revenue side of the balance sheet in 2016-17, said Adams.

And while an increase of more tan $200,000 is expected in state funds for the basic education subsidy, losses in special education funding and vocational education funding for the state leave Pottstown at a $70,723 loss in the state aid column, no matter what the headlines and state officials running for reelection may tell you.

The good news is that ultimately, this preliminary budget look only sees a $155,696 shortfall.

The bad news is that number only gets reached with an infusion of nearly $1 million in new local taxes, a 1.3345 mill tax hike, or 3.4 percent, the maximum allowed by the state index.

School Board President Andrew Kefer, who is also the chair of the joint personnel and finance committee, made it pretty clear that there is little appetite on the board for a tax hike of that size.

Board member Polly Weand expressed the hope that the borough-wide LERTA tax break the borough and school district are working together to implement will help to ultimately reverse the decline in assessed property values.

Let's hope she's right.

Here are the Tweets from the evening.