Some New Ideas on Tax Breaks

Photo by Evan Brandt

Pottstown Schools Superintendent Jeff Sparagana began the joint school board borough council meeting Tuesday with a shameless plug (which we are totally falling for) for The Wiz, Pottstown's first full-district musical in seven years, being staged on March 4, 5 and 6 at Pottstown High School.

Against all odds, the joint meeting of Pottstown Borough Council and Pottstown School Board Tuesday turned out to be fairly interesting and to contain one or two novel ideas.

Yes people, it can happen.

Hat's are off to school board member Polly Weand who, apparently after reading how some other communities have approached the LERTA tax break question, made some interesting suggestions.

For the uninitiated, LERTA stands for Local Economic Revitalization Tax Assistance.

And the question of whether to enact one in Pottstown has been held up by the school board for months.

That log-jam seemed to break Tuesday when Weand suggested that in addition to giving people a sliding scale tax break on the assessed value of their property improvements over time, that they raise the stakes for those who commit to hiring local people.

She also suggested, and council and the school board ultimately agreed, to forming a joint committee to quickly (emphasis on quickly) come up with other incentives that might move Pottstown in the right direction and which could be written into the LERTA statute.

Ideas include a "threshold investment" to qualify, shortening the length of time the tax abatement is in place and breaks for residential properties that are purchased or occupied by teachers and first-responders.

The committee of four was appointed and hopes to finish its suggestions in as little as two month's time.

Also discussed were the Pottstown In Focus film festival, the tourism and recreation district, Pottstown's sustainability plan and plans to teach school children more walking and biking safety.

Without further ado, here are the Tweets and links:

Sustainability, Cooperation and Renovation

Photo by Evan Brandt

Officials gather and chat in Lincoln Elementary School's newly

refurbished all-purpose room before the joint meeting.

Tuesday night, Pottstown Borough Council and the Pottstown School Board held a joint meeting at Lincoln Elementary School.

The meeting began with a tour of the newly renovated and expanded building.

This was followed by a short presentation by Erica Weekley, the assistant borough manager, on the upcoming Pottstown CARES Clean-Up.

This in turn was followed by a presentation by the two to numbers crunchers in the Pottstown, Borough Finance Director Janice Lee and School District Business Manager Linda Adams, who briefed both boards on ways the two entities are working together to save money for the taxpayers both entities served.

This was following by a very interesting presentation by a planner from the Montgomery County Planning Commission on the possibility of Pottstown adopting a "municipal sustainability plan;" a presentation that was well-received and which it seems both entities support and hope to implement.

Below, as usual, are the Tweets from the meeting.

Sustained Sustainability

GVF Assistant Director Maureen Farrell and Action News Meteorologist
David Murphy present Dr. Celeste Schwartz, MCCC vice president
for Information Technology and College Services,
with a platinum level sustainability award.

Blogger's Note: What follows is a press release from Montgomery County Community College:

For the third consecutive year, Montgomery County Community College (MCCC) earned a platinum-level sustainability award from the Greater Valley Forge Management Association (GVF) on Sept. 9 during the organization’s annual Sustainability Breakfast.

MCCC was one of 29 organizations recognized for sustainability efforts in 2013. According to GVF, applicants represent more than 60,000 employees and close to 300 different workplace sustainability programs.

MCCC partners with GVF to operate a campus shuttle service between its Blue Bell and Pottstown campuses. Introduced in 2010 and expanded from a 14- to 20-passenger vehicle in 2012, 10,432 riders utilized the service in 2012-13, a 23 percent increase over the previous year. 

With an average daily ridership of 72 passengers, the shuttle helped to eliminate approximately 54,527 metric tons of carbon emissions and reduce vehicle usage by 522,144 miles over the past year.

In addition to the shuttle program, MCCC also employs Zimride, an industry leading rideshare service that provides a safe and easy way for students and staff to arrange carpooling through college community network that fully integrates with Facebook. Since launching Zimride in 2011, MCCC’s network has logged 1,197,760 carpool miles.

At the College’s Central Campus in Blue Bell, drivers of electric, hybrid, and conventional vehicles that average 25 MPG or greater, as well as carpoolers and shuttle riders, have the opportunity to park in a designated, convenient 185-space parking lot adjacent to the Advanced Technology Center. Electric vehicle charging stations are available in the Green Lot, as well as in the South Hall parking lot at the West Campus in Pottstown.

Other transportation initiatives include a Segway program for public safety officers in Pottstown, electric and hybrid vehicles for public safety and facilities staff in Blue Bell, and an increased effort to promote bicycle accessibility at all MCCC locations.

Since signing the American College and University Presidents’ Climate Commitment in 2007, Montgomery County Community College has put into place policies and procedures that reduce its carbon footprint. To learn more about the College’s sustainability initiative, visit mc3green.wordpress.com.

* Also part of the college's "Sustainability Initiative" is the plan to install wind turbines at the Pottstown campus to generate clean electricity

Getting Green, Down By the River

Those familiar with Pottstown's Riverfront Park are, most likely, also familiar with the brick building which stands near its College Drive entrance.

Once a PECO sub-station, the building has, for some time, been the headquarters for the Schuylkill River National and State Heritage Area, which occupies the front half of the structure.

Originally purchased by Pottstown Borough for this purpose, the rear half of the building has gone unused, but not un-valued.

When the borough sold the building to Montgomery County Community College, it became obvious that the college's Pottstown campus is expanding on both sides of the trail tracks which run alongside the main campus building.

Today, an old-fashioned ribbon-cutting is being held to celebrate the second phase of the rehabilitation of the rear half of that building, bringing it one step closer to opening as the center for the college's environmental science program.

(I can't be there to cover it because I am instead spending my evening -- again -- with the ever-decisive Pottstown School Board.)

But according to the information provided last week by MCCC's Alana Mauger, this building will be pretty green when it's finished.

The completion of "phase II" being celebrated  replaces the building leaking roof, with an eco-friendly "green" roof and energy efficient windows. In fact the building is being designed to meet LEED specifications.

(LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design and is the measure by which environmental friendliness of buildings is measured these days.)

Once complete, the building will incorporate a variety of sustainable adaptions in keeping with the college's sustainability efforts. They will include indirect lighting, passive heating, and the afore-mentioned green roof, which will also be equipped with photo voltaic cells to generate electricity from sunlight.

Here is a blog (hosted on The Mercury's Town Square blog site, where this blog also lives) that provides updates on MC3's sustainability efforts.

The cost of phase II was $1.2 million, including funding from Pennsylvania's Redevelopment Assistance Capital program, Community Development Block Grants, the college's foundation, HUD, National Penn Bank and nearly $600,000 from the college itself.

The project's first phase, completed in March 2010 at a cost of $1.3 million, was primarily focused on the parking lot and required the removal of contaminated fill, and the installation of drainage facilities and bio-retention basins for the frequently flooded site, that captures stormwater run-off and returns it to the groundwater table. That project also featured, LED lighting, which reduced electrical consumption by 70 percent over standard lighting, and the planting of 130 trees, shrubs and bushes.

A final phase, at another $2.1 million, will focus on the building's interior, which will house an interpretive center, laboratory, classrooms, offices, as well as exterior landscaping consistent with the borough's effort to create a pedestrian promenade which forges a link between Riverfront Park, the Schuylkill River Trail and downtown Pottstown.

This project is "shovel ready," although all the funding is not yet secured.

However, the heritage area has already secured nearly $200,000 from the National Park Service for the interpretive center; nearly $16,000 from its board of directors, as well as $87,000 from the PA Dept. of Conservation and Natural Resources and $30,000 from Martin Foundation and another $10,000 from National Penn Bank.

This project is yet another example of the community college's remarkable growth -- a 60 percent enrollment increase in the last five years -- making it one of the fastest growing community college's in the nation.

In addition to showcasing the importance to the region of the history and ecology of the Schuylkill River, the building's interpretive center will promote local attractions to those using the burgeoning trail system.

The portion housing the college's environmental science program, will provide an educational direction that matches the growing demand in this field.

The state-of-the art classrooms and laboratory will be used to teach geology, geography, environmental sciences and geographic information systems.

Not only will this help the town in general, helping to make Pottstown "a college town" as fellow blogger and Pottstown stalwart Ron Downie likes to say, it will also provide our town's students with an increasing impressive array of low-cost college credits at a time when the costs of college are rising further and further out of reach of middle class Americans.