Joint Efforts for Council and School Board

Photos by Evan Brandt

Above, Members of Pottstown Borough Council and the Pottstown School Board tour the aquaponics lab of the Montgomery County Community College sustainability and Innovation Center in Pottstown prior to their joint meeting Tuesday.

At left, the fish seemed interested to have visitors.

West Campus VP David DiMattio explained that the fish droppings are pumped with the water in the experiments to provide nutrients to the plants where are being grown there without soil.

For the third time this year, the majority of Pottstown Borough Council and a minority of the
Pottstown School Board met face to face to discuss common problems and solutions.

Prior to doing so they got a tour of the Sustainability and Innovation Center of Montgomery County Community College located at 140 College Dr. in Pottstown which was handy since that's where their joint meeting was held.

As is often the case, the agenda was donated by prepared updates and reports, but there was some interesting information that came up at the end.

For example, we found out that First Baptist Church does not have enough money to fix the leaning tower that has forced the closure of Charlotte Street, and so is going to take part of the building down.

Jeff Sparagana with the borough council resolution

provided to him by Borough Manager Mark Flanders.

We also learned that in the past year, the borough's Licensing and Inspections office has inspected
1,699 rental units  some more than once.

And we further learned that Community Champions, hired last year to get a handle on vacant properties, has so far registered 213 of them in the borough and remains on the hunt for more.

All of these tidbits were answers to questions asked by Pottstown School Board member Thomas Hylton.

Borough Council also voted on a lovely resolution honoring retiring Pottstown Schools Superintendent Jeff Sparagana, now days away from retirement, thanking him for his dedication to borough schools.

The joint meeting was also host to the annual report from the Pottstown Area Industrial Development, as well as the Walk Bike Program, Pottstown InFocus film festival and all kinds of juicy tidbits.

Here are the Tweets to prove it: