And You Can Take That to the (Land) Bank

Most of Monday night's borough council meeting was taken up with discussion of land banks.

What's a land bank you ask?

It is a entity which takes possession of property, often blighted property and almost always tax-delinquent property, and either holds it in search of a qualified developer, or passes it off to that developer almost immediately.

The idea, said Winifred Branton and John Kromer, consultants for the PA Housing Alliance, is to take vacant problem properties and flip them into productive, tax-paying properties.

Council, uncharacteristically, asked a lot of questions of the pair and its support for the program could be described as lukewarm.

Nonetheless, they agreed to let the Blighted Property Review Committee put together some recommendations about how and in what form a Pottstown land bank might be established.

On other matters, as expected, council authorized a new ordinance to deal with vacant property; approved a contract with Community Champions to manage the impacts of that new ordinance, and also approved applying for a grant to replace the borough's street lights with LED lights.

Honoring Marable, Energy-Efficient Street Lights.

One of my favorite Mercury photos of

Newstell Marable addressing Pottstown Council

Three major topics dominated discussion at last night's Pottstown Borough Council meeting.

One was how to honor the legacy of the late Newstell Marable Sr., the long-time president of the Pottstown chapter of the NAACP.

Mercury intern and Pottstown born-and-bred journalist in training Leah Proctor-Ford is taking this subject on and she attended the council meeting. You will find her Tweets are intermingled with mine.

The second was a proposal to use a grant to replace all the street lights in Pottstown with LED lights at no increased cost to taxpayers. The 30 percent match for the grant would come from funds already collected from developers.

And third was the likely vote at Monday night's meeting to move forward with a new vacant property registration ordinance and a contract with Community Champions to administer it.

But you can read all about it in the Tweets from the evening and in more detail in the news columns of The Mercury.

New Chapter in Fire Merger, New Fire Truck

Photo by Evan Brandt

It was a nice twilight walk back from Pottstown Borough Council Monday.

So once again, the Storify program I use to collect all these Tweets and links fails the primary test of usefulness when it will not allow a link from a YouTube video to be posted within its borders.

I have asked a question publicly on Twitter, but here in the world of deadlines, I doubt it will come soon enough.

Instead, I am left with little choice but to embed the video here in the blog for you to view, if you are interested in the mayor's thoughts on the fire merger talks, here instead of in the context of when it occurred.



So it goes.

The headlines are council unanimously to cease its arrangement with David Woglom, their consultant in the fire merger talks, and agreed to but a new $1.1 million fire truck without raising taxes.

Otherwise, pretty quick meeting.

Here are the Tweets

Officer of the Year, Fire Merger Fall-out, New Life for Mrs. Smith's Pies Site, Rental Issues Update

Photo by Evan Brandt

Pottstown Mayor Sharon Thomas, right, reads the proclamation naming Det. Heather Long Pottstown's Office of the Year, while Police Capt. Robert Thomas, left, and Chief Richard Drumheller listen.

So sometimes, you know, technology just fails you.

Despite waning battery life, it was not my mobile devices which made life difficult last night, it was the after-the-fact compilations.

I don't know if it was Storify or YouTube that had a stick up its ass, but I could not get the video links of Heather Long's swearing in to show up on the Storify of last night's council meeting.

And I had such good seats too.

Anyway, because I will never let a good video go to waste, I am embedding them here in a different, hopefully more cooperative program (Not much more).

Here is video of Police Chief Richard Drumheller praising Heather Long's dedication:



And here is more video, this time of Pottstown Mayor Sharon Thomas, reading the proclamation for Long's honor:



And I'd like to say more about last night's meeting, because it was kind of interesting, but you'll have to get it from the Tweets below because at this point, I need a cocktail ... or 10.