2017 Articles
Season of giving
This is the time of year when people give the most to charities. We've paid the annual household bills, and now we decide how much we have to spare for others.
Generations of merchants
Some years ago my friend George Wausnock, perhaps the area's biggest collector of Pottstown memorabilia, gave me an 1887 New Year's Day supplement to the Daily Pottstown Ledger.
Grants vital to Pottstown
In the last 15 years, the borough has received nearly $22 million in federal, state, county, and private grant funding.
Park-aholics
Grants are vital to the sustainability of Pottstown, providing vital infrastructure improvements. But some grants do more harm than good, paying for superfluous projects that are costly to maintain.
State oppresses local municipalities
The state legislature can be as irresponsible as it wants, but local school districts and municipalities still have to follow the rules it sets down.
Testing merry-go-round
Last week, Gov. Tom Wolf announced the state will reduce the time school districts must spend next
spring administering the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment test (PSSA).
Police ever more costly
In 2008, the borough laid off 12 employees and increased real estate taxes 10 percent. Since then, Pottstown police officers have enjoyed the borough’s fastest growing salaries and benefits.
Sustainable police force needed
It’s a question no one wants to answer, but it must be asked. With the ever-increasing cost of salaries and benefits, coupled with a declining tax base, can Pottstown sustain a police force with 46 officers?
More downsizing needed
Next week, Pottstown Council will have to make some difficult choices. Unless further cuts are made
to the proposed 2018 borough budget, real estate taxes will need to increase 18.6 percent.
Toughest job in Pottstown
At the same time it deals with a huge budget deficit, Pottstown Council will also need to appoint an interim borough manager to replace Mark Flanders, who is retiring on Christmas Eve.
Pottstown loves dogs
During my 21-day trek from door to door prior to the recent Pottstown School Board election, I learned many things about our town I never fully appreciated. One such aspect is dogs. Pottstonians love dogs.
Welcome -- No, go away!
In my futile quest for glory as a three-term member of the Pottstown School Board, I recently got to experience our town up close and personal. You can learn a lot about people just by looking at their front porches and yards.
Always easiest to raise taxes
Leo Durocher got it wrong: Nice guys don’t always finish last. More often than not, they win local school board elections. And once in office, they find it much easier to raise taxes than to cut costs.
Pottstown looks great in the fall
I can’t say I’m delighted with the outcome of Tuesday’s Pottstown School Board election, but I thoroughly enjoyed the three weeks I spent prior to Election Day walking from home to home distributing my campaign literature.
Lots of ways to define the 'good life'
Let us pause in our discussion of current Pottstown issues and consider the reflections of an eminent world scholar on "the good life."
Reverence for life
Last month, President Trump addressed the United Nations and threatened to “totally destroy North Korea,” a nation of 25 million people. At times like these I reflect on a teacher who preached the polar opposite.
History gives Pottstown meaning
Pottstown is more than a collection of older buildings, most of them housing people of modest means. Our history and architecture give us our unique sense of place and identity.
Hesburgh earns his own stamp
I’m not Catholic, but I consider the Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, the former president of the University of Notre Dame, who died 2015, to be one of the most influential people in my life.
Where do kids play?
The Pottstown Parks and Recreation Departmentboasts 16 parks and tot lots, distributed throughout the borough. Yet you will often find kids playing on private fields, parking lots, or in the streets.
Street work: tangible progress
Pottstown owns 60 miles of streets. (PennDOT owns another 10 miles of streets like High, Manatawny, and Charlotte streets.) Ideally, streets should be repaved every 12 years — about five miles a year. But until recently, we were only resurfacing an average of 1.5 miles per year.
Pottstown grows greener
Two great examples of green infrastructure are a meadow planted last spring at the Pottstown wastewater treatment plant and a rain garden planted behind the Franklin Elementary School.
Park or pavement?
Last month, Pottstown Council authorized the borough solicitor to prepare an agreement to acquire a .78-acre tract of contaminated land at 860 Cross Street, across the street from 2-acre Pollock Park. It ought to become a meadow.
Ruthless downward spiral
Because of declining real estate assessments, the borough and school district will lose nearly $1.5 million in annual tax revenues, most likely starting Jan. 1, 2018.
Hill School needs to step up
The Hobart’s Run initiative has been a public relations bonanza for The Hill School. But the school has yet to make any substantive improvements to the neighborhood or to Pottstown.
We need green infrastructure
Green infrastructure calls for removing as much impervious surface as possible and installing trees and other water-absorbing plants in its place.
Green stormwater management
Removing excess impervious surfaces, such as Pottstown's "tree park," is the least costly and most effective way to reduce runoff.
Who pays for stormwater?
The most common source of local government revenue is the real estate tax, based on the value of a property. But there’s no correlation between the value of real estate and the amount of runoff it causes.
Non-profits would pay also
An additional feature of a stormwater runoff fee would be its application to tax-exempt properties. Because a stormwater runoff fee is not a tax, tax-exempt properties would have to pay it.
More floods in our future
For those of us who were around in 1972, the catastrophic flooding in Houston last week was a reminder of Pottstown’s own monster flood caused by Hurricane Agnes.
Stormwater a costly problem
With climate change and ever more natural areas being paved over for development, flooding will be far more common in the future than it has been in the past.
Real science versus Sound Off
Millions of Americans — and thousands of Pottstonians — experienced real science last week as they looked skyward to view the solar eclipse.
Proud of Pottstown's diversity
The controversy over monuments glorifying the Confederacy reminds me of one of Pottstown’s finest qualities: racial diversity.
We need projects like this
Rockwell Development Group, which manages the Hanover Square townhouse development at Hanover Street and the Industrial Highway, proposes to convert the historic Meyerhoff shirt factory into 28 market rate condominiums.
43,602 parking spaces
Many people think that Pottstown has a parking shortage. In fact, Pottstown has a surfeit of parking — more than two spaces for every man, woman, and child in the borough.
PAID important to Pottstown
Our tax base has been steadily declining for 20 years, and we desperately need more revenue-generating businesses.
Mosaic gets asphalt sidewalk
Pottstown’s first asphalt sidewalk, 95 feet long, has been installed at the Mosaic Community Garden on North Charlotte Street at Walnut Street.
Plenty of information online
Today, thanks to the internet and enlightened public policies, we can easily access a wealth of public information about our county, school district, and borough.
Speeding cars more dangerous than crime
Fatalities involving cars and trucks are more than twice as common in Montgomery County than those from crime, and they almost always involve strangers.
Pottstown streets best at 25 mph
Excessive speed is by far the leading cause of serious injuries and fatalities involving all kinds of motor vehicle collisions, either with pedestrians, bicyclists or other autos.
Traffic calming makes streets safer
In recent decades, traffic engineers have recognized
that physical changes to the streets are needed to force motorists to obey posted limits.
Real estate and rentals
About half the residential properties in Pottstown are rental units, which many citizens think are a major source of Pottstown’s problems.
It's all about economics
Perhaps no other building illustrates Pottstown’s real estate quandary better than 323-325 King Street.
Up and out of Pottstown
Educating Pottstown students is very important. But how many of our graduates are going to stick around and contribute to the sustainability of our community?
Avoiding the real problems
Figuring out how to keep our school district viable in the face of ever-increasing costs and diminishing resources is going to take a lot of research and creativity. But we're not talking about that.
Schools can't do it all
We’re kidding ourselves if we think schools alone are going to transform Pottstown. They aren’t. Schools are a reflection of the demographics of their community.
How many will settle here?
It’s great to prepare our students for life, but how many are going to stay here and contribute to the sustainability of our community?
Getting a handle on local jobs
Six years ago, when PAID reorganized, it adopted by-laws requiring PAID’s director to submit an annual progress report that included an inventory of all borough businesses.
Spending and taxation
From time to time, I publish a chart showing how much local government — the borough and school district — spends in Pottstown each year and where the money goes.
Residency incentive okayed
As we try to encourage more professionals to live in Pottstown, the Pottstown School District has implemented a residential homeownership initiative through the Foundation for Pottstown Education.
The big question
Pottstown Memorial Medical Center is the school district's biggest taxpayer, by far. With the sale of the for-profit hospital to the non-profit Reading Health System, will the new owners now seek a property tax exemption?
Hill School: untapped resource
Pottstown Borough government and the school district need to become more efficient. But Pottstown has other resources it could tap.
Tax-exempt campus expands
The most valuable real estate in Pottstown is The Hill School. Most of its property is tax exempt. Otherwise, its tax bill would top $2.3 million.
Public schools and self-reliance
Pottstown superintendent Stephen Rodriguez will host a forum 7 tonight at Pottstown High School called “Why Are My Taxes So High and What Can I Do About It?”
You can't build a city on pity
John Norquist, former 16-year mayor of Milwaukee and longtime advocate for cities, has published a compelling book about the natural advantages of cities (and towns like Pottstown).
50 years: Pottstown drained by car culture
Mirroring national trends, Pottstown lost most of its middle class residents to new homes on large lots outside of town. It lost its stores to new suburban malls and with ample free parking.
The future: Pottstown's key asset: sustainability
Despite the rise of sprawling development that undermined traditional towns like Pottstown, there are major economic, demographic, and environmental trends that now favor us.
2010s: Historic renovations continue
A vacant furniture landmark, the former Fecera’s Furniture warehouse on Beech Street, was purchased by a non-profit housing company and renovated into 43 apartments and an arts center.
2010s: More renovations, expansions
Montgomery County Community College West Campus continued its expansion by creating a University Center in the newly renovated former Reading freight station on South Hanover Street.
2000s: Downtown renaissance begins
A new borough hall was built downtown in 2000, and an adjacent town park, called Smith Family Plaza, was completed two years later. On the east side of the park, the 1880 Security Trust Building was renovated as offices and a restaurant in 2006.
2000s: College, greenway expand
Just ten years after it opened its West Campus building in 1996, the Montgomery County Community College expanded north of the railroad tracks to the newly re n o v a t ed Vaughn Knitting Mills building on High Street.
1990s: From downtown to Route 100
After losing downtown stores for two decades, Pottstown replaced that retail space with the construction of a new shopping center on Route 100. Meanwhile, a gaping hole downtown was sold for the construction of a new borough hall.
1990s: A college and a riverfront park
The Pottstown community pulled out all the stops to persuade the county commissioners to place a satellite campus of the Montgomery County Community College in the borough, near a newly-constructed riverfront park.
1980s: More industry, train service lost
Pottstown manufacturing jobs continued to nosedive in the 1980s, and more historic buildings, like the 1923 Pottstown High School, above, were demolished.
1980s: Historic ordinance, new business campuses
Spurred by the demolition of historic buildings, Pottstown adopted national and local historic districts and began restoring icons like the Pottstown Roller Mills, above.
1970s: Pottstown loses industry, history
The 1960s might be considered Pottstown’s golden era. But even as Pottstown prospered, there were signs of decline in the 1970s.
1970s: Decline, but seeds of renewal
In the 1970s, even as Pottstown began losing the heavy industries that had been its backbone for two centuries, the borough began planning for the future. The most significant event was the construction of the Pottstown Memorial Medical Center.
Whither goest thou, Pottstown?
Is Pottstown turning around? You would certainly get that impression at the recent Progress Pottstown luncheon sponsored by PAID and the Tri-County Chamber of Commerce.
Plans ... plans ... plans
We love plans in Pottstown. At least 20 of them have been adopted by borough government and nonprofits during my 45 years in the borough.
See the whole world from home
Thanks to Google Earth and its ground-level cousin, Street View, you can tour 40 countries all over the globe from the privacy of your own home. Anyone with a computer can download it free.
My favorite travel guide
There’s another fascinating way besides Google Earth to tour faraway places from the comfort of home, thanks to intrepid Dutch traveler Kees Colijn and YouTube.
Rethinking school structure
We need to put the individual student first and subjects second. Building relationships is more important than anything else. To do that, we must limit the number of students each teacher sees.
Sustainable schools
Last year, the Pottstown School Board set aside time at its meetings in February, March and April for cost-cutting suggestions. No one had any. Let me make a few.
The test that tells us something
For all the obsession with testing, there is only one credible test that has measured student achievement consistently since 1970 -- the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
No tax increase necessary
Exorbitant taxation has deterred many prospective businesses and residents from moving into Pottstown. We can't afford to raise taxes any higher than they are now.
Tracking student test scores
Next month, Pottstown students in grades three through eight will be taking the annual PSSAs, the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment tests.
What does state testing mean?
Although PSSA tests are supposed to make schools accountable, the state doesn’t provide much guidance in interpreting scores.
Pottstown yearbooks on website
The Pottstown School District has posted about 90 of its yearbooks on its website as pdf files. They can be viewed and downloaded free. Dating back to 1908, the yearbooks are an engaging narrative of the life of our community.
Acting for the common good
Pottstown educators engage in " silo" thinking: "Whatever I’m doing is more important than everything else.” But the people who are footing the bill, the residents and property owners of Pottstown, have their own priorities.
Pottstown crime is down, but it never was high
Major crimes were down 14 percent in 2016 over the previous year, Pottstown Police told The Mercury last week.
Crime is down, crashes are up
After falling for decades, motor vehicle crash fatalities are increasing again, nationwide and in Pennsylvania, thanks in part to more motorists reading or sending text messages while driving.
Learning to appreciate nature
The Natural Lands Trust is partnering with NorthBay, an outdoor education group, to immerse Pottstown elementary and middle school students in the natural world around them.
Setting priorities in tough times
Facing a deficit of at least $1 million in the upcoming school year, and with the third highest taxes in Pennsylvania, we should pause our discretionary spending on athletic fields.
Mountaintop remover
Back in 2015, Pottstown’s representative in Congress, Ryan Costello, was one of just 10 Republicans to sign a resolution declaring that human activity contributes to climate change and calling for action to respond to the threat. Now that Donald Trump is president, Rep. Costello is changing his tune.
Pottstown taxation: 3rd in state
The Pottstown School District now has the third highest taxes of Pennsylvania’s 500 school districts. We want to offer the best opportunities possible for our children. But we also must live within our means. We cannot afford to raise taxes this year. We must cut spending by doing things differently.
The big day: budget unveiled
The most important state event of the year takes place today, as Gov. Tom Wolf unveils his proposed budget for the 2017-2018 fiscal year.
Save a farm. Live in a town.
In the long run, traditional, walkable towns are the
only way to accommodate population growth while conserving farmland.
Trails increase our quality of life
Trails allow people to enjoy the countryside and get healthy exercise at the same time by walking or biking through it.
Deluged with technology
It’s amazing how quickly we take technology for granted. Apple introduced the iPhone just ten years ago. Yet three-quarters of all Americans now own smart phones.
Land bank will help Pottstown
Earlier this month, Pottstown Council authorized the creation of a borough land bank to facilitate the reclamation and redevelopment of blighted properties.
Investing in Pottstown
The Hill School has a significant handicap in comparison to its peers. Other schools are located in an idyllic village, or in the woods, or in the countryside.
Hobart's Run
As part of a fundraising campaign, The Hill School has identified an area surrounding the school campus which it hopes to revitalize by partnering with residents and property owners.
Investing in Pottstown
The Hill School has a significant handicap in comparison to its peers. Other schools are located in an idyllic village, or in the woods, or in the countryside.
Sustainable Pottstown
Terrorist attacks in Orlando, Berlin, and Brussels. The threat of ISIS. Mideast refugees flooding into Europe. These stories dominated the headlines in 2016. But the real threat is climate change.
Restoration fund needed
Last month, Borough Council passed a $52.6 million budget for 2017. Nearly all this money is aimed at keeping existing borough services. There's no money for improving the appearance of our town.
Thoughts for 2017
To begin the new year, here are some thoughts from one of humanity’s greatest thinkers, Albert Einstein:
Our perilous future
Just before Christmas, NASA scientist and former astronaut Piers Sellers died of pancreatic cancer. Earlier, here's what he wrote about climate change: