Council Gets Down To Business

105 Haws Ave. 

Wonder of wonders, the agenda for tomorrow night's Council meeting is up on Norristown.org already! I love this new trend toward giving us advanced notice and I hope it continues.

The agenda includes a zoning appeal for 105 Haws Avenue. I have no idea what this is about. Although we have an archives page of meeting agendas, all of the zoning and planning agendas from last year seem to have been removed, so I couldn't look it up. Public Comment is still up first in the meeting, before the topics are actually discussed, so residents can't even listen to the issue and then comment on it. If anyone knows the story on this appeal, let me know and I'll update this item.

Also listed are two motions to approve agreements with CGI Communications and Lois Hagerty. CGI is a marketing company in Rochester, NY that specializes in "Come To Our Community" videos and other tools to promote towns. Take a look at the sample videos on their website.

Lois Hagerty is a Harrisburg lobbyist. Apparently Norristown has had an ongoing relationship with her. I'd be interested to see a list of her past accomplishments on Norristown's behalf.

The next motion I thought was oddly worded: "...to award the bid for repair of the storm sewer improvements on East Roberts/Willow Streets...." Is that right? We're repairing "improvements?" Who did the improvements, how long ago and how much did we pay for the original work? Or should it just say "...to repair the storm sewer..."? Anyway, the bid was from N. Abbonizio Contracting Inc. in Conshohocken, in the amount of $146,104 "as per our Interim Engineer’s letter and contingent upon final funding approval from the PA. Dept. of Community & Economic Dev."

So that's the gist of what will be going on at the meeting.

In other news, I'd just like to thank Shae Ashe, The Norristown Project, and the volunteers who came out Saturday for the service day projects at the OIC, Selma Mansion and Centre Theatre. I was at Selma, and can report that, along with all the dust we kicked up, there was a massive amount of positive attitude toward Norristown in the air. Very exhilarating. Just remember, we don't have to wait another full year to schedule more service days around town. Our volunteers are our best asset.