Council Meeting Tonight. Bring Your Decoder Ring.

Council Workshop Meeting tonight at 6:30 pm in Municipal Hall. I'm guessing they'll require a secret handshake to get in because they sure don't seem to want us to understand ahead of time what's up for a vote tonight. The agenda can be found at this link.  Here's a summary.

After the usual call to order, etc. presentations will be made by Five Saints Distillery and Norristown Men of Excellence. Then announcements, then the public gets to comment before they find out any details about the issues of the meeting.

The 1st item for voting is an amendment to the Sterling Act to require that up to one percent of Philadelphia wage tax paid by non-residents of Philadelphia be remitted to the Municipality in which the taxpayer resides. The Sterling Act is a state law concerning city taxation. Not sure why Norristown needs to vote on it.

Item 2 is a request from the County to waive location restrictions which prohibits transient merchant sales along Swede Street between Main Street and Airy Street. I assume this is to allow for food trucks in front of the court house. Since the food trucks that the county brought in last year weren't local, all this does is take business away from Norristown restaurants, so I don't think we should allow it unless they give priority to food vendors from Norristown. But since Council always gives the county what they want, it's probably already a done deal.

Item 3 -- Five Saints Distillery requests to waive location restrictions which prohibits transient merchant sales at 129 East Main Street opposite the firehouse garage doors and on Green Street opposite the planned front door entrance. Not sure what they have in mind, but my opinion is the same as above. No transient merchants from outside Norristown if they're offering anything existing town businesses already offer.

Item 4 -- Awarding the contract for the Public Works Roof repair to Munn Roofing from Hatfield for the base and the alternate in the amount of $255,125.

Item 5 is the amendment to Zoning. Here's the actual language: "Request Municipal Council to approve or disapprove a proposed Ordinance to amend Zoning Chapter 320 and establish new provisions governing development in the Municipality. Motion to approve or disapprove proposed Ordinance 16 - 08 to amend Zoning Chapter 320 and establish new provisions governing development in the Municipality." Still not telling us a blessed thing. I can only assume they think this is something everyone would object to, or else why not tell the residents what it involves ahead of the vote like they're required to?

After that are these items for discussion:

1. Facility Use agreement ~ No clue what this is.

2. HARB and demolition issues ~ I believe this is about the demolition of buildings within the Historic Districts due to years neglect by the owners that then puts the structures into a hazardous condition. I think good could come of this discussion and I'll be anxious to hear what, if any, ideas arise from it. 

Then they'll end with Monthly Departmental Reports from Codes, Finance, Public Works, Planning and Development, Fire Department, Police Department, Office of the Administrator.