Council Agenda: Zoning, Consultants, Police, etc.

There's a Council Meeting tonight at 7:30 pm in Municipal Hall, with a few interesting items on the agenda.

First, and to my mind, the most interesting, is the discussion about the new zoning ordinance. Remember the workshops last fall? If you don't, click here, scroll down to the bottom, to the August 12, 2013 blog, which was my first Diary entry on the workshops. You can scroll up from there to find the others.

Several residents and I attended these workshops. We were told that our input was important, but were also frequently given the impression that they'd rather have us sit there and listen politely instead. But I think, after several months of these workshops, we let Norristown and County Planning know which zoning changes we liked and which we hated. The plans for the residential areas, with a block-by-block zoning that wouldn't allow housing that's unlike anything else on the block, seemed to be the best plan--assuming it's followed and variances aren't given out to developers like Halloween candy. We told them we didn't mind tall buildings at the riverfront downtown (as long as they were sensibly designed so as not to restrict the riverbank and cause flooding), but that we didn't want anything taller than about 4-6 stories on Main, so views of the river and our historic buildings wouldn't be compromised. We had to remind them constantly where the Central Historic District borders were (you'd think planners would know). I think we came away with a much better zoning ordinance than we started with, and MUCH better than what we've got now. The new ordinance would give our zoning board and planning departments teeth. Projects like the ultra-dense development at 1202 Dekalb wouldn't be allowed.

But here it is, the 4th month in the new year and the zoning ordinance is FINALLY coming up in front of council, which makes me wonder where it's been. The agenda item says: "To discuss the latest draft of the proposed zoning ordinance and map and to move forward with the public hearing and adoption process." I find myself wondering how much the ordinance has been changed since the last workshop, and whether any changes reflect what was discussed in the workshops. Still, that's what the public hearing process is for.

Another interesting item on tonight's agenda is the Small Business Development update. We've had a few new places, like Mina Mart, open recently, and I'd love to hear if more new businesses are in the offing.

Two items have to do with hiring consulting firms to administer the Housing Rehabilitation Program and the Historic Facade Improvement Program. I'm always a bit skeptical about the borough hiring consultants because we so rarely hear about them again. We hear that so-and-so was awarded $35,000 then we don't hear any kind of result. Possibly this is just a communications failure. But if we start hearing about houses being rehabbed and facades being improved, I'll be the first to congratulate these firms.

Other agenda items cover a Joint Task Force on Policing (between Norristown's force, the County Sheriff, the D.A., and SEPTA police), and a proposed requirement that absentee landlords must use local property managers.

The agenda has other items as well. You can view it here. If something strikes your fancy, come to the Council Meeting tonight and weigh in.

Where We're Vulnerable

When I was in 9th grade, I came down with a case of walking pneumonia, the result of taking a day-long field trip to NYC in January while recovering from a bad cold. My doctor told me from then on, I'd be more susceptible to respiratory bugs. Sure enough, since then, on an average of every 8-10 years, I've gotten bouts of bronchitis or near-bronchitis. I've at least learned which germs are likely to head for the lungs. I've also learned that the more I try to do during the bouts, the harder they are to get rid off. The last one in 2003 put me out of action for 6 weeks.

A couple weeks ago, I went to a 3rd district Town Hall meeting and a woman sat next to me. Ten minutes into the meeting, she started to cough--not a polite little cough, but one that said she had a major respiratory illness. By last Sunday, I knew I had her bug and that it was made of the kind of germs that could easily turn into bronchitis. Because of it last week, I missed the school board budget meeting, a workshop about sustainable food in Norristown, palm braiding and helping to decorate St. Pat's church, the opening of Mina's Mart, Family Feud night at Caffe Galileo, a music event at the University of Delaware that I'd already paid for, 4 days of blogging, and most importantly, a paying teaching job and 6 days of work on my current writing project. I still have laryngitis, so I couldn't sing in church for Palm Sunday, and I'm not sure if I'll be able to do Holy Week services. If you know me, you know that when I can't sing or write, I get really grumpy.

So I spent a lot of time last week wondering why that woman felt she had to attend that meeting, sick as she was. And I spent time thinking about Norristown's particular health vulnerabilities.

One vulnerability has to do with one of our economic strengths. We have a lot of businesses run by self-employed locals. As I've explained before, if people who live in or near Norristown run our businesses, the profits stay in town, instead of going to some out-of-state corporate headquarters. Many of our businesses patronize each other, strengthening our town economy further. We have a growing number of these new entrepreneurs, and we need to support them for the heroes they are, for the good they're doing our community.

But if you're self-employed, you don't get paid sick days, and you don't always have enough staff to keep your business running without you. Losing a week's worth of business can be devastating to a small operation. Yet, part of your business is to bring in the public, so how do you avoid germs?

Our other vulnerability is that our average income is lower than surrounding communities. We have a per capita income of about $20,000 and a median household income of less than $43,000--about half that of King of Prussia, for instance.

If you're low income, you probably avoid going to the doctor until you absolutely HAVE to. Even if you have health insurance, you know that the cost of your co-pay for an office visit is only the tip of the iceberg. You'll come out of his office with scripts for medication or bloodwork or both. It's not the health insurance that has kept low income people from going to doctors--it's the unknown out-of-pocket costs. You can't budget for an illness.

So I don't blame anyone in Norristown for not going to the doctor when they're sick--I only blame them for going out in public and spreading their germs around. Work is one thing--I've worked for idiot companies that don't allow enough sick time and encourage workers to come in when they're ill or risk losing their jobs. But when you're that sick, you DON'T need to go to public meetings. You don't need to visit our small businesses--they'll be happy to wait until you're better. You don't even need to go to church.

The vast majority of our citizens don't earn money when we're sick at home, so we each need to take responsibility for keeping our town healthy, and therefore keeping our economy healthy. Do your part and please stay home when you're contagious. Do it for Norristown.

Spring Break, Spring Cleaning, and Eggs

Sorry I've been AWOL all week. A virus got me. I would have much rather been blogging and braiding palm at church and getting a start on my garden. But spring must be here, because all of a sudden there are a zillion things to do around town. Click on the calendars links to the right to see all the listings.

First, note that today (Friday) the Code and Planning Departments will be closed due to employee development training.

Tonight from 7-9 pm at Caffe' Galileo, 317 Swede St., the Norristown Business Association and Dragon Boat Club will host the 2nd monthly Family Feud Night. Tonight Feed the Burbs (come and find out who they are) will challenge the reigning champions--Norristown Municipal Council. Caffe Galileo will be serving up their famous coffee and steamers.

Last weekend to see "Buried Child" at Centre Theater. Friday  and Saturday at 8 pm, Sunday at 2 pm. For tickets: click here, or call 610-279-1013.

Saturday morning at 9 am you can have breakfast with the Easter Bunny at Hancock Fire Co on West Airy. Adults-$8. Kids 4-7 years-$5. 3 and under FREE. An Easter Egg Hunt will follow.

Also Saturday morning, the Dragon Boat Club is holding an Easter Egg Hunt at Riverfront Park. Free to all kids. Come at 10 am to build an Easter basket, then hunt for eggs at 11 am. For info, www.dragonboatclub.org

Also Saturday from 10 am to 1 pm, Coffee Talk Artists' Co-op,507 W. Marshall St is hosting "Pisanki" (the Polish art of decorating eggs). Contribution $5. Call 610-272-4811 for info. Come and learn.

Saturday from noon to 4 pm is Clean-Up Day at Riverfront Park. Volunteers are needed to help clean up the park and along the Schuylkill River Trail nearby. Wear long sleeves and pants (poison ivy) and bring gloves if you have them.

KYW Movie Critic Bill Wine will speak at the Library will be at the library (Powell and Swede), Saturday afternoon at 2 pm. His topic: BASED ON THE BOOK: BESTSELLER CINEMA! Free program.

ACPPA's Spring Break Camp this year is a Cook-a-Thon, and runs Tuesday through Friday, 9 am to 3 pm. Ages 5-12. Half-Day Registration, $40/child; Full-Day, $60. For information, http://www.acppa.net/#!springbreak/cl6j

Tuesday night, 7:30 pm, Municipal Council Meeting. No agenda yet.

Wednesday, 9-10:30 am, the Latino Collaborative of Mont. County will meet at the Montco Intermediate Unit, 1605 Main St. Marisol Lezcano, Deputy Director of Commerce for Workforce Development and Executive Dir. of WIB will be presenting. Please RSVP to Advolifeline@aol.com

For gardeners: Wednesday at 6:30 pm at the Norristown Library - "Groundcovers, more than just Pachysandra." Presented by Pauline Myers, Penn State Coop Extension. Info on the library website.

Thursday, April 17, 6:30 pm, the Montgomery County Anti-Human Trafficking Coalition’s Rachel Yudt will be speaking along representatives from the Department of Homeland Security, and Montgomery County Detectives in the Community Room of the Montco Human Services Center (old Sacred Heart-Fornance and Dekalb). Come to a presentation and Q&A forum that will inform participants of the nationwide and local implications of human trafficking. Participants will also learn strategies to lessen the risk in their home and community. Learn the facts from the experts!  Presented by GNPAL, In His Eyes Outreach and Buck Jones. Parking available in the MCHSC garage.

Happy Passover! (I've already had 2 plagues in the last 5 weeks--does that count?)

A HUGE Variety of Events Coming Up

Opening Day is Saturday! 

Now that the Municipal Calendar seems to be working again, I've added a link to it in my right hand column. Remember to check both calendars for all events. What I list here tends to be one-time happenings, or those that last a limited time, like our theater productions, but Norristown has many ongoing programs every week, for instance, at the Library, the Zoo, and at places like Jus' Java and August Moon. Here are the stand-outs this coming week:

Friday at 8 pm, Buried Child continues at the Centre Theater. Other performances Saturday night at 8 pm and Sunday at 2 pm. For tickets: http://thecentretheater.ticketleap.com/buried-child/ or call 610-279-1013

Saturday starting at 9 am, the Norristown Little League will host their annual Opening Day Parade to the baseball fields. The parade will kick off at Eisenhower Middle School and march to the fields. Immediately after will be the Tee Ball's first game.

Also Saturday from 1 to 4 pm, as part of the National March Against Deportations, there will be a local march from starting in front of La Plazita at 506 Marshall St and ending at Main and Dekalb. Please join in and wear a white shirt!

Sunday from 1 to 4 pm will be a bilingual Health Fair at St. Patrick's Church, 714 Dekalb St. Health screenings, "Ask the Doctor" booth, and info on cancer, exercise, nutrition, home care, social services, and financial planning. Free food, music, dancing, and a children's corner.

Sunday from 2 to 5 pm, Norristown residents can get into Elmwood Park Zoo FREE. Adults must show photo ID as proof of residency. Children must be accompanied by a borough resident. Non-residents will be charged normal admission rates. Borough residents are defined by living within the following four boundaries: east of Forrest Avenue south of Johnson Highway west of Sandy Hill Road/E Fornance Street, north of the Schuylkill River

Also Sunday from 2:30 to 4:30 pm, the Historical Society of Montgomery County, DeKalb and Roberts Sts., will host historian Gene Pisasale who'll speak about THE WAR OF 1812: The War Which Forged a Nation. This is a FREE program. For information: 610-272-0297 or contact@hsmcpa.org.

At 4 pm Sunday, Ebenezer Concert Choir will perform their "Faithful" concert at the church on 234 E Spruce St. The church will also accept donations to help fund a wheelchair ramp for its visitors.

Monday night at 7 pm, there will be Norristown Area School District Budget Committee Meeting Presentation at the East Norriton Middle School Multipurpose Room. Residents are encouraged to attend to learn about the district's budget process. Click on the links to read questions and responses from the 1/13/14 meeting and 2/14/14 meeting.

126-128 E. Main 

Tuesday at 7 pm, the Planning Commission meeting at Municipal Hall. On the agenda is a conditional use request to allow 4 one-bedroom apartments above existing retail space at 126-128 East Main.

Thursday from 1 to 3 pm, come to the Grand Opening of Mina Mart, a new grocery store and deli at 428 Arch St. The grocery section has been partially open since February. Thursday, the deli will open, featuring take-out breakfasts and sandwiches, and that day, promotional discounts. The owner, Ms. Ivonne Patino, seeks to offer healthier, fresher foods to Norristown. Representatives from the Norristown Small Business Assistance Center and officials from the municipality will be on hand.  

Another Family Feud Night, next Friday at 7 pm, this time at Caffe Galileo, on Swede across from the Courthouse. The reigning champions, Norristown Council, will take on Feed the 'Burbs. Last month's game was crowded. Come early to get a good seat.

Habitat is Back!

If you're a homeowner, you know that the biggest job is just maintaining your house.Right after you get that roof leak fixed, something goes wrong with the plumbing, or water gets into the basement. You know you should do something about the drafts coming in around the windows and doors. The cracks in the plaster are getting bigger, and the woodwork really ought to be painted again. Et cetera. Et cetera.

But if you're on a low income, home repair and improvement projects are often sidelined so you can feed and clothe your family. In a low income neighborhood, this means many houses on a single street will show the need for care. People riding through think to themselves, "This neighborhood's really going downhill." It doesn't help if you have abandoned properties in the same block.

This is why the proposed plan by Habitat for Humanity of Montgomery County is so good for Norristown. Their project will, over the next 2 years, repair and rehabilitate more than 40 homes on Cherry Street, between Chestnut and Spruce.

If you drive down those blocks of Cherry Street, you realize that this has been the home to Norristown's working class for centuries. The houses are modest, yes, but sturdy, and some have nice architectural features. The street is pleasantly tree-lined and could be downright pretty if the houses just received a little TLC.

Half of our usual class of developers would look at Cherry and say none of the houses could be saved. They'd want to level them all, along with the trees, then throw up cheap wooden housing that wouldn't last 20 years. Or put up another Family Dollar store. They'd leave us with vacant lots. The rest of the developers wouldn't touch the project at all.

Habitat for Humanity's focus is on the neighborhood and the residents. Marianne Lynch, executive director of Montco's Habitat, in a statement to the Times Herald, said, “We are shifting our mission to help homeowners stay in their homes. We are a catalyst for the neighborhood to improve...." In addition, Habitat will try to acquire abandoned properties in the project area, to rehab them and sell them on the open market.

Someone is bound to say I shouldn't compare Habitat to for-profit developers. That's it's comparing apples to oranges. But my point is that the Habitat approach--simply taking what we have and improving it---is more in keeping with the part of Norristown's Comprehensive Plan dealing with preserving our look. Somehow though, when developers come in saying we need modern makeovers in our town, no one will say no to them. 

Habitat in N-town, 2008.

Habitat has helped Norristown out before. Between 1992 and 2011, they did extensive rehabilitation on 21 homes. This new project are lighter repairs, but will effect more blocks. And once the neighborhood starts looking good again, those fixed-up abandoned houses should sell.

I'm happy to say that Council unanimously endorsed the project, and agreed to help in any way they could

Norristown's Natural Therapy

Yesterday I was feeling the need to take a vacation. I couldn't afford, in money or time, a long vacation, so I went to Valley Forge Park, which is one of my favorite places on earth. A historian I wanted to hear was speaking at Washington Memorial Chapel last evening, so I'd planned to go anyway, but since it was a nice day, I went over early and spent some time in front of the Chapel, looking out over the pretty rolling hills and meadows. For me, that's all the therapy I need.

Still, you don't have to go even as far as Valley Forge to find serenity in nature. Norristown has some of its own. As I mentioned last week, we have a river. The view of the Schuylkill from Riverfront Park is lovely. We're fortunate enough to have an undeveloped island in the river at that point, so all you see from the park are the woods on the opposite bank. I pray that Norristown is smart enough to never allow a developer to ruin that view. But, besides a great view, along the banks you can occasionally see graceful herons and other long-legged water birds, and on the river itself, 3 or 4 kinds of ducks and geese. On a hectic day, it can be a very calming place.

Our other parks are also decent natural places. Walk along Stony Creek between Sterigere Street and the Zoo. You'll see ducks and water birds there, too. You can hear the sound of the shallow water splashing past the rocks. In spring and early summer, you can hear bull frogs, too.

I worked at Valley Forge one summer, and I remember a tourist asking me about the trees. She'd never seen trees so tall (I think she was from one of the prairie states). We tend to take our trees for granted in this part of Pennsylvania, but take a look at the older trees around Norristown sometime. Some of them are as tall as 6-story buildings. There's a tall oak down the street from me that's bright green in spring, dark green in summer, and a gorgeous red-orange in fall. My favorite winter trees here are the sycamores, with their bright white limbs against a blue or stormy gray sky--they look like big skeletons.

I hope Norristown's equally intelligent about the preservation of our healthy old trees. Sure, we have laws about developers needing to replace trees that they destroy, but they plant short, skinny new ones to replace specimens that are centuries-old, and in many cases, the ordinance is waived altogether. The photo above is of 1202 DeKalb--those beautiful old giants won't be replaced at all when Sarah Peck's overcrowded development is built there.

The Montgomery Hospital site has 3 old growth trees, along with several smaller ones. Together with the hospital building, they keep the streets shaded and cool in summer. Imagine it if Einstein is allowed to level the block. I guarantee Elon will do everything in their power to plant as few trees as possible, and even if they did, the shade produced by new trees can't equal what's there now. With the sun reflecting off the cement and mirrors on the parking garage, medical building and apartment buildings, that block is going to be awfully hot in the summertime.

In their passion to make sure that every space within our borders is developed, I worry that Council forgets that all human beings occasionally have the same need I had yesterday--to get away from the hubbub, to enjoy a pretty piece of nature, maybe to just sit under a shady tree for a half hour and relax. Wouldn't it be nice to have places like that in Norristown, instead of creating yet another reason for people to leave town?

Council, Codes, and Artsy Trashcans

It's April Fools' Day AND there's a Council Meeting tonight. Not that I'm implying any kind of a link between those two statements.

You can look at the full agenda here, but the highlights are mainly code-related--adopting ordinances regulating the height of grass and weeds, throwing snow and ice into the traveled area of the street, and regarding snow and ice removal. One would hope the latter two won't be put to the test for another 9 months, but with summer coming, I have a few concerns about the 1st.

First of all, I believe this code was written to deal with owners who purposefully neglect their properties--mostly landlords who don't live in town and don't care if their properties are derelict. We've all seen these kinds of houses, with tall grass and weeds, that make Norristown look bad. However, I've also seen certain landlords who have friends at Municipal Hall get away with not caring for their properties while the elderly and sick in the same neighborhood are harassed by code enforcement if their grass grows over 3 inches high.

I was sick a few summers ago and got a citation about the hedge on my back fence. The temperatures that week were in the high 90s, and not much cooler overnight. When I tried to explain the situation and ask for an extension, until I could find someone to come and trim it, I wasn't given any slack. I was told to "have a younger member of my family do it." I explained that I WAS the youngest member of my family. No good. So I had to go out in the heat and trim the hedge, sick as I was. My doctor later told me I could have easily had a stroke. I've heard similar stories from other residents, one of whom had cancer. All I ask is that someone from code enforcement assess the situation in person. If it's an elderly resident or someone who shouldn't be doing physical labor, then work with that resident to find a solution.

On the other side of it, we can all help out code enforcement by taking a photo of overgrown properties and sending it with the address in question to Joe Januzelli (jjanuzelli@norristown.org). Also, if you know of any of your neighbors who have trouble physically taking care of their properties because of age or sickness, please give them a hand. We can all chip in to keep Norristown looking good.

On another topic related to keeping N-town looking good, The Norristown Project purchased 20 trash cans a few weeks ago with the thought of giving them to persons or groups who'll turn them into artwork. The decorated cans will then be placed around the community. They'll keep trash off the ground AND provide community-based art.

10 groups/individuals have accepted the challenge and are working on their trashcans, but TNP has 10 cans left. Come on, local organizations, businesses, paint a trashcan for Norristown. If you're interested, email NorristownProject@gmail.com and they'll send you more information on the program. You can read more on TNP's blog.