Royersford 2nd Annual Community Day Approved

Royersford Borough Council met for its final meeting of January on Tuesday night at Borough Hall. Among the topics discussed were the borough website upgrade, schematics on a new generator, and the approval of Royersford's Second Annual Community Day.

Jan Christman (Christman Jewelers) and Annamarie Chestnut (Annamarie's) were in attendance to ask council's permission to begin planning for Royersford's Second Annual Community Day. Christman noted that the Royersford Business Association is planning to hold the community day on Sep. 8, 2012 between 3rd and 5th Avenues.

"We would love to have your approval to have it," Christman said. "It will be the same kind of concept as last year with the question of: if for some reason we have an abundance of vendors interested or more cars, can we go one block further from 5th to 6th Avenue on Main Street? That I don’t know at this time, but we at least want to use 3rd to 5th – we felt it was a good success."

The ladies added the approximate number of people at last year's event was 3000, which "on a Saturday in the borough of Royersford was very good."

"I’d take that every week as a business owner!" Christmas said.

Last year's event was planned in eight weeks, and along with the 3,000 attendees, there were about 100 cars entered into the car show. The association is anticipating at least that amount again for this year, if not more.

Council President Thomas Weikel was joyful of the request.

"It was very well attended," he said. "I was there a couple hours walking down the street and was impressed with it in that short amount of time."

Council passed the request unanimously. The association will be holding meetings at night and added that it would keep councilmen in the loop.

Also on hand at the meeting were representatives from Net Thing Inc. to talk about the borough's website upgrade. Representatives included owner Harry Wagner and his son Rod, who does most of the legwork. The two have been running the operation since 1995-96 and have worked with a number of municipalities in the area, including Skippack, Lower Providence and Upper Providence.

Harry explained that the current website would be updated to add a navigation field, therefore creating an additional 20 pages of content for users to browse through. The site layout would consider a scrolling banner with the borough's address and phone number in the header. Other optimizations include adding fee schedules, navigation links to individual deptartments, implementing a Paypal account for payment of fees and bills, and a zoning map for the convenience of residents.

Also, to facilitate interaction with residents, the borough could opt to run a newsletter through Constant Contact, which is an email program provided by another company.

Most intriguing, according to Harry would be an online borough calendar with event listings and updates. Administrative Assistant Donna Ziegler and Borough Manager Mike Leonard could be in charge of managing the calendar.

Council specifically liked online bill pay and form downloads.

"This would be good for a resident asking for something like that," Leonard said. "Nobody likes to come in anymore. I think that we want to try to get more information out to the residents about what’s going on in the borough and all the events, forms and not only building forms but other forms we have that the public would need to be put on there."

Also available would be a search capability built in so users can type in what they're looking for and be directed to the correct page within the site. Council thanked the Wagners for their time.

In finance, committee chairman John Kring noted the enterprise funds of solid waste and sewer have collection balances that are in "very good shape" at this time. He commended Ziegler and Leonard's efforts to collect the bills in a timely manner.

The bills were paid from the general fund of $167,509.45 for the month.

Wastewater committee member Bruce Burns mentioned the diesel generator for the Green Street Pump Station is being shipped today. Council discussed the idea of switching the shipment from diesel to propane, but later concluded that the diesel tank is the best option, since they wouldn't have to bury it and would have to further coincide with the Spring-Ford Area School District on the groundwork.

Leonard indicated the generator was on Co-Star and did not have to go out to bid. He also said he saved the borough $20,000 in the purchase.

Public safety committee chairman Bruce Buckwalter went over annual numbers for the police department from 2011. Here is the breakdown:

• In 2011, there were 3,102 total incidents reported (compared to 3,179 in 2010)
• 14 burglaries reported (compared to 16 in 2010)
• 81 thefts reported (compared to 76 in 2010)
• 55 criminal mischiefs reported (compared to 67 in 2010)
• 175 criminal arrests reported (compared to 173 in 2010)
• 18 juvenile arrests reported (compared to 27 in 2010)
• 36 DUIs reported (compared to 35 in 2010)
• 42,405 miles patrolled (compared to 45,131 miles in 2010)

Council recognized the official resignation of Paul Chrisman from the planning commission at the meeting. Chrisman is now a member of borough council in light of John Guest being appointed mayor.

Finally, the Planning Commission will meet on Feb. 6 to discuss the R5 ordinance, which is the zoning change proposed for the 800-900 block of Main Street.