The Berks County commissioners took their business on the road this week.
In an attempt to make themselves more accessible to residents around the county, the board held its first of what they plan to be a series of traveling meetings Thursday evening at the Wyomissing Public Library.
The commissioners plan to hold one of their weekly Thursday meetings in the evening at various locations throughout the county once each quarter.
About a dozen people turned out and commissioners Chairman Christian Leinbach thanked them for their effort and interest.
“There’s nothing quite as important than local government,” he said. “That’s the government that touches our lives every day. When I first ran to be a county commissioner, I thought I knew what county government was about. And then being a commissioner I realized there was more that I didn’t know, but I became a fan of county government because I saw that I could make an impact in peoples’ lives.”
Commissioner Michael Rivera said he didn’t know what to expect from the first On the Road meeting, so it was great to see that there are people interested in county government.
Commissioner Kevin Barnhardt, who originally pitched the traveling meeting idea, thanked everyone who worked behind the scenes to make it happen.
Along with giving people around the county a chance to check out county government in action, the On the Road series also aims to give the commissioners a glimpse at what’s going on in the communities they visit.
Wyomissing’s part
At the meeting on Thursday, Wyomissing Councilman John Woodward and Mayor Fred Levering gave a presentation on what people need to know about the borough.
Woodward said he was proud the commissioners chose Wyomissing to be the first stop in their traveling meeting series. He highlighted the work the borough has done to boost economic development.
“Our economic development committee has been a very valuable tool for the borough,” he said. “And these investments are not just helping Wyomissing, they are helping the entire region.”
He spoke about a recent project that aims to improve traffic flow and promote economic development along one of Wyomissing’s busiest corridors.
The Commonwealth Financing Authority announced in May that it awarded a $2 million grant to the borough for its proposed Fourth Street extension project.
Once complete, the project will link North Wyomissing Boulevard and Innovation Way, opening up another route of travel between the Warren Street Bypass and The Knitting Mills complex and alleviating traffic congestion along North Park Road.
“This borough of 11,000 residents has seen over a quarter-of-a-billion dollars in private investments in the last five years, and it’s great for our residents because it keeps taxes down for our residents,” he said.
Woodward said the borough has worked closely with their counterparts from West Reading to get the improvements made, which has made all the difference in getting things accomplished.
The borough’s strategy
Levering pointed out that the reason why the borough is focusing so much on economic development is because there is no more space for Wyomissing to grow residential development.
“We concentrate on our residents with commercial development because it helps pay the bills,” he said. “That is extraordinarily important to a community like ours that has no room to grow. The commercial development helps ensure that our taxes remain affordable for our residents.”
He said the borough went to a lot of effort to improve its infrastructure and to update its zoning ordinances, which set the borough up to attract that commercial development.
The future is now his main concern.
Levering said he is extremely excited about what the new Drexel University College of Medicine at Tower Health will mean for the area moving forward.
“This is a big deal and we need to support it,” he said.
But that means the borough will need to invest in housing for students and faculty. The borough is currently considering a plan for a significant apartment building project that would address that need.
And, Levering added, the opening of the school means that there’s a need for passenger rail service from Berks to Philadelphia — a long-discussed idea that has the support of the commissioners — that includes a stop in Wyomissing.
“A key to this train is that it must come to Wyomissing,” he said. “To take full advantage of the opportunities that this service presents for our communities, the train should stop in the borough considering all the things that we have to offer.”
Other business
Also at the meeting:
• Barnhardt spoke about how he participated in a meeting Wednesday with various community leaders to talk about the more than 100 overdoses and one death since Saturday from a “bad batch of drugs.”
Law enforcement took action shortly after the situation become known to authorities.
Officers from the Reading Police Department and the district attorney’s office executed three search warrants in the city since Sunday. Two of the three raids recovered 500 blue bags that contained heroin, fentanyl and other drugs.
A Reading Hospital spokeswoman said Friday that emergency department team members have provided life-saving treatment for 75 patients at the hospital with symptoms of heroin overdose. At this time, she said, 12 individuals remain in the hospital.
The meeting on Wednesday included officials including Berks County District Attorney John T. Adams, Council on Chemical Abuse Executive Director Stanley Papademetriou and Director of Emergency Services Brian Gottschall.
“With the efforts of city police and county detectives they were able to successfully decrease the number of overdoses by making some arrests,” Barnhardt said. “But there were some takeaways from the situation that we can learn from to ensure we have a better plan moving forward.”
Barnhardt said there needs to be better communication with the local hospitals to alert law enforcement when situations such as the one over the weekend arise, and that there needs to be some protocol modifications at the 911 dispatch centers to make sure that overdoses are flagged.
“We don’t ever want to see this happen again,” Barnhardt said.
• County Controller Sandy Graffius gave the board an update on some of the issues that arose from instituting a new payment method that caused some headaches for a handful of people who worked the polls during the primary election.
In the days following the May election, the county controller and election offices received a combined two dozen calls with a variety of complaints about the cards. Graffius took full blame for any issues that arose, saying she should have provided more training about the new system.
Graffus reported Thursday that 94% of the election workers who received the debit cards have successfully activated their accounts.
But, she said, there are still 72 people who need to activate their debit cards. And if they don’t do that soon they will begin to lose $3.95 each month.
Source: Berkshire mont
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