"I am proud to say we are a busy community with so many opportunities to continue to move our community forward."
As we enter the last week of July and look toward the fall, and importantly, budget season, it is always worth stopping and discussing where we are on some critical issues and where we may be headed in the coming months.
Vacant Property Fees: For the better part of two years now council, the community, and I have been discussing the possibility of implementing some kind of vacancy fee for commercial properties that are persistently empty and keeping our community from being otherwise filled with productive businesses. This year, the Code Committee committed itself to first finding out where all commercial vacant properties are to understand the complexity of this challenge. I am thankful to say that out of that process came an interactive GIS map that would allow any interested party to easily find vacant commercial property in our borough.
It is time to move forward and implement a policy that would allow us to charge fees for creating persistently vacant property in our community. Based on conversations I have had with staff and our economic development consultant for multiple long-term vacant properties, we are doing more outreach to potential businesses than the property owner. That is a problem for me. It means we are subsidizing them and when we find a business to fill their commercial space, they will reap all the profit without investing anything back in our community or even showing any interest in helping make Lansdale a better place to do business. The fact that they would rather leave their building empty than fill it is unacceptable, and something that should not be allowed without a fee or fine of some kind. They are damaging the economics of our community, and that is something we should not abide by. It is my hope we can develop a comprehensive ordinance to resolve this issue by the end of the year.
Unhoused and Anti-Camping Ordinance: As many of you are aware, every local municipality in the country is grappling with the growing unhoused population and the challenges they present to communities. As I stated in a recent musing, I find it undeniable that being unhoused is a status and that being unhoused should not be criminalized. Currently, we are making every effort to help the unhoused through our Mental Health Co-Responder Program. Our Co-Responder has worked closely with those who are unhoused over the last several months and has been able to, and this is a critical component to success, develop relationships with them to ultimately help them find services that meet their needs.
However, there are miles to go on this issue. Some residents would like us to kick anyone who is unhoused out of our parks and out of the Gazebo in Memorial Park. This ignores the reality that those individuals will then just wander our streets aimlessly, since they still have nowhere to go. Others desire the borough to fund a shelter of some kind in our community. While I would love to develop a lasting solution, such as a shelter, in our community it is unlikely that we would be able to self-fund an endeavor of this kind. It is far more likely that the burden of this solution falls to Montgomery County and the Commonwealth to fund. It is my hope that we can work with both to find a lasting solution for our community going forward.
Expanding Local Green Energy: Admittedly, the other two issues have been far more prevalent topics of discussion so far in 2024. However, as we enter budget season, I intend to discuss this issue more frequently at both council and with the public. As I have shared in other musings, we buy a substantial amount of power every year and half of all that cost is in getting the power to our community. If we are going to drive down the cost of buying power, it will be by creating more power in our community so that we do not have to pay to acquire it or transfer it. Additionally, the creation of more local power will allow us to build local redundancies that protect us from emergency events.
Going forward, it is my hope that during the budgeting process we can discuss a potential bond borrowing option that will allow us to build more local green power options. This could come in the form of utilizing our retrofitting our Wastewater Treatment Plant to use anerobic digestion to generate power off biogas or, simply, investing in more solar panel systems to help off-set our power usage. One major point of discussion is likely to be potential investment in developing power storage systems that will allow any local power generation to be even more efficient and effective by allowing us to use stored energy when we need it most.
Finalizing Plans for Pool Repairs: At the end of this summer season, it is likely that White’s Road and Fourth Street Pool will be fully and completely reviewed and analyzed to determine the full extent of repairs and redevelopment needed going forward. We are already aware that, without major renovations, White’s Road Pool will open in 2025. Estimations for redevelopment across both pools are estimated to cost around $4 million will and take months to complete.
In the fall, during the budgeting process, the council and I are likely to review redevelopment options for both pools. It is my hope that part of that process will be the modernization of our pools, and the amenities included in them. It has been decades since our pools were fully renovated and it is exciting to have the opportunity to build something that the community values so much every summer.
This is just a sample of some of the major initiatives that are being discussed currently and are likely to continue to be discussed in the coming months. Obviously, there is a multitude of public works projects actively taking place as well alongside other maintenance work that is always ongoing. I am proud to say we are a busy community with so many opportunities to continue to move our community forward. Our challenge is to meet the demands of being a community of action and delivering the change our community needs to keep us all moving forward together.
(Mayoral Musings is a weekly op-ed column submitted to North Penn Now, courtesy of Lansdale Borough Mayor Garry Herbert. The views expressed are his own and are not representative of North Penn Now or Lansdale Borough.)
