Lansdale Public Safety Committee Approves Summer Community Events

Dan Sokil | The Reporter•

Get your calendar out because Lansdale Borough is getting ready to fill up events for 2024.

Council’s public safety committee heard previews of a series of town events this week, voting them ahead for full council approval later this month.

"This represents all of the event applications that have been turned in, vetted, and are fully approved and are ready to execute,” said Police Chief Mike Trail.

"And there are plenty more that are not here,” committee chairwoman Meg Currie Teoh added.

Each year borough police and staff work with community organizations that host local events to vet their applications, make sure details like event hours, parking, insurance coverage and security plans are finalized, then police and the organizers present those requests to the public safety committee for input before that group gives their approval and sends them to full council. This year, Trail and borough special event coordinator Lisa Pearsall told the committee, they’re working to streamline that process so those event applications can be integrated into the town’s map-based online GIS system.

"Let’s face it: we have a lot of community events in Lansdale, probably more than any municipality I can think of,” Trail said.

Several of those events were discussed during the March 6 committee meeting and voted ahead:

• On April 13, from 7 a.m. to 10:30 a.m., the Manna on Main Street "Race to End Hunger”

• On Fridays, from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. with setup starting around 4:30 p.m., monthly First Fridays organized by borough event nonprofit Discover Lansdale, on May 3, June 7, July 5, Aug. 2, Sept. 6, Oct. 4, and Nov. 1

• On June 1, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., the Lansdale Day arts and crafts festival organized by the Rotary Club of North Penn

• On June 22, from noon to 4 p.m., the Lansdale Beer Tasting Festival, organized by Discover

• On Aug. 24, from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m., the annual Founders Day events, organized by Discover

• On Sept. 14, from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m., the Lansdale Cruise Night and Food Drive, organized by Discover

• On Oct. 6, from 10:30 a.m. to 6 p.m., the Zer0.5K Oktoberfest, organized by Discover

• On Nov. 23, from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m., the Lansdale Holiday Mardi Gras parade, organized by Discover

All of the events have routes or locations on file with the police department, Trail told the committee, and have minimal changes from prior years; the only major change is that the beer-tasting festival will now be organized by Discover and will be held on the Lansdale Cannoneers ballfield on West Fifth Street, the chief said. Trail added a joke that the Zer0.5K Oktoberfest, a walk of roughly four blocks along Wood and Vine Streets, is "an exercise in athleticism that you all must train vigorously for,” and new councilman Michael Yetter replied that he agreed.

The committee voted ahead seven of the eight events, with Teoh asking for that group to abstain on a formal vote on the Manna event since she’s employed by the organization and would be unable to vote. All eight will be up for full council approval when that group next meets on March 20.

After the votes on those events, resident Helen Schwartz asked if the committee had heard about plans for the annual Under the Lights Car show to be held this year, in light of online rumors and reports about events that would not be held in 2024. Pearsall said she had recently received an application for that event to be held this year, and "it just got entered into GIS today,” and would be up for committee and council discussions in April.

"Hopefully, as we move forward, we get this process more streamlined, and next year all of the event organizations will be on board in January, filing their applications, and we’ll do this maybe in one meeting and do the whole year’s approvals,” Trail said.

Mayor Garry Herbert added that the list up for approval in March is "probably about half, at best,” of those being discussed and vetted.

Regarding one event that’s not officially sponsored or endorsed by the borough, resident Alex Strickler asked if police were prepared for an informal pro-Palestinian rally scheduled to be held in the town on March 8. Trail said his department had worked with their counterparts in other local departments to cover two similar protests in recent weeks, and "we will have a robust deployment” for that protest and any similar ones.

Lansdale’s borough council next meets at 7 p.m. on March 20 at borough hall, 1 Vine Street. For more on the borough visit www.Lansdale.org.

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