Municipal Council - Regular Meeting

I'd like to call to order the Norristown Municipality Council Work Session, Wednesday, May 20th.

Can I have a moment of silence and a pledge of allegiance?

Madam Secretary, roll call, please.

William McCoy. Adira Robinson. Natalie Colson. Here. Jasmine Griffin. Here. David McMahon. Here. Dustin Queenan. Here. Rashad Bates.

Here. Tonight, Council did have an executive session on personnel and litigation. Thank you, Sean. Vice President Queenan, do you have any announcements, sir?

If anybody needs a translator, Jess is back there. Jess is waving her hand. Feel free to go see her. That's it for me. All right. Any other announcements? Okay.

All right. We'll move on to public comments.

Ben Zwang. You can come up to the podium.

You can come up to the podium. Mr. Lassie. No, Mr. Lassie.

Yes. Hi, everyone. I'm the owner of 506. The building is used as a dollar shop. So my tenant wanted me to come here to express our our way of thinking. So the city want to make the street look more beautiful. We really appreciate that and we would cooperate. But there is one thing. nothing should be close to the window, so everything would be put away from them for five feet. I think it depends on what you are selling there. If you are selling service, yes, making the window transparent and then people can look in, this looks better. But if you are selling products, like, Across the street is a Hispanic grocery store. They pile their sodas up. To me, it looks beautiful because if you are walking on the street, you see, oh, what are they doing? They are selling soda. That's a grocery store. That is beautiful. I don't feel bothered. Again, my... My building, the first floor is selling the daily use things and some accessories. They have accessories displayed over there. I think that this is beautiful. This is not offensive to anybody who walked on the street. If you know nothing about West Marshall Street, you might just say, ah, this is a department store. I want to step in and have a look. So I truly hope the township should have a diversity in this policy for stores how to keep their windows open. look beautiful. I think the ultimate objective of this regulation is to make the street more attractive to visitors or to the residents. Yes, that's my thoughts. Thank you everybody.

Thank you.

Jim Waters.

I was able to get my boots on. Two broken ankles, folks, over the past two years, so it's a long story. All right, gears have shifted. Initially, you all were made aware of this book with respect to the damage to Riverfront Park, Schuylkill River, Elmwood Park, so on and so forth. But I have to shift gears now because we have to shift to the Army Corps of Engineers in competence and malicious negligence with respect to the flooding. What's bringing this to a head, oh wait a minute, first look, I gotta tell you guys, I never take time to tell you, thank you for what's going on, what you're doing. I'm so intent on what's not doing, then I turn around and I really, I need to do that. Even with making them keep the trash cans clean over there at the dollar store. Okay, we're done with that. The new book will explain the federal USGS flood gauge at the bridge to Barbados Island and Riverfront Park. It was turned off in 1933 and it was turned back on in August 2001 after Floyd, we found out about it and my wife because of the the magic person she is, she was able to turn it back on. Now the thing is is that the Ida flood, wait a minute, DEP, okay, therefore DEP is given permission to fill in the floodplain causing higher flood crest and damage. Ida was, Ida is the record flood passing the record of 1972 by 2 1⁄2 feet. That was Agnes, if anyone wanted to know that. Toll Brothers is trying to fill in a floodplain in Betswood so that the two 402 townhouses will not need flood insurance. This displaces a volume in a floodway, increasing flood crests in Norristown homes and damage to our sewer plant. The DEP has given permission to fill in on Barbados Island, 37 acres, Bridgeport, so on and so forth. That is affecting us. Now I talked to Barry Thompson at the sewer plant, Ida cost us over $400,000. I didn't get that in writing, he just told me, but if we need it in writing, we can add it to one of the books of what's going on in Norristown. And what you have here, this is the documentation of this. Now in 72, the flood of Agnes, Congress had blue marsh built to protect flooding on the Schuylkill River. If you look at the Army Corps of Engineers web homepage, whatever the hell they call it, they state that the community...

All right. Council, do I have a motion to approve last meeting's minutes? So moved.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. All right. Thank you. We'll move on to presentations. We have the Montgomery County presentation for the 2026 Monaco Forever Green Open Space Grant.

and I'm the Trails and Open Space Planning Manager with Montgomery County Planning Commission. Thanks for having me here tonight. This is purely informational. I'm going to be talking about an exciting new initiative that the county rolled out last fall known as Monco Forever Green. Do we have a presentation? We sent it over. Uh, okay. Is there a way for me to email it to you right now so you can add? Can you bear with me for one minute? Absolutely. I can get started while he's pulling that up, and then we'll just skip the first couple of slides. I apologize for that. We had sent it over. I'm not sure what happened. Anyway, so last fall, we rolled out a new open space grant program called Monco Forever Green. And you may or may not know, but the county has a pretty strong record of open space preservation, especially... IN 1993, WE HAD A $100 MILLION OPEN SPACE GRANT INITIATIVE THAT LASTED FOR ABOUT 10 YEARS, AND IN 2003, THE COUNTY HAD A PUBLIC REFERENDUM WHICH APPROVED ANOTHER $150 MILLION THAT WENT TOWARD FUNDING OPEN SPACE PRESERVATION AROUND THE COUNTY. IF YOU COULD JUST, THERE YOU GO. SO THAT'S THE SECOND ITEM ON THIS SLIDE. SINCE THEN, AND ESPECIALLY I clearly about the last six or seven years since I've been with the county, the county allocates about $3.5 million a year for open space preservation. And we use that money to either buy land and fee for the county that it would own, and we also give that money out as grants to municipalities and conservation organizations around the county to preserve open space. And that's put in our annual capital budget every year. Next slide, please. In terms of open space across the county, there are about 44,000 acres of open space around the county held by a number of different types of entities, including the federal government, the state, the county. There are private conservation easements that are held by private landowners. And of course, there is land that's held by municipalities, which comprises the biggest chunk of ownership across Montgomery County. And that map there shows all the different areas of open space across Montgomery County. Next slide, please. So why create a program when we already had open space money available within our county capital budget? Well, we wanted primarily to improve awareness that this money was even available. We found that even though we had three and a half million dollars in our budget every year, most municipalities or land trusts didn't even know that that money was available for open space preservation. And we were finding that most of the places that were coming to us to seek that money were people who were aware of it or who were what we kindly refer to as the squeaky wheels, the people who know that the money was available and who are super passionate about open space. So we wanted to formalize the program to better market the availability of this money and to make more of the municipalities aware of it. We also wanted to formalize the process. We had a process before, but now we put it into writing. We've got a guidebook. that very clearly lays out how the program is structured, how you apply, and how the money is distributed. We also wanted to expand our definition of what open space is, and I'm going to get to that in a few minutes in another slide, but I think that's especially important when we're talking about open space in a more urbanized setting like Norristown. And the other thing that we wanted to do was we wanted to make the money more accessible by making the match that's required for our grants to be lower. Prior to the end of last year, if someone came to the county looking for, say, $400,000 in open space funds, the county would require typically a $400,000 match toward that $400,000 grant. So in other words, a one-to-one match. We have lowered the match requirement as part of MACO Forever Green to 25%. So in other words, if you come to us for a $400,000 open space grant, your match would be $100,000. We wanted to do that to make the money more accessible to municipalities and organizations that might not have the fiscal strength that some of the other more affluent communities have. Next slide, please. So just an overview of Montgo Forever Green. It provides funding for fee acquisitions, buying land that the municipality would own, as well as for conservation easements. I would say that probably in a more urbanized setting like a Norristown or a Pottstown, you're probably talking more about fee acquisitions than conservation easements. Conservation easements are typically used on larger tracts of land. that are open and undeveloped. The funding source, as I said before, is the county's capital budget. Right now, in 2026, we have $2 million allocated for grant distribution this year for Monco Forever Green grants. The staff of the Planning Commission administers the program. Any applications have to flow through the county's Open Space Board, which then makes a recommendation to the county commissioners, who then make the final approval for the funding. Next slide, please. In terms of requirements and criteria, all 62 municipalities across the county are eligible for this funding, as well as qualified nonprofits, typically land trusts. You might have heard of Natural Lands or the Penny Pack Ecological Restoration Trust or Wissahickon Trails, those are examples of organizations that could apply for this money. The maximum grant award is $500,000 with, as I said, a required 25% match. The project scope and use of the funds, it can be used for any public or private open land, and I'm going to get into that with the next slide. used for acquisition. Some expenses may be used to meet the match requirements, and that's all laid out in the guidebook. And I can certainly talk to you about that in more detail after tonight's meeting if you'd like to learn more about that. Public access is generally required on open space at the county funds. We feel that if taxpayer money is going toward preserving land, people should have access to it. The only time we might consider not providing public access is if it were a piece of open space that was being preserved for sensitive ecological reasons where public access might not be a wise thing given the sensitivities of the environment. The other thing about this program is it's a rolling application process. Unlike some programs like DCNR, their C2P2 program, applications are due every year in April. Our program is rolling, and so you can come in at any time and make an application. The idea behind that is that it provides flexibility for our applicants. Sometimes real estate transactions can be spontaneous and quick, and we wanted to make municipalities and the land trusts be as nimble as possible when trying to preserve open space. Next slide, please. So the types of projects and places we're talking about, it's a very wide range of open spaces. They can be rural, suburban, or urban. They can be natural resource land, nature preserves, public parks, vacant land, community gardens, and urban green spaces. The thing I want to say, this is probably the biggest thing I want to press tonight, When you ask most people about what open space is and what open space conservation is about, your average person is going to think that it's about preserving large tracts of undeveloped land. And you might see tracts like that in the western part of the county in places like Lower Frederick or Upper Frederick, New Hanover. It's our belief at the Planning Commission that open space comes in many different forms, and people look at open space in different ways. Someone who lives in Norristown is going to look at open space differently than someone who might be in another part of the county. A pocket park where perhaps a building was demolished that's an eighth of an acre or a tenth of an acre has just as much value in a more dense setting than a large tract of land that you're preserving in more undeveloped parts of the county. Urban plazas, places where people can gather, come together, have respite. see each other, spend time with their family, those are considered open space in our mind. And this program is really designed to provide funding for all types of open space in all different kinds of settings to benefit the communities where those locations are. So I want to emphasize that we look at the more densely populated parts of the county just like we do the less densely parts of the county. populated parts of the county as far as their potential for open space preservation and the use of these funds. And so I just wanted to make sure that that was clear because we really do view places like Norristown as just as viable for these grant funds as anywhere else. Next slide, please. So in terms of evaluating potential projects, we take a holistic approach. We look at conservation value, the feasibility, what the public benefit is. We look at the land characteristics. Are there recreational values? There can even be cultural values, which may be more applicable to an urban setting, more urbanized setting. Scenic features. We look at plan compatibility. Is the project compatible, perhaps, with the municipality's comprehensive plan or other planning documents to show that there's alignment between your desire to protect open space and some of the planning documents that you've put together for the municipality? And, of course, we look at financial considerations. We look at what the sources of your matching funds might be. We look at access and disparities in access. And if a potential open space project is going to provide an open space area for an area that doesn't have a lot of those types of places, that would score highly with us when we're evaluating an application. Next slide, please. The application process, it's an application process, but we try to make it as easy and straightforward as possible. You submit a pre-application, Planning Commission staff reviews it, we get back to you with questions and give you a sense as to whether we think it has viability with respect to the program guidelines. Then typically the applicant comes to the open space board, makes a preliminary presentation. The open space board offers feedback and there's usually a very healthy and productive discussion with them. Following that if the feedback is positive the applicant will submit a full application which is much more in depth than the pre-application. And then following staff evaluation of the full application, The applicant comes back to the Open Space Board seeking their recommendation. The county's Open Space Board is advisory only, so they can't approve an application. Only the county commissioners can approve funding allocations. So if the Open Space Board recommends approval, we then take that upstairs to the county commissioners, present to them at a public meeting, and they allocate the funds officially on behalf of the county. Next slide, please. And that's it. That was a lot of information in a very short amount of time. I do have some small brochures that describe sort of the bare bones framework of the program, if you would indulge me to let me bring those up and give those to you. And please, if you have any thoughts or ideas about even an idea that you think that might not be a potential project, give us a call and we'll talk. We're very open-minded and we want this program to be a success. We wanna spend all the money and we wanna show that there's a desire out there to create open spaces in all types of places around the county that will benefit all of our residents and businesses too. Thanks very much.

Thank you. Council, do you guys have any questions or comments? I do have one question. You mentioned that also municipalities can apply for this as well as nonprofits. Is there any way that, say, like a nonprofit wants to apply for something like this, they don't have the money, are they able to partner with another nonprofit or a municipality to get this open space?

Yes, you can do like a co-application.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think that's possible.

Okay, thank you. Mm-hmm.

We've tried to make the matching requirements such that things that might be required to do for any project, like get appraisals or seek legal counsel or get surveys, the money that you spend on those required things can be used to meet the match. It doesn't need to be all a cash match. So there's some flexibility there, too.

Thank you. Great. Thanks very much. All right, moving to the municipal administrator. How do we run that?

I recommend that the council board make a motion to open the agenda.

I'll stop with that. Council, do I have a motion to open the agenda? So moved. Second. All in favor? Aye. Thank you.

And I'd like to make a recommendation. The council consider a motion to authorize the municipal solicitor to appeal the decisions of the Zoning Hearing Board related to applications 13-26 and 14-26, or 1314 DeKalb Street in Norristown.

Council, do I have a motion to send our solicitor to appeal the Zoning Hearing Board for 13-26 and 14-26, or 13-14 DeKalb Street? So moved. Second. We have to allow for public comment.

And what's that? You have to allow for public comment.

Yes, and this is time for public comment. If you have a comment, you can come up now and speak on the Zoning Hearing Board. Okay, seeing none. So we have the motion. Do I have to make a motion to close the public comment?

Yeah.

Okay. So council have a motion to close the public comment. So moved.

Second.

And all in favor again?

Aye.

Thank you. So we are good then. Thank you. So then we'll move on to the next one of resolution.

No, you have to vote.

There was a motion and a second, but no vote.

Yeah, we did.

What did I just miss? Okay. So I'm going to do the motion again for the zoning hearing board.

You made a motion to send our office to appeal these two matters. There was a second, but there was no vote to actually do that. There was public comment. You closed the public comment.

All right, council. Got a motion to send the solicitor to appeal his own.

It's already been made. You would just have to ask her to do.

Oh, I am really confused. Okay, so I'll do a roll call here. Thank you. Madam secretary. We have a roll call. Please.

I have Lee Colson as McGriffin. Hi, David. Dustin Queen. Hi.

The eyes have it. Thank you, Sean. Resolution number 26-23, request for council approval on annual service renewal with Civic Plus LLC for the municipal website C-Click-Fix 311 system, the civic engagement platforms in the amount of $55,119.27. Yes. Hello, council. Hello.

Hello. As you read, that is for our website for the C-Click-Fix platform as well as like our chat bot on the side as well. This is part of our annual subscription for that. So I'm just seeking your approval to proceed so we can pay the invoice, essentially.

Council, do you guys have any questions?

I have a question.

Is this for our current website? Correct. Are we looking to any other companies to improve our website or change our website?

We can with your guidance. If you want us to, we can definitely look at that. I know we were looking at... a possible website to better house our agendas and so forth, which is kind of covered within our current subscription. So then it becomes a broader discussion, essentially, to say if we want to really revisit our entire website, the C-Click Fix service, as well as our agenda, or piece mail it, however that case might be. But we were looking at at least the agenda side of it.

OK. Let's see.

Council, any other questions? Seeing none. Do I have a motion to approve resolution number 26-23, request for the annual service renewal with Civic Plus LLC, the municipal website, see click fix 311 system, and the civic engagement platforms for the amount of $55,119.27. So moved. Madam Secretary.

Allie Coulson. Aye. Jasmine Griffin. Aye. David McMahon. Aye. Dustin Queenan. Aye. Rashad Bates. Aye.

I'm struggling up here, as you can see. All right, we'll move on to resolution 26-44, request for municipal council to approve the appointment of legis group LLC as solicitor for the Civil Service Commission. I can speak on that.

The Civil Service Commission went through an interview process, wanted to hire a new counsel. The Civil Service Commission gets to select their own counsel. Norristown Counsel has the ability to approve or disapprove their engagement letter or their terms of paying them. Our office reviewed their engagement letter. It seemed in proper form, and according to Jane, was in line with what would be budgeted for the Civil Service Commission. So it would be our recommendation that you approve Resolution 26-44. Council, any questions or comments?

Nope.

All right, seeing none, do I have a motion to approve Resolution 26-44 for request of municipal council to approve the appointment of legious group LLC as solicitor for the Civil Service Commission? So moved. Madam Secretary.

Natalie Colson. Aye. Jasmine Griffin. Aye. David McMahon. Aye. Dustin Cleenan. Aye. Sean Bates.

Aye. The ayes have it. Moving on to fire. Resolution 26-38, request for Municipal Council to approve the purchase of two camera trailers.

Good evening, Municipal Council. Before you this evening is Resolution 26-38, requesting Municipal Council to authorize the purchase of two camera trailers from Intercated Security Systems, a CoStar's vendor, in the amount of $166,800. This is a 100% funded LSA grant initiative that was approved back in 2024 for us to apply for the grant. We work closely with the police department who will mostly utilize this equipment along with our technology oversight officer to make sure that all the equipment that's coming on this trailer is compliant with our existing camera equipment that we have throughout the community.

Council, any questions or comments? Councilman Griffin.

I just want clarification. You said so it's fully funded. So this is all paid for through this specific grant. It is perfect. Thank you so much.

I just want to say you had me at fully funded.

One question about the camera trailers. Are they the same? Are they different? Are they the two?

I think Corporal Gurgel would be able to answer that question. These are the subject matter experts in the designation. Sounds good. Thank you.

There's two separate trailers. They're both designed to be a little bit different. One's bigger than the other. So they're set up so that they can be deployed in different locations throughout town. One of them has a 14-foot boom where the other one has a 33-foot boom. So they tie directly back into the existing community camera system that we have, so the video would come in. They're equipped so we can put them in any small area, a hot spot, dumping areas, anywhere in town that we can deploy them, including some, like, large events that are going on at the same time.

Okay. Awesome. Thank you. All right.

Oh, go ahead. I just had a question about just I know that these are the temporary cameras, but just to refresh my memory on, like, what What's, how long is the recorded information kept? How is that used after the initial days of being on location where they're set up? That wasn't very clear. How is the information handled, shared, stored?

So the North Sound Police Department has a policy that all video is saved for 30 days. Okay.

So it's the same procedures as?

The video feeds would come directly in, they would be incorporated into the existing feeds, and they would be saved for a total of 30 days.

All right, counsel, do I have, oh, is that another question? Oh, I heard you say something, okay. Do I have a motion for resolution 26-38, request for municipal council to approve the purchase of two camera trailers? So moved.

Second.

Madam Secretary.

Natalie Colson. Aye. Jasmine Griffin. Aye. David McMahon. Aye. Dustin Queenan. Aye. Rashad Bates. Aye.

Thank you, municipal council.

Parks and Recreation. Resolution 26-43, request for municipal council to approve ratifying the purchase from National Fitness Campaign LP for Fitness Court Equipment.

Hello again. So this item sounds familiar because it is. This is tying back to the fitness court that we've talked about for the past couple meetings. This isn't a new request for any funding. There's nothing changing about it. This is more so for our back end to make sure we have a resolution to tie for the actual purchase order. It was already discussed as far as what was there, but we just never had an actual resolution with the dollar amount on it, so we wanted to make sure we had that in place to pretty much dot our I's and cross our T's. Thank you. Council, any questions or comments?

Seeing none, do I have a motion to pass resolution 26-43, request from municipal council to approve ratifying the purchase from National Fitness Campaign LP for fitness court equipment. So moved. Second. Madam Secretary.

Natalie Colson. Aye. Jasmine Griffin. Aye. David McMahon. Aye. Dustin Queenan. Aye. Dr. Shafiq.

Aye. The ayes have it. Thank you. All right. We're going to go over to planning and municipal development. Yeah. Ordinance 26-02, request to adopt Ordinance 26-02. I'm sorry. Request to adopt ordinance 26-02, window signage amendment. So just before we make a vote on that, there was a public meeting about that on Monday. From what I hear, it's supposed to continue. So I would like to recommend to table this, since there is another meeting that has to be continued with this ordinance. Is that good with you guys? All right. So do I have a motion to table ordinance 26-02? So moved. Madam Secretary, or do I have a second? I need a second. We'll second. Thank you.

Yes. Natalie Colson. Aye. Jasmine Griffin. Aye. David McMahon. Aye. Dustin Queenan. Aye. Rashad Bates. Aye.

You guys have it. Thank you. That has been tabled. All right. So now we'll move on to presentation for proposed House of Worship development at 336-338 East Airy Street. Aye.

Good evening, Council President and members of Council. My name is Steven Sheo, and I am the Planner and Grants Coordinator with the Planning Department. So, the second item on tonight's agenda is related to the properties located at 336 and 338 East Aries Street. So the proposed project seeks to consolidate the two existing parcels and redevelop the current vacant lot into the house of worship for the King of Prussia Church of Christ. At this time I would like to invite the applicant to come forward and present their proposal. PRESENTATION MATERIALS HAVE BEEN SUBMITTED AND WILL BE DISPLAYED TO ASSIST BOTH THE APPLICANT AND THE COUNCIL WITH THE PRESENTATION. THANK YOU.

GOOD EVENING, MR. PRESIDENT AND BOROUGH COUNCIL. I APPRECIATE YOU ENTERTAINING US THIS EVENING. and giving us the opportunity to make this presentation to you. My name is John Panizza, and I'm part of the team that will be working with the Planning Department and Borough Council as we walk through this process. I'd like to make some quick introductions of fellow team members. Here with me tonight is Dan Lyons of the law firm Fox Rothschild, Dan Yazbek, professional engineer with the firm Kimley Horn, Mark Pagancoff, minister of the King of Prussia Church of Christ, and our sponsors for this use, Jim and Laurie Hess. Dan and I have met with the planning department on a few occasions, and as we met with them, we started to understand borough council, the need for this house of worship, our constituency who we would be serving and we started to make some changes with respect to this use so that it would be, it would serve the residents of Norristown Borough and I think we accomplished that and you'll hear more about that this evening. One of the items that came up in the planning department meetings were real estate tax revenues. And the thought was that we would be applying for an abatement of the real estate taxes that the borough would receive if this were a different use. That is not going to occur. We intend not to seek any sort of an abatement and we will be paying real estate taxes so that the borough will be made whole on this project. Having said that, I'd like to turn this over to Dan and he'll go through in a little more detail the particulars of our use and the process that we think we have to go through. And at the end of this, we would like to request your support. So thank you again.

Thank you, John. Thank you, everybody, for being here. My name is Dan Lyons. I'm here on behalf of the applicant, as John said, from the law firm of Fox Rothschild. So I'm just going to take you through the specific zoning hearing board application that is requested for this project. As was already said, the property is located at 336 and 338 East Airy Street. It's located in the TC Town Center 2 zoning district pursuant to the zoning map. The property is currently vacant, but it is 100% paved, so it's just a paved lot. There were photographs attached to the application, and I'm sure you all had an opportunity to look at it, and it's also right down the street, so I'm sure you've driven past it many times. Technically, there are two parcels, but as mentioned, the proposal is to consolidate the two lots. In total, the square footage of the lots is just under 9,000 square feet. In order to develop the property as proposed, applicant seeks two items of zoning relief. First, a special exception to permit the house of worship in the TC2 district, and second, a single dimensional variance to permit the house of worship on the undersized lot. It's 8,856 square feet and 10,000 square feet is the minimum for the use. Though the project does need this dimensional variance for the slightly undersized lot, it's important to note here that the project, the building fits well on this property. It doesn't need any other relief such as dimensional setbacks front yard, rear yard, side yard setbacks. Doesn't need any relief from building coverage or impervious surface. So it does fit well on this property. And in fact, the proposal brings the non-conforming condition of the impervious surface ratio into compliance. So it's currently 100% right now. In the TC2 district, the maximum is 75%. The proposal brings this down to approximately 54%. So it almost cuts it in half, from 100% to 54%. So that will allow the property to have some nice green space around it, some nice landscaping, and to kind of beautify the property a little bit. Furthermore, it does fit well, this use does fit well in this specific location. There are other churches around, surrounding this area, but not exactly where this property is. And this specific Church of Christ is going to be Spanish-speaking. I understand that the Spanish-speaking population is growing here in Norristown, so this is a good beneficial use for the community, and Mark is here to discuss that in more detail should you have any questions about the operations, how that's going to work. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to

to be seeking any relief from the Board of Assessment as to the classification for taxes. For how long would you agree to that? What kind of condition would be appropriate for that if there was zoning relief related to that? In perpetuity. In perpetuity, okay.

And at this time, I'd like to turn it over to the engineer for the project to kind of walk you through the plan in a little bit more detail.

Hi, good evening, Municipal Council. My name is Dania Yazbak. I work with Kim Lee Horn, the engineer on the project. I'll probably repeat a lot of what Dan already said, but just to walk you through the plans and describe what we are proposing here tonight. The two lots combined are approximately just over 8,800 square feet. We're proposing a 2,400 square foot house of worship on the property with an associated covered porch. It also includes associated walkways, sidewalk, ADA accessibility, landscaping for beautification, as well as a lawn area. Currently, the site exists as a lot, which is 100% impervious. We would be taking this down to about 56% impervious, somewhere around that number. So we would be increasing the landscaping on the site by about 44%. We would also be proposing a drop-off area in the rear of the site that would just include a loading or drop-off area for anyone that might be stopping by at the House of Worship. I'd like to introduce Mark at this point for him to speak.

Good evening. As was said, my name's Mark Pagenkoff. I am the preaching minister at the King of Prussia Church of Christ. Just wanted to briefly tell you why we have an interest in this project and this property. About three and a half years ago, we began volunteering to assist with Coalition to Save Lives. I think many of you are probably familiar with Mike Kingsley and the work that he does with that. We've been helping out on Saturdays over there. In the course of doing that, we really became obvious to us that there is a need among the Spanish-speaking population. About the same time, I'm going to speak as a minister for a minute, hand of God, we believe, we had a young man come and join us, our congregation, from Nicaragua, who was a preacher down there previously, and has an interest in becoming a minister here in the United States. We feel like we have an opportunity to establish a viable Spanish-speaking congregation here in Norristown to help meet the needs of that community in a better way. The question came up, well, why can't they come over to King of Prussia? What we have found is that there are many in this population that have transportation issues. And even getting across the bridge and over there, particularly in inclement weather, is difficult for them. So we feel like if we can come to the community where they are, we can serve the needs of those folks more effectively. Any questions? I'm sorry.

Council, any comments or questions? Councilman McMahon?

So it may be a lot of pedestrian traffic, but something was mentioned about a drop-off area. I don't really see so much the overall layout of the plot itself. Is there a bit of a, in the sidewalk here, is there a bit of a cut? What is it gonna look like on the day of services, or when they conclude and before the services, what's that section of the street gonna look like, do you think? It's a relatively narrow street, two lanes, so double parking, I guess, is one of them.

It would be from the drop-off area.

Oh, okay, okay.

Which would be about 60.

Okay, I didn't see that. So that relieves some of the pressure off of Airy Street in particular. Yes. Go ahead. Yeah, that was more of a question. I was just wondering what it might look like after service is over.

That was a good thing you brought up because parking is always an issue with us. How many people would be able to fit inside the church as far as sitting?

My understanding is a maximum of 90 people. There's a maximum of 90 seats. My understanding from Mark is it's still a small but growing population. but mostly serviced by public transit and not by car traffic, and that no parking requirement is required for the site.

Oh, you said no parking?

Yes, my understanding from Jane is that there is no parking required for this property.

And I guess you guys think that basically there's going to be people walking there from our side? Just to let you know, I'm born and raised in Arnstown. People still drive to church. They're like, they can walk, but they still drive there. I was just thinking about the neighbors there. What will Sunday look like for them? Every Sunday, will they be competing for parking spaces and things of that nature? Yeah.

When we started to talk about this idea, we got in touch with a group inside the Churches of Christ by the name of Herald of Truth. They're kind of a consulting organization. They work with churches to help you start up Spanish-speaking ministries. They have a division that does that. They came up, talked with us, met with us. What they told us to expect was that when you plant a new church like this, that it's going to be a slow go for probably 18 to 24 months. People don't know you're there. They don't know you're offering this. You have to sort of build it up. They told us to expect, and I'm just going with what they told us, that at the end of the year, if we had 15 folks from the community that started to attend there regularly, that would probably be exceptional. So I don't think parking is going to be an issue in the near term, and we would expect, our church in King of Prussia right now is about 100. We've been there for 40 years. I'm going to be pleasantly surprised if we grow much more quickly, but I don't expect that to happen there at this time. So we're expecting it to be a small population that will grow over the period of two, three, four, five years. Does that help? Yes. Okay, thank you.

Council, any other questions or comments? Okay, Councilman Colson, excuse me.

Sorry, I just have a quick question. So I guess the members of the congregation and everything, they're going to do on-street parking as well? There's not going to be any parking around the building at all, or?

There is no parking at this site.

Okay.

But as we start and as we grow, there will be those issues that we recognize now and new issues, and we'll work with the borough We'll work hand in hand in the event something pops up where you have a request that you make to us. I promise you that I and this team and Jim and Lori Hess will listen to you. And if it's within our power to change, we will. So I just wanted to say thank you and mention one more time that we'd like your support as we work through this process.

So what they're asking for, as you know, before the zoning, so you're asking for zoning relief, before the zoning hearing board, normally council does not take a position. You're asking us to take a position to support the application. Is that what you're doing? Or no position. Or no position. So your normal default is no position. They're asking for positive or neutral. And then obviously if you really don't like something, you send us to oppose.

So that's... We can put two or three spaces in the back and we'll refer to that when there's no drop-off.

Councilwoman Griffin. My question, are there any plans to, I guess... canvass the neighborhood and speak with the residents to get their understanding or talk about their concerns or anything like that, just to get a mutual understanding. That's my job.

That's my job, and I will do that.

Okay.

Yep. Thank you. And Dan mentioned, and I should have mentioned that this space, During the time that services are in place.

And another question, you may have said, and I may have missed it, about how long do you think would it take to develop that, the church?

Mark?

Yeah, like when you're, yep.

Oh, you mean from this point to having a grand opening? Yes, yes. Boy, that can't happen fast enough. So, we'll go through the planning process and we have every, we have the people on the team covered to, in every aspect of that. That's what we do and that's what we do well. We'll, we have also on the team who are not here tonight, construction professionals. I don't know how long it will take them to construct this, but I would say that that would be about a six-month time frame. So if we're at a 90-day time frame to get us through the approval process, hopefully within 12 months of today, you're all invited to our grand opening.

Sounds good to me.

I do have one more question. I guess it's too late to incorporate parking into this plan.

Nothing is too late.

Okay. Okay, that would be my hope, just because I do know that parking is tight on Airy Street right there. And on a Sunday morning, people tend to be home more, right? And they're not working. And I'm just thinking about the neighbors in the area and where they're going to park and where people from your congregation. I know you're hoping for more walking, but I would like to see parking put in if it was still possible.

We would... dania what process would we use to put parking for sunday services only where our loading area is that might be that might be how we accomplish that we we line it and we have several spaces there do you have the same plan up on the presentation that we could show

Okay, we could definitely incorporate additional parking in the rear via Carson Alley if necessary. Instead of a parallel to the road drop-off type of zone, it could be pull-in spaces and that could increase the number of parking spaces to most likely one ADA spot and maybe six to eight. normal regular parking spots. It would obviously increase the amount of impervious on the site, but it would still remain conforming with the 75% maximum.

Yeah, I think that that would be at least a start for some parking there for sure. So thank you. Yeah, absolutely.

Can I answer any other questions about the layout or site or anything?

She worked so hard at this. Ask another question. Mr. President, ask Dan yet another question.

Sounds good. All right. Um, so, uh, we'd like it, but we are going to keep a neutral position at this point. Um, but we're hoping that you can find parking and give us some feedback about when you talk to constituents in that area.

Thank you very much. Well, thank you. Nice meeting all of you. Thank you. All right. Have a good night. Thank you.

Okay, next we have a presentation for 722 Sandy Hill Development and Zoning Text Discussion.

So the next item on the agenda is the presentation for the proposed 722 Sandy Hill development and zoning tax discussion. The applicant is proposing the development of 36 townhomes along Sandy Hill Road and is requesting that council consider the zoning tax amendment related to the proposal. At this time, I will again ask the applicant to present the project and the presentation materials will be available to assist. Thank you.

Good evening, Council. My name is John Benson, artist in my company. I think what's shown up here, it's a 3.3 acre piece of property. I believe the property was in front of the council or probably in front of the council and then from the zoning hearing board about four years ago. It got a handful of variances for height, density, setbacks, slope, things like that for I think a 76 unit apartment building, four story apartment building. It's on one of the slides. Slide 10. Yeah, that's the site plan. I have one more. There it is. That was the rendering that got the variances from the last developer that was in in 2022. Our proposal as we started with it is to do 36 townhomes. The townhomes allow us to build the property a little bit differently than an apartment building. The apartment building has to be built, as everyone knows, on a flat plane. We can't use the slope to our advantage. We can't use walkouts. We can't use fronting garages because everything has to be a pad for the parking lot and then for the actual building itself. And the buildings being as big as they are for apartments, it creates a bigger use to do. The townhomes, they're individual in packs of six and five. We can work with the grade a lot better. The density that we are talking about, like we said, the council saw an apartment building of 76 units. We're proposing 36 townhomes, so a little bit about half of what was previously proposed, but being townhomes. These would be fee-simple townhomes for sale. These are not rental townhomes. They're a rental building. The proposal, if we can go back to the slide one, the actual site plan, please. The roads being designed would be private. They would be owned by the homeowners association, so there'd be no maintenance for the borough to do over snow plowing, trash removal, et cetera. They'd be fully responsible residents inside the development, so there'd be no impact back to the borough on that issue. Kind of where we are with the project is we're kind of like half in between a couple of your zoning ordinances. Right now the property is a multifamily MF. Your zoning district allows for up to 15 units per acre, I believe off the top of my head, and we're about a little over 10 units. So we don't need a variance on density as opposed to the apartment building that did come, they did need a variance on density to take it up from the 15 up to, I believe they were around 22 or 23 units to an acre. They also received the variance on height. That was a four or five, I think their variance was up to a 55 foot high building at four stories high. We're like somewhere between, we need probably a little leeway anywhere from 35 to 40 feet. We're trying to see if the market is here to do a rooftop deck on these buildings to be able to have it, but it would still be in an A-shaped frame. It wouldn't be more in a flat. So five or six feet was probably, we'd rather leave ourselves a little room if the market would allow us to have that type of feature. It has a great view out the back of the property overlooking the creek, so we think a rooftop terrace or patio or deck, however you want to, or somebody looks at them, might be an option that some of the residents might like to have. But we're still well under, right around 40 feet, which is a lot better than 55 feet that was proposed for the apartment building. The property as developed right now meets all the requirements that you would probably be worrying about, building coverage, impervious coverage, and the requirements of the MF zoning district, so we're not asking for any type of concessions on that. Really, where the concessions come into, and two of them are from the last, proposal as well, if it was an apartment building. One, it's a 3.3 acre property. The MF zoning district requires a five acre property, so it's a pre-existing condition. So sometimes we don't know how different authorities look about pre-existing conditions. Is that need a variance? Is it not need a variance? Some people look at it differently. Also, it also has a limited road frontage up on the road. We have about, I believe, 80 feet, and the minimum, I believe, is a couple hundred feet. But the shape of the property is pre-existing. We're using everything that we do have to use. And why we're unique is when you developed your MF zoning district and or your R2 or your row home, it was more under the assumption that something would be torn down, something that would be built parallel to other existing buildings and basically get a straight line and not to impede upon your neighbor to the left or the neighbor to the right. So much of the regulations were based around that thought pattern of that type of development. Not really a piece of property that really doesn't have any neighbors on either side of it. We have a cemetery. to the east. East to the left on the one side. Oh, I got this. There we go. That doesn't allow us to do that. Cemetery is right up in here to the left side of the picture. And then we have a couple of twin homes up along the road, but nothing. This is all vacant all along here. The backyards of the twins would sit up here on the sandy road. And then one more property down, I believe, was the carpentry. Local 135 had a building up there. Now it's a vacant lot. So we're not really impacting people to the left or right of us because we're set down off of the road. So we're really here tonight to see how the... borough handles, or how they would like to handle a project like this. We could do it two different ways, and same thing, different people like to cut the cake. Either way, we could do it with a variance like it was done with the apartment building, and we'd probably need about three or four variances, and the variances are more set back to distances between the buildings and distances from front to back. And one more, what was the third one?

Front to back. Hold on a second.

Getting older, my memory used to be able to get me everything.

Like we said, the two pre-existing we would need on the 3.37 acres. The road frontage would be a pre-existing condition. A little bit variance on the setback for the landscaping buffer as it runs along this line right here, which really shouldn't be too much of an issue. We will fully landscape and give a screening buffer on both sides, even though there's not much looked that way. So landscaping will give a full buffer out there to do that way. Or what we proposed and we gave you a copy of part of our package was to do a text amendment. Your MF zoning district does not call out for any type of qualification for a row house. So it kind of jumps around, it just doesn't have that one type of dwelling unit inside of the MF zoning district. So with a couple corrections that we put, We think by adding a row home into your MF zoning district can accomplish the same goal. It also allows us to have a couple special features about doing a road design that's a private road design. So we need a couple features with how the road can be built on arcs, distances, and on widths since it's going to be a private road. And we can write that into the text amendment, and that's what we proposed to do here. So Artisan's here tonight to say number one, do you think a townhome community at 36 or in the 30s is a good use of the property as opposed to a 76 unit apartment building? If you did think that a townhome development is a proper use for this three acre property, what would the borrower think would be the best way to proceed? either, as the previous applicant said, give support or tell us that with the project that we're an adverse on the three or four variances that we might need, or would it be better to explore with the staff and all the text amendment that we have? And that's kind of why we're here. We're ready to go to full engineering on it, but if we're going to go zoning here, we could go with the exhibits that we have. We don't need the full engineered drawings to go for the variance. If we're going to go on the... Text amendment, we'll pull the trigger now on the engineering and move that along right now and not have to wait for the zoning hearing board to do it. So we're excited about the project. Townhome projects are all being built now. As you know, the apartment buildings are slowing down and have slowed down for several years due to the interest rate climate and the lending climate with apartment buildings. But for sale, townhomes, I've built over 2,000 homes in the three different counties that we have. between building them, developing them, and getting the approvals. So we're really happy to come in here. We've never worked in the borough before. So we've worked all around here in Montgomery County, Chester County, and Delaware County on projects like this. in the past, so we have the expertise, we have the people who do it, and we're just trying to see if this is something that the borough wants, because in today's day, we're not really, we have our hands full with a couple projects that the people do not want, and we're not really interested in trying to force something down a municipality if it's not something they want. So really see if we are on the right path and if we are to try to get some sort of verbal response from you guys is kind of what we're looking for. But thank you for your time and I'm here to answer any questions that you have.

Council, any questions or comments?

Well, me personally, I love homes better than apartments. I understand they're needed sometimes, but home ownership in Northside is a great thing. Question for you. You said something about how close they are?

Side to side and front to back. So they call it out. It's a side to side dimension. We're asking for 15 feet. And that's, I mean, we just did a single family home development in Chester County, 155 of them, each of them had seven and a half foot side yards. So we had $700,000 homes with each yard being seven and a half, so between the two of them it's 15 feet. And that's what we're proposing here. The other one's a 40 foot dimension from back to back. So there's the back of the unit and that's the back of the unit. Right now, the ordinance is 50 feet. So we're asking to go from a 50 feet to a 40 feet. And that's because we're getting linear coming right down. We're working with every inch we have to try to have a circular unit. And every foot counts. We used every foot that we could on this type of thing to try to get it down. And we just don't have any more to give than what we're asking for on the site plan. OK.

Did I miss parking, of course? Is there a driveway, or is there a garage?

All the units will have one-car garages on them. There is driveway parking, and we also have guest parking for another half spot. So there's 36, so 17, there's half a surface spot, and then one garage, and also street parking, or driveway parking as well.

And then did you say, are they two, three-bedroom townhomes? Two and three-bedrooms. Two and three-bedrooms. Okay. Thank you.

Yeah, yeah. And they're all going to be 20-feet wide units. So they're 20 by 45, about 2,000 square feet. We think that they'll sell somewhere probably in the $500,000 range. Yeah. Okay. There we go. Wait, like each unit? Yes.

That was my question. Yes.

Each townhome unit would sell in the $500,000 range. How many bedrooms? Two or three bedrooms, depending on the model. Sometimes people can turn one of the bedrooms into an office, sometimes not. Sometimes they have a different alternate layout. They add another bathroom, they get rid of a bedroom, and go two bedrooms on the one level to get into it.

So will each unit have the exact same layout, or will they have different layouts?

No, they have optional layouts. It's the same footprint from side to side and front to back, but inside the shell, we have different options to make it. The kitchen on one of them can be at the front or the back, or the bedrooms can be two and two or three and two and a half, and then they share a whole bath. Two of the bedrooms share a whole bath instead of having a private bath for each of the bedrooms.

Did you say what kind of square footage?

About 18 to 2000 square feet.

All right. Finished basement or not finished basement?

If the people would buy one, but we don't put that into the price. These units are being designed, so these are all walkout basements. The reason you like the walkouts, like I tried in the beginning, we can work with the grade. You're dropping 10 feet, and we can limit our retaining walls as opposed to the apartment building having flat. They were up to 30, 35 foot high retaining walls. an impediment to the cost of why the project also wasn't built was all this infrastructure costs. If we can go with townhomes, we can try to lower the cost, which makes the job more viable, even though we're losing density from 76 down to 36. But the grade really helps us out. And having walked out basements on the one side to make the grades work a little bit better.

And did you mention the HOA fees or?

No, we'll do that budget. Through the land development, we'll have a full, but all the projects that we do are professionally managed HOAs. So then we'll give draft documents to the solicitor and a budget as we talk through it.

Okay.

Councilman McMahon. So basically, you're seeing two pathways here. Going to the zoning hearing board for variances or asking us to amend our current code to include this category of row house dwelling. That's correct. And that's the decision that's before us tonight? Yes. Okay.

Does the Planning Department have an opinion on this?

Okay. We have the zoning amendment application in place. Okay.

You put up slide three, please Like they had a recommendation I think that they like the proposal in general but want to leave it to you which process this Obviously if this is something council really likes the applicant would prefer text amendment to having to go to the zoning hearing board because there's more One is it will be quicker Two, there are more, less risk. You never know what could happen at the zoning hearing board. So that's why they're requesting this text amendment.

And there is a true need to not have row houses. And you have a definition for row home under your dwelling. So putting one into the, and not only can just serve us, but if it pops up again as an anomaly for if it is a vacant, bigger piece of property and not a tear down building in a line, hopefully it could then hopefully maybe serve as somebody else as well. Or if something, at least you'd have it in there, and if you had to modify it a little bit more, the basic frame print of what we're doing with the use regulations, the meet and bounds, and then the building, you're halfway there. Gives maybe another developer another idea, like, okay, maybe the path isn't as hard for a project they might be looking at down the road as well. Or including us, if it becomes something that we want to do.

I just had a question. Since we have someone from planning here, I was wondering, I just wanted maybe a little more background on why we have this missing category of row house dwelling. And I'm not with planning, but general knowledge. So what's being pointed out basically is potentially a shortcoming in our zoning as it stands, in which we don't have this category of row house dwelling already. And then what would be the pros and cons of, you know,

so it's always it's always good to define as many uses as you possibly can within your zoning ordinance and then give you a flexibility as to what zoning district you want to put them there are always uses that come up there are always uh you know the zoning ordinance is a living document there is always changes sometimes things are missed when there are rewrites i don't know what the evolution of all this was obviously there's been a lot of row homes in porous town throughout history and various such but yeah Right. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I will say, just walking around, talking to constituents, because that is in my district, I do know that that property in particular is very run down and it's been vacant for many years. And talking with the property owners around there, they were concerned about the condition of it and what was actually going to happen with that property in the upcoming year or so.

So I guess here, Sean, since this is a presentation, this is kind of like the last one, we're just going to say be considered given the zoning text amendment.

So, yeah, what would be appropriate then is make a motion to direct staff to work with the applicant to move a text amendment forward.

Okay. Council, do I have a motion to direct staff to work with developer to work on the zoning text amendment? So moved. Second. Madam Secretary.

Natalie Coulson. Aye. Jasmine Griffin. Aye. David McMahon. Aye. Dustin Queenan. Aye. Rashad Bates.

Aye. You guys have it.

Thank you, everybody. Appreciate your assistance in making the project along. We'll see you soon. Sounds good.

Thank you.

Okay, we move on to ordinance 26-04, request to advertise data center ordinance. So who's going to talk about the data orders? Do you have to do that?

I can chime in. I believe council's well aware of the data center ordinance. So first of all, I'll give you some history. Obviously, data centers have been in the news quite a bit. And about two months ago, the Montgomery County and Chester County Planning Commission came out with draft ordinances. They're actually coming out with another set of draft ordinances. as you know our firm represents a lot of different municipalities have been working on this issue i know mr hitchens from my office has worked closely with several of the council councillor griffin and councillor mcmahon on this issue and staff and we believe that we have a data center ordinance in the heavy industrial District you can't there's been a lot of attention saying hey Banning data centers can't do that under Pennsylvania law as it's currently constructed Uh, the general assembly can change that if they want. Uh, there would obviously be constitutional challenges, but right now what we have to do is provide for it, uh, and place reasonable restrictions on it. Um, so I believe that's what you have, uh, before you. Uh, so if council wanted to go ahead, it would be a motion to, uh, to advertise, uh, this ordinance. There would be a required public hearing. from that, of that at a future council meeting, and then adoption of an ordinance. And again, technology is changing related to data centers. New information is coming out. Ordinances are living documents. So if there is, if it needs to be amended in the future, obviously that's a step council could take if they wanted to go ahead and do so. But this is kind of putting our best foot forward at this point, the ordinance that you have before you. And that's really what I have.

Council, any questions or comments? Okay. Council, do I have a motion to request to advertise the data center ordinance? So moved. Second. Madam Secretary?

Natalie Colson? Aye. Jasmine Griffin? Aye. David McMahon? Aye. Dustin Queenan? Aye. Shad Bates?

Aye. The ayes have it. Thank you. Moving on to police. Resolution number 26-42, request for municipal council to approve a request for disabled parking spaces.

Thank you. Good evening, Mr. President, members of council. Before you tonight in this resolution is the addition of disabled handicapped parking spaces within the municipality. This is the addition of a number of spaces and then also a removal of spaces. As you're aware, but I'll reiterate, every year we find out who no longer needs their placards, so they get removed. We also have individuals who are applying for them. So there is a number of spaces here on the list. I think this number is starting to come down a little bit. There was a moratorium on spaces for a period of time. So we're kind of working through that backlog. But based on the information I have, it's my recommendation for you to approve the addition of the spots so enumerated and the removal of the ones that are also identified.

I just have a quick question. I had a constituent ask if there was a neighbor that passed away that had a handicapped spot, how would they go about submitting that request? You can ask just in case you leave it.

So are you talking like mid-year, like God forbid someone passes away?

Yeah, so their neighbor across the street passed away, but their handicapped spot is still there. So how would you remove that?

Well, if they want to report it to you and you bring it to me, we'll take it under review. We could check an obituary, for heaven's sakes. I'm sure we could work on it. Perfect. Thank you.

And these are subject to yearly review, is that right? Correct. They have to reapply every year.

Any other questions or comments? All right, seeing none, council will have a motion to pass resolution 26-42, request for municipal council to approve request for disabled parking spaces. So moved.

Second.

Madam Secretary.

Natalie Colson. Aye. Jasmine Griffin. Aye. David McMahon. Aye. Justin Queenan. Aye. Todd Bates.

Aye. The ayes have it. Thank you, Chief.

Thank you.

Thank you. And we'll move on to departmental reports. Oh, for administration, public works, and code. So we're not doing administration. Who's doing administration? Sean, are you doing administration? Yeah, we can do that. Okay, we'll move department all three until next meeting? Okay. All right. So then we will move those monthly updates until next June 2nd meeting. You said...

I don't know if Public Works and Code has something to present today, but when I spoke to Andrew.

He's always ready to go. Yep, that's fine by me. He loves attention.

Evening, counsel. Can we go to the next one? So for the first quarter this year, we issued 265 building permits. We also registered 2,132 contractor registrations. That'll be on the next slide, Kev. Thank you. And you can go to the next one. During this time period, we issued almost 600 violations for a proactive code violations that were safety violations and we also issued nine hundred twenty five quick tickets for quality of life violations I just want to, we talked earlier about the C-Click Fix system, and I just want to let you know, we responded to 205 citizens concerned during this quarter. And just to put it in perspective for you, of the entire municipality, of every department that citizens reported, The Building and Code Department responded to 57% of those issues, which shows you that folks are using that system to help us keep Norristown beautiful and safe, so it is working. Just wanted to give you a little information on the violations here if you compare owner-occupied to rental properties. Rental properties account for 67% of the violations that our department is involved in. Have a go to the next one. Just to put that in perspective, We have 3,931 registered rental properties, which makes up 8949 rental units themselves. And of course, these are the legal ones that we know that are registered, not counting the ones that aren't registered. can get an experience and again just a little information for uh... everyone's knowledge if you compare that there are ten thousand five hundred eighty total properties in our stamp with the three thousand nine hundred thirty one rental properties thirty eight percent of his properties in our stand are rental properties and again that doesn't county evil rentals that we don't know about so if you look at that I would suspect we're at 40, 45% of rentals in our population here in Norristown. During our time period, we conducted 494 permit inspections, 360 rental inspections. We also conducted 123 property transfers during that time period. And just to give you some information on our staff, we completed 47 hours of training. We participated in four community outreach programs during that time. And during that time, we assisted other agencies 62 times. You can see the breakdown there, zoning, fire, public works, police, and other agencies such as county and state agencies. Some of the projects we're working on, our HAARP board has received yearly updates and training this year. We, the bladed property program is in progress. New letters have been sent out. We're moving forward with that project. So we're working on accreditation and the new software program is being investigated. And lastly, I'll just give you some staff highlights. Out of 10 members, six of them actually are Nardstown residents. So three of our team members are bilingual, and in a business where it's dominated by men, we're proud that we have five women on our staff. And that concludes my report.

Any questions?

Thank you. Thank you.

And do we have anyone from Public Works?

Oh, I'm sorry, Dave. I have a couple questions. Go for it. I just wondered, so the information that you have here, I have a motivation behind this, right? I would like to see there be a publicly searchable database of rental properties. And so I'm wondering like, Um, the idea of a landlord registry, um, I know Syracuse, New York has, um, like a feature, like a look before you rent kind of feature. So you can do research on the property owner before you rent a property from that landlord. So I just wanted to know, currently, so of the information that you presented here, how much of that is already kind of publicly searchable or easy for the public to get access to to sort of make an informed choice about where to be? And then do we, going forward, maybe want to start thinking about formalizing that.

I agree with you. That's part of our new software program process. A lot of this information currently is not available easily. But that is one of the major things that we want to make everything visible to our community.

Because, like, if you go Montgomery County, you should be able to see the owners, but they removed that for what you're asking for. Like, you can't see, like, if I pull my property, you can't see them as the owner anymore. That, I think that was passed a couple years ago, I think.

No, you still can. No, you can't. On the county website, you can search by address.

You can search by address, but the owner.

It'll give you the owner's information and their address where they.

They must have put that back, because wasn't that taken off before? I don't know. Okay. You can't search by one. You can't search by one. Okay, okay, okay. I knew it was something because I remember we had a discussion about it here.

But yeah, to answer your question, there's so many things that we would like to be transparent for the community that they don't have to come to us. They can look right up on our website. That's one of the big things we're driving toward our new program.

Let's talk about a look before you rent system program, something.

That's wonderful.

Members of the community do that, too. Because I don't know what kind of legal liability we could run into if someone puts up negative reviews and we're supporting that site. But someone mentioned before, was it tenants association or something? I forget the exact name of it, but that is something we can encourage our community to do on our own. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, because, you know, I'm a insurance guy. I'm just thinking I was getting sued. If we put something out, we're sponsoring it, somebody's going to say, you caused me harm, someone didn't rent, and that was a false allegation. But I think the unions, the Tennessee is shooting.

But there are models. Like there's a Syracuse. Other towns have kind of explored this kind of thing. So there might be options for us to consider.

And I think what you're saying is probably long overdue. So, again, we should definitely encourage that and help that get started.

Because it goes right into, like, the difficulty, like, even back to, like, the traffic piece and trying to find who owns the properties on the TV and kind of contact property owners. That's, for some of the people who have been looking for traffic resolutions, just that piece has been hard or a little bit onerous for a resident to try to figure out.

Right. I agree with you. I agree with you a thousand percent. We should definitely help that get started, even if it's outside of the municipality. Right, right. Yeah, I think as council, hey, we're representing our constituents, and we've been hearing for years about some of these landlords, so maybe that's a way. Like we heard at one of the, was it a zoning hearing, the young lady, what she was going through? Exactly, exactly. So we could help empower them. Hey, I'm all for it. Thanks for bringing that up. Thank you.

Thank you again, Keith.

Public Works 2 next week? Public Works 2?

Okay. Well, in that case, Council, do I have a motion to adjourn? So moved. Second. All in favor?

Aye. Thank you.