SANATOGA PA – Recent jottings from a reporter’s notebook:
Brevity Is Bliss
People who testify in some legal proceedings tend, unfortunately, to be long-winded. Those who testify in specific kinds of proceedings – a Lower Pottsgrove (PA) Township zoning hearing, for example – can drone on forever unless reigned in early.
Zoning Board Solicitor Robert Brant, therefore, politely runs a tight ship.
Consider a hearing last week (July 21, 2009) over which Brant presided at the township municipal building, 2199 Buchert Rd. One witness stepped before board members armed with a dozen oversized photos and drawings, and a sheaf of notes. Brant saw both and, before the witness opened his mouth, offered this advice:
“Why don’t you take a moment … a concise moment … and tell us what you’re going to tell us,” the attorney said with a smile. The emphasis also was his.
The witness took the hint. He was finished in seven minutes.
Is Bruster's is "opening soon? Lower Pottsgrove's not quite sure.
Bruster’s? Maybe, Maybe Not
Back in May, the township Board of Commissioners asked that a sign on Buchert Road, announcing the imminent arrival there of a Bruster’s Ice Cream store, be removed because the store had been advertised for more than a year without materializing. The sign’s still there and so, apparently, is the hope of the store.
Earlier this month, township Manager Rodney Hawthorne talked with the property owner about the sign’s removal and was told that once-dormant plans for the parlor were back on the burner. “He reports it’s still coming,” Hawthorne told commissioners during their July 6 meeting. Then why, board members asked, is there also a sign on the street frontage promoting the property’s availability for sale or lease? “Maybe he’ll go with whichever happens first,” Hawthorne replied.
The property owner has been ordered to mow weeds in front of both signs more regularly.
Now All He Needs Is A Better Economy
You meet a lot of local people, and make a ton of local business connections, if you’ve been selling cars in the same area for more than 20 years. You become party to some interesting golf course scuttlebutt, too, when your handicap is in the low single digits. And it never hurts when, to top it all off, you’ve got some political knowledge.
People, politics and polish on the back nine: everything a banker needs to attract new business.
Former Norco Automotive Group owner, township commissioner and golfer extraordinaire James Phillips was named recently as business development officer of The Victory Bank in Limerick PA. The bank said Phillips “will analyze clients’ financial situations and develop strategic solutions to meet their short and long-term goals.”
The bank is locally owned and operated, and includes Lower Pottsgrove residents among its investors.
Cafe Benefits Meals On Wheels
Shorty’s Sunflower Cafe, the Lower Pottsgrove restaurant on North Charlotte Street that often has a line waiting for its tables, last month donated more than $12,000 to the Meals On Wheels program of Montgomery County Family Services.
Each weekday, an average of 165 homebound elderly and disabled residents of Pottstown, Royersford and the Lower Perkiomen Valley have a hot lunch and refrigerated dinner delivered to them by Meals on Wheels. Family Services estimates it serves up to 100,000 meals a year. Meals on Wheels feeds more than bodies, too; just the daily contact between a recipient and a delivery volunteer lifts a lot of spirits.
The Shorty’s donation was the result of an April fund-raiser in which the restaurant’s customers played the greatest role, owner Liz Bieber said: they bought the products and tickets that brought in the funds.
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