Office Of The Mayor
Thomas M. McMahon


Mayor’s Report To City Council
July 10th, 2006

McMahon Plan for Reading

This administration will continue to address issues coming to the forefront of my attention in terms of the four major tenets of the McMahon Plan. The major elements of the plan are:

1. Crime and Public Safety issues
2. Economic Development
3. Building neighborhoods
4. City Finances

Flood of 2006

I want to thank everyone who provided assistance during and after the floods two weeks ago. The police, fire and rescue, public works assisted by the sheriffs department, the Pennsylvania State Police, Red Cross, Salvation Army and many others stepped up to the plate and helped.

Deputy Fire Chief Squibb, with the able assistance of other chiefs and the entire fire/rescue team, was able to monitor and coordinate resources on a moment-by-moment basis, and he along with the rest of the department should be commended.

In general, the entire city team came together and worked hard to keep this event from being significantly worse than it could have been. I think everyone in Reading needs to recognize the good work done by our city workers in this emergency.

The city suffered significant damage to a storm line in the Northmont area, as well as major damage to the 3rd and Spruce Recreation Center. Cleanup efforts continue and with the Berks County designation of a disaster area, we hope to be able to recover some the costs that have been and are being incurred.

The flood in combination with the holiday falling in mid-week, stressed our ability to communicate with the public, and subsequently some recycling and some trash days were missed. We find that the traditional methods using the newspaper may need to be supplemented in the future.

In addition, we needed to do some special cleanups and the trash problem again reminded us of the need to move to a different system. We had a fair amount of illegal dumping that we had to content with and there were extra cleanup costs associated with the illegal dumping.

Our current system is not flexible enough to easily handle emergencies, holidays or special pickups.

Crime and Public Safety

1) We are moving forward on the anti-gang initiative with a meeting this week with the US Attorneys office to put a program in place based on the GREAT program, Gang Resistance Education and Training. Our proposal will be to link this with the initiatives of the other five cities in the program with the help of the US Attorney’s office, and to find areas of the city where we can direct our resources to make a measurable impact on gang activity.

2) We have had our third homicide this year in the city which happened July 9th. By the end of July last year, we had a total of 17 in the city

3) We send out monthly surveys to citizens regarding their satisfaction with the police services.

a) Overall satisfaction rate measured by excellent or good responses for Patrol Responses is 72%

b) Overall satisfaction rate measured by excellent or good responses for Criminal Investigations is 67%

4) The VIPER (Violent and Pattern Crime Reduction) detail has been operating for two months. Since robberies are the biggest crime problem in the city right now, they are tasked with responding to and investigating robberies, especially armed robberies with some clues to be followed-up on and those having similar characteristics. So far, they have solved a couple of series of robberies. They also respond to shootings, getting to the scene as quickly as possible and immediately taking steps to investigate the crime and also to prevent retaliation from some of the participants.

5) Thirty officers attended an 8 hour class in problem oriented policing. This is the beginning of the effort to make officers, especially patrol officers familiar with the concepts of identifying and abating conditions that lead to crime and disorder.

6) For the month of May, 134 noise violation citations were issued. This is very good in comparison to the 61 citations that were issued for May of 2005.

7) In the past week, five patrol officers planned and implemented a special detail aimed at apprehending persons who were breaking into cars in SW Reading. They did this on their own initiative and researched the location and times of occurrence. They then deployed to watch certain target areas. The results were very good. While we won’t reveal the tactics used, the officers made three separate arrests of persons trying to break into cars and also made several drug arrests. This is an example of what we want officers to do in regard to using innovative methods to catch criminals.

8) You may have seen that the investigation of the four home fire on West Greenwich St last week was an arson. This points up again the problem of trash dumping and the fire hazard that ensues. I encourage everyone who lives in a row home to be sure that there is no trash dumping in yards, houses or garages on their block since the threat of fire hazard is real.

Economic Development

1) Progress is being made on renovation of the Reading Outlet Center buildings – we expect to see some new commercial activity in those buildings within the next couple of months

2) This week we will welcome the next group of students into the Reading Works project, funded in part by the Pa Dept of Environmental Protection, the United Labor Council and the United Community Services for Working Families. The UCSWF offers a program combining a set of courses at Reading Area Community College with visits to construction sites and union apprenticeship programs. Participants receive a small stipend and will be interviewed for union apprenticeship.

3) We expect this week to hand out the first check to a senior citizen relative to the Major Systems Program. This is a CDBG funded program to help seniors with fixing heating, roofs etc. we are working with the Office of Aging and so far we have almost 20 requests from seniors.

4) We are planning on breaking ground for the 10 or 12 screen movie theatre in late August early September. Plans are in the process of being submitted for land development and variances for the Zoning Hearing Board.

5) We are on the agenda for Public Hearing on July 31, 2006. This hearing is to get the public’s input on the proposed zoning district change from M/C to C/C around the Goggleworks. This is because the use of the parcels in the immediate area of the Goggleworks is more in line with the (C/C) Commercial/Core rather than (M/C) Manufacturing/Commercial.

6) We had a successful meeting with a major national hotel chain and are meeting with another tomorrow. We are very hopeful that we will be in a position to announce the “flag” for the hotel project at 7th and Penn shortly.

7) We successfully defeased the HUD 108 loan which was prepaid by Brentwood Industries. This saved the City nearly $40,000 in fees after deducting about $8,500 in fees to the bond brokers to defease the HUD 108 bonds.

Building Neighborhoods

1) We attended the groundbreaking of another of the habitat for humanity homes in the Glenside area. Thanks to all who participated and continue to help us in the construction of new housing for city residents.

2) Thanks to the Berks County Conservancy and some anonymous donors who helped with the successful dedication of the community gardens at the Reading Iron playground. It is a great resource for that area of the city and I recommend all our citizens stop and see the well-tended gardens.

Financial

The 2005 Audit is finished and management is putting its MD & A together and corrective action plan.

Results for 2005 are in the process of verification however preliminary results appear to be very good. In 2005 the City came in under budget and reduced the number of findings by over 40%.