READING, Pa. \u2013 During its Committee of the Whole meeting on Monday night, Reading City Council said it wants the city’s administration to schedule a town hall meeting to have public discussions on crowds and noise at gatherings along the riverfront and on Skyline Drive.<\/p>\n
Councilwoman Marcia Goodman-Hinnershitz raised the issue of crowds at the riverfront, which has been dubbed “Penske Beach,” as it is near Penske Truck Rental at 255 Riverfront Drive.<\/p>\n
“I’m not going to call it ‘Penske Beach’ anymore because I think that makes it appear as if this is a beach area, which it is not,” Goodman-Hinnershitz said.<\/p>\n
“It’s occurring on city property with misuse, trespassing, and with large crowds that are dangerous,” she said of the gatherings. “And we’re starting to see a resurgence of problems again up in the Skyline Drive area.”<\/p>\n
Goodman-Hinnershitz said the city needs to look at the matters strategically.<\/p>\n
“I really wish the mayor were here to be able to have some dialogue on this,” she added. “I’ve attempted to text him, but haven’t received responses back.”<\/p>\n
Mayor Eddie Moran does not necessarily attend council meetings on a consistent basis.<\/p>\n
“I really feel we need to have a special meeting to discuss both this and also the number of shootings that are occurring,” Goodman-Hinnershitz said. \u201cNow, it seems it is almost on a daily basis.”<\/p>\n
“We do not have a safe city anymore,” she continued. “And for us to pretend that we’re going to bring in business and economic development. and yet we can’t feel safe walking our streets, is just delusional.”<\/p>\n
Councilman Chris Daubert said the answer can no longer be about educating the offenders.<\/p>\n
“We received a report from the riverfront today about the trash that was strewn and left all over the place,” Daubert said, “and I keep thinking that this really goes beyond education because there’s no conceivable way that someone would think that it was OK to leave our natural area in such disrepair.”<\/p>\n
“I think the only way that you change behavior has to be enforcement,” he said.<\/p>\n
Councilman Wesley Butler said that with the amount of people that are coming to the riverfront, the city should start making money from it.<\/p>\n
“I think we definitely can start making money off of a bunch of people who come from New Jersey \u2014 where there’s a bunch of beaches \u2014 but they rather come here for some reason,” Butler said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Start charging for parking,” he proposed. “Maybe have some food vendors there and start making money off of it instead of always just complaining about it.”<\/p>\n
The issue of crowds gathering along the riverfront was first brought to the attention of council last summer when officials from West Reading made complaints to the city regarding the noise coming from across the river.<\/p>\n
Council President Donna Reed said she agreed that there should be a town hall meeting, with the mayor present and at a location that can accommodate a large gathering of people.<\/p>\n
Reed asked the administration to come up with possible dates and locations and requested that Managing Director William Heim get members of the administration to attend.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, Pa. \u2013 During its Committee of the Whole meeting on Monday night, Reading City Council said it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":216094,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[94561,2716,2005,2793,2951,128,1095,130,129,94562,58571,5635,707],"class_list":["post-216093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-chris-daubert","tag-donna-reed","tag-eddie-moran","tag-marcia-goodman-hinnershitz","tag-penske-beach","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-council","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-riverfront-park","tag-skyline-drive","tag-wesley-butler","tag-west-reading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216093\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/216094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}