The Republican candidates for Pottsville City Council say City Hall leadership has failed to secure grant money, keep committees functioning, and properly manage projects — and said they have a plan change that if elected in November.
In an interview with Coal Region Canary at a Back to School-themed GOP campaign event at Yuengling Mansion last Thursday, the candidates described a city government that they believe has become reactive, disorganized, and inattentive to basic needs like street repairs and blight reduction.
They said it’s only been “costs and chaos” over the last decade. And during the interview, they highlighted their 90-day plan that, if elected, they believe can counter what they see coming from City Hall leadership.
Under their plan, mayoral candidate Tom Smith said he’ll look for any and all available funding.
Council candidate Jonathan Marsh said he will make sure there are people in place on various committees and authorities to manage the money, and council candidate Scott Price said his job is to put systems in place to make sure that money is spent effectively and that there’s an onboarding process for people assigned to those committees, they said.
“Each piece builds off each other,” Price said. “Once we put those systems in place, we can really move the city forward.”
Missed Opportunities, Reactive Policies
Smith was highly critical of what he sees as Pottsville’s inability or unwillingness to secure grant funding in recent years.
“They haven’t applied for a grant in five years,” Smith said. “Eight grants they missed, two multimodals this year for streets. God knows, we don’t need street repairs … hundreds of thousands of dollars passed on.”
Smith said Pottsville even failed to apply for Local Share Account money – funding which comes from legalized gambling in Pennsylvania – and called it “a slam dunk” they missed.
“‘I’m going to make sure that every legislator has everything available to us … any grants, anything like that, anything with money,” he said.
At last week’s City Council meeting, Administrator Ian Mahal did announce that he applied for a Dept. of Community and Economic Development Multimodal Grant in July in the amount of $1.462 million for the Pottsville Yuengling Tourism Revitalization Route.
Marsh said Pottsville has committees that haven’t met in more than a year and others that are misdirected.
“We have a blight task force that hasn’t met in over a year,” he said. “We have a redevelopment authority that isn’t doing what they’re intended to do. My job in the first 90 days is to get buy-in, get these people involved, and then have oversight of those committees, which is what city council is already supposed to be doing.”
Price added, “The city leadership has brought us two Cs. They’ve brought us costs with higher taxes, higher fees. And they brought us chaos with mismanaged projects, projects that went ignored, blight that’s been ignored, roads that have been ignored, and essentially just not understanding how to do their job, not understanding what the CBA (Collective Bargaining Agreement) says with the FOP (Fraternal Order of Police), not understanding how to just make basic promotions.
“It’s costs and chaos,” he said.
Balance of Power at Stake in Pottsville
Smith, Marsh, and Price will face Democrat candidates Andy Wollyung for Mayor, and council hopefuls Mike Weres and Tom Wood.
Wollyung and Wood are current City Councilmen and Weres serves as City Controller.
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