Challenge issued for lights project

POTTSTOWN >> David Miller thinks its time for the town to step up and pony up to get the lights replaced at Grigg Memorial Field, and that includes the school board.

Miller addressed the school board last week and put his money where his mouth is, pledging $1,000 in the next 100 days and challenging other Pottstown residents to do the same.

“I am asking the individual and business community at large to come together and make additional pledges of $1,000 each to be paid within the next 100 days, thus creating and fulfilling a 100day challenge in reaching a goal

of $100,000 over the next 100 days,” Miller told the board.

He also wasted no time in including the board among those he believes should help out.

“It is time for the board to formally recognize this capital campaign and establish parameters through which limited tax dollars will be allocated in the fiscal 2017 budget to bring the fund-raising to a conclusion with the stated goal that the 2017 football season be played under the lights,” said Miller.

“I would ask each board member to recognize that a project of this magnitude, funded by as much as 80/90 or even 100 percent of the community is rare and as such has sufficient merit to warrant some public funding,” Miller said.

School Board Vice President Emanuel Wilkerson asked the board, and it agreed, to at least discuss the matter at the board’s next finance meeting.

Board member Polly Weand, who has headed up the effort to raise the $300,000 needed for the project, thanked Miller and updated the board on the campaign’s progress.

She had good news and bad news.

The bad news is that the NFL rejected Pottstown’s application for a $50,000 grant toward the lights.

The good news is that over the Thanksgiving break, the campaign received an anonymous $10,000 donation.

The fund now stands at $132,000, she said. If the campaign can meet the conditions set by the Pottstown Health and Wellness Foundation, it will net another $75,000, she said, which would bring the total to $204,000 — $96,000 short of the $300,000 goal.

“We continue to move closer to our goal,” she said.

Meller said he was motivated after reading a story in a November edition of The Mercury in which Weand fired back at criticism leveled at her in the newspaper’s popular-but-anonymous Sound Off call-in section.

And it spurred him to action.

“I said you know what, let’s get this done,” he told The Mercury.

“An investment in athletics is as helpful to a student’s educational experience as textbooks are,” Miller said. “The things they learn about teamwork and loyalty will serve them throughout their lives, perhaps more than knowing what the chemical symbol for iron is.”