YMCA closing dominates meeting

POTTSTOWN » The Montgomery County Commissioners made Pottstown the first stop on their annual “listening tour” Monday night and heard about two things from the audience.

One was very familiar: “When will the Keim Street Bridge be rebuilt?” (The answer remains: “Work is set to begin in 2020”).

The rest of the meeting was taken up with a comparatively new development: the decision last November by the Philadelphia-Freedom Valley YMCA to close the Pottstown branch on North Adams Street in June.

Most recently, the larger organization rejected recommendations by a task force it formed that the branch remain open, that a new YMCA be built in Pottstown, or that the facility (and several million dollars) be returned to the community.

Commissioners’ Chairwoman Valerie Arkoosh said she had spoken once with Shaun Elliott, CEO of the Philadelphia Freedom Valley YMCA “to do some fact-finding” and added that she hopes to be able to broker some kind of settlement satisfactory to the community and larger YMCA.

But some in the audience, including task force member Dan Boyer, didn’t hold out much hope. He noted that the larger organization never brought the problems with the facility — $11 million in capital needs over five years and an operating deficit of $700,000 — to the community to ask for help or input.

He said when Elliott has spoken to the task force, he has been “absolutely unbending.”

The commissioners were urged to exercise any influence they can to keep the facility open.