Tom DiBello (Credit: Tom DiBello)
The Montgomery County Commissioners is taking their show on the road with plans to hold their next meeting outside the county seat in the western part of the county.
The meeting will be 6 p.m. on Thursday, May 23 at the Limerick Township building, 646 W. Ridge Pike, Limerick.
“It made perfect sense to me … that we do the first one in Limerick, and that’s where I’m from, as being the originator of this initiative,” said Montgomery County Commissioner Tom DiBello. “I’m really excited about doing this, and I’m hoping that the community comes out and appreciates what we’re trying to do.”
DiBello said he got the idea while campaigning for county commissioner. When speaking with voters, he said he received some feedback that the meetings were not convenient for people’s schedules. He made mention of changing things up in an effort to try and make the meetings “more inclusive to our community” during his swearing in speech.
DiBello brought the idea to his colleagues, Montgomery County Commissioners’ Chairwoman Jamila Winder and Vice Chairman Neil Makhija. DiBello stressed that “our job is to really listen to our community as far as things that they feel are important.
“So we talked about it, and then both Jamila and Neil eventually agreed that they thought it would be a good thing for us to try to (have) staff reach out to some municipalities, and no surprise, many were excited to have us,” DiBello said.
The last time the commissioners scheduled meetings in towns around the county was a series of “conversations” dubbed the “listening tour” in 2013-15 under the commissioners chaired by now-Gov. Josh Shapiro.
As the planning process kicked off behind-the-scenes, DiBello estimated that nearly two dozen municipalities have expressed interest in hosting meetings. Along with Limerick Township, other jurisdictions included Pottstown, as well as Franconia, Horsham, Lower Providence, and Upper Providence townships.
DiBello stressed the importance of having the trio of newly elected officials come together to make this work in a bipartisan way. DiBello is the minority Republican commissioner and Winder and Makhija hold majority control as Democrats.
“It just demonstrates one more time that as three new commissioners, although we don’t align philosophically on everything, which is fine, we all agree that those minimal differences we have, we’re going to have them, and that’s OK, but … we’re not going to let that tear us down because we’re trying to be true leaders of … the 865,000 plus residents in Montgomery County,” he said. “So this is just a good piece to demonstrate that we’re holding true to what our goals are.
“… I believe that we may hear from community members about certain things that are going on that are unique or more specific to their community versus other communities,” DiBello said. “I know that for instance, if and when we get up to Pottstown, we’ll hear from the community members about the growing homeless problem in Pottstown. I know that that’s (a) very important issue up there.
“So I would suspect if we get (to) Pottstown, the community will definitely come out and wanna talk about that issue. There may be other parts of the county where over-development may be an issue. There’s projects that are underway where (the) community, they’re not in favor of,” he continued. “So we don’t get involved from a local standpoint, but (it’s) still good to know where they’re at and what their feelings are.”
DiBello also anticipated that logistics, parking, spacing, and technology would need to be worked out at each location. It’s unclear how often that meetings will be held in different areas, however, DiBello said he’d love to use the Limerick-based session as a pilot to see how it works as they take the show “on the road.”
“I can only suspect that the community will be very happy that we’re out there in the community, we’re out there listening to … our constituents, our community members. So I think it’ll be well received,” he said.
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