The Commonwealth Financing Authority awarded the Borough of Kutztown a $674,844 grant on April 22 for Multimodal Transportation projects that will focus on making Kutztown a walkable community and developing âstreets as places,â which can mean the difference between a monotonous route and a destination people want to return to.
âOur goal is to make Kutztown a safe and walkable community by creating an Art and History Self-Guided Walking Route, said Kutztown Community Partnership and Kutztown University Community Liaison, Sandy Green in a release. The goal of this project is to promote walking in Kutztown by engaging a diverse set of community partners to help enhance the social infrastructure and to leverage existing visual assets, such as public art; architecture; and historical cultural sites, to promote walking as a form of active transportation.â
Kutztown Borough and a German town are now officially sister cities.
At its Feb. 16 virtual meeting Kutztown Borough Council approved a resolution forging a relationship with Altrip, a municipality in Germany, through programming to exchange historical and cultural information in an effort to participate in town twinning.
âA year ago, we started this but because of COVID it fell behind. With the Pen Pal Program that was started at the library, there are a lot of people taking interest,â said Kutztown Mayor Jim Schlegel. âI look forward to communicating and visiting the folks of Altrip and when they come to visit us.â
The proposed 2021 tax rate remains at 4.6 mills.
âThis Council has made some moves to save costs for some people in the Borough during our economic downturn this summer going into the fall this year,â said Council Vice President Derek Mace. âI think weâve asked the Borough staff to some things to help residents and to protect themselves and still the budget has managed to come out to be a fairly good situation. Weâre a little behind it but itâs a good budget and weâve maintained our Reserves. I like this budget.â
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Mace thanked Borough Manager Gabriel Khalife for his efforts to put this budget together. Khalife credited department heads for making this budget possible.