Downtown panel plans meetings
Uniontown business owners will soon be receiving invitations from the Downtown Uniontown Business District Authority (DBDA) to participate in a scheduled series of meetings to plan the future of the central business district. The DBDA is receiving free assistance from Lucinda Baron Robbins of the Penn State Cooperative Extension to plan improvements to downtown through the co-op’s “charting” process.
One pre-charting meeting and four charting sessions were scheduled at Tuesday’s DBDA meeting with each beginning at 5:15 p.m.
The pre-charting meeting is Feb. 5 in City Council chambers in City Hall. Charting meetings will be Feb. 19 and 26, March 19 and April 2. Robbins said the pre-charting meeting should last about an hour and the charting meetings will last three hours.
DBDA members plan to contact restaurants in the central business district to ask them to host the charting sessions. Each session could be held at a different restaurant.
Robbins said 25 to 35 people are needed for the charting meetings. They will be divided into work groups. She said she will organize all the ideas and plans from the groups into a report that she will present at the DBDA’s regular April 15 meeting.
In other business, the board approved its 2003 budget. The balanced $28,443 spending plan was unanimously approved.
$21,500 of the revenue comes from a city allocation. Membership dues were projected at $2,597.
In 2003, dues for new members will cost $99 and membership renewals $125. Silver contributors pay $300 per year, gold contributors pay $500 and platinum contributors pay $1,000 or more.
The greatest budgeted expenditure is $19,000 for salaries. The DBDA has a secretary, but has yet to hire a new executive director. The previous director resigned effective Aug. 30.
In unrelated business, Timothy Grindle and Tina Allen were seated as new board members. They replace Mark Thompson and Sylvia Mullin, respectively.
The board extended Grindle’s term for five years because Thompson’s term was set to expire on Jan. 1, while the board was not certain about how much time is left on Allen’s term.