Reading To Take Proposals To Run Egelman Park; Current Operator Objects

Egelman Park is one of the city’s most valuable parks, so it’s time to end the current lease and take proposals from new groups to run it this summer, City Council and Mayor Vaughn D. Spencer’s administration agreed Monday.

That didn’t sit well with Randy Gaston, who has a 25-year lease that runs through 2018.

He and his East Reading Athletic Association have run the Egelman concessions and baseball fields for 20 years.

Contacted after the meeting, Gaston said he can’t run the youth baseball program if he doesn’t have a field.

Read more:  http://readingeagle.com/article.aspx?id=452211

Reading City Council Agrees To Hire 12 Probationary Police Officers

City Council on Monday agreed to hire 12 probationary police officers to get the police force, gutted by retirements, up to its authorized strength of 168 officers.

The new probationers, who entered the Reading Police Academy earlier in the day, are in addition to about two-dozen new officers who just completed or are still in field training.

But even those won’t be enough to keep the force at full strength, with more retirements expected this year, much less get the force back to the more than 200 officers it had several years ago.

Meanwhile, council awarded a design contract as the city gets started on replacing the first equipment at the wastewater treatment plant on Fritz’s Island, required by state and federal environmental agencies in 2004 as part of a court-ordered consent decree.

Read more: http://readingeagle.com/article.aspx?id=402193