GREAT VALLEY — A tree lighting in the memorial park at the corner of Route 98 and Humphrey Road will help celebrate the holidays in Great Valley, the town board recently decided.
The “Lighting the Tree Event” was established Monday at the Great Valley Town Board meeting with plans to make it an annual event with an official ceremony beginning next year. A day to light a tree this year is to be determined.
For this December, the board members are hoping to have at least one tree with lights and spread the word to make the event bigger in 2019.
“I know it’s late into the month of December, but I would like to see a tree lighting ceremony,” said board member Becky Kruszynski.
In conversation with Town Supervisor Daniel Brown, Kruszynski said they thought that the park would make a great place for the tree lighting. She said there are five pine trees along the back of the park.
“It’s something we thought about doing as soon as we built the memorial park and put those pine trees in,” Brown said. “We put a pole service there with outlets just for this purpose.”
“Even if we only got one tree lit, I’m willing to donate the lights this year,” she said. “Maybe we can work on something in the forthcoming years to make this the first of an annual event for the community.”
The town board is looking for people who would like to sponsor a tree. Contact Brown at the town hall at 945-4200 for more information.
In other business, the board approved the renewal of a franchise agreement with Atlantic Broadband for cable in the town.
“We originally reviewed it in March, and some of the other towns wanted to form a coalition to go over it all,” Brown said. “It’s all been approved now.”
The board also discussed how the town replaces mailboxes that are knocked down in winter by snow piles when the plows go by. Brown said the plow rarely hits a box. It’s usually snowed in.
“It’s always been a town policy that if we damage a mailbox, we will make it so mail can be delivered again,” Brown explained. “But we have to get a phone call if we’re to know about it.”
Brown said to call the town hall and leave a message with himself, town clerk Toni Evans or Jack Harrington, the highway superintendent.
“Now we’re not going to replace it if it was held up by two pieces of goldenrod and some bailing twine … and we’re not going to put a mailbox back up that looks like the Taj Mahal,” he said. “We’re going to make it so a mailman can put mail in a box.”
Monday’s meeting was held in memory of Virginia Eileen Hall and Myrtle Blackmon, both of whom had recently passed away.
The next regular meeting of the Great Valley Town Board is scheduled for Monday, Jan. 14 at 7 p.m.
(Contact managing editor Kellen Quigley at kquigleysp@gmail.com)
