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City Halloween hours will be same, the rest is up to you
Glancing at the Greencastle City Council agenda prior to the September meeting, Councilman Adam Cohen offered a prediction to no one in particular.
“Halloween is going to be the most discussion tonight,” Cohen said from his seat at the end of the City Hall table that allows him to social distance as much as possible for monthly Council sessions.
The City Council annually sets hours for trick-or-treating within the city. That is always on Halloween itself, whether it’s Monday, Saturday or the second Tuesday of next week. The holiday is the holiday, the Council has always reasoned.
And in recent years, 6-8 p.m. has always been the allowable timeframe since it has followed a 4-6 p.m. event downtown in which hundreds of trick-or-treaters annually take part.
“This year Halloween does fall on a Saturday,” Mayor Bill Dory said as discussion commenced on the final item on the September agenda.
“And a full moon,” Council President Mark Hammer interjected.
“That may be good or that may be bad, I don’t know,” Dory replied.
“It’s pretty funny,” Councilman Dave Murray quickly noted, “that we’re talking about Halloween right after we just passed the salary ordinance in the middle of a pandemic.”
Mayor Dory then asked if everybody was OK with allowing door-to-door trick-or-treating.
“It’s their decision,” Councilor Stacie Langdon responded in the name of local residents.
People can voluntarily take part if they so wish, letting their children go to appropriate homes that have their front porch lights on as has been the practice locally the past 30 years or more. Some homeowners, it was suggested, might get creative with how their candy is passed out in order to avoid contact with trick-or-treaters.
Mayor Dory noted that he was on a recent community call about the COVID-19 situation and no objections were voiced about Halloween and “no grave concerns were raised.”
“The joke was that we’ll probably see a lot of doctors or nurses with facemasks this year,” he said.
And probably less participation, Hammer noted before making a motion to keep the acceptable hours at 6-8 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 31.
It was also pointed out that organizations and churches in Greencastle will likely have alternative Halloween events.
However, the annual Main Street Greencastle downtown event that usually features “wall-to-wall people,” as Mayor Dory said, will likely not occur this year.
Instead, it looks like organizers might try to use one of the parks to do a drive-through candy distribution.
Big Walnut Sports Park would be the logical place with a “straight shot right through,” Councilman Cohen said, his prediction of the night’s longest discussion coming to fruition.
Councilman Jacob Widner agreed, saying a one-way drive-through with booths spaced out would be a good idea.
In the past, first-responders, churches, local dentists and other organizations have participated in “Trunk-or-Treat” efforts at various venues. One of the parks might be able to make that happen in the topsy-turvy year of 2020, it was suggested.
That, however, is all yet to be determined.
Meanwhile, in another issue, Councilman Murray said he found “something really positive” among the monthly department reports.
First Murray pointed out that from a low of 25,690,000 gallons of water sold in April, the city sold 38,842,000 gallons in July with revenues in the Water Department up 51 percent over the same period.
Murray, who has questioned the city’s unaccountable water reports many times over recent years, noted that the unaccountable water was actually down by 33 percent. Unaccountable water dropped from 22 percent to 9.8 percent, he added, saying it was lowest unaccountable water rate since 2018.
“That’s significant seemingly,” Murray surmised.
Veteran Councilman Adam Cohen said when he first came on the City Council he asked the late George Murphey, a longtime Board of Works member, about unaccountable water.
“I’ve never understood how it varies each month,” Cohen added.
Meanwhile, Mayor Dory also announced that all the COVID-related supplies purchased by the city for Greencastle Schools and Area 30 Care Center with CARES Act funds have been received and distributed.
City Attorney Laurie Hardwick -- who served as the point person on the project, soliciting school needs and ordering the items through city channels -- said the bulk of the city’s CARES Act dollars will go to extra pay and overtime for police, fire and emergency services.
The city used $37,000 of its $341,000 to benefit the schools with such items as water bottle filling stations to replace drinking fountains at all schools and McAnally Center, special masks for band and choir, hand sanitation stations and more.
“The schools are all really, really appreciative,” Hardwick noted, adding that she wasn’t sure “any other community has done that, reaching out to the schools to help them with some of their extraordinary expenses.”
Dory said the motivation came easy.
“If we can help the school be safe,” he said, “that helps the rest of the community be safe.”