ABINGTON TOWNSHIP, PA —For many of us, taking in our neighbors’ outdoor holiday lighting displays and other decorative touches is as much a part of the season as exchanging gifts and singing Christmas carols.
Patch and T-Mobile are partnering to help you compile a list of lights around Abington Township that deserve a drive-by.
There’s a good reason twinkling holiday lights and colorful displays make us feel good, according to mental health experts.
“It does create that neurological shift that can produce happiness,” Psychologist Deborah Serani, a senior professor at New York’s Adelphi University, told NBC’s “Today” show. “I think anything that takes us out of our normal habituation, the normal day in, day out ... signals our senses, and then our senses measure if it’s pleasing or not.”
Decorating for the holidays “will spike dopamine, a feel-good hormone,” she said. “For a lot of us, Christmas is a magical time, it’s a time of innocence. It’s a time of joy.”
So who has the best light displays in Abington Township?
Email Editor Dino Ciliberti at [email protected] and let us know the address. Also please send a photo (that you took yourself) to appear in our holiday roundup!
JENKINTOWN BOROUGH, PA —It was approved in 2023 but wasn't enacted in 2024. But for 2025, sewer fees will be rising for borough residents.
During his presentation recently on the 2025 municipal budget, Borough Manager George Locke said that the sanity sewer rate fee increase is due to the rising expense of treatment, the cost of maintenance to the treatment plant, and for preparation of impending downstream construction of the surveyance system.
He said the annual fee of $82.50 and the cost of $3.41 per 1,000 gallons will remain the same.
The current allowance of 24,194 gallons will be reduced to 10,000 gallons.
Locke said that the current borough rate for the average residential usage of 58,000 gallons per year of $198 will rise next year to $245.70, an increase of $47.70.
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"Jenkintown will remain the least expensive of the 30 municipalities under comparison by $53.26 and below the highest two by $572.26 annually," Locke said in his budget presentation.
He said that residents continued paying the 2023 rate this year due to a billing error.