SALEM Residents push for trick, treat at night

A sewer project affecting a north side housing development was approved.
By NORMAN LEIGH
VINDICATOR SALEM BUREAU
SALEM -- City officials will consider switching to nighttime trick-or-treat after fielding complaints about holding the practice during daylight hours in recent years.
Some residents are lobbying for a return to nighttime hours because it's more traditional, council learned at its meeting Wednesday.
Salem and many other communities nationwide converted to daylight trick-or-treat years ago to better ensure children's safety.
Councilwoman Mary Lou Popa, D-1st, said she agrees the event should be returned to the traditional dark hours.
"One to three o'clock on a Sunday afternoon just isn't Halloween," Popa said, referring to the city's trick-or-treat hours last month.
Children's safety shouldn't be a problem because parents typically accompany youngsters for daylight trick-or-treat. They're likely to do the same for trick-or-treat held at night, Popa said.
A compromise might be to schedule the event so that it starts in daylight and ends sometime after dark, she suggested.
Sewage pumping station
In other business, city council agreed to authorize the sewer department to build a $523,982 sewage pumping station to serve a housing development on Salem's north side.
Council had expected to approve the matter last month but postponed action until language could be inserted requiring homes in the nearly 84-acre Brooks Farm development off North Lincoln Avenue to annex into the city before they could tie into sewer lines served by the pumping station.
That language has since been put into the agreement, paving the way for its approval.
Brooks Farm is expected to pay about half the cost of the sewage facility.