MARS — Borough resident John McWilliams was approved by a 5-1 vote to fill the vacant seat on the Mars Borough Council at a meeting Monday night.

McWilliams has lived in Mars his whole life and is a life member of the Adams Area Fire District. He will be sworn in at the next borough meeting.

“I’ve been a cubmaster, a Boy Scout Scoutmaster, and I’ve been a business owner — I have Keystone Specialties up on Route 8 in Butler, and I’ve been in that business since 1982,” he said. “I’ve been around a while.”

McWilliams said he had heard about the open position from Christine Clutter, a Mars council member.

“I just want to see what’s going on and what I can do to help,” he said. “I have a lot of business background, so whatever I can do to offer, what limited amount of information I have.”

The borough has had an open slot since former member James “Rick” Foster resigned March 7. He had served as a member of the council for three terms, and his current term was scheduled to end Dec. 31, 2023.

Mars community members spoke at the meeting about potential upgrades to Garfield Park, including planting new trees and installing newer playground equipment.

Harmony Hodges and Anastacia Nelson, two Mars residents, brought up the idea of renovating Garfield Park at the meeting after seeing a post on the Mars PA Community Forum Facebook group describing places in the park that are worn.

Hodges asked about trees that were recently taken down at the park due to safety concerns.

Council member Julie Schultheis said that there were not yet plans to replace the trees.

“As beautiful as they were, they were hazards, so they had to go,” Schultheis said.

Hodges offered to help with fundraising to pay to replace the trees.

“The longer it takes, we’re losing time that they could be growing,” she said.

Nelson described seeing damage and vandalism at the park, and explained that community members on the Facebook post, which received more than 50 comments, said they’d be interested in helping out to maintain or upgrade the park.

“From the messages I got and from the interaction on the post, the people who did comment, they were very adamant that they wanted to contribute and help out in any way possible,” Nelson said.

Schultheis agreed to meet with Nelson and Hodges at a later date to discuss the possible projects.

Council member Robert Bost presented a potential layout for usage of the building at 301 Arch St., which the borough has owned since late 2019 and where council has met for the past year.

“We kind of took the thought of, ‘let’s get the staff up here, let’s get them in the space, and let’s start using the space,’ and then over the next (few) months, make any other plans and adjustments to the structure that we might want,” Bost said. “We’re not saying that everything on here is bolted to the floor and will exist forever.”

Previous plans had discussed housing the borough police’s offices in the building, but the new plan would see the police continue to be based at the borough’s main building at Spring Street with an extension built on the original borough building to add more space for the police and public works.

The new design does not involve any major construction changes to the Arch Street building, contrasting with another previous design which suggested cutting an internal window into the foyer.