Jul 16, 2025 By Garrett Neese 3 min read

Nearly a year away from the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, plans for celebration in Greene County are already taking shape.

At Monday’s Waynesburg Borough Council meeting, Bethany Tanner approached the council with her idea for a street fair on High Street on July 4 as part of the America 250 slate of events for Pennsylvania.

Tanner, the owner of Waynesburg embroidery and screen-printing business Embroid’em, said after next year, the festival might move to the fall.

“I love this county,” she said. “I’ve grown up here, went to high school here, graduated college here, I have a building here on High Street. So I’m very passionate about businesses staying here, getting them to be here and putting on events for people around Waynesburg, giving families something to do.”

Tanner said she hoped to hold the event sometime in the late morning and early afternoon, to avoid conflicting with the live music and fireworks at Lions Club Park. The downtown location would allow more families to be able to walk to the site.

The street fair would still overlap with the all-day car show at the park, but council members said the two events would be able to co-exist.

“Your car show’s all day,” said Councilwoman Lynne Snyder. “People go to a car show, they walk around, and then they leave. For her to have a street fair, I think that we can work together.”

The council also approved a request by resident Kevin Cathers to have the borough replace a backflow it had installed at his house on Wayne Street in 2006.

During periods of heavy rain, water builds up at the nearby city park by the storm drain, causing water from the sewer line to back up into his basement, he said.

A plumber gave him an estimate of $3,000 to $4,000 for the work.

The council agreed to fund the replacement, with the understanding that Cathers would take on future maintenance of the backflow preventer. “It’s not because it’s in the borough, it’s because the borough put that one in,” council President Ben Humble said.

Also Monday, the borough agreed to extend the deadline to tear down a Second Avenue house gutted by an Oct. 31 fire.

John Ealy, whose daughter was living in the house, told council he had met with the Greene County Redevelopment Authority to pursue a grant. While his daughter is low-income, he said, he had learned an hour before the meeting that she was ineligible for the grant because low-income residents make up less than 61% of the neighborhood.

“I live three houses up,” he said. “I don’t want it in my neighborhood. I just need a little bit more time now that I’m starting over again.”