Anyone with questions, remarks, recommendations or concerns about Lehighton will soon have a forum to express themselves.

Borough Mayor Clark Ritter will hold his inaugural “Talk with the Mayor” program at 7 p.m. Monday in the Lehighton Municipal Building.

Ritter said the program will be held once a month for residents to meet with him in borough council chambers.

“I believe this would be a great way to open a line of communication between the mayor’s office and the people of Lehighton,” Ritter said.

Ritter said his prior involvement with the Lehighton 150th Anniversary Celebration Committee helped foster his idea for the program.

“The more people you have, the more ideas you have, the better the problem-solving ability,” he said. “I really want to get the townspeople involved in the activities of town.”

Ritter said he’ll be open to constructive criticism.

“You’ve got to have that communication,” he said. “If you don’t know what the problem is, how can you fix it?”

Ritter said he also plans to hold another program, “Junior Mayor for the Day,” at a later date.

He said that program will serve to familiarize school-aged kids with the inner workings of the mayor’s office, police department, borough manager, and secretaries, and would end with the kids sitting in on a council meeting to see how local government works.

Born and raised in the borough, Ritter said he came up with the idea for the programs before he ran for the mayor’s seat.

Ritter praised the police department, which he oversees in his capacity as mayor.

“What I would like is the people to know what the police department does,” he said. “I want to make our guys a little more visible, both on the job and off the job.”

While he’s only been in office a short time, Ritter said his experience to date has “been great,” and thanked the police department, borough manager and borough council for being “very accepting and helpful.”

“I want to make things better for Lehighton, and the people of Lehighton,” he said.