Berlin In Small Town Poll Running

BERLIN — While Berlin has been promoting itself as “Maryland’s Coolest Small Town,” for months, it could receive recognition as one of America’s coolest small towns this winter.
“Berlin is now in the top 10 for Budget Travel’s, ‘Coolest Small Town in the Country,’” Mike Day, director of Economic and Community Development, told the Berlin Mayor and Council Monday.
Budget Travel’s contest is “looking for American towns with a population under 10,000 and a certain something that no place else has.” They include shopping, food, history, music and art scenes and location in the criteria by which they hope to find the coolest small town in America for 2014 Sitting at 861 votes as of Tuesday afternoon, Berlin is currently number seven on the list but is only 53 votes below the sixth ranked small town Abingdon, Va. Buckhannon, W.Va. is the leader nationally at 2,887 votes. Still, a bit of a fire seems to have been lit under Berlin residents and interested citizens elsewhere with Day pointing out that the town has time to advance further in the list. “There are maybe a hundred towns in this right now. The voting closes in a couple of weeks,” he said.
Cracking the top 10 or even the top five could be a bigger deal than people might realize, according to
Councilwoman Lisa Hall.
“We’re almost number five. If people would start voting, we could get national recognition,” she said. Day was also enthusiastic about Berlin receiving attention and told residents and fans to “vote early and often.”
“There are a couple of towns that have just gotten thousands of votes, and I think if we can stay in the top 10 we’ll be great,” he said. “If we can get in the top five, that’s the idea. It is really neat and I think we’re on to something.”
Locals have done a good job so far of promoting Berlin on social networks, Day added, including assistance from Worcester County Director of Tourism Lisa Challenger.
“They’ve been pushing it out there. Lisa has been beginning to advertise this,” he said. “It is on a number of
websites. Ocean 98.1 talks about it every morning so we are gaining traction on this.”
Voting for the top 15 coolest small towns in America will close 11:59 p.m. on Tuesday, Dec. 3. Voting will continue for those towns until a top 10 are announced in February.
For more information visit www.budgettravel.com or the fanmade site www.mdscoolestsmalltown.com.