A Different Kind of Voting

If you live in the Pottsgrove School District and you're kicking yourself because you forgot to vote in the primary election last week, here's your chance to have a say in something important.

Some of you may recall that back in February, the district hired a Jenkintow-based public relations and marketing research company, The Communications Solutions Group to help with marketing and "re-branding" the district.

This spring, a number of focus group sessions with parents, residents and staff were held.

One of the initiatives to come out of those sessions is a choice of three potential new logos for the district.

Now the district is asking you to vote on which one you prefer.

But decide quickly.

They would like you to vote by Tuesday, May 28.

You can vote by clicking on this link.

And, in case you're curious, here are the three logos under consideration.

No. 1

No. 2

No. 3

A Runner Named First Runner-Up for Dannehower Award

Ian Yanusko

Pottsgrove High School senior Ian Yanusko has been named as the First-Runner-Up for the William F. Dannehower Award.

As a result, he is the recipient of a $3,000 scholarship from the Triangle Club of Montgomery County.

Ian plans to attend the University of Virginia in the fall.

The award is given at the Triangle Club of Montgomery County's annual banquet

The club's 50th annual banquet was held on May 9 at Presidential Caterers in Norristown.

Yanusko was chosen from among 27 student athletes in Montgomery County, a list which this year also included Megan Schmidt of Pottstown High School and Natalie Marsh of Perkiomen Valley High School.

Yanusko was the lead runner on Pottsgrove's Cross Country team which won it's first-ever team title.

The Dannehower Award recognizes outstanding achievement in athletics, academics and community service.

The three top seniors selected are also awarded scholarships from the Triangle Club.

According to the club's web site, since 1964, no student from Pottsgrove or Pottstown High School has ever won the top award.

This year's top winner was Matthew Schulman of Wissahickon High School.

The Triangle Club of Montgomery County was established in 1963 to promote service, sports, and scholarship among public, parochial, and private high school students in the county. During the spring of each year, the Triangle Club honors the top scholar-athletes from all area high schools, at which time the most outstanding is selected to receive the William F. Dannehower Memorial Scholarship Award.

The award is named for the late President Judge of the Montgomery Country Court of Common Pleas, who assisted in the formation of the Triangle Club, and whose life exemplified the ideals of scholarship, sports, and service.

Each year, the Triangle Club awards three annual college scholarships. The winner of the prestigious William F. Dannehower Award receives $5,000, and their school is granted $1,000 as well. The first runner-up receives $3,000, and $2,000 is awarded to the second runner-up.

Teachers of the Year

Photo by John Armato

Teacher of the Year awards include a trophy and a T-shirt. The district Teacher of the Year gets the clock.

You don't have to look hard on the Internet, especially on The Mercury's web site, to find people criticizing teachers for having it easy, making big money, only working 10 months a year.

You usually don't hear from those people when we read about the Newtown shootings, and the teachers there acting as human shields to protect their students; or those who saved and calmed children during the recent Oklahoma tornado.

The truth is, they are, like so many other classes of people, or professions, filled with good and bad, competent and not, and those who are a combination of those things on different days.

But on this day (or Monday to be specific) it was teacher excellence being recognized in Pottstown, for the annual Teacher of the Year ceremony.

Each school nominates a Teacher of the Year for their building and then a district-wide teacher is selected from among that pool.

This year's pool featured Jaime Stringer from Barth Elementary; Lori Freese from Franklin Elementary; Diana Hofmanner from Edgewood Elementary; Jennifer Groff from Lincoln Elementary; Natalie Pileggi from Rupert Elementary; Ginger Angelo from Pottstown Middle School and Mark Agnew from Pottstown High School.

Here they are:

Photo by John Armato

From left are Mark Agnew, Pottstown High School, Jaime Stringer from Barth, Diana Hofmanner from Edgewood, Lori Freese from Franklin; Jennifer Groff from Lincoln; Natalie Pilerggi from Rupert and Ginger Angelo from Pottstown Middle School.

From that pool the administration selects the district Teacher of the Year.

Pottstown Superintendent Jeff Sparagana with the district's
Teacher of the Year, Diana Hofmanner.

This year's winner is Diana Hofmanner from Edgewood Elementary.

In her nominating form, Hofmanner was described as a teacher "who carries out all responsibilities with a high degree of professionalism, pride and enthusiasm."

Hofmanner "adapts to the ever-changing initiatives that occur at the elementary level and accepts these changes with a positive attitude. It is second nature for Mrs. Hofmanner to adjust her teaching strategies to accommodate the needs of all students in her classroom," according to her nomination.

Hofmanner "has welcomed the opportunity to work with co-teaching and grade-level partners, building principal, intervention team, speech therapist, occupational therapist and the entire building staff and faculty to carry out her responsibilities as an effective educator."

Here's a quick video of Hofmanner accepting the award from Superintendent Jeff Sparagana.

The Vote

So if we're all lucky, you're reading this after having voted and seen some of the results come in -- the "will of the people."

As I write this Tuesday afternoon, the local results are unknown.

But what's important in a big picture kind of way, is that there will be results -- not something you can say in lots of places in the world, or at least not results you can believe.

Most Americans view voting as a commonplace thing; something you do twice a year if you remember.

African-Americans had to fight for fair voting rules.

But it is one of the few places that the corporate oligarchs who control so much of what happens in this country -- where you live, what you're paid, what you know -- do not yet fully control.

At least for now.

One way to control voting is to control who votes.

Just ask blacks in the Jim Crow south; and women before 1920 when the 19th Amendment was ratified.

Since its inception, much of the democratic history of our great Republic has been a history of limiting voting to those likely to continue the policies and viewpoint those who benefit from being in power.

So did women.

And a parallel, often lesser-known history, has unfolded in the fight by those disenfranchised by such efforts to win the right to vote.

I'll spare you the usual, well-worn axioms that if you don't vote, you can't complain; or that (some) veterans died to preserve the right to vote.

(Many, such as those who fought in undeclared wars in the Philippines, Vietnam and Iraq, mostly fought to advance the "American interests" of the oligarchs of their day. This does not make their sacrifice any less noble, only more tragic.)

The fact that such well-worn arguments about voting are so often trotted out at election time doesn't make them any less true.

Sadly, if voter participation rates are any indication, too few Americans find them inspirational enough to motivate them to actually vote.

But if the recent debate over background checks for gun purchasers is any indication, nothing motivates a person who takes their unused rights for granted more than a perceived effort to take them away.

So perhaps there is a re-surgence in the offing.

Like it or not, there are efforts out there to undermine your right to vote -- unless you're a rich white guy that is.

Like it or not, the "typical" American voter is no longer

a white male. Get used to it.

As the inexorable crush of demographics changes the face of the "average American," like a tsunami of molasses that you see coming slowly but can do nothing to avoid, Hispanics will soon be the majority of this country.

And they vote.

The Obama campaign recognized this and capitalized on it as the national GOP continued to convince itself it would win with a 12-foot fence along the Mexican border.

(Don't worry Republicans, if the Democrats are true to form, they will soon begin to take the loyalty of most Hispanic voters for granted and fritter away their present demographic advantage.)

There is a segment of the Republican party that recognizes this wave, and believes the party needs to do more to appeal to this demographic -- mostly they are realists who govern southern states that already have large Hispanic populations that must be wooed to win.

There is another segment that hopes to win by finding ways to keep that wave away from the polls, which brings us back to the subject at hand.

If you do not think such efforts are underway, then you probably don't vote

either.

If you did vote yesterday, you may have been asked for photo ID, and you would have been legally permitted to refuse and vote anyway.

But that may not be true much longer.

When the Pennsylvania courts suspended Pennsylvania's Voter ID law for the presidential election, and yesterday's primary that followed, it was only delaying the inevitable.

PREMATURE BRAGGART?: Mike Turzai's bragging came 

a little too soon

And if you think this is about preventing fraud, you would work needlessly to find a single example of in-person voter fraud, which is the only thing Voter ID stops.

As famously loud-mouthed Pennsylvania Rep. Mike Turzai made prematurely evident, the entire scheme, cloaked in a shroud if "integrity" was largely about keeping some people from the polls -- people the least likely to have a photo ID as a matter of course.

That means blacks, Hispanics and, of course, the poor.

If you want a taste of the impact of the law's potential consider that "poll workers

wrongly demanding to see photo ID from Pennsylvania voters – especially voters of color – were the most common problem reported during last November’s federal election."

That was the information presented in January to the Democratic Policy Committee Hearing on Voter ID Law & Early Voting.

Pennsylvania voters placed 9,171 complaint calls to the Election Protection hotline on Election Day, second only to California. The number one issue: poll workers wrongly demanding voters show a photo ID.

How PA voted in 2012

Having lost Pennsylvania's electoral votes for Mitt Romney, the Republicans tried a new tac -- change the "winner-take-all" aspect of Pennsylvania's Electoral College votes.

"Split them proportionally," they said, arguing its more "representative" of how the state votes.

In February, The York Dispatch's editorial board put it better than I could:

It's a ploy being considered by Republicans in several other swing states, and one endorsed by GOP National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus after President Barack Obama's re-election.

"I think it's something that a lot of states that have been consistently blue that are fully controlled red ought to be looking at," he said last month.

And the consistently red states? They presumably would continue allocating all of their electoral votes to the winner, meaning the only effect of changes like Pileggi is suggesting would be to siphon electoral votes from Democratic candidates.

It's a shameless attempt to rig the system, but better than the one Pileggi floated last year. That one would have allocated electoral votes based on our congressional districts -- our heavily gerrymandered congressional districts.

Me? I say it doesn't go far enough.

If the Republicans want a truly representative Democracy, let's do away with the Electoral College all together.

Seven of the 10 most populous states voted blue in 2012.

Do Republicans really want to start a conversation about

distributing votes proportionally? OK.

Do they really want to live in a country where the "representative" weight of the ten most populous states -- California, Texas, New York, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, which together represent   53.3 percent of the total U.S. population -- decide every presidential election?

Of those states, only Texas, Georgia and North Carolina have voted reliably Republican since 1992, with North Carolina going for Obama in 2008 and George going for Clinton in 1992.

They realize, one hopes, that under such a "popular vote" scenario Al Gore would have been the president who responded to the 9/11 attack.

Yeah, I would imagine their taste for "representation" would dwindle quickly.

The true idiocy of it all is that each state sets its own rules for voting. 

To my knowledge, no other Democracy on Earth does this.

We are one nation. We fought a bloody war over "states rights," and the states rights people lost.

We need one voting system for the nation, so Ohio can't use the power of an incumbent Republican attorney general to narrow the voting window in Democratic areas and leave it broad in Republican ones.

If you wanted to be picayune, I suppose you could have state voting rules for state and local races, but in truth that would just be even more confusing.

In March, President Obama created a commission to look into just that possibility -- away to standardize voting access and registration across the country.

According to the Associated Press: 

The top lawyer for Obama's re-election campaign, Bob Bauer, will co-chair the commission with the top lawyer for Republican Mitt Romney's campaign, Ben Ginsburg.

The goal is to address issues including long lines at the polls, voter registration and voter access.

Invariably, we come together as one nation during a crisis. 

Shouldn't we all vote under the same rules and regulations when we collectively perform the one tasks which literally defines us a nation?

$53 MIlion School Budget Would Hike Taxes by 2.4%

The Pottstown School Board adopted a $53 million preliminary budget which, if finalized, would raise property taxes by 2.4 percent.

The following information is culled from the "Letter of Transmittal," Business Manager Linda Adams conveyed to the school board on May 13.

The proposed budget increases spending by just over $1 million and represents a 2.1 percent spending increase over the current budget.

The primary expenditures in the budget are salaries and benefits which, when taken together, comprise 69 percent of total expenditures, Adams wrote.

When the $722,281 increase in salaries and $433,185 in benefits are taken together, they add up to an additional $1.2 million, or 3.2 percent. "This includes a retirement (payment) increase of 37.09 percent with rates increasing from 12.36 percent (of total payroll) to 16.93 percent," Adams wrote.

The tax hike is the maximum permitted under the Act 1 index set by the state. Anything higher and the board would have had to go to referendum in today's primary election, something Pottstown has never done since Act 1 was adopted in 2006.

Act one also provides for tax relief for approved homesteads. Pottstown has 4,348 approved homesteads, each of which will enjoy a $369.73 property tax reduction for 2013.

This house at W. Fourth and State streets, is for sale for $72,500, 

close to the median Pottstown assessment of $73,493.

The tax hike would increase property tax revenues by $671,815 and represents a .8940 millage increase.

For a home assessed at $73,493 -- the borough average -- the budget would raise property taxes by $65.70 in the coming school year.

In several signs of economic good news, for the first time in recent memory, the budget anticipates an increase in the borough's net real estate assessment of $948,200 to $813.3 million.

As a result, the same millage rate generates more income for the district, and ultimately, the borough and the county as well.

However, Adams noted that those increases will be offset by an anticipated decrease of $300,000 in delinquent tax collections -- this largely due to the "successful collection activities.

Another sign of economic improvement is the anticipated 13.5 percent increase in earned income revenues, a result of higher incomes among borough residents.

That means the district anticipates getting $1.8 million from earned income taxes in the coming school year.

Coupled with an increase in interest revenue from investments -- about $5,000 -- that means before any increase in real estate taxes is calculated, revenue from local sources is predicted to be up by about $27,250 -- a .09 percent increase.

In terms of revenue from the Commonwealth, the district would see a 2.19

The capitol building in Harrisburg

percent increase, representing $198,750, under the state budget proposed in February by Gov. Corbett, but considering the inaction by the state legislature on many of his proposals, this figure remains uncertain.

The governor's budget also eliminates all reimbursements to school district for charter school tuition, a cost of $1.4 million to the district.

Pottstown would also see a reduction of state funding for special education costs, under Corbett's budget. The state amount would cover less than 19 percent of the total funding needed to support special education expenses in Pottstown. This year's state subsidy covered "a little under 25 percent" of those costs, Adams wrote.

Nevertheless, Adams wrote that the "net impact to revenue" of state funding is an increase of $357,490 under Corbett's budget, including a $113,367 increase to pay for higher retirements costs which remains politically uncertain in Harrisburg.

The closing of Edgewood Elementary is anticipated to save

the district $437,000 in the next budget year.

The budget notes that the district will save $437,000 by closing Edgewood Elementary School, even though it will be occupied next year by students and staff from Rupert, during that building's renovations.

Other savings are $110,000 from retirements and $93,560 from personnel changes. They are offset by the potential for $180,000 in additional teachers, $120,000 for a special education supervisor for the secondary level, $144,000 for having an additional principal at the middle school, which next year will house all the district's fifth graders and $22,059 for another part-time nurse at the middle school.

Over all, the changes net out to a savings of $132,000, according to Adams.

The budget proposes a $500,000 contingency fund and a 1.6 percent increase in the athletic budget, which works out to $10,376.

Park Improvements, Interact Style

Blogger's Note: More news of Pottstown students out in the world making a difference, courtesy of the usual source -- John Armato.

Members of the Pottstown Rotary Club joined hands with their student counterparts from the Pottstown High School Interact Club to make a difference at the Riverfront Park Pavilion.

Young and old worked together to help beautify the pavilion and surrounding area by cleaning up, laying mulch, planting flowers, and placing birdhouses in trees throughout the area.

Rotarian Dr. Dick Whittaker said, “I am proud to be working side-by-side with my fellow Rotarians and the students from our Interact Club to help make a difference in our community by showing what our partnership can do to help make a difference in our communities. I would like to give a special thank you to Hank Saylor for his donation of the mulch and the use of his equipment to help our efforts.”

Interact students helping in the day’s activities included: Kris Horsey, Imani Graham, Annbria Speed, and Bishop Corney.

Our students are learning the value of giving back to the community and seeing first hand what their efforts can do to help beautify an area that is used by so many people said Marilyn Bainbridge Interact Club sponsor.

Rotarians taking part in the program included: Charles Koenig and his wife Sandy, Steve Smith, Lori Musson, Patti Seigel, Bob Thomas, Bill and Beverly Wellen, Brad Musson, Jen Pennypacker, Maryann and Jim Thompson, Hank Saylor, and Gerry Myers. 

Interact is a Rotary International service club for young people ages 14-18. 

Since its earliest days, Rotary has been committed to helping children in need. 

But in 1960, the organization took a new approach to youth service. 

Recognizing the untapped potential of young men and women the Rotary International President urged Rotary clubs around the world to find ways to encourage service among youth, foster their active interest in the community, and offer opportunities for them to develop as leaders. Interact clubs are sponsored by individual Rotary Clubs which provide support and guidance. 

Interact means International action. Interact club members, make new friends, improve their community, develop leadership skills, and make a difference in the world.

At MC3, Waste is a Terrible Thing to Waste

Blogger's Note: This just in from Alana Mauger, over at MC3:

Montgomery County Community College (MCCC), with campuses in Blue Bell and Pottstown, finished the national 2013 RecycleMania competition with some promising numbers.

MCCC placed second among all higher education institutions in Pennsylvania in the competition’s Waste Minimization category, collecting 15.292 pounds of combined trash and recycling per capita.

Nationally, MCCC ranked 17th in Waste Minimization among public two-year colleges and 25th overall.

In the Per Capita Classic category, MCCC finished 12th among public two-year institutions nationally, with 4.252 pounds of recycling per capita. This positioned the College as 20th in Pennsylvania and 303rd overall.

In the Grand Champion category, MCCC scored a 27.803 percent cumulative recycling rate, positioning it ninth in Pennsylvania, 17th among public two-year institutions, and 143rd overall.

MCCC collected a cumulative 34,132 pounds of recycling, ranking it 14th among public two-year institutions nationally, 18th in Pennsylvania, and 271st overall in the Gorilla Prize category

RecycleMania is an eight-week nationwide competition, held Feb. 3 through March 30, during which colleges and universities competed to see who could reduce, reuse and recycle the most campus waste. MCCC has participated for six consecutive years.

According to the U.S. EPA’s Waste Reduction Model (WARM), MCCC’s recycling efforts during the competition resulted in a greenhouse gas reduction of 48 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MTCO2E), which is translates to the energy consumption of four households or the emissions of nine cars.

MCCC was among the first institutions in the country to sign American College and University Presidents’ Climate Commitment (ACUPCC) in 2007. 

The College’s sustainability efforts are led by a team of faculty, students, administrators, support staff, alumni and community members that comprise the President’s Climate Commitment Advisory Council.

To learn more about MCCC’s Sustainability Initiative, visit its “Think Green” blog at mc3green.wordpress.com.

To learn more about RecycleMania or to view the full list of results, visit www.recyclemaniacs.org.