Limerick Supervisor Calls Others Racist re: Joe Gale

Image from screenshot.

State Sen. Katie Muth, D-44th dist., in white jacket, had what appeared to be a spirited discussion with Limerick Supervisor Kenneth Sperring Jr. after last night's supervisors meeting.

It's an imperfect world and one of the things that makes it imperfect is the fact that I can't quite be in two places at the same time.

Last night two important meetings were held that both carried potential for generating news.

One, most certainly, was the second meeting this month of the Boyertown School Board in which the five-member majority's preference for a full-in-person return to school got walked back -- mostly because the superintendent told them it can't be done this close to the opening of school.

The other was the Limerick Supervisors meeting. 

There was nothing particularly Earth-shattering on the Limerick agenda, but given how last month's meeting devolved into a shouting match over masks and Montgomery County Commissioner Joe Gale, the possibility of more news was coming out of that meeting was not to be taken lightly.

My bacon was saved, so to speak, when Linda Weaver, who is a member of the Montgomery County Democratic Committee, let me know that despite the fact that Limerick does not broadcast their meetings, the Limerick Democrats would be streaming it live on Facebook.

This allowed me to cover the Boyertown meeting on my computer, and keep an eye on Limerick on my phone.

This is, certainly, not the ideal situation. Particularly given that the sound level was very low.

But when your paper only has one municipal reporter, these are the lengths that one must go to in order to get the news to the people.

I will forgo a full report on Boyertown, mostly because there are a lot of moving parts and I already gave you the headline. Plus, my brain is mush as midnight approaches.

So, On to Limerick

The agenda included a number of land development issues, but despite the evident interest in some of them, I could not devote my attention to them while Boyertown was debating whether to send all kids back to school in person next month.

So here is the quick and dirty version of the last five minutes of the Limerick Supervisors meeting.

Like last month, the first theme is masks. 

According to the video, the meeting room was as packed as chairs four feet apart will allow.

About a half-dozen people, many of them standing against the back wall,  or more were not wearing masks. which are required indoors to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus..

Weaver texted to me that all the supervisors came in wearing masks, which was a switch from previous meetings, but four removed them after sitting down in chairs at the dias, which are about six feet apart.

Only Supervisor Patrick Morroney, who is the board's only Democrat, kept his mask on throughout the entire meeting.

During the public comment period of the meeting, which comes at the end, a face-mask-wearing state Sen. Katie Muth, D-44th Dist., came to the microphone and chided the supervisors for not wearing masks.

"The political tension that is palpable in this room kills people," she said in apparent reference to the way in which the public health directive to wear masks has transmorgified into a political statement.

"Montgomery County had this curve flattened," said Muth, apparently referencing the potential for cases, and deaths, to surge once again if people ignore the mask-wearing mandate. 

"Freedom does not mean you have the right to hurt others," she said.

This may have been a reference to a statement on the issue made at last month's meeting by Chairman Thomas Neafcy: "my rights do not trump anyone else’s rights and your rights don’t trump my rights."

Muth concluded "hopefully, we can wake up tomorrow and realize that we are in the middle of a deadly pandemic, with no end in sight unless we all work together."

Another speaker noted "we've just spent two hours in this room breathing the exhalations of more than a dozen people" and, turning to them, he added, "not one of you would be allowed in a Wawa for five seconds."

Another speaker told the maskless supervisors "I'm disgusted that you would hold a meeting and violate the governor's orders."

Morroney thanked those supervisors who worse masks into the meeting, but said he was disappointed they were taken off once the meeting began, adding "I am also disappointed in the selfishness of those in the audience who are not wearing masks."

I should note here that I have also now been to in-person meetings in New Hanover and Lower Pottsgrove townships since Montgomery County moved to the green phase, and no one has raised the mask issue at all in either of those two places.

Therefore, I think its fair to consider the possibility that perhaps this drama -- which happens to be coming from a whole bunch of Democrats -- is connected to the fact that Neafcy is running for the 146th state House of Representatives seat, hoping to unseat one-term incumbent Democrat Joe Ciresi. 

This is not far leap when you consider that Morroney told the crowd "you know what to do in November." 

But hey, that's just me. I could be wrong.

And now that I've buried the lead, let's get to the headline and theme number two, which is what Morroney was referring to when he made the election reference.

Like last month, he tried to introduce a motion to write a letter calling on Montgomery County Commissioner Joe Gale to resign after a statement he made referring to the Black Lives Matter organization as "urban terrorists."

"How you respond will tell how you feel," Morroney said to the other four supervisors. The response was silence, as none of the other supervisors would second his motion, even for purposes of discussion.

"The rest of this board, for not addressing the Commissioner Gale issue, are racist," Morroney said.

And that's all she wrote.