Pottsgrove Grads Added to Honor Roll

From left, James L. Frymoyer Sr., Maurice H. Saylor, Lynn Amnescu,
a colleage of the late Donna Webber, and Sybil Genther Williams.

Four members of the Pottsgrove community were recently inducted to the Pottsgrove School District Honor Roll.

It was the 12th annual luncheon, sponsored by the Pottsgrove Retired Educators and the Pottsgrove Education Foundation, and held at the Elk's Club in Pottstown.

This year's honorees were Maurice H. Saylor, James L. Frymoyer Sr., the late Donna Webber and Sybil Genther Williams.

Saylor, a graduate of Pottsgrove High School, is a magisterial district judge and is active in the community coaching and referring.

Frymoyer, a graduate of Pottsgrove High School, has spent his entire life serving the community in charitable ways, mainly through the local Moose Lodge.

For 25 years, Webber taught reading at Lower Pottsgrove Elementary School and, to this day, her estate provides a sizeable scholarship to a graduating senior each year.

Williams, also a graduate of Pottsgrove High School, is a senior research biologist for Merck Cancer Research Laboratories in Maine.

Charles Yohn was the master of ceremonies, and he was assisted by Kenneth Harclerode, James Basile and Lynn Manescu in introducing the honrees. Jane Conley offered the invocation.

In addition to Basile and Yohn, the Honor Roll Committee is comprised of Linda Cole, John Meko, Joseph Dori, Arlan Bukert, Addison Davidson, Barbara Clayton, Earl Boehmer, Thomas Roberts and Robert Rheel.

Asking for a Little Warmth

Sometimes, one warm coat can make all the difference.

The Pottstown High School Interact Club is sponsoring a coat drive for the needy and a book drive for the read-y.

OK, that last one was pretty bad. We're getting a little punchy these days over in the Digital Notebook's editorial complex.

Anyway, as Marilyn Bainbridge, who teaches childcare at the high school and is the club's advisor notes, "on a cold day there is nothing better than bundling up in a warm coat.

So if you've got an old coat in the your closet that doesn't fit anymore, or has fallen out of your fashion sense, you can drop if off in the lobby of Franklin Elementary School until Nov. 1.

The coats will be provided to the Pottstown Cluster Outreach Center and the Salvation Army.

And while you're at it, cleaning out your closets that is, why not take some of those children's books you don't need any more, specifically the ones for ages birth through the fourth grade, and drop them off as well.

Because apparently, the club is also conducting a children's book drive.

Putting Off Peer Pressure

Sometimes, you just have to listen to Albus Dumbledore.

The erstwhile headmaster of the mythical Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry has said many wise things over the course of the Harry Potter Series.

But perhaps one of the wisest was when he told his students: "It takes a lot of courage to stand up to your enemies. It takes even more to stand up to your friends."

With that simple statement, he summed up the conflict we know as peer pressure.

Peer pressure is often portrayed as a teen problem, but in many ways, it's just the time in our lives when the choices foisted on us by peer pressure start to become dangerous and potentially life-changing.

These choices are particularly difficult when being made by teens in tough home situations, tough economic situations or tough school situations.

Without a firm foundation built during childhood, how do you muster enough self-confidence to resist peer pressure?

The answer is, with help from friends and family.

And that's what Saturday's event at the Olivet Boys and Girls Club in the Ricketts Community Center on Beech Street hopes to do.

If you live in a public housing development and need a ride, buses will be provided.

Pottstown People: Always With the Helping Hand they Often Cannot Afford

One reason I have grown to grudgingly love this frustrating muddle of a town is that just when I think we don't have any more feet to shoot ourselves in, people come out of the woodwork and plug the bullet hole.

The latest example of this redeeming quality is the infamous Halloween Parade.

It is scheduled for tonight at 7 p.m. by the way.

As you have in all likelihood read by now, the parade was threatened by a misunderstanding.

Undertaken once and planned twice previously with a waiver of borough fees in hand, this year's organizers had proceeded with planning after being assured by former borough manager Jason Bobst that the borough fees -- more than $5,000 worth for police overtime -- would again be waived.

Unfortunately, Bobst left for greener pastures before the parade and with him left that assurance.

So the parade organizers -- the AMBUCS, the Pottstown Rotary Club and the Parks and Recreation Department -- were brought up short when interim borough manager Mark Flanders informed them the fees could only be waived by council.

And council balked at waiving the fee, saying it was not in the budget.

Making a point about sticking to their budget is understandable in these tough times, particularly seeing as this issue has come up before.

But sympathy for that position evaporated when, moments later, council blithely agreed to pay as much as a whopping $33,000 that was ALSO not in the budget for a consulting firm, now found to be costing taxpayers hundreds of thousands of extra dollars on the elementary school construction projects, to deliver a report on ways to makes the codes department more efficient. But that's another story.)

Ultimately, after a story or two in The Mercury and on this blog, council blinked and agreed to waive half the cost.

Although a welcome compromise, that left the parade organizers $2,500 short.

One might be justified in being discouraged at this point in the story.

Here are a group of people raising money and devoting time to stage a major event in the town, and a mere $2,500 could doom it.

And here's where the optimism comes in.

After just one story in The Mercury about the need to raise funds, people started stepping out of the woodwork and stepping up to the plate.

These were not the elected officials, the pontificators or the complainers, who are all too often front and center in Pottstown's public spotlight.

Many a donation walked through these doors.

These were the "doers," the people in this town who believe in that delightful Missouri motto: "Show me, don't tell me."

And show they did.

First the German Club stepped up with $1,000 donation on the first day, followed in no short order by the Masons, who ponied up another $1,000.

Add to these other donations (the fullest list we can muster appears below), ranging from $500 down to $15 and in no time, not only had the required money been raised, but the organizers had a jump start on next year.

Next year, not only will they have to pay the full $5,000-plus to the borough, but also the $2,000 it costs to actually put the parade on.

And its these people, their generosity that is repeatedly displayed when there is a fire, or during The Mercury's Operation Holiday, who once again renew at least a hope that Pottstown can get back on its feet.

It may not be enough financially to really turn things around, but it demonstrates, in a way no speech, or resolution, or election result can, that people in this town have a willingness to support things they care about, things that make their lives better.

And by people I include people in the surrounding towns, many of whom can be found on that donor list.

Alan MacBain's GREAT editorial cartoon on the subject.

Borough Council President Stephen Toroney was right when he said those other towns should help with the cost of regional events like this.

The donor list shows that those residents are willing to help shoulder the cost.

It's one reason why we should keep calling our home the GREATER Pottstown area.

Here are those who made the parade financially possible:

SPONSORS

Rotary Club of Pottstown

AMBUCS of Pottstown
Department of Parks and Recreation

Borough of Pottstown
The Mercury

GREAT PUMPKINS

Pottstown German Club — $1,000

Stichter Lodge No. 254 F&AM — $1,000

Lowa Insurance Group — $500
Pottstown Memorial Medical Center — $500

TALL SHOCKS OF CORN

Wheel to the Future — $350

Montgomery County Community College — $300

Pottstown Rumble — $300
Anonymous — $200

Sager & Sager Assoc. — $200
Little Italy Restorante — $150

Ice House Steaks & Pizza — $150

Heartland Abstract — $150
Dr. Lawrence Gribb — $100

Jean Spotts — $100
Donna & Aram Ecker — $100

Vision Painting — $100
David & Gloria Schwab — $100

Scott Palladino — $100
Harry Leister — $100

Reed’s Fuel Oil — $100
Roger Baumann — $100

MANY KERNELS OF CORN

Frank Smith

J.B. Supply 

Dale & Cynthia Conard

Caitlin Mattingly
Ted & Lori Freese

Ken Schaeffer Family (for Jenny)

Jim Derr
Doris Jean Sweeney
Charles Fischer

Gerald Richards
Michael Sloane

Pamela Rowland, Cynthia O’Neal, Deborah Fine (PHS Band Alumni)

Roy Reifsnyder
Sanatoga Thriftway

Is Council Losing Sight of the Forest for the Trees?

Hopefully borough council will remember the path they take has 

making development easier in Pottstown as a goal, 

not just outsourcing codes.

Almost as long as I have been covering Pottstown, 15 years next month, there have been complaints about Pottstown's codes department.

That's to be expected I suppose.

Like newspaper people, they are often the bearers of bad news -- "that's not right," that won't meet code," you'll have to do that over" -- and we messengers are used to being shot at.


But the issues raised over the years have gone beyond mere griping; so far in fact that many have opined that the codes department has been part of the reason that Pottstown has not been more revitalized

In all likelihood, the high property tax rate has a little more to do with that, but these things are incremental and every obstacle removed helps move us in the right direction.

And of course, its easier to outsource a codes department than it is to lower taxes. To be fair, the lion's share of the tax burden comes from the school district so there is not much borough council can do on that score.

None of which is to say that there haven't been problems in the codes office. There have -- big ones.

Tales of contradictory instructions from different inspectors, paperwork delays and other problems are too many to mention individually.

The June arrest of landlord Frank McLaughlin on charges that many of his properties had devices that by-passed water meters, raised an interesting question.

How had those properties undergone so many use and occupancy permit inspections without anyone noticing?

It was that question which, in all likelihood, led to a Montgomery County grand jury investigation.

(Some sources have indicated this investigation may have been recently dropped without any charges being filed. However, I have not yet been able to confirm that.)

However, although relevant by way of introduction, that's not our direct subject for the day.

For the past several months, I have been hearing complaints from developers, contractors and property owners -- complaints about the difficulty they are having with the Conshohocken engineering firm the borough hired to handle some inspections and applications for the codes department and planning commission.

The name of that firm is Remington, Vernick and Beach.


At first, I just dismissed these calls as the regular complaints of those who didn't like a decision about their project.

But they started piling up and they all had the same themes.

Typical was one recent call from a commercial and industrial contractor who has done business for 39 years. He said he had never seen such ridiculous requirements.


"It's 10 times worse than it was under codes. I never had these issues when it was just codes," he told me.

For one project, anticipating an objection, he presented a document from a certified engineer that stated he would not need a formal land development review.

"That cost me $350, but Remington wouldn't take it. So they charged me $1,000 to look into it and they said 'yeah, you're right, you don't need to. How is that being more customer friendly?" he asked.

He said he is aware of circumstances in which it took four months for a homeowner to get a permit just to put a deck on the back of their house.

A project he is now trying to complete, a 194-square-foot addition to house a walk-in freezer, has so far cost him $8,500 to satisfy all of Remington's conditions.

"And that cost just gets passed back to the client. This is the new streamlined development process? How does that encourage development"

One developer said he waited days for a
call back from Remington, Vernick and Beach

"I've waited days, sometimes more than a week for a call back," he said.

(Similarly, a call I made Monday to the firm seeking comment on an article in today's paper  was not returned.)

Aren't commercial and industrial contractors and, more importantly, their clients, the kind of people we want to keep happy to bring jobs back to Pottstown? Wasn't that the point?

Another office renovation project was delayed for months while detailed plans drawn up by an architect were revised over and over to satisfy Remington objections.

Add to this complaints made on the record by Pottstown School officials last week, and published in today's Mercury, about requirements and changes that are not only delaying the work at Barth Elementary School, but threaten to add "hundreds of thousands of dollars" to the costs of Barth and several other building projects  planned for next year.

That's money out of the same taxpayer pockets that pay borough taxes.

How is this helping Pottstown revitalize?

All of this raises several questions, questions not raised by council, which, with the exception of Travis Gery, happily voted to spend as much as $33,000 to hire this firm to "benchmark the codes department" and offer suggestions on improvement.

First question: How is a firm that is getting bad marks for customer service, timeliness and a streamlined process the best choice to provide advice on good customer service, timeliness and a streamlined process?

When it eliminated historic architecture review board protections for historic buildings downtown, council at least said it was done because of complaints by developers; even though they could never name a single one.

Did they speak with their same developer friends about how things are going under Remington? Wouldn't that be pertinent information before hiring that firm to tell you how to make improvements?

Secondly, raise your hand if you believe that the report won't come back recommending, among other things, that the codes department be "outsourced" to a private firm.

I don't see any hands out there.

Of course, were this suggestion to be followed, the job would hopefully be put out to bid and not just handed over to Remington; but given that Remington will be writing the report, they would certainly be well-positioned to win that bid.

Hopefully, council would not allow them to bid because of the potential conflict of interest, but I'm not holding my breath.

Not-so-coincidentally, this path, if taken, will be made even easier by the fact that the code inspectors were recently ruled to be "at-will employees" and no longer members of the AFSCME union, which, no doubt, would have made outsourcing the codes work more politically painful.

Much of this effort, it seems to me, is an example of council becoming married to an oft-mentioned  solution to a problem without asking themselves if the solution will make the problem worse.

In other words, losing sight of the forest for the trees. 

The goal should not be to outsource the codes department.

Mark Flanders is one of three finalists
for the borough manager's job.

The goal should be to improve the process of development in the borough so that it is as smooth, painless and inexpensive as possible.

If outsourcing the codes department accomplishes this, be sure you have pretty solid evidence before making that choice.

That evidence should not come from a firm that stands to make money from that recommendation.

Outsourcing codes is not an accomplishment to burnish on your record.

Making development in the borough easier is the accomplishment that matters; the one that will help bring jobs back to this borough.


If the end result of this process is to shut down codes and hire Remington -- which will no doubt help Chief Mark Flanders' chances of becoming the next borough manager, now that he is confirmed to be one of the three finalist candidates -- council will have lost sight of how they got started down this path.

The goal is to make development easier and more streamlined, not just to outsource codes.

That is not a goal. That is a means to an end. If you're going to take it, make sure its where you end up.

The Compromise Curse

Tonight is the final presidential debate and is supposed to focus, as I understand it, on foreign policy.

That means, without fail, we will be hearing a lot about "strength." I will also wager that the word we won't hear is "compromise," unless it is used in a derogatory manner.

Since the first days of the Republic, American foreign policy has focused on, appropriate, what is best for America.

So while some thought that we had a moral obligation and political rationale for joining the force of the French Revolution -- after all, without France we would not be a country today -- George Washington wisely kept us out of it.

Not because it was necessarily the "right" thing to do, but because, at that early stage of our development, it was the "right thing for the United States."

At another time, in other circumstances, the opposite choice may have been the right one.

The point, of course, is that in foreign policy, as with many things, there are few absolutes. The variables continue to shift, as do priorities, circumstances, personalities of the powerful and the many, many other things over which we have no control.

In other words, its a lot like everything else in life.

Now, on a good Sunday, if I play my cards right, I can let the family sleep late and, if I take long enough making them a pancake breakfast, I can be in the kitchen when "On the Media" airs on NPR.

It's a bit self-indulgent, but also serves as a reality check and staves off any megalomaniacal impulses sometimes experienced by those of us in the media. Essentially, it's an hour devoted to all the things we do wrong.

Anyway, yesterday's program had an interesting segment on the Cuban Missile Crisis, which is currently celebrating its 50th anniversary.

The program, which was about how the media is the first draft of history and, in this case, got it wrong about how the crisis was resolved as a result of Kennedy's resolute refusal to negotiate with Kruschev and that the matter was essentially an international staring contest.

As it turns out, that first draft is entirely wrong and history is taking its own sweet time about correcting it.

Although almost his entire cabinet favored no compromise, the records now show, Kennedy was inclined to accept an offer by Kruschev to reverse the ship carrying the missiles to Cuba in exchange for the removal of nuclear missiles recently placed in Turkey, within striking range of what was then the Soviet Union.

Kennedy's only trick was to agree to do so, but six months later when it would seem to have happened all by itself.

Thus did compromise save us from a nuclear war in which victory would have been little distinguished from defeat.

The moral of the "Media Matters" piece was evidently that this "myth" of the Cuban Missile Crisis had made it even harder for American politicians to do what was already hard to begin with -- compromise.

Try and imagine, one of the speakers said, a candidate in today's election saying it would be OK to compromise with Iran and let them enrich uranium to a smaller extent under extreme oversight than the current situation, in which sanctions are crippling Iran's economy to a dangerous extent, we are being blamed and the Iranians are enriching as much uranium as they can to whatever extent they can.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

This might seem to make sense as something to consider, I don't pretend to know the answer, which is why I decided a long time ago not to run for president -- that and those pesky closet skeletons.

Some might argue that the whole point of the sanctions is not to wreck Iran's economy, but to give Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a stark choice, face ruination for your nation or come to the negotiating table.

But can you imagine either Barack Obama or Mitt Romney tonight staring into the television camera and saying solemnly that they are ready to negotiate with Iran?

Compromise, or in this case, "appeasement" of Hitler
only let 

him take at the negotiating table what he
otherwise would have 

had to take by force.

I think the best we could hope for is something like "all options are on the table."

None of which is to say that compromise is the magic bullet to solving world problems or diplomatic impasses.

It won't take an opponent of compromise long to take a few steps further back in history to point to the appeasement of Hitler as the ultimate failure of compromise. And they would be right.

Chamberlin

British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlin's infamous "peace with honor" policy turned out to be neither and pretty disastrous for a few million people.

So which is it?

Compromise or inflexible strength?

Yes.

The answer I will be looking for tonight is the person who I believe will not rule out any option that both keeps America safe, but also promotes peace in the world.

Neither of them will likely say that, because that will not win them votes.

As the Tea Party movement has shown us, "compromise" is a dirty word these days in American politics. Anyone who does is seen as having "given in" or "caved" to the inflexible demands of the other side.

We all have our own opinions about which side is more inflexible in Washington these days and I won't dip into that very deep well here. The point I'm trying to make is look what it's gotten us.

We all hate (or at least say we hate) the gridlock which now gives Congress a popularity rating somewhere below the Community Party table at an American Legion convention.

But in truth, they are only doing what we said we wanted when we elected them, to stand for (fill in the blank) "without compromise."

What did we think was going to happen? Does anyone in Washington ever capitulate completely?

Democracy is, ultimately, all about making deals. It is how we decided to break away from England, how we drafted a Constitution and how we have done hundreds of other things that, in the dispassionate view of history turned out to be pretty good things.

Were they flawed? Of course. We're human beings. Everything we do is flawed.

We drafted a Constitution that recognized slavery. We made compromises in westward expansion that failed to resolve that cancer and ultimately it nearly destroyed the country.

But many of those compromises moved us forward, even if it was two steps forward, one step back.

They key, it seems to me, is to know when to compromise and when to stand your ground.

As someone who has helped to negotiate a fair number of union contracts in my time, I can tell you there is little use in sitting down at the table with a side that has no intention of compromising on anything.

Why even bother negotiating otherwise?

So I tend to doubt the supposed subject of tonight's debate will matter much to most Americans.

Our awareness of the rest of the world tends to be fairly small until the complex forces at work break the bubble and planes fly into skyscrapers.

It's a complex world out there.

Rather, tonight's debate will be about zingers, and who scores the most points. And the electronic media (and most of print too) will cover it from the horse race perspective that makes the coverage exciting but not insightful.

I just hope whoever wins the horse race is smart enough to know when compromise serves the best interests of the country -- even if most of us are too stubborn to admit it -- and when it doesn't.

Because after all, in world affairs, as in life, nothing is ever absolute.

Computer scientists, jewelers and counterintelligence officers, Pottstown graduates all

From left, honorees and their student presenters: Miranda Somich with Ann Shaner accepting for her husband; Andrew Gazzillo with John Gibsion; Cathy Calhoun with Jasheel Brown; Aram Ecker President of Alumni Honor Roll Committee accepting for Robert Davidheiser with Megan Schmidt.

Four more Pottstown High School graduates were added to the Alumni Honor Roll Friday morning.
.
They are, the late David Shaner, class of 1952; Robert B. Davidheiser Sr., Ph.D, class of 1969; Cathy Calhoun, class of 1970 and John R. Gibson, class of 1975.

As always, the honorees who could attend were recognized in an assembly in the high school auditorium which was attended by the entire student body.

Following are the bios provided in the assembly program:

David Shaner

Shaner received a Bachelor of Science degree from Kutztown University and a Master of Fine Arts in ceramic design from Alfred University.

He served as an assistant professor of art at the University of Illinois before moving his family west to Montana, where he director the Archie Bray Foundation, steering it to financial stability, maintaining the facility and continuing its vision to provide serious ceramic artists a place to perfect their craft.

For more than three decades, he made ceramic pottery in his studio and shared his expertise through workshops at numerous universities and art centers across the country.

He leaves a legacy of artwork gracing may homes and art museums. His love and commitment to art, music, gardening and nature and his stewardship of the environment touched and enriched the lives of many friends and colleagues.

His wife Ann accepted the award for Shaner.

Robert B. Davidheiser Sr., Ph.D.

Davidheiser received his bachelor and master of science degrees in electrical engineering from the University of California and in 1994, a Ph.D. in both engineering and computer science from LsSalle University.

He designed and installed the background music at Disney World, EPCOT Center.

Davidhsieser also represented the United States in Geneva, Switzerland for his research and inventions in the field of audio and speech pathology.

While working at AT&T, he invented, designed and implemented satellite, land global telecommunications and computer achitectures.

He developed the standardized computer operating system UNIX and Network Protocols for tyhe Department of Defense, US Customs and the US Postal Service systems.

Davidheiser also supervised the design, system assurance and installation of Air Force One's Global Telecommunications System under the Reagan administration.

In 1994, he was instrument in the development and launching of the IBM Worldwide Internet Divisions and coordinated the customer technology launch of the Disney IntroVentions Center in Orlando.

In 2005, Davidheiser retired from IBM where he directed the Division of Strategies for Emerging Technologies and the use of intelligence agents for voice, security and encryption.

In 20120, he accepted a position with Hewlett Packard as director of enterprise architectures, where he works today as a worldwide solutions architect

A family emergency prevented him from attending the ceremony.

Cathy Calhoun

Calhoun graduating from the Gemological Institute of America as a certified gemologist appraiser.

She is the president of the American Gem Society and in 2009, was selected as the Pennsylvania Jewler of the Year.

In addition to owning Calhoun's Jewelry in Royersford, she owns Avanti Development, a commercial land development company, Main Street Cafe and Spring City Elderly Housing.

She is a board member of the Jewelers Mutual Insurance Company, Jewelers for Children and the Women's Jewelry Association.

Calhoun has appeared on numerous television programs including PBS' Antique Road Show, Good Morning America and World News Tonight.

Aside from her passion for jewelry, Calhoun is a first degree black belt in karate, a license private pilot, scuba diver, gem hunter and road rally driver.

John R. Gibson

In 1995, almost 20 years to the day after graduating from Pottstown High School, Gibson received his BS from the University of Maryland in police science.

Four years later, he was awarded an MS degree in administration from Central Michigan University.

Gibson is also a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Air Command and Staff College, Air War College and the Executive Development Leadership Program.

Gibson has also received training as a Spanish linguist, having graduated from the Presidio of Montery, Calif.

He began his Air Force career as a security policeman and, in 1984, was accepted into the Air Force Office of Special Investigations Program as a special agent.

His years of service have included tours in Japan, Honduras, Kuwait, Iraq, Germany and Italy.

As a senior County Intelligence Resource Manager for the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, he has been involved with conducting felony level criminal, fraud and counter-intelligence investigations and operations for the Air Force.

As a senior manager, Gibson was responsible for the direct supervision and effective management of extensive classified counter intelligence budget and manpower information.

Following his service in the military, he was hired as a civilian special agent serving in the Pentagon.










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