Salary Disputes, Fire Chief Rules and Bond Savings

Last night's council meeting covered a lot of territory in two hours.

It began with Council President Dan Weand refuting comments and articles by school board member Tom Hylton last month about what Hylton said is a 30 percent increase in payroll costs to taxpayers in the last four years.

Here's the full video of Weand's comments:



That was followed by a vote on bond re-financing of water and sewer bonds that could save as much as $800,000, which would be used to keep rates down.

Vice President Sheryl Miller said towns far outside Pottstown and the surrounding Pottsgroves are using the borough kennel to store found animals and that from now on, they will have to pay $500 annually for the privilege.

There was extensive discussion of proposed changes to the fire ordinance, mostly in outlining the policies and elements that define the fire chief's position in anticipation of the pending retirement of current chief Richard Lengel.

Councilman Dennis Arms insisted that the new chief must be required to live in the borough, but few other council members hopped on that bandwagon.

Also under discussion was proposed changes to the Human Relations Commission.

Before that happened, though, Mayor Sharon Thomas used her mayor's report to- address some of those issues.

Here is video of her report:



Council reviewed changes being proposed to the zoning ordinance for the rules governing convenience stores, and again Arms spoke up and said the borough has too many.

Kristin Sirbeck, owner of Beverly's Pastries, also spoke on that issue during the public comment portion. She is the second speaker in the video posted below:


Find below the Tweets and videos from the meeting.

Look for a few, more detailed stories about selected topics from the meeting in coming editions of The Mercury.

Council Vote Puts the Ax to Second Street Pear Tree

Photo by Evan Brandt

Say good bye to this callery pear tree. With a 5-2 vote Tuesday night, borough council approved its removal.

Borough Council voted 5-2 Tuesday night to allow a callery pear tree at the corner of Second and Johnson streets to be removed and for another tree to be planted in its place.

The vote came at the request of Janice Monger, the neighbor of 3 W. Second St., who last week appealed the denial of permission to remove the tree to council on behalf of her neighbor.

Photo by Evan Brandt

This tree, across the street from the one council has allowed to be
cut down, lost a branch which hit an occupied vehicle. Luckily,
no one was hurt.

She told council the Bradford pear tree, a species of callery pear, in front of her neighbor's house is considered dangerous by some and that, combined with the branch that fell off a similar tree across the street, was reason enough to allow its removal.

Since council disbanded the shade tree commission, appeals for tree permits now come to them.

Tuesday night's vote came despite points raised by former shade tree commission chairman Tom Hylton that allowing this tree to be taken down because council considers it a dangerous species could lead to a domino effect.

He pointed to a letter from Bran Gunther, the man in the New York City Parks Department in charge of street trees, that indicated a 2005 census showed the city, the largest urban forest on the east coast had planted 65,000 callery pear trees, the fourth most popular.

(Full disclosure, Bram Gunther is this blogger's brother-in-law.)

Photo by Evan Brandt

Although this tree has not been trimmed to reduce the threat of
a branch cracking and falling, PECO has trimmed the top to try to
keep the power lines clear.

If the tree in front of 3 W. Second St. is allowed to be take down simply because of what species it is, "then what do you do about the other six trees on that street? What do you do about the other 400 pear trees on the streets of Pottstown," Hylton asked.

"If you declare them dangerous, then it becomes incumbent upon you to do something about it," he said.

Even more dangerous, said Hylton, are the 10 "very dead" street trees in town. "Dead trees are far more dangerous."

Further, he said, with the coming arrival of the invasive emerald ash borer, Pottstown's 150 street trees that are ash trees will soon be dead as well unless expensive treatments are given to them.

Since 2007 -- when the borough ceased making contributions to Trees Inc., the non-profit organization with which Hylton is affiliated -- which once maintained street trees at no cost to the property owner, no maintenance has been done on the street trees.

Pottstown spent $60,000 since 2005 to maintain its existing trees when Phoenixville, by contrast, spent $415,000, "and we have one-third more than Phoenixville does," Hylton said.

"If you assume that shade trees add 3 percent of the value to property in Pottstown, and that's very conservative, that means they are responsible for $30 million worth of our property value," he said.

"When you look at the cost/benefit, clearly street trees pay for themselves," said Hylton.

Photo by Evan Brandt

One of the benefits of the callery pear trees in town, is how they make Beech Street look in the spring.

He also noted that PennVest, the state's infrastructure loan program, has spent $6 billion in the past 30 years for water and sewer treatment plants, but in recent years have begun to pay municipalities to plant trees as one of the most efficient means of stormwater control -- to the tune of $6.8 million to day.

Council Vice President Jeff Chomnuk, who represents the ward where the tree is located and who, along with Council President Stephen Toroney provided the "no" votes, reminded council and the public that in addition to removing the tree, the property owner is responsible for stump removal and sidewalk remediation.

Councilman Joseph Kirkland worried about "how we stop this decision from having a domino effect on the street."

Borough Solicitor Charles  D. Garner Jr. noted that the ordinance allows for council to take each appeal "on a case by case basis and how the evidence of the appeal is presented. It does not require you to agree to remove a tree unless you are convinced by the evidence."

However, he noted, this decision will not go unnoticed.

"Don't be fooled, you may have other appeals that will refer to this decision," Garner said.

Before voting, Toroney noted that an assessment of the tree from Todd's Tree Service repeated the information about the tendency of callery pear branches to crack as the trees get older, but noted "he didn't say that the tree should come down or is a danger."

That Messy, Messy Democracy

Meetings of the Pottstown School Board may not be debates of Constitutional significance, but they are one of thousands of examples of local democracy on which our republic is built.

 One of the school boy illusions about our founding fathers that has been happily shattered by my closer reading of history in recent years, is the image of the serene and omniscient statesmen, collectively sailing the ship of state toward its destiny by unanimous agreement.

The portraits of their stately and firm-jawed countenances looking off into a certain future is, no doubt, an image to which they cleaved and wished dearly to project to posterity.

George Washington was a careful caretaker
of his image and his legacy.

But in truth, they fought like cats and dogs, and many of them put their full political weight behind what, in retrospect, where truly ludicrous ideas.

Hamilton and Jefferson loathed each other's politics and participated in the kind of vicious and underhanded political attacks that would put many of today's negative attack ads to shame.

Washington worried endlessly about sullying his reputation and Adams, with his manic swings between brilliant statesmanship and grasping egotism was his reputation's own worst enemy.

So you get the picture. Nobody's perfect.

So, as a result, neither is democracy.

It is, after all, of the non-perfect people, by the non-perfect people, for the non-perfect people.

Sir Winston Churchill

As Winston Churchill told the House of Commons in 1947: "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

So it should be expected that from time to time, those in any given democratic institution, say the Pottstown School Board, should display occasional imperfections.

Pottstown School Board President Judyth Zahora took a stab at perfecting her board's procedures Thursday when she asked the board if it wanted to continue to use the committee system.

The idea behind the committee system is that matters are brought to a small committee chose specific charge and, hopefully eventual expertise, and relevant aspects of the matter in question can be explored in detail, and then a recommendation can be brought to the full school board.

Presumably, the grimy details and alternatives explored by the committee can be dispensed with by the full board because the committee has already done that work.

Judyth Zahora

But as Zahora rightly observed, it doesn't always work that way.

By design, the board is of course free to reject the committee's recommendation, but in the general ever day matters, it is hoped that the judgement of those who have studied the matter in detail will prevail.

The school board must decide,
Zahora said, between committees or...

Lately, however, Zahora noted that not only are many committee debates being re-debated at the full board level, but a lot of committee members are not even showing up their meetings.

So Zahora asked the board if they even want to keep the system, or just hash it all out at the board level, making for much longer but less frequent meetings.

While the thought of longer school meetings did, admittedly, turn my skin paler than it already is, the bottom line is I get paid by the hour. So if the school board wants to meet for five hours a night, that's just money in my pocket and I can pay off that house I bought in the south of France.

....longer school board meetings. No one wanted that.

But the board members, all of whom are volunteer and don't see a dime for their service, didn't take kindly to that prospect and asked to keep the current system.

It is a system, Zahora said, that depends on "trust."

Presumably, this means the board members have to trust in the judgement of the others serving on the committees.

But it occurs to me that trust is a two-way street and often best encouraged by example.

During the discussion on the committee question, several board members told Zahora that she should expect a full-throated debate among the full board on major matters.

"Of course," Zahora replied. "I have always been about open discussion. Everyone knows I never want to stifle discussion."

This proclamation struck me as ironic because as long experience -- and the evidence of long unpalatable hours of video recordings -- confirms, this is simply not the case.

There is one particular school board member whose remarks and observations are so often cut-off, curtailed and interrupted by the board president that it is almost too many to count.

This board member, who has a tendency to "start at the beginning" with his comments, is repeatedly shut down in mid-sentence and told "we don't need another history lesson" and his recitation of past events often leads to reviving debate on those events.

By contrast, a different board member has been known to wax on significantly, often calling the sparse audience back not just to recent history, but things that happened 20, 40 or 60 years ago. "We have to learn from past mistakes," he has been known to say ... often.

As the video-taped evidence of meetings would show, if anyone had the stomach to wade through them, this behavior is not only countenanced by the board president, but encouraged and appreciated.

Now on the surface, this would seem like uneven treatment and not something likely to build trust among those who do not always agree. That's because it is imbalanced and clearly so.

Hylton

But substitute the names Tom Hylton for the first board member and Bobby Hartman for the second and suddenly -- in Pottstown at least -- everything suddenly shifts into an all-too-familiar pattern.

Hartman

Sides are immediately taken, past experiences recalled and minds closed.

No doubt, it won't take long for me (and by association The Mercury) to be accused of taking sides with our former editorial writer, and for some people to abandon reading the rest of this post for that reason.

This is but another sad example of the malady Pottstown cannot seem to shake -- Ron Downie's unforgettable phrase: "Policy by personality."

The history Mr. Hylton elects to recount, admittedly repetitive, is most often a history shared by those sitting at the table, and is treated as tedious and unnecessary lecturing.

But Mr. Hartman's recollections about everything from the warnings against erecting wooden light poles at Grigg Memorial Stadium 20 years ago to what Rupert looked like when he attended as a child, are allowed to meander ad  infinitum without a whisper from Mrs. Zahora's gavel.

I have a deep suspicion that were it not Mr. Hylton making long soliloquies -- often complete with well-research charts and hand-outs -- about why a previous board decision was wrong, the need to curtail discussion and "call the question" would suddenly be found to be less urgent.

Hylton is practicing only what he urged others on the board to undertake, "their homework and their critical thinking skills."

While it may sound high-handed, the fact of the matter is being a school board member is not about showing up at meetings. It's about making decisions and the better informed those decisions are, the better decisions they will be.

If you don't like what Mr. Hylton has to say, that is of course the purview of every American citizen. Don't listen, leave the room or check your hand-held device for messages as some board members now do regularly during meetings. But everyone has the right to speak and an elected official, perhaps even more so.

As school board president, Mrs. Zahora has a special responsibility to ensure that everyone the people of this town elected to represent them on the school board has an equal opportunity not only to speak their mind, but to share whatever they think may be helpful to the board's deliberations.

Exercising favoritism should not be countenanced by either the public or the board, and particularly not by someone identifying herself a champion for the exact opposite.

After all, even Jefferson and Hamilton managed to agree on some things.

Alexander Hamilton

Thomas Jefferson

There was that infamous dinner party when Hamilton gave up Philadelphia as the nation's capital to Jefferson's Virginia contingent in exchange for a federal banking system which took on the states' debts from the Revolution.

Further recall that the election of 1800 was thrown into the House of Representatives when Jefferson and Aaron Burr tied in electoral votes for president.

It was Hamilton, Jefferson's political enemy, who lobbied hard for Jefferson's election over Burr's because, Hamilton said that despite disagreeing with almost everything Jefferson stood for politically, Jefferson at least had character and acted on what he believed at heart to be the best interests of the nation.

Aaron Burr

"Mr. Jefferson, though too revolutionary in his notions, is yet a lover of liberty and will be desirous of something like orderly Government," Hamilton wrote to those members of Congress who could be swayed by his opinion.

"Mr. Burr loves nothing but himself, thinks of nothing but his own aggrandizement, and will be content with nothing short of permanent power in his own hands."

Jefferson was getting critical help at the critical time from the man who Jefferson had urged by investigated as the Secretary of the Treasury; an investigation which led to the nation's first sex scandal when Hamilton confessed an affair and being the victim of blackmail.

Surely nothing so equally dire has happened in Pottstown politics that we can't at least hear each other out.

Reasonable people can disagree, but they have to be allowed to make their case.

Suppressing debate does not engender trust, either among the members of a potentially fractious school board, or from the public who may sometimes wonder why they elected them.

Pottstown Comes Through with Funds for Student Competition

Lindsey Havyer

Yesterday was the day Pottstown High School student and DECA stand-out Lindsey Havyer headed off to Utah to compete on the national level.

As regular readers of The Digital Notebook know from this March 16 entry, Lindsey needed to raise $1,200 to cover the costs of continuing her winning streak.

As we reported in this March 10 post, Pottstown's DECA team kicked some serious DECA-butt at the 61st Annual State Career Development Conference held recently in Hershey.

Among those kicking some butt was Havyer, a Pottstown High School junior who competed in the Community Service Project where she showcased her efforts of the “Pottstown Clean Up.”

In a letter to merchants, Lindsey described her project by writing: "many of you may remember me from last spring when I organized many of my friends and fellow students to help clean up the downtown of Pottstown. Several Saturdays and Sundays were spent with many teenagers cleaning the downtown streets in order to help our merchants find pride in their place of business."

Lindsey’s project placed 6th in the Community Service Project category competing against 25 other teams.

Lindsey and her crew cleaning up downtown

That success earned her a trip the National Competition in Utah, but it didn't earn here the money to pay for it.

That's where the Pottstown Downtown Improvement District Authority came in. They started a campaign not only to raise money to pay for her trip, but also to establish a scholarship fund to help other talented but financially challenged students.

Recently Shelia Dugan, PDIDA president, wrote The Digital Notebook to let us know how things turned out. 

"Lindsey is on her way to Utah. She is able to attain this trip due to the many private donations made from the merchants, business people and community throughout Pottstown. Thanks to a tremendous match made by Tom Hylton and his wife Frances, it took less than a week to raise more than $1,400 for the scholarship fund.

"Lindsey is leaving for five days and will be joining more than 15,000 other students who will compete in various areas of the competition. Lindsey will be competing specifically against other students for the DECA / Communtiy Service Project.

"PDIDA would like to thank everyone who helped support this cause and wishes to extend the scholarship to future students in need. 

"As we continue to prepare for events throughout the summer, a few merchants want to hold a fund raiser specific for this scholarship -- PDIDA is looking to do so in the fall -- our hope is to have participating merchants working together for a great cause.

"Thank you again for all your support, and we wish Lindsay the best of luck in all her future endeavors."

We at The Digital Notebook join Sheila in wishing Lindsey good luck in Utah.