Posted in 2010 …

Apr 28 2010
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Hatboro Council nixes mayor’s use of car

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A narrow majority on Hatboro Council ruled Monday that Mayor Norm Hawkes must surrender the keys to the old police vehicle he had been driving for borough-related reasons at the borough’s expense.

Hawkes drives the car when he goes to perform marriage ceremonies, for which he earns an average donation of $100 that he deposits into a borough fund for civic projects. At times he uses the car for emergency management and public safety reasons, for example as an extra police vehicle for blocking roads during emergencies.

The mayor lost the car in a 3-4 vote in which the Republican minority, Councilmen John Zygmont, Bill Tompkins and Vincent LaSorsa, supported that Hawkes continue using the 1991 model, which has clocked more than 96,000 miles. The four-person Democratic majority opposed the mayor’s use of the car.

“It was strictly political retribution,” said Hawkes, a Democrat. “And because I did not support their candidates in the last election.”

But council President Marianne Reymer said that’s not the case. “It’s not political, it’s not malicious — it’s factual in my mind,” she said.

Hatboro had been paying around $300 for insurance each year, and an unrecorded amount of money for gas, as Hawkes uses a gas card tied to the public works account, Reymer said at council’s April 12 committee meeting.

In 2009 other expenses included a new battery and inspection. No resolutions or sections of the borough code authorize the mayor to drive the car. Four years ago someone gave him the key and “no one will step up and own that decision,” she said Monday.

The Republicans said they didn’t see a problem with the car because the mayor brings in money for civic programs and only drives it for borough-related purposes. The Democrats cited the liability issue and a concern about an absence of records.

Hawkes receives a between $4,000 and $5,000 a year in donations from performing wedding ceremonies, he said. He deposits the money into a fund that the borough then distributes to local organizations such as the YMCA and the Boy Scouts, upon request.

The problem is that it’s a huge liability, Reymer said. The borough’s insurance provider, Delaware Valley Insurance Trust, said it’s only covered if the mayor has council’s permission to drive the car, she said.

Councilwoman Nancy Guenst referred to the fact that the mayor has gone through three vehicles in four years — one that caught electrical fire and another whose floor boards rotted — in her reasoning that insurance likely costs a lot more than $300 a year, and that the taxpayers shouldn’t have to bear those costs, she said.

“The car and the weddings don’t go hand and hand, though some people like to make the argument that they do,” she said.

Hawkes said only performing marriages at borough hall would limit how many he could do. He has upcoming marriages scheduled in Warrington, Horsham and Montgomeryville, he said.

Before stopping he will honor his already scheduled 10 wedding ceremonies. “I already donate my time. I’m certainly not going to do it at my expense,” he said.

Under borough code and state law, the mayor must either keep his salary or the donations he earns from weddings. He is not permitted to keep both. Hawkes makes $2,500 as the mayor.

“Some of these civic programs will lose some of their funding. That’s what I’m concerned about,” LaSorsa said.

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Apr 22 2010
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PennSTAR landings allowed to continue at firehouse

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The Springfield Township Zoning Hearing Board Monday told the Flourtown Fire Company PennSTAR helicopters may continue to land behind the Flourtown firehouse.

The ruling came after the township had questioned the legality of the landings because there was no provision for it in the township code.

The Flourtown Fire Company has been working with Chestnut Hill Hospital since the spring of 2008 to transport patients needing urgent attention for blocked coronary arteries to the catherization lab at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center in Philadelphia.

The township did not object to the landings, Robert Dunlop, zoning officer, said, but officials are concerned that the practice may develop further.

The zoning hearing board gave the Flourtown Fire Company permission to continue its helicopter landings as long as the township’s emergency readiness plan, developed by the Springfield Township Emergency Services Board, continues to state that the property can operate as a landing zone for emergencies.

The zoning board also expressed an appreciation that the fire company has complete control over its back field, where the landings take place.

In life or death situations, an ambulance picks up a patient at the Chestnut Hill Hospital and brings him to the Flourtown Fire Company, where a PennSTAR picks up the patient for transport to the medical center.

The catharization lab has a proven 95 percent recovery rate if the patient gets there soon, said Flourtown Fire Company Chief George Wilmot III.

“Our mission is to save lives and to help the community, and we thought it was another way to help the community and save lives,” Wilmot said. “We feel, [for] most of the residents in Springfield Township, Chestnut Hill is their hospital of choice.”

The Flourtown Fire Company facilitates an average of 30 landings per year, he said. Some patients include victims of severe accidents, which are “few and far between,” he said.

The benefit is that PennSTAR now knows the landing area, and all parties have gotten the process down to about a five- to 10-minute window between the ambulance’s arrival and the helicopter’s departure, Wilmot said.

“It’s safer for everyone because we have it down pat, basically,” he said. “We have complete control over that field. We just feel that’s the safest location for this type of transport.”

At a time of landing, the fire company has about four or five people on deck to help, trained by PennSTAR, Wilmot said.

The Flourtown Fire Company does not get paid for the service and hopes to recoup some of the money from PennSTAR it has spent on the benefits given to volunteers per call, Wilmot said. It is a small amount of money, he said, though he declined to divulge it.

Of the handful of residents at the hearing for that matter, only one opposed the landings. Judy Patitucci of Flourtown said she saw an ambulance get lost for about 20 minutes on its way to the fire company, and she worried about the safety of traffic near the site.

David Delacato of Flourtown said he lives close enough that the helicopters fly over his house, and he has not heard any concerns from the neighbors. “We’re lucky we all have volunteers who will make this happen,” he said.

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Mar 30 2010
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Quidditch, the sport of wizards, is tough competition at Chestnut Hill College

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The golden snitch — a male muggle with a small ball tied to his backside — sprinted toward the collegiate towers of Chestnut Hill College to hide from the seeker, as 18- to 22-year-olds with brooms between their legs pelted each other with bludgers and the beaters belted the bludgers away from the chasers charging toward the keepers.

On March 23, muggles (that is, non-wizards) at Chestnut Hill College faced off for the first time against Middlebury College in an earthbound adaptation of Quidditch, the competitive sport played by wizards in the Harry Potter series of books and movies.

Instead of flying, players run with the brooms between their legs. Multiple balls with different functions are in play at once, and each time a certain type of ball called a quaffle shoots through the other team’s hoop, it is worth 10 points.

The game can’t end unless the teammate in the position of seeker catches the golden snitch.

The Middlebury College team walloped Chestnut Hill 150-10. But the home team can redeem itself at the World Cup at Middlebury College this October.

When freshmen at Chestnut Hill College first learn about Quidditch, they think it’s cool, but it’s more important than that for the upperclassmen, freshman Emma Burkey said, as she cheered for her boyfriend, the keeper, or goalie.

“This is something we do. It’s like a big thing around here,” she said. “It’s real important to our school.”

Burkey plays on scrimmage teams in the fall, when the school holds its big match for alumni weekend.

“It’s also a really fun event because not a lot of schools do it,” she said.

Villanova also has a Quidditch team, according to the Intercollegiate Quidditch Association, which began at Middlebury, as stated on its Web site.

Nearly 230 American colleges and universities are involved in the activity, whether a World Cup team or a currently forming team, according to the association’s online roster.

Chestnut Hill began playing in 2008 with 40 members, and now 100 students participate, advisor Kimberly Cooney said. In the fall, the campus has a large Quidditch tournament with packed bleachers.

“I can only imagine what next fall will be like,” she said.

The hundred Quidditch players make up eight teams, Lindsay Sladowski, a senior and president of the activities team, said before the game.

Quidditch at Chestnut Hill began when the vice president of the activities team saw a YouTube video of the sport and sent away for an official rule book.

“It’s fun to act like a child again,” she said.

The students also think the college looks like Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, she added.

Quidditch attracts two types of people, Middlebury senior Charlie Hofmann said before hitching up the old broomstick.

One camp is made up of those who do it because they’re big fans of Harry Potter, and the other consists of athletes, he said.

“I like it because it’s athletic,” he said. “It’s been interesting to adopt it from Harry Potter to a more athletic game.”

In addition to Chestnut Hill College, Middlebury also played at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., St. Lawrence University in New York and McGill University in Montreal during its six-city spring break Quidditch tour, he said.

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Mar 15 2010
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Backyard becomes a maple sugar farm

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Last month Erdenheim resident Joe Slapinsky decided he would tap into the natural sugar in his backyard for the first time rather than buying his sweetener at the supermarket.

He passed on modern power drills in favor of an old brace drill, which he got for a dollar at an antique shop, and bought a set of metal drill bits for $10 on eBay.

“I thought, if you’re going to do it, do it the way your great-grandparents did,” he said.

His grandmother, who is 90 and grew up canning preserves and working in her garden, asked why he was voluntarily doing such labor-intensive projects when he could buy sugar at the store, or at least use a modern drill.

“Knowing how to do it is fulfilling as well,” Slapinsky said. “It’s those old skills that nobody is doing anymore.”
He also likes to show his children, Karina, 9, and J.T., 5.

Three weeks ago, with his new-old tools, a red maple tree and a silver maple tree in his backyard, and the help of the book “Backyard Sugarin’” by Rink Mann, Slapinsky invited over some neighbors and fellow members of the groups Sustainable Springfield and Wissahickon Growing Greener, drilled two-inch holes in the trees and hung stainless steel bucket sprouts to capture the clear sap drip by drip.“Here’s the cool thing about this — you can drill it and just forget about it,” Slapinsky said.

Then they went inside and enjoyed some Tommy Knockers Maple Nut Brown Ale.

The “backyard sugarin’ project,” as Slapinsky calls it, partially began because Slapinsky wanted to make beer with the sap just as he did in his college days at Temple University.

“I’m a DIY [do it yourself] kind of person. I’m a tinkerer,” he said, adding that people who live around him on Harston Lane have also shown an interest in projects like this one.

Slapinsky was also inspired by the book “Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers,” by Stephen Harrod Buhner, where he read about the medicinal uses of maple beer, which requires boiling the sap, adding yeast and fermenting, he said.

The sap he draws from the trees is mostly sucrose, basically table sugar with extra vitamins and minerals, he said. He boils it down halfway to three-quarters, a concentration American Indians called “maple water.” He uses this as a sugar substitute in his green tea and in his bread recipes. He has made some quantities of syrup for pancakes and waffles.

The boiling point of sap is slightly above that of water, around 218 to 219 degrees, he said.

He likened the process of sugaring to tending to a fireplace, which is not necessarily a labor-intensive.

Slapinsky got a little bit of help from Lehmans.com, an Amish business that sold him his spouts, to determine when sugaring season had begun.

The best time for sugaring is about a two- to three-month window in which the atmosphere is below freezing at night and above freezing during the day, he said.

During the warmer months, the tree gets its sugar from its leaves and sends it down to the roots. When temperatures drop below freezing, the tree draws the sugar up again.

Slapinsky inserted his taps on the side of the trees closest to the sun because the warmth makes the sap thaw and flow more quickly through the tap.

When the sun is shining, he gets about a quart of sap per day.
Slapinsky, a multimedia consultant for pharmaceutical companies, works from home and can check his taps or boil sap during the day.

For those interesting in tapping into their own trees, Slapinsky recommends reading “Backyard Sugarin’” and looking into the instructional Wissahickon Valley Watershed seminars.

“The best part about it for me was sitting in front of the fire and drinking herbal green tea with my own sugar sweetener,” he said.
Next year he will probably make his own taps, he added.

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Mar 15 2010
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Council backs off gun vote

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Hatboro Council took no further action to pursue a local lost or stolen handgun reporting ordinance last month, but may adopt a resolution at a later date in support of statewide adoption of the ordinance.

Council announced at its Feb. 8 meeting it would vote Feb. 22 to advertise a future vote on a lost or stolen handgun reporting ordinance, which would require citizens to report their lost or stolen handguns to the police up to 72 hours after discovery or face a fine or imprisonment.

Before the meeting, Hatboro Mayor Norm Hawkes suggested the ordinance be removed from the agenda because a vote to send a resolution to the Pennsylvania General Assembly and Gov. Ed Rendell would have had a better chance of passing, he said.

“I don’t know whose support it would have gotten or not gotten,” Hawkes said of the ordinance. “I thought it was a compromise.”
“The ultimate goal is to get it [the state] to adopt it on a state level. The local ordinances are trying to push the state in that direction.”

In the future, maybe two years down the road, he thinks the ordinance will come up for a vote again, he added.

“My personal opinion is he [Hawkes] realized that the ordinance was not going to be passed and he didn’t want to have the negative impact of it not passing so he had it withdrawn instead,” Aleta Ostrander, chairwoman of the borough’s public safety committee, said.

Council had decided it would also consider sending a resolution to support the ordinance on a state level, an idea suggested by council President Marianne Reymer.

Upon reviewing the proposed resolution, Solicitor Christen Pionzio advised against a vote for Feb. 22, and is preparing a more simple resolution that she thinks would be appropriate for officials to consider.

“The resolution was full of facts and statistics that I had no independent knowledge if they were true or not,” Pionzio said. “I couldn’t recommend they adopt something without knowing that the facts and data contained in the resolution were accurate.”
Hawkes received the resolution under consideration from Mayors Against Illegal Guns, of which he is a member, he said.

“Everything in there is fact,” he said. “I think you have a difficult time telling the families of police officers that were killed in Pennsylvania that it was propaganda.”

The resolution states that Hatboro requests the Legislature and governor “take rapid action to address the epidemic of illegal handgun trafficking in our commonwealth by passing a statewide lost or stolen handgun reporting requirement law.”

Ostrander had received at least 40 calls from Hatboro residents asking her not to support the ordinance, she said.
“I’ve had, I believe, four people tell me they were in support of it,” she said.

Hawkes said everyone he has spoken to is in favor of the ordinance.“The only negative comments I got were from the people who came to the [council] meeting,” he said. “Everyone has told me it’s a good ordinance and it should be passed in Hatboro.”

Last week a missing handgun was reported in the borough and recovered, said police Chief James Gardner. “It’s not something that comes up all the time,” he said.

Nearby, Ambler Borough Council on Feb. 16 chose to support the ordinance on a state level instead of enacting a local ordinance due to concerns it would pre-empt state law.

A lost or stolen gun bill, House Bill 29, was considered in the House Judiciary Committee in January 2007, but did not get enough votes to move forward.

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Mar 15 2010
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Tea party groups speak out at President’s visit to Arcadia

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After listening to President Barack Obama speak Monday [March 8], Pat Stanton still didn’t have the answers he wanted about health care reform.

“Who’s going to pay? He didn’t answer that question,” he said after the president left Arcadia University’s Kuch Center.
The small-businessman in Jenkintown spends a lot of money on health care and just saw a 24 percent increase on his premiums, he said.

For Stanton, high costs are the crux of the problem. His mother was recently in the hospital and incurred a $20,000 bill for three days, he said.

While he supports reforming the system —“Everyone in this building’s for reform,” he said — he was concerned how the government will pay for the legislation.

He was also concerned that tax dollars would fund abortions under the bill.

“[That] our citizens will now be forced to pay for abortion is unconstitutional,” he said.

While President Obama’s speech brought in its fair share of supporters, those skeptical of and opposed to the plan, from event ticket-holders to Tea Partiers, were also present Monday.

During Obama’s remarks, Jack O’Brien shouted a question asking how the government would pay for the bill, but the president continued speaking.

“The government can’t supply us with health care. They can’t afford it,” the Coatesville resident said after the speech. “We have a trillion-and-a-half dollar a year deficit. They raised the debt ceiling $1.8 trillion in December. This is going to cost another trillion dollars.”

Earlier in the day, at about 9 a.m., at least 30 people with signs reading “Obamacare — vote no!” and “Free health care is not free” rallied on the Easton Road border of campus.

Russ Murphy, founder and chairman of the 9-12 Delaware Patriots, traveled to Philadelphia to show his opposition to the president’s health care reform bill, legislation he fears will incur costs that could drive some doctors out of business and hike the price of Medicare, he said.

“They ought to just take the whole thing, tear it up and start over again,” he said, adding the bill would also give the government more control over the people.

“There’s over 2,700 pages and to go through the list of all the things that are in there that are hidden, and most of these people are aware of, you might just as well take the whole thing, trash it, start over, write it so people can understand it,” he said.

Kurt Gasper of Southampton also called for legislators to tear up the bill.“We got a good turnout here and just want everyone to know, we got to stop Obama and his health care takeover — his socialism,” he said.

If the bill is passed, it will significantly change more than health care, said Joseph Panas, a member of the Valley Forge Patriots.
“I suspect that he may be willing to be a one-term president to try to ram this through,” he said. “So in my own small way, I’m just out here trying to send a message and say, ‘Please don’t do this, it’s ruining the country.’”

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Feb 10 2010
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Erdenheim photographer tests models’ English on German TV

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(2/10/2010)

In Germany, Mat McCabe is known as the nice photographer on supermodel Heidi Klum’s top-rated television show, “Germany’s Next Top Model.”

That’s what he learned from a fellow Erdenheim Elementary School parent, who heard it from a German friend, he said.

McCabe attributes his amicable reputation abroad to the way he works with his subjects. He tries to be a bit of a teacher, whether he’s featured as a celebrity guest photographer working with aspiring models on a foreign reality show or taking portraits of local families at his studio in Bridgeport.

“I always try to help and encourage,” said the photographer, who lives in Erdenheim with his wife, Kim, and children Lucas, 6, and Jake, 8.

The fashion and beauty editorial photographer was just selected to make his fifth appearance on “Germany’s Next Top Model.” He will participate in a day-long shoot on the West Coast in March.

He could not divulge the subject of his shoot, but a look at his portfolio might give some clues. His past shoots include models sitting on ice cubes in a sub-zero frozen food storage unit and models reacting to a car suddenly exploding in the background.

He remembers the ice cube shoot very well. The models came into the cold from the warmth outside, so they stuck to the ice cubes and the crew had to pull them off.

“Germany’s Next Top Model” is a reality show that follows young women as they compete in a series of challenges for the grand prize: a modeling career.

McCabe had been on the show for four years, but has been working with Klum the past 10.

“It started out just doing shoots, and it morphed into her asking me if I wanted to be on the show,” McCabe said. “She’s great, she’s funny, she’s smart. She’s just a really good person.”

His portfolio includes magazines like Cosmopolitan, for which he did a cover shoot with Klum.

As a guest photographer on a reality show, McCabe plays with lighting and directs the shots while a camera crew films him.

This means McCabe has to stay focused as about 100 people work behind him, plus any interesting events happening on set.

Sometimes, if the models aren’t “projecting” enough, Klum will make them scream with her to loosen up, which can be odd with the whole crew standing there, McCabe said.

“Often I’m so focused on what I’m doing that I don’t watch,” he said.

He will be taking photos of 13 models, 12 whittled down from 1,500 original hopefuls who came to a casting call, and the winner of a similar contest in Austria who was chosen for the show because Germany is a larger market.

McCabe isn’t German and doesn’t speak German, and the judges use this as an added element of competition, he said.

A German model needs to be able to speak English, so a contestant’s ability to follow McCabe’s directions is a strong indicator of her success in the challenge, he said.

The shoots normally last as long as McCabe feels it’s right.

“I got it, I saw something you did that was fantastic,” he said, describing the feeling.

By becoming a photographer, McCabe was carrying on the family tradition, as both of his parents have been professional photographers.

A photo his father, David McCabe, took in 1965 of a young Mick Jagger in Andy Warhol’s studio hangs in McCabe’s dining room. Another photo his father took of surrealist artist Salvador Dali in New York City’s Ritz Plaza hangs in a hallway.

McCabe, who grew up in New York City, loves photography partially because of the lifestyle he experienced in his youth — traveling and meeting interesting people.

But it’s also the process of creating a photograph that attracts him.

“I really enjoy thinking it through: How am I going to do it? What do I need to do it? How am I going to connect with the subject?” he said.

For now, McCabe looks forward to continuing photography, both fashion and at his new portrait studio, where he hopes to work with local families.

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Feb 10 2010
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Hatboro to vote on gun ordinance

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(2/9/2010)

Hatboro Mayor Norm Hawkes proposed a lost or stolen handgun ordinance to borough council Monday night that he said would help keep firearms out of the hands of criminals.

If adopted, the ordinance would require citizens to report their lost or stolen handguns to the police up to 72 hours after discovery.

Anyone who violates the ordinance would be subject to a fine of no more than $1,000, or imprisonment for not more than 90 days, or both, reads the draft ordinance.

Council will vote at its meeting Feb. 22 if it will advertise the ordinance for a future vote.

Officials will also vote whether to send a resolution to state legislators in support of a statewide adoption of the lost or stolen ordinance.

Hawkes has been a member of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, the group endorsing this ordinance, since July.

“Lost or stolen handgun reporting costs nothing and can only help save lives,” he said.

When a gun owner reports his lost or stolen firearm, the authorities can track it down before it ends up at a crime scene, he said.

Hatboro Solicitor Christen Pionzio told council she did not feel comfortable recommending it adopt the ordinance.

Whether or not the ordinance pre-empts the existing Pennsylvania Uniform Firearms Act has yet to be tested in court, she said.

Seventeen municipalities in Pennsylvania have already enacted this ordinance, including Philadelphia, Allentown, Erie and Lancaster.

Council Vice President Nancy Guenst and Councilwoman Aleta Ostrander said they were not in support of the ordinance.

“It’s making the legal gun owners feel like criminals,” Guenst said.

She added it felt like an infringement of the Second Amendment rights of legal gun owners.

Councilwoman Patricia Fleming said a councilman and police officer she met at a meeting described the ordinance as “feel good legislation.”

Ostrander said the court costs if the ordinance is challenged could be “astronomical.”

She added an ordinance could be the beginning of more limiting laws for gun owners.

Maxwell Nacheman, the Pennsylvania Coordinator for Mayors Against Illegal Guns, who attended the meeting, said the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence dispatches lawyers pro bono for such cases.

Hawkes and Councilmen Bill Tompkins and John Zygmont said the ordinance does not target responsible gun owners, who will report their lost or stolen handguns, rather it targets those who will not report them.

If everyone was responsible then there wouldn’t be a need for a police department, Tompkins said.

He also added an ordinance is meant to guide residents into acting responsibly.

“Any ordinance — any law — is not designed to punish people,” he said.

It would be the police department’s job to enforce this ordinance, Borough Manager and police Chief Jim Gardner said.

Currently, when someone reports a stolen gun in Hatboro, the police department will enter pertinent information into a national database of stolen articles, he said. Stolen guns are never purged from this system, he added.

The ordinance would not limit hunters in any way, it would not affect legal purchase or ownership of guns and does not penalize people who are unaware their guns have been lost or stolen, according to information from CeaseFirePA that Hawkes distributed to council.

“It makes it safer for everyone, that’s all it does,” Hawkes said.

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Feb 10 2010
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Parents ask school board to help fund playground

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(2/5/10)

Parent volunteers of the Springfield Township School District have been fundraising for the last year so students who attend the new Erdenheim Elementary School in September will have a nice, new playground.

But with just a few months left to raise funds before the summer, the parent volunteers of the playground committee are feeling an urgency in their situation.

They have collected a little more than $45,000 of the projected $130,000 cost of the playground they want, and they have approached the school board for a $50,000 contribution to the fund.

“This is a bunch of parents that are going out and fundraising for a large sum of money,” Nancy McDonald, chairwoman of the playground committee and member of the Erdenheim PTO, said Monday. “I think the board understood the urgency.”

A pledge from the school district would “re-energize the parent base to fill the gap,” she added.

At its meeting Tuesday, the school board decided to hold a special interim property committee meeting to determine how much the district could contribute and where the money would come from.

Members would make a recommendation to the rest of the board for a vote at its meeting Feb. 16.

“We’re very supportive, and we want to be able to help them as much as we can,” Gail Inderwies, chairwoman of the property committee, said after the meeting.

The approximate costs of the project are $95,000 for equipment and $35,000 for installation, according to the playground committee’s projections.

What they need now is for the school to commit to an amount so volunteers can plan how they will close the gap, McDonald said.

McDonald and Erdenheim Principal Christine Bradley presented their designs for a second- through fifth-grade playground at the meeting.

The design, a collaborative concept of parents and teachers, includes slides, climbing apparatus and swings. One of the swings is meant for students with special needs, and physical and occupational therapists can use it with students throughout the day, they said.

The plan also includes fitness stations, such as a balance beam and parallel bars.

The committee is working with PlayWorld Systems, a Pennsylvania company that uses only recycled Pennsylvania steel and does not use polyvinyl chloride, McDonald told the board.

The district has received a bid of a little more than $35,600 for the complete installation, more than 20 percent less than the market price, district Facilities Director Roy Johnson said.

This proposal was “a very pleasant surprise,” he told the board.

If the district commits to funds later this month, it would give a much-needed boost to the fundraising efforts, which have felt the brunt of a down economy, McDonald said.

When the fundraising began, the parents were told that the funds the district used to finance construction work were ineligible for noncurricular projects, she said.

Due to some miscommunication, the parents understood they had to fund the entire playground, McDonald said, adding she is not blaming anyone.

A playground committee within the Erdenheim PTO mobilized, and parents talked to grant agencies and professional fundraisers in hopes of securing donations from the community and businesses large and small.

But there were two main problems.

Research showed that grants would be difficult to receive because the township does not fit the more underprivileged demographic typically preferred of applicants, McDonald said.

The other problem was the down economy, which made businesses freeze their donations.

The $45,000 raised so far is from the community, mostly from the same groups of people, she said.

Another hurdle was the changes that came from the district restructuring, as changes needed to be made to accommodate the new group at Erdenheim, she said. This was when the cost of the project rose to about $130,000.

The committee is happy with the change, it just wasn’t in the original plan, McDonald said.

The collaboration of Erdenheim and Enfield parents has benefited the project, she said.

“There’s lots of new energy around it by having a whole new community to work with,” she said.

The parents recently held a movie night at Erdenheim that brought in $2,000 for the fund.

The public property committee meeting to discuss playground funding will take place Feb. 12 at 8:30 a.m. in the administration building.

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Jan 29 2010
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Hatboro Council nixes plan for Miller Meadow

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Hatboro Council on Monday halted action to install a walking trail and fitness stations at Miller Meadow due to concerns the project would waste resources and hurt the fundraising efforts of local nonprofit organizations.

By a 3-4 vote along party lines, the Democratic majority opposed a resolution that would have given council’s support to an already submitted preliminary application for a grant that could have been used to add the trail and fitness equipment to Miller Meadow, the property across from Borough Hall on South York Road.

Council’s action essentially voids the application to the PECO Growing Greener grant program, which council directed Assistant to the Borough Manager and Planner Daren Miller to submit at its Jan. 11 meeting in order to meet a deadline.

The Montgomery County Open Space program gave a grant to Hatboro to acquire the land in 1998 for the borough to use for passive recreation.

County officials recommended the project, Miller said.

The project proposal included a trail along the perimeter with 20 fitness stations and was estimated to cost about $20,000, half of which would have been paid by the borough.

Vice President Nancy Guenst said she voted against the proposal because of a number of concerns from the residents and because she asked for but did not receive specific information from the borough about how much the project would cost, such as material and length of the path.

She did not want the borough to have to pay more than expected, she said, adding that it cost the borough $30,000 to pave the circle outside of Borough Hall.

Councilman Bill Tompkins, who voted for the resolution, suggested council remove the fitness equipment and approve a proposal for a macadam trail.

Tompkins asked council why the borough should spend the money to look into different options before learning if the grant is awarded.

Hatboro had previously received a $5,000 grant from PECO and will use it to plant trees on the property, Guenst said.

Members of the Greater Hatboro Chamber of Commerce were concerned the development would affect the nonprofit organization’s ability to hold vital fundraising events, such as annual carnivals held at the field, chamber President Bill George, told council.

George said he had spoken to Miller, who said he didn’t think it would be a problem.

“If what we’re going to do at Miller Meadow is going to affect all of our incomes, then I vote no,” president of Elm Street, John Farnen, added.

Hatboro resident Ron Battis said he did not want the borough to make the same mistake with Miller Meadow as it did with Eaton Park on West Moreland Avenue, where a stone trail became “grooved out” in some places and washed away by rain in others.

People were constantly destroying the signs on the fitness equipment and the borough kept replacing them, Battis said, until a previous council decided to take out the equipment and pave the trail.

“So what I’m saying is, there’s no sense in repeating the same mistake twice,” he said.

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