Notes From the July 23rd Meeting

NOTE: If you want to watch the board meeting yourself, tune to Lower Providence's Community Channel (Comcast channel 28, FiOS channel 42) the Wednesday after the meeting at 6 PM, or that Friday and Sunday at 12 AM, 8 AM, or 6 PM. Or, here is their YouTube channel.

- Three members of the Board (Jim Phillips, Howard Jones, and Christian Nascimento) couldn't be bothered to show up to this meeting, apparently. For Phillips, he's missed the whole month of July, knowing last week that he was sick. For those members who are running for re-election, it reflects poorly on them if they can't show up to a regular meeting and can't be bothered with alerting the Board President ahead of time (they have her number, what's five minutes?), so it looks like a No Call/No Show. At a job, you'd get chewed out by your supervisor--or worse, why should this be any different?


- Item 9.4, the Reverse Appeals, is a fun one if you own a business in Lower Providence. Because the last time these business's were assessed for taxes was in 1998, the School District feels that they need to be assessed again, doing a "Reverse Appeal" where the taxing body appeals the tax rate for a business. I didn't memorize the addresses, but I recognized most of them being in the area of the Lower Providence Industrial Park Park Pointe at Lower Providence. Now, a School District wouldn't try and squeeze more money out of a business unless a) they feel like they're making mad bank (urban lingo, I know), or b) they're losing a good chunk of income. What's that, you say? MSD lost about $80,000 from the state because of houses being repossessed in Evansburgh State Park? Oh, and Shannondell is still appealing re-assessment, so there goes a huge chunk of income for MSD.

The money MSD gets for this reverse appeal is good for them, but it's bad for business owners in Lower Providence. They're going to squeeze any good these business's have been doing for the past two or so years just so MSD can get money back. Couple this desperation in the left hand with the goal of putting in a turf field on the right, this school district is ass backwards. It's as if the finance guy sees the future as one way, while the board sees it as another, and this lack of communication needs to cease if MSD plans on operating at any capacity in the future.

- Here's another sign MSD needs money: there was some shuffling around in the Networking department. One position of Computer and A/V Tech was eliminated, while the Network Administrator was eliminated and became Network Manager, with a "pay cut" according to Dr. Miller (the salary is $92,000). With the Computer and A/V Tech eliminated, they replaced the position with a Systems Administrator, with a salary of $85,000. I don't know how much money MSD is saving (even at all), but companies and the like don't shuffle employees around and end up paying more money at the end of it.

- Here's an idea: putting something on the roof of MHS, because let's face it, it gets beaten up by the sun for as long as the sun is up. A gift from the University of Delaware is a Methacton High School Greenhouse Roof project, where they presumably put plants on a part of the high school's roof. That's awesome, seeing that my idea for the roof was solar panels, it's good to see some use of the resources we have in this district. It's even better that this was a gift from the University of Delaware, so a big thanks to them.

- From what I can tell, the school district should have viable candidates for Superintendent come August, and most likely, that will be the time the public will get to meet the candidates for the job. I'm going to keep and ear to the ground to see when this will happen, and when it does, I urge every member of the public to show up and grill them with any question you feel is important. If you don't think it's important to go, just remember Timmy Quinn, and crap stunts he pulled around here. If Skyview, tax increases, the lawsuit against the Lower Providence Zoning Board, or the fight for the field lights/turf fields hasn't affected you in any way, then you don't have to show up. But if one of those items has affected you in some way, I'll give you the date. The only way things will change is if the public gets involved.