Thursday, November 21, 2013

Notes From the November 19th 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.

- More M Awards! This time, the recipients are the high school golf team and the girls' tennis team for winning districts. Congratulations to them!

- If you take the time to comb the extensive List of Bills, you will see a handful for Bartle's office involving "[Right To Know] fees." When asked about this by a member of the audience, apparently, a resident involved with the ongoing dispute between Worcester and Methacton over conditional use asks for a "laundry list" of items under Right To Know, and when some of those items are denied (ie, items currently in litigation or information that cannot be released), that person appeals it. This also apparently happens every week. To someone like myself, or anyone else active in these activities, we can probably guess who that person is, and while it can be seen as that person being very meticulous in the current act of base-covering, one can also see it as a way to aggravate the opposing party in any way, shape, or form. By the way, it's costing the school district about $1,700 to do all of that.

- The Food Service Contract was approved last night, by a vote of 8-0 (Maria Schakelford was absent). I still have a bad taste in my mouth (pun!) over the whole Outsourcing-the-Lunch-Ladies-(and men) thing, even more so when Aramark was in their first year, in which I had the privilege to eat their food, it was terrible. According to what I've heard from some members of the Board and some people I've talk to offhandedly, it has gotten better. That being said, I still don't know why it had to be done in the first place. The guaranteed profit is what the School District is guaranteed to make under this one-year contract.

- The new Memorial Baseball Field is looking good--and it will look better with the Memorial Terrace approved by the Board last night. At last months Worcester Zoning Board hearing, I was told that the project has reached $170,000, and the Terrace's value is approximated at $40,000. (If Mascaro can pull this off for about $250,000, it will honestly be harder to prove the $4.5 Million football field project is a good value.)

- The Board thinks its a good idea to have one meeting in December, which is the post-election reorganization, work session, and regular session meeting, rolled up into one convenient ball. Because combining three meetings into one won't rush anything, and nothing will happen in December anyway.

- After last month's meeting, where Mr. Schanbacher questioned the board about a member receiving a "D.W.I. or D.U.I." and Lower Providence Patch's article about the same subject not just two weeks ago, it seems that this issue is reaching its head. Five members of the public--Winnie Hayes and Mary Jane Barbone, who both were former Board members and Presidents; John Andrews, Candy Allebach, and Bob Andorn--expressed their concern over this issue, with Mrs. Hayes asking for Joyce Petrauskas to step down as President. Which this is almost wonderful timing in that regard, because the Reorganization Meeting (and Work Session...and Regular Session) is December 3rd.

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