The Nov. 30th front page headlines two extensive articles: “A Hole in our Net” describing “the closing of one emergency shelter next year could leave more people on the streets” and “Where offenders plead…and cry” which, along with a second article, describes the workings of the Accelerated Rehabilitative Disposition (ARD) program.

WATCHDOG: Both articles, the former by Helen Colwell Adams the latter by Jon Rutter, are excellent journalism. Adams’ article is New York Times / Washington Post quality. Hopefully the Sunday News will continue and expand its in depth coverage of local community problems.

With growing satisfaction, the WATCHDOG recognizes that all three Lancaster Newspapers have progressed from the dark days of their disgraceful coverage of the Convention Center and Conestoga View controversies. Hopefully ownership has learned to avoid financial conflicts of interests. The Lancaster Newspapers, Inc. would do well to follow Fulton Bank’s lead by exiting Penn Square Partners.

Our community will neither prosper nor be honorable without conscientious media. WGAL – take note.

The so called ‘free money’ from the state and feds (our tax dollars recycled) has all but dried up. I have to go on record and [say] the Trolley is all but dead in the water.

The city sewers are crumbling. Klein is doing one plus house per day. The sewers in the city run left to right, not out from the house to the street, and the homeowner has full responsibility; the city has none.

Johnstown has to tear down a parking garage that is unsafe and demolition will cost $150,000 that the city does not have. They are not rebuilding it near their convention center as the convention center is not doing enough events.

Pittsburgh announced that two of their suburban strip centers in Allegheny County are being foreclosed, leaving the county short of hundreds of thousand of dollars in tax revenue.

As I returned home I realized how fortunate we are here in Lancaster County. It is a shame that the powers that be think we are not going to have the problems that other cities are experiencing. It will come, maybe not as great; we have got to stop this wasteful spending and concentrate on the infrastructure that is failing daily in the city.

A news report on the BBC network explained that the “Black” in “Black Friday” referred to the start of the holiday season which enabled merchants to stop losing money (in the “red” since losses in hand written ledgers were designated with red ink) and start making money (thus in the “black”.)

Here we thought “Black Friday” referred to the dangers and frustrations of trying to wait on or be among hordes of shoppers.

At last week’s County Commissioners meeting, Library SYSTEM Executive Director Susan Hauer showed pluck by getting up during the Public Comment portion and asking if she might make a presentation concerning the need for SYSTEM funding. And to their credit, the Commissioners graciously allowed her to do so.

(The commissioners indulge visitors including the publisher of this web site. And yes, they do take and respond to questions, unlike Mayor Rick Gray and Lancaster City Council. In fact, Chair Dennis Stuckey makes a point of thanking contributors for their remarks.)

Hauer talked about how County funding had remained static since the turn of the century and made a strong case for not reducing the SYSTEM’S request in next year’s budget. She then went on to say that the full allocation of $2.3 million would allow “distribution of a total of $150,000 to the 16 municipal libraries that are part of the system.”

Hey what? The only funds going to the actual libraries average less than $10,000 each? Don’t the independent local libraries, not the SYSTEM, incur most of the expenses? Do we hear correctly?

Sadly we do. We have a bloated SYSTEM and starving libraries.

Hauer isn’t totally to blame. She works for the SYSTEM and is taking care of her own. It is the very fragmentation of library services in the county that leads to mis-allocation of scarce resources and weak local leadership, especially with fundraising.

There is no strong and articulate voice for the hundreds of dedicated employees who faithfully serve our community at the local level and for the hundreds of thousands of visitors who use library services throughout the county.

$150,000 at most for 16 libraries that have to pay the salaries of their employees and purchase all of the materials while maintaining their facilities? But $2.3 million for the SYSTEM which is staffed to the hilt under Hauer’s swaggering leadership?

Symptomatic of debilitated leadership was the downtown (Duke Street) trustees canceling the upgrade and renovation and rejecting a million dollars in grants after spending $600,000 without even trying to raise $1.3 despite having over $3 million in an endowment fund.

Lancastrians will not be properly served until consolidation takes place, or at least until the Commissioners arrange to have an independent analysis made concerning how county library funding should be more fairly allocated.

by Chris Hart-Nibbrig

A nation in financial free-fall has forced many Americans to make some very heartbreaking decisions, including whether to give up the family dog. For these people, a job layoff or foreclosed home has meant moving across state lines, or into an apartment that does not accept pets, or with relatives who don’t want or have the room or desire to accommodate a beloved furry relative.

When this happens, or when medical or veterinary bills override the ability to pay them, a painful choice confronts a family.

“We are definitely getting an increase in people having to surrender dogs because of the economy,” says Kelly Hitz, Director of Public Relations of the Humane Society of Harrisburg. “For a lot of people, it is forcing tough decisions between food for animals, and food for children.”

The economic crisis is too fresh to gauge precisely how it has economically affected the $30 billion annual pet buying, feeding, and caring industry, but an indication of how the recession is affecting the adoption of dogs in particular can be found by listening to the people who accept the surrendered and abandoned dogs on a daily basis.

“Yes, we have seen more surrenders,” says Kerry Flanagan, Vice President of Humane League of Lancaster County. “We don’t have an exact number [attributable to the downturn], but with people losing their homes and having to move into places that do not allow pets. Some people are not able to meet their own medical needs or the medical expenses of their pets.”

Those expenses are not negligible. The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has published estimates of the cost of adopting a dog in the first year between $1,300 to $1,800, depending on the size of the dog.

Lisa Conklin is the Director of Development for the Adams County, Pa, SPCA. “I did some calculations, and we are up 30% on dogs and 22% in cats compared to last year at this time,” says Conklin. “We also have an increase in strays, although I don’t have have precise numbers on them right now, but we’re seeing more. We’re finding more abandoned animals, some just dumped on the street.”

“It really is the saddest thing,” continues Conklin. i

Pet owners often aren’t aware of what’s available for pet support resources. “There are programs in place.” says Hitz, of the Harrisburg Humane Society. “We have a pet food bank and low cost vaccines to ease the financial burden on pet owners. People just need to contact us.”

Kerry Flanagan of the Lancaster Humane Society sells her product with the conviction of belief. “Our pets [are] wonderful!” Flanagan says. “They are vaccinated, spayed and neutered, micro-chipped, and given a leash. And they need homes.”

Adams County’s SPCA’s, Lisa Conklin, is blunt about the problem of shelter overcrowding, especially during this economic downturn:

“Let’s be real. Animal shelters are not primarily government funded. Adams County gives $11,000 to the SPCA. Another $16,000 comes from the municipalities. This is for a county of more than one hundred thousand people. People need to fund it and they have less money. It is slipping and slipping.”

Conklin continues: “The bigger picture is we are farming a crop of animals – dogs — that become unwanted throwaways. The farm breeding of animals is perpetuating this overflow at the shelters where the supply exceeds the demand. There is something wrong with this picture. You can find a pure bred at a shelter. The shelters are overflowing. We need to do better here as a society.”

With reporter Matt Henderson on assignment elsewhere, our publisher covered what appeared to be a routine and not particular newsworthy County Commissioners meeting last week. Indeed, the only coverage by the Intell was a short artice about the purchase by the county of several easements on farms to prevent their future development.

Rick Kastner, Executive Director of the Lancaster County Drug & Alcohol Commission, made his annual presentation. From that, our publisher learned during a public comment period that government funding for medicine ceases when someone enters prison. Not only does this seem undesirable from the point of view of inmate health, but it also prevents prisoners who are heroin drug addicts from entering into a Methadone or Buprenorphine / Suboxone regimen, either of which would go far towards making them self sufficient and deterring them from future crimes. Kastner indicated that 70% of prisoners had addiction problems.

Following Kastner, Susan Hauer, Executive Director of the Library System of Lancaster County, presented the Library System’s Annual Request for County Funding. Two revelations from a discussion with Hauer following the meeting were:

(1) A past County referendum to establish a tax millage to support currently underfunded libraries was placed on an off-year spring primary due to well meaning but bad political advice from a powerful source. (Voters in off year primaries tend to be older and conservative and rarely support tax increases.) Nevertheless, the queston lost by only a small margin.

(2) Consolidating the Library System of Lancaster County, which provides special services, with the several independent libraries in the county, could not happen unless the boards of the independent libraries agreed. Consolidated systems have been successful in other counties.

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Consolidation might be more efficient and perhaps enable the hiring of top notch professional staff at the System level to perform some functions now carried out by less qualified or overburdened staff at local libraries. The current fragmentation also makes it difficult to attract experienced and established community leaders as board members.

The last minute aborting of the renovation and upgrading of the Lancaster Public Library (Duke Street location) is an example of both problems.

Our publisher suggested to the reporter from the Lancaster Newspapers that LNP write about the issues of medicine for prisoners and library consolidation. The respectful response was that they had already done so.

NewsLanc will explore medicine for prisoners and consolidation of the libraries with experts and report further.

Below are two of the reasons why members of TRRAAC, an organization of neighbors, desire that governmental authorities explore the relative feasibility and desirability of proposed alternate sites for the relocation of the Nofolk Southern rail yard:

As currently proposed by F&M, the project would take a 100 year old railyard, in and surrrounded by an established industrial zone, and relocate it to a site bordered by residential neighborhoods. To now locate such a facility next to neighborhoods built in a residential, non-industrial area is just plain wrong and verges on illegal taking something of value.

At the June meeting, after viewing the noise isoplats (rings of equal noise levels at some defined level), the consultants were urged to produce isoplat maps charting the MAXIMUM impact (impulse) noise levels, to present a true representation of what neighbors could expect to encounter from rail yard activities such as coupling and uncoupling of rail cars. Such isoplats would present a better, more realistic idea of how much disturbance there would be a night! F&M / LGH have declined to pursue the matter.

A Nov. 24 article was headed “Will open-meetings law ever be revived?” and goes on to say “The state House adjourned for the year Wednesday without taking action on Senate Bill 467. The bill would have increased fines to pen meetings, violations from $100 to $1,000.” It then quoted retiring Sen. Gibson Armstrong as saying “Hopefully, somebody else will pick up the banner and move forward.”

WATCHDOG: The state legislature took no action probably because the members recognize restricting legislators from discussing matters outside of public session is impractical and unenforceable.

The commissioners Dick Shellenberger, Molly Henderson and Pete Shaub were fined because they agreed to a violation as a sop to then District Attorney Donald Totaro to get him to call off his year long witch hunt, which had come up totally empty.

The Grand Jury did not present evidence of violations by the commissioners. Rather it described the Sunshine Act as ineffectual.

True protection comes from a requiring a second reading and mandating sufficient delay before passage for public input.

I’ve been reading your site and have agreed with the negative aspects being pointed out about the streetcar. One issue that I have not yet seen raised in any forum is the impact that the streetcars will have on the City’s fire service.

The city Bureau of Fire operates two ladder trucks. Truck 1 has a 75′ ladder and Truck 2 has a 95′ ladder. The catenary wires that will hang above the streetcar will likely prevent either of these apparatus from deploying their ladders anywhere along the streetcar’s route of travel. This will include areas such as the Convention Center itself and many of the city’s larger buildings.

Additionally, any traffic congestion along the route could significantly delay the response of fire and other emergency vehicles. Are the risks worth the reward?

I was taught typing in 9th Grade while at Reynold Junior High School.

It was actually 30 years ago this semester that we tapped away on the electric typewriters and where I learned the home keys and use of the QWERTY keyboard that allows me to bang out words on the computer to this day. I have a hard time understanding why this vital and important skill could be falling by the wayside given the importance of typing.

It was called TYPING class.