(Thirty-sixth in a series)

by Christiaan Hart-Nibbrig

“I started looking at the agreements and contracts, and became really concerned about the risk to taxpayers. And it was obvious that the people involved in the [convention center-hotel] project were doing everything they could to avoid answering any serious questions.”

– Randolph D. Carney, aka Artie See, on what prompted him to get involved in opposing the convention center-hotel project.

Questions about the TIF proposal and other tax breaks for the hotel and convention center project awakened not only the concerns of Commissioners Shellenberger and Henderson, but also those of an increasing number of regular Lancaster citizens.

Until this point, early spring, 2005, opposition to the project was thought to be limited to a handful of dogged hoteliers, who continued to challenge the legality of the room tax; activist Ron Harper, Jr., and a handful of mostly silent ‘nay sayers.’

The TIF debate changed that. The property tax abatement plan for the “private” hotel was an unlikely front-page story for weeks leading up to the March 15th school vote. All three Lancaster Newspapers editorial pages supported the Penn Square Partners proposal presented to the school board.

The public meetings right before and the night of the TIF vote attracted hundreds of audience members from both sides of the issue. From that group emerged two citizens who would take on the issue on as concerned citizens and, despite appearances, both had a lot of fight in them.

April Koppenhaver in 2005 was a single mother in her late 40s, who owned a burgeoning art gallery and studios collective in Lancaster city.

Koppenhaver, a hyperkinetic dervish of energy, had not been involved in local politics to this point. But the TIF issue raised her awareness of the project.

It was at one of the public meetings leading up to the school board TIF vote that Koppenhaver’s fire was lit.

“I was indifferent about the project until I learned that the financing had changed, that the public was now on the hook for most of the investment,” Koppenhaver says, recalling the changes in the project’s financing.

“And when I heard Nevin Cooley stand up at the school board meeting and tell us this was our one and only hope, that really boiled my skin. He didn’t see the problems with putting a huge hotel and convention center in the middle of this particular city. He didn’t see how this project would hurt other good things starting to happen downtown. If he wanted to put up a hotel and convention center that won’t work, fine, but don’t expect the public to pay for his bad idea. That’s really what it came down to for me.*”

After the TIF vote, April Koppenhaver took a keen interest in the project, and immediately began to attending as many of the convention center authority, city council, and county commissioners meetings she could fit into her schedule, and some she couldn’t. She began speaking out at them.

Then Koppenhaver, with a few others opponents of the project, started a loose-knit band of citizens to get information out about the project named Lancaster First. This group stayed in touch about the issue via email distribution. They began showing up at meetings in greater numbers, letting the community know their side of the issue.

Koppenhaver was joined in these efforts by a seemingly mild-mannered Lancaster City resident named Randolph Carney. Carney, too, became interested in the issue because of the TIF vote.

“The TIF issue really bothered me because it was giving a major property tax break to a private business, violating one of the most important promises made to taxpayers about this project” Carney told NewsLanc. “Then I started looking at the agreements and contracts, and became really concerned about the risk to taxpayers. And it was obvious that the people involved in the project were doing everything they could to avoid answering any serious questions.”

“As a Christian, I feel this project and the way it was being developed is morally wrong.”

Carney is also a computer savvy Field Service Engineer, and it was he along with Koppenhaver and Ron Harper, Jr. who started Lancaster First.

Carney also spoke up at the public meetings. Where Koppenhaver would often speak emotionally at the microphone, Carney would make his comments and questions in a rational, clear tone of voice. But the remarks were often incisive, cogent, and often more familiar with the subject matter than the people who voted on the measures.

Perhaps Randolph Carney’s biggest impact on the project has been his online persona: Artie See.

Carney, under the Artie See pseudonym (a play on words using his initials, RDC), posted literally hundreds of posts on Lancaster Newspapers own website, LancasterOnline.com  (LOL). The posts revealed a serious thinker, who took the time to obtain many of the original documents and read them very closely. There is no one in the opposition to the project who is a familiar with the esoteric details as Carney.

Carney would not only explain on LOL what the documents said, but how and where the newspapers got it wrong, which was often.

Soon, some politically experienced and reputable citizens were joining the ranks of the opposition. Names like Tom Despard, a successful real estate developer; Victor Capecce, Yale-educated with experience in trade shows; Randolph Harris, then the well-regarded director of the Historic Preservation Trust.   All publicly voiced concerns about the project.

Other officials joined Shellenberger and Henderson in speaking out against the project. Republican city councilman, Luis Mendoza, a sweet-tempered Colombian, was one, and Robert B. “RB” Campbell, the city controller, was another.

In fact, Campbell pressed the matter to the point where he himself became a target of project sponsors.

It was now a civic civil war in Lancaster.

###

Chapter Thirty-Seven: 2005 Part V: NOT JUST AN ACT: THE ‘SWEETHEART DEAL’ OF ACT 23

I am disappointed to see the end (at least for now) of TalkBack. There was a lot of garbage on there, but I think that it’s up to each mature citizen in a democracy to wade through the trash in order to get to the gems.

Despite the all-too-frequent tendency of TalkBack discussions to devolve into partisan sides trading barbs, I still think that the discussion forum was valuable in its own unique way. I think that the move to eliminate the boards entirely is a broad overreaction.

Couldn’t they have deleted the accounts of the worst offenders? I understand that the offending persons can create new screen names and come back, but are we really being told that that was occurring with such speed and on such a large scale that the staff was helpless to deal with it?

I’m told that there are technologies available to log the I.P. address of the computers requesting accounts and making the postings, so that if someone is a particularly vile or repeat offender, their computer’s unique address can be blocked permanently, or for a suspension period. They could make it so that comments are not immediately visible below stories and must be clicked on to be accessed.

Or they could do what NewsLanc does and have a moderator approve comments ahead of time, although that has its danger of censorship as well. Wouldn’t that be better than no discussion at all?

I’d like to believe that I’m sensitive to the coarsening of the dialogue and the offense that can be taken to the kinds of comments that Crystle was complaining about, but my sense is that the value of the discussion forum outweighs the fact that some of the dialogue is going to be base and offensive.

While regrettable that a public forum has been lost to Lancaster, and heaven knows Lancaster is in desperate need of more venues devoted to the sharing of differing ideas and ‘truths’, I feel Lancaster would be better served by the closing of the Lancaster Newspaper itself.

In recent years LNP has seeming become nothing more than a subscription/ad funded public relations department for other members of their ‘club’, such as The High Group, Lancaster General, and Franklin and Marshall College to name a few.

In one recent instance, a LNP reporter spent two days interviewing a respected attorney and was provided supporting documentation obtained from Right-To-Know requests concerning questionable practices involving a large local construction project, and yet the resulting article(s) either mentioned nothing that was offered or worse, spun the information 180 degrees to make the participants appear as to have been community heroes. What was lost was public awareness to questionable practices affecting tax dollars of Lancaster residents. This one act alone, in my opinion, should be cause enough to revoke LNP’s credible newsworthiness.

Lancaster would be much better served with an organization such as NewsLanc taking over or at least on equal footing. I respect NewsLanc’s desire to supplement rather than replace. However, the continuation of Lancaster Newspaper’s ‘monopoly’ and NewsLanc‘s stance as a minor player is the true loss for Lancaster’s community.

Seems like there will be a handful of losers, as a result of this:

1. LNP is sure to lose.  The online version will slowly fade away, just like their daily circulation.  Right, wrong, or indifferent many folks went to the site only to take part in the discussions.  These will be missed.
2. We the users of TalkBack.  We have all lost our cool little hang-out.
3. As a result of the online version of LNP turning to dust, I believe LNP will have to reduce staff.

I did not read everyday and I did not read everything, but nothing I read was obscene, nothing was vulgar, and nothing was unexpected. Things may have been inappropriate, things may have been insensitive, and also lacking judgment…but I am not sure we are better off because it is gone.

Best of luck LNP and its employees!  Thanks for the memories!

The notion, as expressed by some, that Charlie Crystle ended TalkBack is absurd. It was not his property; he didn’t have access to the plug.

Personally, I was surprised by the number of racist comments. I didn’t realize those sentiments still had many proponents. Charlie Crystle had a reason to be upset but Lancaster Newspapers held the keys. Frankly, I found their actions cowardly.

People want to point fingers so let’s point. Mine is pointed at the TalkBack community. I’m not casting blame on racists. They’ve got an ill-founded sense of superiority based on a superficial notion of skin color. Chances are they’ll die as racists despite tender Hispanic nurses who assist their end-of-life treatment. The rest of the community is to blame for its loss.

In the marketplace of ideas, the best ideas should win. Unfortunately, poor ideas were allowed to thrive. Freedom is not without responsibility.

I’m not too happy about this sudden shut down of Talk Back.

I think they’ve made a big mistake in taking such drastic action. First to the public who reads and follows the news online, and the comments found on TB. And also the advertisers, who’ve now lost a captive part of potential Lancaster customers.

My business spends 5k+ a month on advertising with LNP. So my drastic action will be to cancel it as of tomorrow. I’ll switch it all over to WGAL’s web site. Dumb move LNP, very dumb.

While I agree with Charlie on some issues, the preference of shutting down an opinion board rather than minority students hearing what a few in the community think of members who make the paper for the crimes they commit is where he and I butt heads. No doubt he fears for the state of their self-esteem, but how effective is it to create this faux world for kids where seldom is heard a discouraging word and the skies aren’t cloudy all day? And then they leave home and it’s hello cruel world and they fail to succeed in adulthood.

I always detected enough levity in Nicknack’s posts to assure me that he wasn’t the kind to go burn crosses in minority’s yards like Democrats used to and felt that in his own unique way he indirectly challenged members of said communities to own what is a very disturbing level of violence of crime and work to combat it, starting with themselves.

Directly, he challenged this idea that Charlie Chrystle and other pastety white liberals have that minorities don’t have what it takes to succeed in life unless they have people like Charlie to take them under their wing. With government programs to take care of everything in the name of eradicating poverty, the young men sit around bored to death and just want to kill themselves or someone. At the very least Nicknack understood that the first step to overcoming a problem is to admit that you have one.

Meanwhile the Charlie Chrystles of the world esteem themselves much more highly than they ought and don’t care whose opportunity to opine they trounce as they with the best of intentions mind you, grease the skids for yet another generation of children.

From the FINANCIAL TIMES:

The US economy continued to grow at a healthy clip in the first three months of the year, as measures to stimulate output spurred spending and helped the recovery gain momentum.

Gross domestic product grew at an adjusted annual rate of 3.2 per cent in the first quarter, Department of Commerce figures showed on Friday. That was slightly weaker than Wall Street analysts had expected and followed 5.6 per cent growth in the fourth quarter of last year.

During the previous quarter, a massive inventory swing accounted for two-thirds of the economy’s expansion. That impact, which tends to be cyclical, slowed at the beginning of the year, but the consumer has started to pick up the slack…

Click here to read the full article.

In today’s  Intelligencer Journal – New Era article concerning the shutdown of “TalkBack”, Harold Miller, CEO of the Lancaster Newspapers, Inc., explains “It’s been abused. It’s gone.  Whether it ever comes back again, we’ll look and see.”

Fair enough.  However, In today’s Internet world, ‘Letters to the Editor’ for print can hardly take the place of real time dialogue among a newspaper and its readers.   Therefore, NewsLanc fully anticipates that LNP will soon restore “TalkBack” but in a monitored format, controlled by people rather than openly accessible through sophisticated software.

(Those who read the Convention Center series will note LNP’s history of reporting one thing to arouse and influence public opinion, and then suddenly reversing course upon achieving its end.)

NewsLanc will soon  introduce “LNP Talk” to allow readers of LancasterOnLine.com and the newspapers to discuss the articles.   The same rules will apply to “LNP Talk” as “Letters to the Editor”:  Staff will delete unsubstantiated personal attacks and edit out or hyphenate language deemed offensive by current social norms.

The thousands who contribute to and read “TalkBack” will find NewsLanc to be an excellent complement to the Lancaster newspapers, with incisive local commentary, quicker and superior statewide reporting, and links to national and international media for the fuller  and more immediate coverage of worldwide affairs.

In the remote possibility that LNP will continue to turn its back on its readership,  NewsLanc may engage additional staff, broaden coverage, accept advertisements, and become a true rival to the newspapers.  However, for the time being, NewsLanc would prefer to supplement rather than replace.

News article “PAM still seeking permanent new home” reports “”We need to resolve this, but the time line has gotten a little softer,’ said Dr. Thomas F. Godfrey.   Godfrey said PAM’s landlord, Union National Community Bank, has given the music academy an extra week to vacate its 42 N. Prince St. building.”

WATCHDOG: How a one week extension makes a difference in finding a new location for PAM’s future is hard to understand.  Faculty members need to make decisions.   Parents need to plan for their children’s musical education  for next fall.

Even harder to comprehend  is PAM’s apparent  reluctance  to take a look at the ample space available for it at the Brunswick Hotel,  let alone explore the matter with the hotel’s  management.

Hopefully there are fruitful discussions going on with Millersville University behind the scenes for PAM to remain in its current location.