By Cliff Lewis

Some might assume that all of the cultural hot spots of Downtown Lancaster exist within a few blocks of Penn Square—surely the culture ends by the time you hit Mulberry St, right? Wrong. Cozily tucked into an historic, 315 W King St, stone row home, La Costeña Restaurant prepares some of the most diverse and palate-expanding dishes that the city has to offer.

Before visitors place their order, the table is fixed with little bowls of canchita, salted puffs of corn that can best be described as “inverted popcorn.” (You won’t understand until you try it.) This free appetizer provides a good preface for the quality of La Costeña’s menu: It touches on American culinary expectations, but always pushes flavors into delightfully uncharted territory.

The selection of entrées deals significantly with seafood, or “mariscos.” One of these dishes is “Parihuela,” a wide bowl of talapia, scallops, shrimp, mussels, and lobster claws in a spicy broth of onions and Peruvian seasonings. The menu also provides a strong selection of chicken and steak items, most notable for the heavy and freshly spiced sauces used in their preparation.

What La Costeña offers is a rich and affectionately crafted cultural experience. One cannot enter this establishment without gathering the sense that a very unique heritage is being guarded behind these stony Lancaster walls. The Peruvian experience is well worth walking the extra blocks—and it sure beats buying a plane ticket.

By Cliff Lewis

Saturday evening, June 13, was the opening concert of the Pennsylvania Academy of Music’s (PAM) 2009 international summer music festival, “Vivace!” The program consisted of three orchestral pieces, two of which were written by Felix Mendelssohn, the nineteenth century composer with a knack for the dramatic.

The festival, now in its tenth year, was conceived during the late 90s with a series of outdoor summer concerts. As the annual tradition flourished, it continued to draw premier music talent from various corners of the world, including Italy, Hungary, and China. One defining quality of the festival is the friendly intermingling of these special guests with PAM student and faculty talent.

Saturday’s performance was both simple and lively. The first piece, Mendelssohn’s “Octet in E flat major, op. 20″ (sampled in the video below), was perhaps the most moving, as the string octet gracefully swept through a persistently epic composition. The second performance, Carl Maria von Weber’s “Clarinet Quintet in B flat Major, op. 34,” was light and playful, showcasing the agility of clarinetist Doris Hall-Gulati. The evening concluded with the Newstead Trio’s pounding performance of Mendelsson’s “Trio in D minor, op. 49.”

The following video features a sample of the first performance, along with a few images from that night in Lancaster City:

“Vivace!” will continue, with twelve different performances, until June 27. To find out more about the festival, including show times, please click here.

(Seventeenth in a series)

With Robert Field added to the growing number of those openly questioning the convention center and hotel project, sponsors of the project now faced formidable opposition.

The emergence of April Koppenhaver, Randy Carney, and Field, along with Ron Harper, Jr., and others, meant that the Lancaster County Commissioners, specifically Dick Shellenberger and Molly Henderson, had a swelling of support behind them in their challenge to the increasingly expensive, taxpayer subsidized project.

Since the early part of 2005, before the TIF vote, it was apparent Shellenberger and Henderson were going to examine a variety of concerns regarding the project, including the $40 million county guaranty, the hotel room tax, and other issues related to the feasibility of the project. A possible lawsuit challenging Act 23 funding was also publicly discussed by the two Commissioners.

It was the late spring of 2005, and the project was far from complete. Not a shovel of dirt had been turned, funding was not secured, architectural drawings were not finished, and the public was demonstrably becoming more impatient and resistant to the project. It was a project with a very uncertain future.

Then the sponsors were presented with an opportunity which they seized with gusto. It came in the form of the sale of a 200 year-old, county-owned nursing home called Conestoga View.
Prior to the summer of 2005, if the Conestoga View nursing home was mentioned at all in any of the Lancaster newspapers, it was in the obituary section. By the end of the year, Conestoga View made the front pages, the editorial pages, and letters-to-the editor pages almost every day of the week.

The facts around the sale of Conestoga View began in the summer of 2003.

The idea to sell the facility, which employed about twenty percent of the county workforce and housed the county morgue in its basement, as well as a youth intervention center on its 40-acre grounds, was first raised sometime during the campaign summer. It was then when sitting commissioner Pete Shaub brought it up with county solicitor, LCCCA solicitor, and Stevens & Lee partner, John Espenshade.

During the summer of 2003, Shaub and Shellenberger, despite differences in temperament, often campaigned as a team. In September, when Shaub spoke to Shellenberger about the possible sale of Conestoga View, Shellenberger agreed with Shaub that the county should sell the facility. Both believed that selling Conestoga View was consistent with their interest in shrinking government, a standard part of the Republican platform.

“Conestoga View was losing money, and we felt this was the kind of thing that government should not be doing,” said Shellenberger after he left office. “This was the philosophy I campaigned on. Anything the private sector can do, the government should not be competing in and doing.”

Since Shaub was the only sitting commissioner during these pre-election meetings with Shellenberger and Espenshade, they were not in violation of the state’s open meetings, or Sunshine Act, requirements.

After taking office in January, 2004, Shaub and Shellenberger, along with solicitor Espenshade, continued to pursue selling Conestoga View to Complete Healthcare Resources, the private company that had operated the facility for more than a decade. But now that Shellenberger was in office, meeting with Shaub privately to discuss potential legislation meant possibly violating the ‘Sunshine’ law.

The two Commissioners, Shaub and Shellenberger, according to a later grand jury investigation into the sale, deliberately and carefully kept newly-elected Commissioner Henderson ‘out of the loop’ and completely ignorant of these ongoing negotiations. Shellenberger and Shaub were able to circumvent the Sunshine law restrictions by either meeting with Espenshade individually, or by using a common practice known as “walking the halls.”

‘Walking the halls’ is a term used to describe a practice where a surrogate of one official, in this case a County Commissioner, meets with another Commissioner. Then the surrogate ‘walks the halls’ back to the other commissioner’s office and briefs him. This goes back and forth, and it is done frequently as a practical way of not awaiting a public meeting in order to discuss matters between a quorum of Commissioners.   (Only two of the three commissioners make up a quorum!)

The person walking the halls on behalf of then-board Chairman Shaub was County Administrative Officer, Don Elliot, (who happened to use Penn Square Partners’ Nevin Cooley as a professional reference on his application to the county).

The person walking the halls as Shellenberger’s representative was an administrator with a newly created position of Chief Services Officer (CSO) named Gary Heinke.
Gary Heinke and Dick Shellenberger were close personal friends. For several years, they had been active fellow church members, and regularly socialized together before Heinke left Pennsylvania, and moved with his family to Minnesota.

After Shellenberger won the Republican endorsement in early 2003, he contacted Heinke and asked his friend if he would be interested in returning to Lancaster to work as the Chief Services Officer for the county after Shellenberger took office.

Heinke was interested, and Shellenberger, Shaub, and Espenshade all helped Heinke get the job. The three sent Heinke material and job-related questions in advance of the formal interview for the position. Shaub, Shellenberger, and Espenshade also had several meetings with Heinke, none of which the other candidates for the position received. (Elliot was the only candidate to receive advance material for the Chief Administrative Officer post.)

Neither Commissioner Henderson nor the county human resources department were aware of the preferential treatment afforded Heinke and Elliot.

With unanimous Commissioners’ approval, Heinke was hired as Chief Services Officer. He began work on March 29, 2004. Weeks later, his job responsibility was expanded to include supervising five new departments, and overseeing Conestoga View.

During 2004, as negotiations continued between Shaub, Shellenberger, Espenshade, and the private company operating Conestoga View, the relationship between Shaub and Shellenberger deteriorated drastically.

The high-strung, combustible Shaub, who in his previous term often clashed with fellow Republican, Paul Thibault, frequently lashed out publicly at his fellow Commissioners.

“I’d like to know which side of your mouth you are speaking out of today,” he told Commissioner Molly Henderson at one meeting.

At the turn of the year to 2005, Shellenberger and Henderson staged a ‘coup’ for the Chairman’s seat, and voted to place Shellenberger as chairman of the board of Commissioners. Shaub was livid that he lost the Chairman’s seat to Shellenberger. Shaub was also bitterly angry at Henderson, whose vote enabled Shellenberger to depose Shaub.

The animosity between Shaub and Commissioners Shellenberger and Henderson was exacerbated by their present positions on the convention center project. Shellenberger and Henderson were increasingly concerned about the convention center financing and feasibility, and demanding answers from project sponsors. Shaub remained a staunch supporter of the project.

The deal Shaub, Shellenberger, and Espenshade were hammering out with Complete Healthcare Resources had the county selling Conestoga View and its grounds for a total of $13.5 million – $8.5 million for the buildings, the rest for compensation and assurances that no job cuts would be made and no indigent patients denied care. The facility had a long history of caring for the elderly poor.

The morgue and the youth intervention facility would remain on the grounds.

On July 6, 2005, at a regular Commissioners’ meeting, all three Commissioners’ voted to enter into an agreement to sell Conestoga View. This meant they were intending on finalizing the sale at a later date.

The first reaction to the now-pending sale in the Lancaster Newspapers appeared on July 10, 2005, in the “Coffee with Clyde” column, written by then-Sunday News editor, Dave Hennigan.

The “Clyde” columns were a collection of observations and homilies put forth by Hennigan’s alter ego, Clyde. But the column printed on that Sunday in July had a decided edge to it. And it may be there was a voice other than Hennigan’s whispering in ‘Clyde’s’ ear.

Below is the first reaction to the issue that would dominate Lancaster Newspapers’ coverage more than any other in its history:

“July 10, 2005

Coffee With Clyde

Good morning, Clyde. What’s going on?

“The county commissioners played a little ‘full steam ahead’ on Wednesday,” my jogging friend said, sipping his coffee.

Indeed, Clyde. What do you mean?

“They approved the sale of Conestoga View in record time, Mr. Editor. It took the commissioners only six days from when it became public to unload a piece of Lancaster.”

What’s the point, Clyde?

“What’s the rush, Mr. Editor? They pulled this stunt over a holiday weekend, when few people could react, and when a couple did complain, they ignored their request to postpone the vote…”

Hennigan’s column did mention that Commissioner Henderson requested more time for public input before voting on entering into the sale agreement, but Shaub and Shellenberger wanted the vote done on that date, and it was passed. Soon, the newspapers’ coverage conflated Henderson with the other Commissioners’ involvement in pushing the sale.

After the July 6 vote, as if by orchestration, waves of letters to the editor opposing the sale also began to appear in all three papers.

“Last Wednesday, I learned that our county commissioners had been in secret negotiations for many months to sell the Conestoga View Nursing Home,” read one letter printed in the Intelligencer Journal on July 14, 2005.

“I would like to let the public know how the sale of Conestoga View has affected the staff and residents. The staff and residents were informed of the sale the morning before it came out in the evening newspaper. That was a slap in the face,” read another in the Lancaster New Era on August 13, 2005.

These letters were typical, and they were printed by the dozens during those summer months.

A readers “poll” in the Intelligencer Journal showed 96 percent of the self-selected respondents opposed the sale of Conestoga View.

Prominent political officials and ex-officials (all ardent convention center supporters) – like former Mayor Art Morris, former County Commissioner Paul Thibault, and then-Lancaster city Mayor Charlie Smithgall – all very publicly voiced opposition to the sale. Morris was especially critical in his rebuke of all three County Commissioners.

By the time the final sale agreement for Conestoga View was voted on, on September 28, 2005, the unlikely issue of nursing home sale was front page news.

And it was just the beginning of the story.

###

Chapter Eighteen: A Board Divided: Convention Center Authority Splits in Two

The McCaskey Soccer Booster Club is sponsoring free professional training by nationally acclaimed One On One Soccer for interested School District of Lancaster youngsters from 12 to 18.

Rigorous skill training will take place during the week of August 10 – 14 from 9:00 – 11:00 a.m. at McCaskey East High School.

Students interested in attending need to fill out an application and submit it by mail to One On One Soccer by June 26. Information with the form can be downloaded here.

It is anticipated that up to 100 boys and girls will be accepted into the program.

Another sign of the revitalization of the School District of Lancaster’s athletic program under Athletic Director Jon Mitchell was the record turn out by 375 students for free physical exams to qualify for teams.

General information concerning One On One Soccer can be accessed at OneOnOneSoccer.com.

As reported earlier by NewsLanc, Pennsylvania Secretary of Education Gerald Zahorchak held a public press conference at Manheim Central High School to discuss the potential impact of the State budget cuts introduced in Senate Bill 850. In the following video, Zahorchak discusses the value of Early Childhood Education—one of the programs that would experience sharp cuts under 850’s reccomendations:

On June 11, a special press conference was held at Manheim Central High School to discuss the Education and Library budget cuts proposed in the Republican State Senate Bill 850. Although the bill was recently rejected by State House Democrats, many of the bill’s initiatives will remain on the table as Harrisburg lawmakers work to compromise on a final budget by June 30.

Headlining the gathering was Gerald Zahorchak, Governor Rendell’s Secretary of Education. Zahorchak was careful to remind Lancastrians that the cuts of Bill 850 remain a threat to PA Schools and Libraries: “Some people are applauding the fact that the House Appropriations Committee said that this bill won’t move forward. Well, that’s good news. However, it’s not the story. The story is that…all of the minutes and hours of the coming days and weeks [of developing the final budget] will be spent with the ideas of 850 at the table.”

Zahorchak stressed that, in simple economic terms, Education is one of the most valuable investments that our State can make. And, in Zahorchak’s estimation, 850’s budget cuts would hamper some of PA’s most progressive educational programs-programs like pre-Kindergarten, which are voluntarily taken on by many districts without any special funding.

Also speaking at the conference were representatives from the local Pennsylvania State Education Association (PSEA), Conestoga Valley School District, Solanco School District, and Manheim Borough.

Following the conference, NewsLanc spoke with Susan Hauer, Administrator of the Library System of Lancaster County. Hauer explained that, even without Senate Bill 850, funding for Public Libraries remains in jeopardy: “Libraries…are under the Department of Education, but a lot of times, they don’t include public libraries in their machinations with the Legislature and the Governor, because we’re not mandated…. So, in the Governor’s budget, education was increased, but libraries were cut.”

Manheim Community Library Director Barbara Basile, also present, laid out the funding challenge in plain terms: “We’re already at bare bones. We’ve been bare bones for a number of years. If libraries get cut, jobs are going away….We’ve done the best we can with as a little as possible for a long, long time. There is nowhere left to go except cutting hours, cutting jobs, cutting services.”

On Monday, June 8, a press release from the Pennsylvania Academy of Music announced the addition of seven new members to its Board of Trustees. What was not mentioned was then Vice Chairman Ely Gonick had tendered his resignation from the board the prior Friday and Chairman Paul Ware resigned a day later.

Ware had led the Academy during the planning and decision process and, when the fundraising fell more than ten million dollars short, had generously arranged to guarantee loans to make up most of the deficit.

Thus, when the ability to repay construction loans came into question, Ware was in the conflicted situation of serving as the Chair of the Board and as a major creditor.

At the emergency meeting on Monday, the quorum of directors voted to return Robert Faulk, M. D., who had preceded Ware as Chairman, to the position.

Although the By Laws called for a minimum of 15 trustees, the number had shrunk to nine. Thus there was a pressing need to add seven prominent members of the Lancaster community.

The newly appointed trustees are: Jon Tryon, Esquire; Arthur Mann Sr.; Mary Burton; John Thorn; Mark Rast M.D; Terry Vance Field; and Douglas Weidman.

Fran Veri, Co-Artistic Founder and Academic Dean, was elected Vice Chair.

In an Academy press release of late Wednesday afternoon, Academy president Michael Jamanis acknowledges the contribution of Ware and Gonick: “They have positively led us through construction and opening of the new building and we thank them for their participation in the musical life of the Academy.”

The release goes on to say “Recently announced new members of the board of Trustees and Advisory Council brings extensive knowledge and backgrounds in business and education…This eliminates the need for the Academy to hire outside consultant, Silvia Strobel, as previously announced.”

A week earlier, PAM had announced the engagement of Sylvia I. Strobel, as a consultant. She was given extraordinary powers and was to report only to Ware as Chair.

The Trustees also appointed Richard E. Field as Director of International Marketing. He will serve as a volunteer. A graduate of McCaskey High School, Field is a real estate developer residing in Budapest, Hungary who continues to have close ties to Lancaster. He had provided marketing assistance to PAM in past years and produced the video loop of a virtual walk, both around and through the planned building. (Full Disclosure: Richard Field is the son of NewsLanc publisher Robert Field.) Field’s appointment suggests an interest on the part of the Trustees in evolving PAM into an international high school for talented young musicians.

According to the release, today’s “announcement comes on the eve of the 20th anniversary of the founding of the Academy, amidst the backdrop of the Academy’s Founders Day celebration on June 11 highlighted by a concert showcasing outstanding students and alumni who have been an important part of the school’s history and mission.”

The second in a series of two by Cliff Lewis

NewsLanc recently interviewed Daniel Jurman, Director of Development for SouthEast Lancaster Health Services (SELHS, a.k.a. SouthEast clinic) in Lancaster City. Jurman, whose work focuses on promoting and raising funds for SELHS, had a lot to say about the state of medical under-service in Lancaster County and how his organization has been working to fill the existing void. As Jurman explained the current role and aspirations of SELHS, it became clear that this system will likely expand to a greater prominence in the years ahead.

Ultimately, the SELHS does not provide free healthcare. The organization’s annual budget consists primarily of money collected through standard service fees. What really makes the clinic a vital asset to the community is that SELHS will accept payment through medical assistance (MA)—a currency that many doctors would not readily accept. As the need for MA increases in Lancaster County, so does the need for services provided by SELHS. There are currently over 35,000 Lancastrians on MA.

The clinic’s ever-growing emergency dental clinic illustrates role of SELHS. Besides one private dental practice, SELHS is the only place where people on MA can receive dental care in Lancaster County. According to Jurman, the SELHS dental clinic—which operates on Tuesday and Thursday mornings—is never below capacity. So, even through public funding is available for dental care, the providers of this care are few and far between.

Jurman explained how this shortage of care comes about: “If you’re a private practice dentist, and you say, ‘I’m going to see new medical assistance patients.’ What tends to happen is you get overrun as soon as you make that announcement with patients who have been desperate for care, in some cases, for years.”

Furthermore, Jurman explained how such reluctance can be understandable: “From a price standpoint, imagine if we walked [into a restaurant] for lunch today and [the cashier] rang us up and told us what the bill was, and we said, ‘That’s awesome, but we’re only going to pay a third of that, and you’re going to have to fill out this paperwork before you get our money.’ She would tell us where we could go.”

Even if universal health insurance was instituted from a Federal level, this shortage of providers would continue to impede the provision of public health care: “Lets say, for instance,…that the Federal government decides to give everyone health insurance: We’re still faced with the same issues that we have with medical assistance. Who’s going to see these people? If they suddenly have a health insurance card, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re going to have access to care.”

Jurman thinks that, as health insurance reform progresses in Washington, Community Health Centers like SEHLS may hold the secret to dodging the current provider shortage: “Our local representatives…have all seen that Community Health Centers are already set up-in terms of infrastructure-to do that. And we tend to do it at about 40% less than it costs other provides to provide the same care.”

The considerable amount of stimulus money ($2 billion) for Community Health Centers is, in Jurman’s mind, a likely sign of things to come: “My gut is that that’s because the administration sees that, if we’re going to have that many more people in the system who are going to need primary health and preventative care, we’re going to need to beef up the infrastructure of our community health centers to be prepared to see those additional people.”

“It feels to me as if the government is trying to prepare us for a whole new wave of patients,” Jurman said.

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To find out more about SouthEast Lancaster Health Services, click here.

Sometimes the publisher can play a separate role in providing advice and support in confidence to those about whom he/she later is called upon to report. NewsLanc is so conflicted having communicated on a confidential basis with Paul Ware, Ely Gonick, Fran Veri, and Michael Jamanis.

Over the past couple of weeks, we have encouraged the Lancaster Newspapers to investigate this important story. Perhaps because they also are conflicted, their coverage has come simply from a press release.

The public is entitled to transparency, not about confidential discussions, but about definite events that have occurred, especially when public funding is involved!

NewsLanc has given notice to PAM that, as of the end of this day, we will be reporting concerning the recent reconstitution of the PAM board of trustees and its implications. If the New Era beats us to the punch, that is just fine with us. Although five thousand persons read NewsLanc last week, the New Era reaches over 30,000 every day.

The PA Dutch Convention & Visitors Bureau (PDCVB) is largely funded by tax payers dollars, a good portion of its budget coming from its share of the Hotel Room Sales Tax imposed in order to subsidize the development and operation of the Convention Center.

A poll was published in the Lancaster Newspapers and attributed as in part coming from this semi-public organization. The press release from the PDCVB claimed that the respondents overwhelmingly favored a street car system.

NewsLanc’s investigation has shown that the information provided to the respondents prior to or with the questions was outrageously distorted, the questions asked were few and slanted, and the interpretation of the poll was a bald face effort to mislead the public. This raised the question: Why would a semi-public institution undertake such deception?

NewsLanc therefore inquired of the PDCVB: “Who requested, who paid for the poll, and who prepared the questions?”

The response from Joel Cliff, Media Relations Manager for PDCVB, was “I need to direct you to Jack Howell [director of the Lancaster Streetcar Company] for these details.”

Shame on the Lancaster Streetcar Company for exploiting the PDCVB, shame on the PDCVB for being so duped, and shame on the Lancaster Newspapers for carelessly (if not knowingly) printing misleading information.