Tag: featured

LETTER: The two fold importance of saving PAM

Watchdog, what you wrote was: “Concerning a move in 2011 to the Brunswick Annex, a non-musician Board member told NewsLanc: ‘This project is far beyond the reach of current Board of PAM, technically & financially.’ ” I understood what you were referring to; I don’t think you presented the board member’s quote out of context.

Is the convention center project feasible? Delay seizes defeat from jaws of victory

From the time the hotel and convention center project was introduced, the sponsors of the project consistently referred to the “feasibility” studies that they said supported building it. Beginning with the Ernst & Young “Market Study” of 1999 (1), two studies by PricewaterhouseCoopers, one in 2000 (2) and a 2002 “Update Draft,”(3) a 2003 HVS “Market Study, ” and finally the C.H. Johnson “Memorandum Draft,( 4)” the sponsors publicly referred to them as “feasibility” studies by name.

LETTER: Why did PAM not make provisions for its move?

One leader who has both a business and education background should be sufficient. PAM is so small. It surely doesn’t need two leaders. There are plenty of folks graduating from arts management programs who could handle the job. But I think it is far more important for the next leader to have some education experience. PAM is a school first and foremost. Its leaders need to understand private school markets and how to recruit students in a crowded market.

Correction and apology

It has been brought to the editor’s attention that NewsLanc mistakenly confused the Lancaster General Comprehensive Care Medicine (LGCCM) with the Lancaster General Hospital Suboxone clinic.

We are told that the LGCCM is independent of Lancaster General Hospital. We apologize for confusing the two and offer our apology. We will try to take greater care in the future

PAM’S funding shortage result of lack of vision, business acumen and attention

On Thursday, failing to make payroll, the leadership of PAM finally got around to requesting that the bankruptcy court judge release $250,000 from over a million dollars in the endowment funds to cover the school expenses over the summer.

According to the Intelligencer Journal New Era, “The troubled Pennsylvania Academy of Music says it is too cash-strapped to cut paychecks. To tide it through until students return to the fall, PAM asked a judge to let it tap its $1 million endowment.”

Chester curfew a start, not a solution

From the PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER: Declaring a state of emergency in Chester and imposing a curfew was a drastic but necessary move to try to stem the bloodshed… It remains to be seen if the nighttime curfew in five high-crime areas of the city will make a dent. The mayor and City Council on Wednesday extended the emergency order for 30 days – which only puts a Band-Aid on the bigger problems of poverty, lousy schools, and a lack of jobs, which have become entrenched in this hardscrabble city of about 36,000…

INTELLIGENCER NEW ERA

A feature article “The state of AIDS in Lancaster, Fastest-growing group locally: middle-age, heterosexual women” reports “With more than 47,000 new cases in 2007 (these are the most recent figures available), according to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), the disease is still being spread — the age group between 13 and 29 being the largest, according the CDC.”…

Dem. Gov. thanks Rep. rep for State tax amnesty idea

From the PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE: At a time when most revenue projections have fallen and then fallen some more, the state’s tax amnesty program generated good news for Pennsylvania’s bank account. Delinquent taxpayers jumped at the chance to pay their debts because the interest charges and many of the late fees were waived.

History of CC as Private/Public venture of national interest

I have heard that this series will be made into a book. That is a wonderful idea not only because the issue of Private/Public ventures is in great need of review nationwide, but, from what I have read of the series, and its fairly dramatic details, there is also a good story here. That story continues with the Henderson lawsuit which would make a dramatic climax to the book no matter what the actual court decision may be.

LETTER: PAM requires less PR, sound planning

Many people are justifiably skeptical of pronouncements about PAM’s [Pennsylvnia Academy of Music’s] value to the community. They’ve heard that tale before. What they need to hear instead is how PAM will construct realistic budgets based primarily on tuition revenues, how it will recruit students to provide those tuition revenues, and how it will use donor gifts to supplement those revenues.

LGH symptomatic of ills from national mergers and acquisitions

Let’s start with an excerpt from the recently published Ill Fares the Land by the renowned historian Tony Judt.

“What then, of the contemporary belief that we can either have benevolent social service states or efficient, growth-generating free markets but not both? On this, Karl Pepper, Hayek’s fellow Austrian, had something to say: ‘[a] free market is paradoxical. If the state does not interfere, then other semi-political organizations, such as monopolies, trusts, unions, etc. May interfere, reducing the freedom of the market to a fiction.’ This paradox is crucial…

Lancaster Public Library wins Bucher Estate litigation

A challenge to an estate valued at over a million dollar that was bequeathed to the Lancaster County Public Library (Duke Street) was dismissed by Orphan’s Court after almost two years of litigation.

Upon retirement as a supervisor after 22 years of service in the Lancaster County Office of Probation and Parole, Thomas W. Bucher, 59, took his life on or about July 20, 2008. He was the eldest of three children of the late Christine Bucher and the Honorable Wilson Bucher.