Month: January 2017

pocket park

 Jenkintown’s Pocket Park: Buy now, ask permission later

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It took nearly six months, but the Borough finally decided to let us in on their quarter-million-dollar secret: A park no one asked for.

On Wednesday, we received like many of you the official email from the Borough announcing this transaction. As we know now, the ink has dried on the purchase. The two plots now belong to the Borough, or more appropriately, to you and us whether we want it or not.

The email essentially says this: It was great opportunity. We had to move fast, and we didn’t tell you about this because you would have said “No.” If you have kids, you’ve heard this one before.

While the unsigned eblast defends Council’s actions as prudent, Borough Hall still filled with disgruntled residents last Monday night who thought otherwise.

After an extended period of public comment, Council President Deborra Sines-Pancoe responded with a prepared statement that served as a rough draft for what the Borough issued and posted on Wednesday. We appreciate the fact that an “opportunity” seemed to present itself, but a park represents a serious commitment of time and resources over a long period of time — especially for a small town such as ours. Despite the presumed benefits of the Council’s expediency, they voted to purchase this property without a plan, public approval, or adequate public disclosure.

Bad faith, inadequate disclosure

We indeed welcome the news that the Council found itself flush with funds saved from a loan renegotiation, but that was not their money to spend. As taxpayers, we have every right to feel like the Borough dipped into our pockets. Saved funds are not automatically discretionary.

Ms. Sines-Pancoe also justified this action because the Jenkintown 2035 Plan includes a call, albeit well down the list of priorities, for more greenspace in the Borough. Curiously, she dismissed the school playground at the school as School District property, suggesting that the Borough must step up with its own land acquisition. It’s all community property.

In the eblast sent on Wednesday, the Borough asserts that it followed all guidelines spelled out by the state’s “Sunshine Laws.” Looking over the timeline of these events, the Borough did post public notices in the Intelligencer’s Legal Notices section the day before each hearing. In other words, the Borough included none of this business into the regularly scheduled Borough committee or Council agendas.

This begs us to ask the reader: Do you read the legal notices in the paper? How many of you actually get the paper any longer?

According to Borough records, two special public meetings were held. On September 8, it staged a Special Council Meeting. The agenda for this meeting was created less than one hour before the meeting. We don’t know exactly when the Borough posted it on the website.

agenda meta data
The document metadata that reveals an agenda created less than an hour before the September 8 meeting.

On November 9, the Borough held a Public Budget Workshop an hour before the regularly scheduled Public Works and Public Safety committee meetings. As this link to the Internet Archive shows, the Borough had not announced the meeting even as late as the previous October 21st.

By the letter of the law, yes, the Borough has covered itself here. However, for those of us who live in the real world, this process was anything but public. Clearly, for whatever reason, Council and Ms. Sines-Pancoe slipped this transaction towards approval in the most unscrupulous manner possible without actually breaking the law. This is not acting in good faith.

Specious claims

Ms. Sines-Pancoe’s made a specious claim that they had to conduct this business during executive session — which legally excludes the public — because this is a real estate manner. The Borough did not go out seeking to buy land or enter into any negotiation. The owner of the property came to the Borough and effectively gave it the right of first refusal, with a price reportedly well under market value. In other words, the Borough had no competition for this property, and so should have broadly notified the community via email immediately upon the presentation of this offer and taken input before voting on the purchase. The meeting minutes from both special meetings reflect that there was no public comment.

If we have misinterpreted the rules for executive sessions, then the Borough should have dismissed the offer out of hand due to the framework that guides its actions. It would not matter if the land was bequeathed to the Borough. It represents a major commitment and thus needs to be presented to the residents before approval.

No plan

Transparency issues aside, now that Jenkintown owns it, what do we do with a piece of property for which they drafted no plan? According to the email:

Early ideas include a rain garden, community garden, or open play space. No decisions regarding the use of the property have been made.

And yes, despite what the Council now says, our sources tell us that a dog park was considered.

In other words, the Borough does not have a plan for this commitment. Any urban planner will tell you that creating park space involves far more than just acquiring the land. Budgets for build-out, upkeep, and other unforeseen costs require careful, long-range thinking. This too has not happened.

So instead of taking input and planning for the revival of the Jenkintown downtown, Borough hall will distract itself with this new obligation. Perhaps we could debate the need for this park, but for us, that has no relevance. The Borough acted in bad faith to acquire something with our money that no one had asked for. It is our opinion that the properties should immediately be put back on the market, sold to the highest bidder, and the profits returned to the taxpayers.

Further, the Council must address its transparency problem. Public notices for any special meeting should go out by email and posted on the Borough website at least three days before they take place. In a town as tiny as ours, they might also consider knocking on a few doors as well. A twelve-member council could probably cover our entire community in a weekend.

Jenkintown Borough Council Meeting, January 23, 2017

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I think we made a little history here. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time anyone has live-streamed a council meeting. This video is a cleaned-up version of the live-stream and resides on YouTube. As this was a first-time attempt, we look forward to improving the quality of the video (if not our own Council). If you’d like to help in this effort, please get in touch.

West Avenue patchwork

Finding a better way for Jenkintown to pay for better sidewalks

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What brings more value ALL of Jenkintown? A well-built pedestrian infrastructure for all the Borough or a pocket park on Cedar?

Like it or not, I probably know more about sidewalks and pedestrian policy than at least 95% of the population. That and a couple of bucks will get me a cup of coffee at Velvet Sky, I know. Yet, we continue exploring this issue because we believe in its importance and the value it can provide for our community. We want walkable communities not just because we here in Jenkintown think they look nice, but because they help foster a better, more sustainable lifestyle.

The arguments so far presented to counter the idea that community assets require community responsibility include cost, liability, snow removal, and aesthetic preferences.

Liability: Most communities impose rules upon homeowners for keeping their sidewalks cleared, including ours. That doesn’t need to change. In my hometown of Springfield, Massachusetts, the city will issue citations to homeowners and businesses that do not properly clear their publicly owned sidewalks. Your homeowners will cover you either way unless a citation was issued. Yes, in theory, the city would be held liable for damages that occurred on damaged sidewalks, but as homeowner, we would pay either way — either through our insurance or through Borough insurance via our taxes. As a single-payer insurance plan, it would come at a much lower cost.

Snow removal: Similarly, the Borough would not necessarily be required to clear the snow like they do the road, although some cities in more northern latitudes do. On the other hand, Jenkintown will clear the leaves from your yard, so I don’t know how they could object to clearing the snow from their sidewalks. What’s the difference?

Aesthetics: A uniform block-long sidewalk would just look better and last longer. Any claims, as some have made, that individual homeowners would want to apply their own preferences to their frontage seems specious to us. However, we can imagine a system where that the Borough might allow for that after assessing a special fee.

But how do we pay for it? As it happens, this particular cat could be skinned in a number of ways.

  1. Direct tax: We’ve estimated that incorporating this responsibility into the Borough’s budget might add, at most, five percent to the budget assuming it changes nothing else. We have argued that perhaps the Borough reassess some of its priorities in light of this. What is more important to you, for instance? Subsidies to local businesses or a better high-quality pedestrian infrasture? A $250,000 pocket park, or the sidewalks of an entire block? The Borough already outlays several hundred thousands of dollars per year supporting its parking fund, which amounts to a gift to downtown retail, while at the same time it levies taxes and fees.
  2. Transfer fee: Assuming that the average cost to rebuild the curb and sidewalk per property amounts to about $8,000, why not roll that into the mortgage? The money goes into a pedestrian infrastructure fund that at least eliminates the sudden nature of the Borough’s sidewalk inspection and insulates homeowners from any hardship that repairs might incur.
  3. Yearly assessment, or what we’ll call the Ithaca plan: In Ithaca, New York, homeowners receive a sidewalk bill of about $45 per year, less than what we pay for trash pickup. The money goes into a fund dedicated to sidewalk repair, so again, no sudden hardships.
  4. The private solution: Over the past several months, we’ve explored the idea of incorporating a company that would insure your sidewalk — much in the same way Aqua provides insurance to repair the water line that runs under your property. How much would you pay? Would you be interested?

We understand that the Borough’s paving program instigated a relatively rare mass-inspection of the walks and curbs, but that also spotlighted the fatal flaws in our current system.

The idea of having a multitude of itinerant contractors suddenly invade our community to service homeowners facing serious deadlines, applying patchwork fixes to our otherwise charming streetscape at wildly divergent prices benefits no one, least of all the hapless homeowner who planned instead to spend that $5,000 on a new furnace or some other much-needed home improvement. This past experience just showed how onerous and harmful the current sidewalk ordinance is.

Can we please find a better way?

Another clear sign most Americans are broke – CBS News

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Our last “unexpected expense” was a requirement by the Borough to spend $3000 to fix their sidewalk.

“Fifty-seven percent of Americans don’t have enough cash to cover a $500 unexpected expense, according to a new survey from Bankrate, which interviewed 1,003 adults earlier this month.”

https://apple.news/AFjZswNehT-KbMuUJc-VSww

Nuclear weapons did destroy our cities. Just not in the way we expected.

The nuclear arms race and how we live today

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Nuclear weapons did destroy our cities. Just not in the way we expected.

We Jenkintonians are fortunate that the great wave of urban renewal mostly passed us by. We had a close call, though. Most people don’t know that the state had planned an expressway that would have run roughly down the West Trenton line right-of-way and interchanged with Route 309 at about the Wyncote Apartment towers. Those who live on the odd upper blocks of Runnymede would today look out their back windows at one of those walls that now line interstates everywhere — if those houses still stood there at all.

This is not to say that Jenkintown has remained immune from the forces of sprawl. PennDOT stands pat against reigning in Old York Road traffic and the restoration of on-street parking, and some elements on Borough Council still think we don’t have enough parking. At one meeting, a proposal was floated to demolish the old A&P to make a lot for the movie theater, an enterprise that already pays no property taxes and receives a subsidy from the Borough.

In response to articles such as this one in Treehugger and many other places, I’ve always said that if we had figured out a way to deliver an atomic bomb on Moscow by train, we’d have the greatest passenger rail system in the world.

It is important to remember why sprawl was promoted in the first place: as a defence against nuclear attack. It’s why corporations and industries moved out of cities. The purpose of the highway system was not to meet demand, it was specifically designed to induce demand, to get people into cars and out into low density suburbs. It was a strategy designed to help outlast them all.

Source: How sprawl was caused by the nuclear arms race, and why this matters more than ever today : TreeHugger