The Congress for New Urbanism advocates for sustainable development — the type of development that Jenkintown has enjoyed since its founding. Unfortunately, our powers that be have little clue about the underlying reasons for why residents and visitors find our little borough so charming. Hint: It’s not the parking lots.

On-street parking does several good things, and its alternative (on-site parking lots) does nothing good. Google “sea of parking.” Are any of the hits positive? Of course not; a sea of parking is dreadful on all counts. Beyond the obvious ugliness, they heat the microclimate by absorbing solar radiation and heating the air above them. Heating the microclimate makes walking uncomfortable and so people drive, even if the parking lot is out of sight. More driving = more crashes and more deaths and injuries.

Source: How fire chiefs and traffic engineers make places less safe | CNU

“This is the way we’ve always done it. This is the way everyone else does it.” Sorry, Rick. Not everyone.

So said Rick Bunker at a public works committee meeting in 2015 in response to my suggestion that Jenkintown find a better way to finance sidewalk repairs that does not overburden residents. Once again, I can report Mr. Bunker wrong.

Yesterday, while driving up Rockwell Road in Abington, I noticed the recent sidewalk reconstruction between Roy Avenue and Welsh Road, nearly a quarter mile of contiguous sidewalk construction. Who paid for all that, I wondered?

Turns out that Abington Township did with considerable help from a Transportation and Community Development Initiative (TCDI) grant. Administered by the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission (DVRPC), these grants “support smart growth in the individual municipalities of the Delaware Valley through initiatives that implement the region’s long-range plan…”

Among the stated goals of this initiative are:

• Supporting local planning projects that will lead to more residential, employment or commercial opportunities in areas designated for growth or redevelopment;
• Improving the overall character and quality of life within the region to retain and attract business and residents;

Emphasis mine.

Abington Township put this project out to bid, estimating a cost of $75,000. It applied for and received a grant of $60,000 to offset that cost on the basis that this would promote bicycling along the Route 611 corridor. (See here.) One bid, one contractor, with one-fifth the project cost split among all of Abington’s taxpayers. We have some residents that by themselves paid $15,000 to fix their frontage.

At that same public works meeting, I also asked if the Borough had researched the state’s Multi-Modal fund, a pot of money for pedestrian and bicycling infrastructure improvements that comes from our paying the highest gas taxes in the country. Borough Manager George Locke speculated that those grants were intended for commercial districts. To the best of my knowledge, he did not follow up on my suggestion, but I have shown that PennDOT has awarded grants to non-commercial districts.

I’ll leave the reader to come to their own conclusions about the level of vision, leadership, professionalism, and accountability of our public officials, but if like me you continue to feel overburdened by their actions, these missteps multiplied by the dozens will help you to understand why.

Our response to Brian McCrone’s shoddy piece about the Cedar Street purchase:

Brian,

I write this with some reluctance, but as a creative professional, I believe that feedback is an important part of our professions.

You should know that I’ve been the subject of stories published in the New York Times, The Boston Globe, the Wall Street Journal, Yankee Magazine, the NY Daily News, and many other papers, and I’ve appeared on the Food Network, the Discovery Channel, Channel 5 in Boston, as well as NPR — on some of these outlets more than a few times. So, I have some experience dealing with reporters and their agendas.

Simply put, your piece on Cedar Street was — to be diplomatic — disappointing. You said in our interview something about your sense of journalistic skepticism, and yet I saw none of that in your piece, which I can’t quite decide if it was actual reporting, an editorial, or a meandering thought piece.

I’m guessing that you don’t own your own home, and therefore do not have first-hand experience with the burdens that homeowners face in helping to finance the activities of our local government and school district. I make that assumption based on your snide closing line about the location of my house.

You should know that my wife and I own a house that is about 1500 square feet, and for the privilege of living here, we pay more than $7,000 per year in property taxes. To put that in perspective, if I had the same house in a similar community in my home state of Massachusetts, my house would be worth three times as much, and I’d be paying half the property tax.

If this strikes any chord with you, then you might better understand our objections to the Borough’s misadventures in park development.

Your article stated that the borough “saved” money with that purchase. It’s a common fallacy to think that you save money by spending it, especially when it is on something that no one wanted and that the Borough does not need.

If by any chance you are planning a follow up to your piece, I suggest you might sit and listen to those of us who are a little tired of watching our Borough government using slimy parliamentary maneuvers to further a hidden agenda.

In other words, apply that skepticism that you claim to have.

Sincerely,

Randy Garbin