Blaming budget woes on COVID, Council spotlights the size of the borough’s police force

Last year, the Borough and the Jenkintown Police Benevolent Association agreed to a new four-year contract that determines compensation and benefits for our police force. This agreement was the subject of much discussion and not a little controversy that involved the fate of Jenkintown’s K-9 unit. 

Most residents wouldn’t otherwise read this contract nor did they hear much about its details, because Council rarely shares information that doesn’t advance its happy-talking agenda. We found this document attached to the lawsuit filed against the borough that we reported on yesterday.

I’m happy to let others debate the need for a K-9 unit in a town of 4400. I’ve lived in Jenkintown for 18 years, and outside of a Borough Council ceremony, I don’t remember ever seeing the dog on patrol. (I’ve never seen a cop walk the beat either, but that’s another matter).

It pains me to agree with anything asserted by Borough Council, but in the newsletter they sent out two days ago, they made a valid argument for targeting the budget of Jenkintown’s unusually large police force for a town this size.

Unfortunately, the Borough’s chart doesn’t break out the part-timers in the mix. Jenkintown’s entire force employs 13 full-time officers and a police chief, which according to the contract, either draw or will soon draw six-figure salaries — or more than $1.4 million — plus benefits and expected overtime.

A new hire starts at about $75,000 per year, but after two years, they receive a 30% raise then about 4% per year after that. Police in Abington and Upper Dublin receive similar compensation. In fact, a cop serving in Upper Dublin for five years or more receives more than $182,000 per year in total compensation not including overtime. Jenkintown is right on their heels. State-wide, the median police salary is $57,500.

I acknowledge the challenges and dangers of police work, but this is Jenkintown, not Fort Apache, The Bronx. According to the Attorney General, crime for the county is trending down, not up.

Reasonable people can and should question whether a community of 4400 really needs 14 full-time police officers. For instance, Hatboro also has a 14-person force, but it serves a population of 10,000. Springfield Township has 20,000 people protected by a police force of 30, but some of those are likely part-timers. Their budget documents don’t say. 

Download the Agreement here.

Suit claims that officers faced hostile work environment after discovering mismanagement and financial irregularities in K-9 unit non-profit

While Jenkintown residents digest its Christmas dinner leftovers along with the Borough’s recently released newsletter detailing its financial distress, another civil rights suit filed by against the Borough in Federal court last November makes its way through the system.

The gist of the complaint centers around officers Christopher Kelly and Edward Titterton attempts to report and remediate the mismanagement of the non-profit set up to support Jenkintown’s K-9 unit. The suit alleges the officers suffered backlash from their superiors as a result.

The 41-page complaint itself cites, among many things, that the non-profit set up to support the K-9 unit was suspended for failure to file tax returns and that its funds were siphoned off for other purposes. Titterton and Kelly alleged that as a result of their actions to expose and correct matters, their superiors created a hostile work environment for them.

The suit also alleges that:

• Police Lieutenant Richard Tucker “took vacation each year from November to January, which he achieved by converting the training hours to compensatory time in violation of the Collective Bargaining Agreement.”
• Tucker spread rumors that Titterton was having “sexual relations with Shelby Smith”, undermining Titterton’s stance within the department
• Titterton and Kelly found themselves excluded from overtime hours
• Titterton and Kelly were not informed of Police Benevolent Association meetings as required by bylaws or of special Borough Council meetings that discussed their collective bargaining agreement
• the department expressed little concern for potential exposure to COVID and that it failed to provide sufficient PPE.
• Titterton was taken to task for getting mud on his police car.

Titterton and Kelly seek damages related to violations of their civil rights, emotional distress, civil conspiracy, and defamation of character.

Read all the allegations for yourself by downloading the complaint here.

As mentioned in our last post, I believe that the concept of strategic voting is a fools errand. I’ve always believed that people should vote according to their own conscience and always in their own best interest. Voting against a candidate rarely works. Statistically speaking, one vote counts for little in state elections and practically nothing in presidential elections. 

However, we have a primary looming for our 154th district that includes three candidates from Jenkintown, and this town does itself no favors at all sending them to Harrisburg. 

The Democratic candidate online forum from the last week showed us why. Jay Conners who seems to be running on his wife’s nursing scrub-tails dribbled stances that he must have pondered for all of a half-minute.

Jennifer Lugar, though poised and measured in her responses, lacked any palpable confidence of her convictions. She’ll get less done than McCarter, if that’s at all possible. 

And Adrienne Redd? Wow! I said in my last post that Ms. Redd does not play well with others, and right on cue, she shoves her foot deep down her throat with remarks about “assault weapons” that brought State Senator Art Haywood out of the woodwork to denounce her.

If you drive past my house, you will see a Gretchen Wisehart yard sign. I will be voting for her but with wincing reservations. 

Watching the forum, it was plainly evident that Ms. Wisehart is the most professionally qualified for the seat. She’s got the chops, she looks good, and she appears approachable. 

Sadly, on the issues, I disagree with her on almost all of her tired Democratic boilerplate proposals related to spending and taxes.

https://www.facebook.com/wisehartforpa/videos/1922285277895942

School funding? Ms. Wisehart would spend more and restrict the spread of charter schools. Forgive me if I don’t quite understand the government monopoly on education. If you received a voucher for $24,000 (Jenkintown’s current cost-per-pupil) to send your kid to any school you wanted, would you send them to Jenkintown if you had a choice? Or would you shop around first? 

Infrastructure and mass transit? Ms. Wisehart would “make investments in climate-resilient infrastructure and mass transit that improve our connectivity and environment.” Our infrastructure problem is yet another created by long-standing government policy. Government aggravated and then cited the problem, blamed others, then promised fixes — with more money. Never mind that Pennsylvania already suffers under the highest gas taxes in the country and a Turnpike teetering on bankruptcy. Government subsidy of suburban development created our car-dependency, which is already breaking the back of taxpayers. Throwing more money at it only makes matters worse. 

Horse racing? I hardly thought this would pop up on my radar, but Ms. Wisehart defended a state subsidy for horse racing of $242 million. Read that again. Yes, taxpayers prop up a business where only fools, state governments, and our current president lose money. Ms. Wisehart justified the subsidy saying that it helps to spur development and provide jobs, but it also ignores the opportunity costs of using that $242 million for services that benefit everyone, or better yet, return it to the taxpayers. It also aggravates gambling addiction and exacerbates homelessness. The subsidy siphons away $242 million from property tax relief in a state where tax foreclosures claim 10,000 homes every month. 

Guns? She would pass “common-sense legislation to keep guns off our streets.” I’m not sure what that means since most of the gun violence on “our streets” involves illegal guns. With school shootings, while unspeakably tragic, the stats have long shown a decline despite the media hysteria. I would suggest better enforcement of the laws already on the books before passing still more laws that criminals will continue to ignore. 

Finally, Ms. Wisehart promised greater transparency, but she echoes similar promises made by Barak Obama, who led an administration less transparent than the the one that preceded his. This remains to be seen, so to speak. 

So why vote for her? Simply because of the six running, and because the Republican challengers have no chance in hell, she’s still the best of the lot, and she’s clearly more capable than the bush league faction from Jenkintown. Such is the sorry state — and commonwealth — in which we now live. 

Pity the voter that lives in the one-party state, county, town or borough, which is the predicament of any forward-thinking Jenkintown resident. Sadly, for us we have a primary coming up that will effectively decide who gets to be our state rep, and thanks to the implosion of the GOP, they will be a Democrat. 

Though I have never registered Democratic myself, I grew up with the understanding that it was the party of blue-collar America, resisting the wealthy and the privileged to clear a path for the American dream for those of us who toil in the trenches keeping the lights on, the water flowing, the streets paved, and the factories humming. 

One quick look at Jenkintown provides a microcosm of what the national party today now represents: Privilege — especially at the local level. How else do you explain the flip-flopping of American politics where the backbone of the GOP is now what’s left of blue-collar America while the backbone of the Democratic party are today the comfy suburbs?

The Democratic scramble to replace the retiring do-nothing state representative Steve McCarter has attracted three Jenkintonians, none of whom have any real record to run on. At best, like many of us, maybe they just want to get out of Dodge.

Jay Conners

Jay has to be running for the salary — $87.000. Probably the best way to describe Jay comes from a conversation I had with one of his fellow council members who described him as a “broken stick.” I can’t imagine what platform Jay’s running on since he has done next to nothing on council and stood by silently as his constituents were materially harmed by the policies he himself voted for.

Jay can take credit for at least one ordinance — the one where Jenkintown forces billion-dollar utility companies with their own fully staffed legal departments to repair any stretch of road that they dig up that we taxpayers just had repaved. Jay got this bright idea after PECO announced it would fix lines under streets paved only months before.  Instead of coordinating the project with PECO, Jay got his name on a pointless law passed to cover up this oversight by our borough manager. 

Jennifer Lugar

Jennifer is a one-issue pony: gun control. On her twitter account, she describes herself as a “suicide widow,” which is certainly tragic and unfortunate, but hardly a qualification for state office. Like Jay, she has no record on which to run. She fills her Twitter feed with rants against the guns, which has no relevance at all in Jenkintown. 

If she aspires for a career in the State House railing against guns, she’s running into this: 

Article 1, section 21 of the Constitution of Pennsylvania states, “The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State shall not be questioned.” 

The state police reports more than 791,000 guns were purchased or transferred in 2017 alone, so good luck with that, Jennifer. Where do you stand on the school tax? That’s a bigger danger to my family than any shooter out there. 

Adrienne Redd

Adrienne is another single-issue candidate, though to her credit, that’s one more than Jay. I had the pleasure of sitting down with Adrienne for nearly three hours one warm summer day two years ago and had a wide-ranging conversation about all-things-Jenkintown and about her pet cause, the environment. She’s a life-long activist in this area and is a fount of knowledge on the topic, but Adrienne has no political experience whatsoever and has shown during the Downs fiasco and the pocket park debate that she doesn’t play nice with others.

You want to set up a recycling program? Advice about solar power? Composting? Call Adrienne. You want her as your vanguard against the spread of government power or as an advocate for fiscal responsibility? Not so much. 

So what am I doing? Against everything I deem holy, I actually changed my registration to Democratic just so that I can vote against this sorry group. Calling myself a Democrat violates almost everything I stand for today. 

While I don’t believe in the concept of the strategic vote since I have only one, and as much as would love to see Jay or Jennifer off of council, I’ll even stoop to becoming a Democrat if it helps keeps them out of Harrisburg.