Walkable Jenkintown PA

Dave and Peggy Downs have served the Borough of Jenkintown and its four de facto leaders with a Federal civil rights lawsuit.

The suit filed in Pennsylvania’s Eastern District Court, names the borough along with Council President Deborra Sines-Pancoe, Council Vice-President Rick Bunker, Borough Manager George Locke, and Borough Solicitor and Montgomery County Sheriff Sean Kilkenny.

The suit alleges that these four were responsible for prosecuting the Downs family for zoning code violation in retaliation for Peggy’s decision to run for mayor in 2017 against the wishes of the local Democratic Party committee. Peggy’s write-in campaigned garnered more than 35% of the vote.

The complaint alleges that:

Defendants engaged in multiple corrupt actions, conspired with one another against Plaintiffs and, after Plaintiff, Margaret A. Downs, exercised her First Amendment Rights to participate as a candidate and run for election for the public office of Mayor of Jenkintown Borough, Defendants used the Jenkintown Borough Zoning Code as a weapon to retaliate against Plaintiffs by falsely accusing them of operating an impact business, in violation of the Jenkintown Zoning Code, out of their residence and further trumping up evidence Defendants knew was false for the sole purpose to harass, intimidate, punish, embarrass and humiliate Plaintiffs and to cause great economic harm to Plaintiffs by forcing them to undergo the expense of appealing trumped-up zoning violations.

Specifically it cites that the “Defendants conspired to retaliate against Plaintiff by trumping up false evidence, including suborning perjured testimony from witnesses, and falsely alleging that Plaintiffs were operating an impact business from their home … in violation of the Jenkintown Borough Zoning Code.”

And further that, “Defendants did nothing to investigate and obtain evidence of the alleged violation because they knew that Plaintiffs did not operate a business out of their home.”

While the Borough is insured against the threat of such lawsuits, the insurer is not obligated to cover damages awarded in the event of “deliberate violation of any federal, state, or local statute, ordinance, rule or regulation committed by or with the knowledge and consent of the insured.” Courts typically award plaintiffs in such cases amounts extending into the high six figures.

The lawsuit caps off more than two years of contention between the Downs family and the borough, starting with a complaint the Downses filed with the borough against a neighbor who eventually was found guilty of not only running an impact business from his property, but also criminal harassment against the Downses after they filed the complaint.

You will find Peggy’s account of the events up until March, 2018 here.

A month after the election, the Downs were called to meet with Kilkenny and Locke under the pretext of discussing an ongoing dispute with the next door neighbor. Instead, they were handed a letter of complaint citing the operation of an unspecified business in violation of the zoning code.

When the county judge dismissed the violation for lacking detail, the Borough returned with a redrafted notice citing the operation of a landscaping business. The Jenkintown Zoning Hearing Board would later dismiss the complaint after nine hours of testimony in three hearings by a vote of 5-0.

To date, the Borough has expended more than $21,000 pursuing of this complaint, most of which benefitted Sean Kilkenny’s law firm, Kilkenny Law. Naming Kilkenny as a dependent precludes his firm from representing the Borough in this matter. The Borough has retained Suzanne McDonough from the law firm of Holsten & Associates of Media, Pennsylvania as outside counsel.

Deborra Sines-Pancoe is Associate Director for the Friends Council on Education. Sean Kilkenny is not only Jenkintown’s borough solicitor, he also serves as the Montgomery County Sheriff. Rick Bunker is president of Prescription Advisory Systems. George Locke has served as Jenkintown’s Borough Manager since 2013.

Read more here:

Jenkintown Lawsuit Complaint

Jenkintown adopts a long-range plan that tip-toes around issues it needs to address head on.

Last week, after five years of discussion, Jenkintown Borough Council formally adopted the Jenkintown 2035 plan. After a half a decade of notes, presentations, debates, and fact finding, the fact that no one involved with the plan — except for someone from the county — witnessed the vote came as quite the anti-climax.

The plan paints a lovely future for Jenkintown. It looks to a thriving commercial district, preserved historic housing, and enhanced transportation options among other other things. As these plans are typically the result of consensus, a reader will find almost nothing controversial in there.

As such, like any plans that attempts to accommodate such a variety of public suggestions, it is deeply flawed and it exemplifies the futility of the public process. StrongTowns addressed exactly this issue just last week in this post. StrongTowns founder and author of the article nails it when he writes:

I’ve come to the point in my life where I think municipal comprehensive planning is worthless. More often than not, it is a mechanism to wrap a veneer of legitimacy around the large policy objectives of influential people. Most cities would be better off putting together a good vision statement and a set of guiding principles for making decisions, then getting on with it.

The plan is well-meaning and could provide a blueprint for Jenkintown, but only if the Borough puts someone qualified in place to steward it. As best we can tell, that person does not currently have a desk in Borough Hall.

Here’s just a few things that the plan failed to address or got wrong.

York Road, York Road, YORK ROAD! Jenkintown’s core will never truly revive until York Road is put on a traffic diet. We hammer on this point all the time, but it’s true. Everything must begin from there. Until that happens, the only developers interested in bringing anything major to the town will be auto-oriented. You simply cannot get a critical mass of foot traffic unless you create more pedestrian-oriented commercial space, and you can’t do that until York Road is tamed.

Wholesale district development. There should be some major incentive or marketing push for a wholesale redevelopment of the area between Cherry and Cloverly. Right now that rag-tag bunch of mostly nondescript, auto-oriented buildings are doing no one any good, least of all the community.

Apples to oranges comparisons. The plan cited in inventory of over a million square feet of commercial space in Jenkintown and then went on to compare that favorably to Center City and Fort Washington. Really? In comparison to those places, how much class A commercial space, office and retail, do we have in comparison? By my reckoning, it’s tiny, and outside of the buildings by the train station and the old Strawbridge building, next to zero. Sadly, Jenkintown’s office and retail inventory is largely obsolete. Much of this would be addressed by the preceding point.

Streetscape. I find it odd and more than a little aggravating that the plan talked mostly about commercial streetscape. Company heads and entrepreneurs typically prefer to set up businesses where they like to live, and what improves the look of a residential streetscape? Great, well-engineered and well maintained sidewalks. You make a town a great place to live, and all else follows, and if you remove the burden of sidewalk repair from individual households and make it a wholesale program, you get more and pay less. There is simply no argument against that.

In simple terms, the plan does not think big enough. For such a small town like Jenkintown to survive, it must add density. It must do whatever it can to get more people to settle and work here, not fewer — and that includes bringing in more children. The whole Summit Hill issue exposed a rather unsavory attitude some residents had about the prospect of more kids in the school system. Sorry to have to tell them that this is not and should be a gated community.

For Jenkintown to survive as an independent entity, it needs to add density, not disperse it. I know there’s a mindset that wants to fight that, but there’s no denying the economics of it.

Council President Deborra Sines-Pancoe motion to exercise an option to purchase of the Church of Our Savior almost slipped right under our noses last June 20 at the special Council meeting. If Borough Solicitor Patrick Hitchens hadn’t corrected the wording of her motion, we might never have known of the Borough’s designs on the property as a possible location for a new Borough Hall.

In the motion passed by a vote of 10-0, but it begs the question, will residents this time get a say in the matter before our government closes this or any deal? This vote came during a “special session” that the Borough suddenly announced with little notice and no e-blast.

We’ve since been made to understand the option does not obligate the Borough, but it does protect it in the event the owner entertains offers from another buyer.

What we find most disturbing is now the notion of transparency still seems to be anathema to our council president. It took three minutes for a council official to explain to us what actually happened, and yet Ms. Pancoe, with the motion in writing in her hand nearly omitted the location for this option. After repeatedly expressing her commitment to transparency, one would think this would be her first impulse as a representative. Apparently not.

While there may be merits to the location, the ends should not justify the means. Ms. Pancoe has a responsibility to us, especially after her repeated and passionate assurances of transparency. We’re still waiting for evidence of this commitment. We didn’t see it on June 20.

The video of the vote can be seen here: