It’s Showtime! Paparazzi Await At Methacton Post Prom

Students arriving at Methacton for post-prom were greeted by a dramatic cherry colored red carpet and an entranceway styled after Grauman’s Chinese Theater. I didn’t see any Joan Rivers’ wanna be’s stalking the sidelines and waiting to offer commentary on the gowns and tuxes worn by the arriving guests, but you could almost imagine her there. And that’s a good thing, because soon after checking in students will swap out their fancy duds for more comfortable attire far more suitable for the evening’s recreational activities.

As always, the hugely popular community walk-through prior to the post-prom garnered lines well in advance of the 6:30 pm start time as hundreds of students’ family members, friends and curiosity seekers from other towns showed up to await a tour of the over-the-top decorations and fascinating activities that had been prepared for Methacton’s post-prom attendees. Note: link to a 23-minute video set to music featuring all of the decorations can be found here. 

Guests started down the red carpet and wound their way through a hallway depicting past Oscar-winning films, and past the coat check into the gym, where two new features are a virtual reality station and an escape room. As you approach the end of the gym, a rising drumbeat signifying danger ahead leads into the ‘Jumanji’ exhibit featuring 3D jungle animals appearing to leap off the wall and the twinkling nighttime stars of the plains.

Other movies featured in the extensively detailed decorations include Avatar, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Minions, Dr. Seuss, Toy Story, Ghostbusters, Titanic, Star Wars, Finding Nemo, Grease and the Wizard of Oz, to name a few. Also included was a section on films from “Bollywood”.  As in prior years, elementary school students handled decorations in the lavatories and were exceptional, as always. This year’s themes included the hilarious “Lego Batman”, ‘9’, a steam punk-themed Tim Burton film, a super scary “It” and the soothing ocean colors and island atmosphere of “Moana”. The Methacton School Board directors and their families put together the 'Minions' display.

2018 marks the 19^th year of the premier post-prom event in Montgomery County, attracting close to 100% participation by students attending the prom (93% of prom attendees as of last year, and between 800-900 students in total, some of whom do not attend the prom) and the over one thousand visitors who take the walk-through preview tour. Created to give students a safe place to spend the overnight hours after prom, it’s blossomed over the years to be something students AND parents look forward to experiencing.

Post-prom came about largely because studies show that two of the most dangerous nights for high school students are the evenings following the prom and graduation. As soon as the prom ends, students spend the entire night inside the high school in a safe, drug and alcohol free environment. Free to all junior and senior high school students and their dates, attendees are expected to sign in and stay all night – if they want to leave, parents are called and the students are not released until they arrive.  Students are free to go after 5:30 am but must stay til the end to be eligible to win awesome door prizes.

The high school interior becomes virtually unrecognizable, having been transformed into an entirely new environment. Activities available throughout the night include a casino, sporting events such as dodgeball and volleyball tournaments, a coffee house with entertainment (this year’s theme was Harry Potter), inflatables, a, an arcade, glow laser tag, a comedy/improve group, hypnotist, yoga, trike races, and roving performers. There’s even a dash of reality TV in the form of Cash Cab. Food is available throughout the evening for students and volunteers. New this year was an escape room and virtual reality station.

There’s no cost to the students to attend – all expenses incurred in making the props and decorations, providing food and entertainment, and the prizes that are offered to those who stay all night are paid for by generous donations of hundreds of hours of time, and cash, goods and services from community sponsors, businesses, organizations and families – the operating budget is between $45,000 and $50,000 annually. Several fundraisers are also held during the year to raise funds, such as the annual summer golf outing at Shannondell, and the adult dinner dance held in the wintertime.

Enjoy this compilation of the gorgeous decorations created for “It’s Showtime!”, and these fun facts provided by the post-prom committee:

·        * It takes more than 450 volunteers to work the night of post-prom, for setup, manning the functions and security at post-prom, and clean up the next morning.

·         *60+ local businesses and over 100 families provided cash donations for this year’s post-prom

·         *Post-prom is an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit volunteer organization and is not affiliated with Home & School or Methacton High School.

·         *Each year a student logo design contest is held, with the winner receiving two free tickets to the prom.

·         *Over 65 volunteers work behind the scenes starting in October each year lending their various talents to design, build and create the decorations and displays for post-prom.

·         *Post-prom decorations are loaned out to seven other Methacton School District schools, five surrounding local school districts, and many local community groups.

·         *The post-prom Education Committee sends notes to all of the local florists and tuxedo shops to tuck into students’ corsages, boutonnieres and jacket pockets reminding students to make good choices on prom night and thanks those shops who’ve agreed to help us keep our students safe.

It’s never too late to donate to support this very worthy cause that saves young lives. If you’d like to contribute, mail your tax-deductible check payable to Methacton Post Prom to: PO Box 39, Eagleville, PA, 19408-0039.

Bidding for Ballots

A desire to update equipment purchased in 1996 and to address potential security and vote integrity concerns are two factors that motivated Montgomery County officials to announce that they will be issuing an RFP in March of this year for the purpose of replacing and upgrading the equipment used to record and tabulate votes. There are 425 polling places across the County, utilizing approximately 1150 voting machines each election (ten polling places are located within Lower Providence). Polling places have 2-3 machines apiece.

Toward that end, County commissioners Val Arkoosh and Ken Lawrence [both serve on the Board of Elections, Lawrence as its chairman] hosted an open house on Saturday, February 24, 2018 at Montgomery County Community College to give the public an opportunity to view the vendors and products vying for the chance to provide the latest technology, test them out and to provide feedback about those products and potential selection criteria.

Ideally, the new equipment could be in place as early as the November 2018 election cycle, but a Voter Services employee told me today that it was far more likely that it would be available for use by voters for the first time in 2019, given the need to train a large number of poll workers and communicate all the changes in the process to the voters who will use it.

The crowd consisted primarily of elected committeepeople and poll workers, and a smattering of the general public. Two categories of change were shown:

1)  New way to check in -- touch screen and potentially less need to have check-in clerks at the table inside the poll; and  

2) Different approaches to casting a ballot.

First, the check-in process is now all electronic regardless of selected vendor, but seems to be less of a process, mostly verifying the voter and signing, which people do now.

As for the 11 potential vendors providing demos and marketing materials, the exhibitors present on Saturday included: 

• Clear Ballot of Boston, MA
• Election Systems and Software of Omaha, NE (ESS is the only vendor currently certified by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania)
• Dominion Voting of Denver, CO (acquired the former Sequoia Voting System, who manufactured the equipment the County uses now)
• Unisyn Voting Solutions of Vista, CA
• Tenex Software Solutions of Tampa, FL

The other vendors are currently in the process of getting certified by the Commonwealth.

In the public comment/Q&A segment of the open house, a

number of speakers voiced what they hoped to see in the selected product and what they were concerned about. Jenifer Maslow, a Democrat and an inspector for more than 20 years at the LP polling place in district 1-2 (which votes at Arrowhead School) was primarily focused on the security of whatever system is chosen.

Maslow, who is also involved with the group Citizens for Better Elections, leaned toward vendor Clear Ballot, arguably the least-technological option, consisting of voters hand-marking a paper ballot by filling in circles for their preferred options, and that paper ballot then being fed into a machine for recording and tabulation.  She said she preferred Clear Ballot because she felt that “anything can be hacked, we don’t really know who owns these companies or who designs the software” and, with regard to Clear Ballot’s paper ballot, that “it’s not a foreign concept, this is how SATs are done” so it should be acceptable. “A voter would know their vote is as they intended", she said.

Maslow also noted that many times one of the machines in a poll breaks down and then creates a backlog of voters. In the more manual system, a voter would still be able to vote. She would also like to see a system that can ‘last for a long time’, since ‘we [the taxpayers] are not only voting on them but paying for them”.

Republican committeewoman Brenda Hackett, whose polling place is located within the Shannondell retirement community, offered her perspective – and arrived at the same preference as her Democrat counterpart.  “We have unique issues here at Shannondell with so many people unable to learn new things and some afraid of computers.  I think a fully touch screen system would keep voters away or create very long lines.  This problem will dissipate in the future as people unfamiliar with computers will have passed on.  However, there may be some people who never have to deal with computers…and introducing a touch screen system will be unfamiliar to many of them”.

Hackett continued, “I had a good feeling about the security and accuracy of the machine where a voter marks a piece of paper or where they vote on the touch screen and a piece of blank paper that they insert is returned to them filled in with their vote.  They then feed it in to the machine. So, I guess the one I like best is Clear Ballot.  When you are verified by the clerk, you are given a ballot which you write on in a private setting and then insert it into the machine.  It is in the control of the voter, and it gives the paper backup, and most people would easily learn how to do it."

And "I did not like the system that produces the paper ballot behind a window that they can't touch.  It may be hard to read. Since the issue with our machines is that there is no paper trail… [and since part of the new state requirements are that there must be a paper trail that can be reconciled/audited]… I liked the concept of a voter handling the paper themselves."  

From MY own perspective, I certainly agree with their comments, but I also liked that vendor Dominion re-uses a lot of the technology the County has already paid for in their Sequoia systems – which the County says they believe are reliable and safe - so they may have an edge in that their product can potentially been integrated more easily, quickly and for less money. In this system, voters are issued a card at check-in which is then loaded and activated with their voter information (party, district and relevant voting options) and then taken by the voter to the voting machine and handed to the machine operator for insertion, voting and recording. The card is then given back, wiped clean and reused.

Arkoosh said that money has been budgeted for this purpose over the past few years, but the County wanted to make sure the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania had finalized their voting machine requirements before going out to bid.

If you want to provide general feedback on what features you’d like to see, reach out to the County at www.montcopa.org/vmfeedback and let them know your thoughts. They plan to post pictures and descriptions of the potential replacement machines on their Voter Services website shortly.

EAGLES-Ville

Over the past two weeks, since the Philadelphia Eagles captured the NFC Championship and the chance to compete for the Lombardi Trophy in Super Bowl LII (which we all now know that, against incredible odds, they actually WON), LP residents, along with the entire greater Philadelphia area and surrounding suburbs, understandably went all in for the boys in green.

[I’m proud to say that I was the only person at the Super Bowl party I attended who brought a bottle of champagne. While I'm certainly one of millions of long-suffering Philly sports fans who has come to expect being disappointed again and again by our teams, somehow I had a feeling that, for once, it was going to be our year!]

Everyone got involved somehow or another. Eagles merchandise flew off the shelves and pop-up gas-station vendors sprouted everywhere. Women got their nails done in green and silver. All manner of Eagles garden flags and wreaths went up.  Eagles decals and car magnets got slapped on vehicles. Local businesses got in on the act and made an undoubted killing selling Super Bowl party food, including local business Collegeville Italian Bakery, who entered into a friendly bet with a Boston-area business, Montilio’s Baking Company.

Photo courtesy of C.I.B.

“It [the Eagles being in the Super Bowl] did wonders for every single mom and pop business,” said co-owner Steve Carcarey of the Collegeville Italian Bakery. Montilio’s wagered one of their famous butter-cream specialty sheet cakes – with a big Eagles logo - against Collegeville’s famous Eagles tomato pies which would have featured a Patriot’s logo had the Eagles lost. Another part of the bet was Montilio’s making a $500 donation to the Philadelphia School District in the event of an Eagles win.  Carcarey even changed the sign temporarily on his business to read ‘Eagleville Italian Bakery”. [this story appeared in the Times Herald the day after I made this blog post]

LP Township issued a proclamation on January 31, 2018 declaring it “Eagles Day” encouraging the celebration of the team’s success and support for them as they took the field in the Super Bowl. Eagleville Elementary held one of many pep rallies in the area; theirs was featured on the ABC6 news broadcast that day [link].  ABC6 also did a spot featuring the Valley Forge Chorale, who rehearses at Lower Providence Presbyterian Church (LPPC) in Eagleville singing the Eagles fight song.

Even my church’s pastor at LPPC presented a sermon entitled “We Will Soar on Wings Like Eagles”. It was rooted in scripture (Isaiah 40:21-31) but also meant to support the team as pastor wore a vestment featuring the Eagles logo in a pattern, and he led the congregation in an Eagles chant at the end of the service.

It was wonderful to see something that united everyone in the community and was a distraction from everyday problems. That’s a ‘win’ right there.

As for the parade, I wasn’t going to miss it. It was a long day – our group of 10 left Eagleville at 4:30 AM, bundled up in layers, determined that we were going to savor this victory. It truly was something not to be missed. We had a good entry, parking and exit strategy and it worked out pretty well. We enjoyed beer and a very happy clientele while hanging out at the Urban Saloon on Fairmount waiting for the parade to make its way to the Art Museum, and made lots of new friends in green. People were, for the most part, well behaved and it was a glorious event where we heard the Eagles fight song more times than we could count.  (And yes, it is true, Eagles fans WILL CLIMB JUST ABOUT ANYTHING!). 

Still, it’s hard to believe it really happened. My boyfriend (and others I know) have re-watched the game several times. We Philly sports fans are so used to inevitable disappointment, of defeat snatched from the jaws of victory, that many of us can’t quite believe the other shoe isn’t going to drop.

Now, if we could just get those Philadelphia Flyers to bring the Stanley Cup home for a trip down Broad Street….

Driver's Ed

Driver’s Ed, Part I. Is it just me, or is crashing cars into buildings a trendy new thing? It’s been quite a while since I first took the test to get my driver’s license, but I’m pretty sure back in the 80’s the DMV didn’t feel obligated to point out explicitly that one should avoid running into buildings with one’s car. Maybe they should start including that as a test question, though, because over several weeks this past summer, and then again in December, LP has been home to four such crashes, and I’ve seen a few more on the local news around the wider area.

First, on June 21, a car crashed into the side of the Sunoco/Mini Mart at 3201 West Ridge Pike (at the intersection with Mt. Kirk). Reports indicate that the driver was parking their car, when their dog jumped into the front seat, hit the gear shift lever into ‘drive’ and then the driver, attempting to stop the car, hit the gas instead of the brakes.

Second, around 5:30 pm on June 26, 2017 a truck crashed into the home of the Wheelers on Woodland Avenue. The home, at the juncture of the ‘T’ intersection of Clearfield and Woodland, sustained some damage although it was still habitable. In that incident, officials still aren’t sure what the cause was, although mechanical issues and careless driving have been ruled out. The cause is potentially medical, but confirmation of that may never be received. 

Third, on July 9, someone crashed into the Dunkin’ Donuts at the intersection of Trooper Road and Egypt Road shortly after midnight. I’m told it was the result of a domestic argument. The facility was repaired and reopened in September.

Then, to finish out the year, on December 22, 2017, the Friday just before Christmas a car crashed into the Collegeville Italian Bakery on Ridge Pike, practically turning it into a drive-through at the busiest time of year.  The building sustained significant damage to the pizzeria section of the restaurant, but no one was hurt and they were able to have it repaired within a month later and reopened as of January 21.

Let's be careful out there, folks! So far, no serious injuries or fatalities, but it's only a matter of time until something tragic happens. 

Driver’s Ed, Part II

In the Déjà vu Department (there was a similar incident with a prior school board member a few years ago), back on September 30, 2017, a Methacton school board director, identified in court records as Michael Ryan of Audubon, was arrested and charged with ‘public drunkenness’ stemming from an incident that occurred outside the Audubon Ale House.

Reportedly Ryan, elected in 2015 as a member of the CARE team of candidates (Community Advocates for Responsible Education), was allegedly found asleep, intoxicated, inside his car and identified himself as being on the Methacton school board to the arresting officer. He was charged with public drunkenness in violation of 18 Pa.C.S.A. § 5505, which prohibits a person from being in any "public place manifestly under the influence of alcohol or a controlled substance ... to the degree that he may endanger himself or other persons or property, or annoy persons in his vicinity."

Ryan had a hearing in district court on January 10 (continued from a November date) and reportedly was ordered to perform 24 hours’ worth of community service. Another hearing is scheduled for March 28, at which time I understand his charges may be dismissed if he completes said community service. It’s not clear whether or not he actually wound up pleading guilty to anything, although some reports of comments Ryan has made on the record at school board meetings would seem to indicate that he in fact considered himself guilty despite an initial ‘not guilty’ plea. In reaching out to the district court office for clarification of the docket details, I was referred to the arresting officer, who has yet to return my call.

According to people in the courtroom at the time, Ryan was told by the judge that he 'might want to drink less' or 'call an Uber' next time. 

At least Ryan didn’t try to claim it never happened, and blame anonymous internet bad guys for completely inventing the story (as did the former school board director who found herself in a similar situation, albeit in another state). At the end of the day, she resigned; as in that instance, Ryan should probably also consider resigning from the school board. Those responsible for educating our kids and  elected to be in charge of an annual budget exceeding $100,000  are supposed to be serving as good examples to them, and should be held to a higher standard and demonstrate that they can exercise better judgment while in office.

I’ve heard some people ask why, if he was found in his car, he wasn’t charged with DUI instead of public drunkenness  -  that’s a question for the arresting officer. We don’t know the entirety of the fact pattern, and clearly, the arresting officer has discretion at the scene to determine how they want to handle a given incident.  There are numerous pieces of criteria that go into determining whether a driver has ‘control’ of the vehicle and intent to drive and thus whether it rises to the level of DUI. 

By most accounts Ryan is a hard worker on the Board, and I'm sure the pressure of being a school director is substantial, but let's hope this is the last time a Methacton school director finds him/herself in the crosshairs of the law. 

Time Flies

Happy (belated) New Year! 2017 went by in a blur and for me included my daughter getting married down South, my son graduating from college, and the passing of my father late in the year, in addition to work being insanely busy. And, the boyfriend is still keeping what little spare time I have occupied too. 

In the meantime, there have been lots of great new developments in Lower Providence, including the arrival of new grocery store chain Lidl, two new microbreweries, and possibly another alcohol-related venture. Stay tuned for more on that.

Speaking of 'flying', here we are, on the verge of Super Bowl LII featuring our Philadelphia Eagles. Our area has been getting charged up along with everyone else. Bring it home guys!