Cause for "Concern"

 ‘Watching. Listening. Acting”.  This was the credo of local citizen activist group Lower Providence Concerned Citizens Association (LPCCA), whose logo was a wise old owl. Over the past few years, if you’ve donated money to or been a member of LPCCA, you might want to ask if you knew who you were dealing with and what  really happened to your money, particularly if you thought it was tax deductible.

The words they selected to represent themselves apparently don’t include ‘complying’, because according to the federal government, LPCCA is an IRS scofflaw, appears to have inappropriately solicited funds, and possibly misappropriated the donated money they received. This supposedly nonpartisan group represented to donors that they held status as a 501(c)3 charitable organization.

Created back in 1981 (according to the PA Secretary of State's office) by (primarily) former longtime Township supervisor Rick Brown to fight Moyer’s Landfill, this organization lay dormant for a long time until revived in recent years just in the nick of time to fight the American Revolution Center (ARC) project and run it out of town. Their more recent members have come from the anti-ARC ranks (including current supervisor Colleen Eckman, a former vice president of the group), Planning Commission member Harold “Ted” Baird, who, courtesy of Brown has helped LPT rack up thousands in legal fees fighting a local business on his behalf and whom I've written about several times previously on this blog;  virtually all of the current Zoning Hearing Board members, and Arcola residents Cathy Beyer and Mary Kaczor (whom I've also written about previously), who have been embroiled in battle – at considerable Township expense - with the 5 other member municipalities of our regional sewer authority.

In addition to collecting membership fees, LPCCA held several functions in recent years to raise funds to support its aims (mostly, fighting the ARC, the interceptor project, and any other projects (and people) Brown and his minions didn’t approve of.

The candidate for supervisor in last year’s BOS race that Brown supported – Democrat Jim Donohue - stated in campaign materials and online that he was LPCCA’s  latest secretary, having assumed that role not long before he threw his hat in the ring for the 2013 election. Other than that, the members of their executive board were not widely known.

In 2011, LPCCA facilitated and hosted an allegedly nonbiased candidate forum in that year’s supervisors’ race -- in which I (the chair of the ZHB during the ARC hearings) was a candidate and Brown’s Public Enemy #1 – the first and only such candidate debate they ever held. They didn't bother to hold one last year.

Curious about this group after they inserted themselves into my race and their members were publicly supporting my opponent, I started to look into them a couple of years ago and learned that not only had they not obtained a 501c3 determination letter from the Internal Revenue Service, as they’d been representing, but according to IRS officials, they had never even applied during their entire 30+ year existence.

Over the course of a year, I checked the IRS' online so-called 'cumulative list' and called them three different times, thinking that maybe it was (very belatedly) in the works and delayed during the IRS’s Tea Party targeting scandal, or that I’d happened to get an IRS agent on the phone who didn’t know what he or she was doing and provided incorrect information. Each of the three times the agent on the other end of the phone gave me the same information. Each time I checked online, there was no charitable organization listing with the IRS for LPCCA. I guess this may explain why they had never filed annual 990 reports and why there was no official record as to whom their executive board officers were or how much money they had raised.  

Any citizen has the right to request a copy of a charity’s IRS determination status letter in order to determine their legitimacy, and since the IRS did not have it, I was directed to try to obtain directly from LPCCA whatever documentation they had that they felt supported their claim to 501(c)3 status. I asked a friend to write both an email and a formal letter to LPCCA to request their determination letter (since I presumed they wouldn’t respond if it was me asking for it); no response to her inquiries were ever received. They never even acknowledged receipt of her correspondence.

The IRS indicated it would look into this group and take whatever action they felt necessary if they determined LPCCA had falsely represented their status to potential and actual donors.  The IRS itself will not disclose whether they investigated and if so, what the outcome of that investigation was. FOIA laws, they claim, preclude that.

However, the group is no more. Last fall I learned from a local attorney that on October 21, 2013 the officers of LPCCA had abruptly met and voted to disband LPCCA. Could it have been because the IRS was breathing down their necks?  Since they never filed anything with the government and other than Baird, never put their officers’ names and titles on their website, we can only know who was involved from materials the group themselves put out and quotes attributed to them in the press (such as here and here).

If you contributed funds to LPCCA that you thought were tax deductible, you might want to check with your accountant before the IRS catches up with you.  Otherwise, since I also discovered another local charitable entity with 'Lower Providence' in its name who has had their 501(c)3 status revoked for non-filing of annual reports, let the donor beware.

 

Don't Hate The Player, Hate the Game

If you choose not to play in a particular game, is it unfair when someone else who does, wins?

That is the twisted political logic on display in a recent Lower Providence Patch article (here) from local far-left Democrat, Joe “The Nerd” Ferraro.  You may have seen Mr. Ferraro on cable TV attending a local meeting on occasion. He has a talent for getting the local press to publish his sound bites, and is a frequent contributor to Huffington Post (and Patch). He and I have butted heads on occasion in the past and he’s often tried to label me as one thing or another.

Joe cries foul and plays the victim because, as he claims, the LP Republican Party is ‘gaming the system’ in that their candidate for the Board of Supervisors, attorney Patrick Duffy, is allegedly running a write-in campaign on the Democrat ballot. This is not illegal; in fact it’s standard practice for school board and judicial candidates in Pennsylvania to file nominating petitions to run on both tickets.

I think it’s disingenuous for Joe to throw a flag on the play. The Democrat party in LP either is so disorganized that they can’t get their act together to get someone to step up and run, OR actively chose not to recruit and run candidates for township supervisor. Then, when there is an attempt at a
write-in campaign on their (empty) ballot, they get all indignant, as if somehow the GOP is disrespecting the position that they couldn't even be bothered to fill in the first place --- for TWO ELECTION CYCLES RUNNING!!!

In addition, they only have one candidate running for the 4 open spots on the Methacton School Board. Something tells me the LP Dems may not even have had anything to do with that; most likely, that candidate is a lone ranger.

They are also not running anyone for auditor. The only position they really do have a candidate for is tax collector. Incumbent Kirsten Deal – who withdrew from her seat as a Democrat committeeperson several years ago when she became frustrated with their leadership -  is up for another term this  year, so it’s not like the Dems had to go find their candidate for this slot.  She was already in the gate.

For all intents and purposes, LP Dems have almost totally avoided wading into the LP political pool of late. Given that, why on earth wouldn’t any smart candidate try to wrap up a 9-month election cycle in the primary if he or she can? If your party abandons its voters and offers up no candidate for them to rally around, who can blame the only participant in the race for going after them and presenting them with a candidate to evaluate on his/her merits, rather than by whether their name is followed by an R or a D? What have you got to lose at that point?

As I can personally attest, running for any elected office these days can cost a decent chunk of change and, if you do it right and actually knock on hundreds of doors to meet voters personally, can consume a huge amount of time and shoe leather. If your opposition gives you a freebie, you’d be stupid not to take it so that you can win on both ballots in the primary and be done with it. Don’t doubt for a second that if the shoe were on the other foot, the Democrats wouldn’t do the same.

When I ran for township supervisor in 2011, I elected to try this strategy and ran a Dem write-in campaign, as did the other two Republican candidates. As Joe alludes, the Democrats got wind of it when all the mail started hitting and, incensed that the Republican candidates were supposedly ‘hijacking’ their party, sprang into action 72 hours before the election, beginning their own write-in campaign on the Sunday evening before the Tuesday primary. Well, I submit that you can’t hijack something that has been abandoned, and make no mistake, the Dems abandoned the supervisor’s races in 2011 and 2013.

He also expressed outrage at this supposed violation of the ‘rules’.  Rules? Maybe the Dems should try  playing by the rules per the PA election code and running a real campaign the way serious candidates do.  Playing by the rules means filing nominating petitions full of voters’ signatures to get your candidate on the ballot, filing campaign formation documents and appointing officers so your candidate can fundraise and have transparency as to what he spends his money on, and running an issues-based campaign around whatever his positions are. It is most certainly not throwing a Hail Mary pass two days before an election and running an unvetted Johnny-come-lately who couldn’t be bothered to follow the process or spend any time visiting or educating voters on what he believes, his position on the issues, and what he would do if elected. It is the political equivalent of a drive-by shooting.

And, not for nothing, but the whining about how Duffy is supposedly sneakily using the color ‘blue’ in his yard signs to lull Democrats into voting for him is ludicrous.  Did I miss something? When did the Democrat party trademark the color blue and reserve it for their exclusive use? If everybody had the same thought process Joe does, shouldn’t Duffy’s use of blue work against him with his own party of red-loving Republicans?

I have to hand it to the Dems. In recent years all they managed to do was run the same retreads for the same offices over and over, but in the last few years it appears they completely threw in the towel and are running no one, so Joe’s righteous indignation rings hollow.  If you only start looking for candidates at the time nominating petitions are being circulated, you're already behind the 8-ball....what, you have no bench??

To quote the PA lottery groundhog, “You can’t win if you don’t play”.  

 

 

 

 

 

Funny Business

If you're like most people, every week you go to work, pay your bills, feed your dog, play with your kids, and put out your trash. If you are like most people, that is.

If you are Lower Providence Township supervisor Don Thomas, you undoubtedly do all that, and put your trash out, too, but the difference is, who is picking it up?

G&C trash truck pulling out of Thomas' driveway on trash day

As I'm sure most everyone knows, like many other communities on the East Coast and in Pennsylvania, our community has one company, J.P. Mascaro, under contract to remove residents' trash. Unless you can  prove you are eligible for an exemption or, in rare instances, grandfathered from compliance by having another contractor in place prior to 1990,  the current contracted hauler must pick up your trash.

One such exemption is that if you own a business, you can use whatever company hauls your business trash away in lieu of the Township trash hauler. Supervisor Thomas claims that he owns and runs a valid business, Earl Thomas Heating Oil,  out of his home address and is thus exempted from compliance with the Township ordinance, a claim he substantiated by taking out a business license with the Township in that name. Accordingly, he is having HIS family's trash picked up by a private hauler, G & C Waste Services of East Norriton (see photos).   

While it is true that at in the past, there WAS a family business - Earl F. Thomas Heating Oil Inc.  - being operated out of  Don's home address, that business was sold to competitor Jay Gress, Inc. approximately three years ago, according to a principal at Gress. My understanding is that a condition of the sale was that Mr. Thomas was to be given a desk job at Jay Gress, and my sources confirm that not only does Mr. Thomas work there in a full-time capacity as a dispatcher, but that he "shows up for work every day and apparently only ever leaves the office to eat lunch..." Really? So when, exactly, is he running this business of his? Why would he even have another job if he was running his own business?

I suspect Jay Gress, Inc. would be very interested to know that a company they acquired and presumably paid good money for is allegedly still operating, particularly if there is a non-compete provision in the agreement of sale.

A Gress source told me that as a typical rule, whenver Jay Gress has acquired a business, it keeps the old entity name open, but the business address is changed to Gress' corporate address in Conshohocken to facilitate the transition from the old business's customers to Jay Gress. So, although the business name may still be active (and per the State Corporation Commission, it is), it is no longer owned or operated by the Thomas family and as such, the business license taken out by Don Thomas in their former company's name could potentially be considered fraudulent and taken out in an effort to evade compliance with the ordinance and payment of the contracted trash fees - fees that the rest of us must pay. 

G&C trash container awaiting pickup at the Thomas residence

Whether or not you agree with the issue of a single hauler or not, it is the current law of the land, and it's only fair that if residents are subject to it, supervisors should be too unless there is a legitimate exception.  

As an elected official, supervisors take an oath to "serve with fidelity", which Webster's defines as "strict observance of promises and duties".  One would presume compliance with the Township's own ordinances would fall into that category, and that our elected officials would not try to get away with any 'funny business', as it's no laughing matter to the rest of us.

Trash Talk

Maybe you haven't heard, but trash is the hottest topic in the land these days. And everybody's got an opinion.

It's the system that has served Lower Providence well for almost twenty years, with Mascaro doing the hauling. We were one of the first townships to do contract for volume purchasing power with a single hauler; now the vast majority of municipalities across the state have caught up with us. Mascaro was the winning low bidder in the last six contract cycles dating back to the early 1990's. We were trendsetters in the waste removal arena before it was trendy to be.

The trash removal contract is up for rebid. There's been great debate about whether it should be rebid, and if so, how it should be rebid.

Recently, supervisors Chris DiPaolo and Rick Brown decided that we should get out of the trash business altogether and not put out a bid for one company to do trash removal. I'm sure this recent change of heart has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that Chris, and close friends of both he and Rick Brown, were sued by Mascaro recently involving alleged election violations during the primary this past spring. Nah, probably just a coincidence.

The bid package that will be put out for bid will, in addition to a tiered pricing option depending on whether you want once or twice a week pickup, have an 'opt out' provision. The problem is, 3 supervisors think "opt out" means one thing, and 2 think it means something else.

Rick and Chris think 'opt out' means you opt out of the contract hauler option and instead pick your own company to pick up your trash. Piero Sassu, Marie Altieri and Craig Dininny support 'opt out' to mean that you are one of those folks who has some other option to handle your trash. Maybe you own a business, and you dispose of your residential trash there.  You have NO need for trash service here in Lower Providence.

The math associated with this option as interpreted by Rick and Chris is staggering. Here's a little word problem: if you and your neighbors select, between you, six different trash companies, and each of those six picks up one time a week for trash, one time for yard waste, and once for recycleables, how many trucks do you think that is thundering down your road each week?

That's a lot of trucks tearing up all the roads that were just paved...roads that have to last for ten years, until they're paid off. That's a lot of extra vehicles on the roads with the school buses each morning. That's a lot of extra noise.

What do you think makes sense? And for the record, since Election Day is coming up soon, Republican candidates Eckman/Thomas favor multiple haulers, and Democrat candidates Keenan/Heinegg support one contract hauler with tiered pricing based on how many pickups you need a week...a modification of what we have now.

I understand the township will be surveying residents on this issue. However, the survey is a mere two questions long and doesn't fully explain the options. Be sure to let your elected officials know just what you want, whether you respond to the survey, or take the time to email them.

Fair is Fair

Isn't it part of the American way that those accused are entitled to face their accuser? That people should be accountable for the things they say and do? Well, maybe so, but apparently not here...not if you're Rick Brown.

Mr. Brown, a current and past supervisor, went on record at the Aug. 24 Board of Supervisors (BOS) meeting as voting against approval of the invoice submitted for July by the Zoning Hearing Board (ZHB) solicitor, relating to legal work regarding the American Revolution Center (ARC).  He insinuated that my solicitor and the ZHB that I chair were somehow improperly billing the township for this work. Seems Rick couldn't understand why on earth there would be charges for a case that had been all over the news as abandoning its efforts to build a museum here and relocating to Philadelphia.

Maybe Rick has been at this a tad too long, because apparently his memory is starting to go. The reason there was an invoice was because...of Rick himself.

Rick submitted an amicus ("friend of the court") brief in July in that still-open litigation, asking the judge in that case to allow his personal opinion to be considered along with the rest of the record. And that's fine, I respect his right to do what he feels he must. But he filed his brief 4 days AFTER the ARC announced that they were leaving...and he never mentioned that he filed this brief in the BOS meeting while he was strenuously objecting to the payment of the invoice. Surely Rick, with all his years of experience as a township supervisor and a former ZHB member himself,  knew that his brief had to be reviewed and responded to by the ZHB solicitor and that of course he would bill for that, as he should.

Why would Rick do that? FYI,  Rick already testified at length in the ARC hearing...his position and opinions are already on the record. Rick cost the township taxpayers an extra $4,093 in July and August this year solely because he filed that brief. I don't know about you but that's money I'd rather have go to our parks program or some other more worthy cause than addressing a brief that didn't have to be filed.

When I showed up at the September 17 Board meeting on behalf of the ZHB and our solicitor to ask Rick about his sudden memory lapse, why he seemed to be intentionally misleading the residents, why he seemed to be insinuating that the ZHB (and by extension, me) and its solicitor had somehow done something improper, what do you think Rick did?

He ran. Literally, ran out of the room, left a Board of Supervisors meeting while it was still in progress, stating that he didn't have to listen to me (which I find pretty strange considering he's usually very interested in talking and trying to tell me how to run the ZHB). Where's the accountability for the things he said in a public forum on August 24? He probably didn't want to answer, because he doesn't HAVE a good answer.

On top of that, he probably should have abstained from voting on invoices related to a case he's attempting to become a party to. It just screams
"conflict of interest".

So, how 'bout it, Rick? Want a do-over?