Sinking Spring says 69,000-volt line will clash with development plans

By Steve Reinbrecht

Here is a small town with big plans to fix up its business district versus a utility giant that wants to hang a new 69,000-volt line through it – which could snarl plans to improve some of the worst traffic in Berks County.

PP&L Electrical Utilities plans to build a new electrical line through the borough. Sinking Spring-area residents are invited to a council meeting at 7 p.m. Thursday night. I couldn't find an agenda on the borough website, but I expect the topic to come up.

Sinking Spring officials say the line would disrupt plans to redevelop the downtown, plans in the works for a long time and already at considerable taxpayer investment.

The line’s 100-foot right-of-way will go through downtown and affect revitalization and hundreds of residents, eliminating a wide path of development, Borough Manager Michael Hart said at a meeting in June, according to the Reading Eagle.

Poles that carry 69 kilovolts are typically wooden and 50 to 70 feet tall. The cleared right-of-way is typically 70-100 feet wide, according to Minnesota Electric Transmission Planning.

The line would cross Penn Avenue between Autozone and Paparone’s pizza shop, according to a map from PP&L.

New Wilson schools chief should answer to public

by Steve Reinbrecht

If Wilson School District’s last superintendent, Rudy Ruth, was a paragon of longevity, working for the district for more than 30 years, the new one is a job changer, working at four districts in the last 10 years.

I’m glad newspapers have reported about this important man, the new Wilson schools chief, Curtis Baker. I’m betting he might like to stay in Wilson and has answers to our questions.

Baker worked at his last job, as superintendent of the Moon School District, near Pittsburgh, for two years.

The Moon School Board voted to put him on paid leave in December.

Funny the Reading Eagle hasn’t mentioned that.

In any case, reading between the lines of coverage by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, it seems a newly elected majority tossed Baker out because they didn’t like his ideas.

In response, Baker has sued the district and seven school board members, claiming a broken contract.

I’m more worried about plant invaders than Islamist invaders

by Steve Reinbrecht

There is a forest stretching through my neighborhood, all one kind of tree, an invader from East Asia that pushes out the local plants.

Bradford pear trees [Pyrus calleryana] are pretty. They brighten up our neighborhood this time of year. Also known as Callery pears, the tree is native to East Asia. Developers installed them among homes and businesses all over the United States.

But now, experts warn against planting them, mostly because they break catastrophically if not pruned when they are small. And they grow happily everywhere, spread by birds, especially starlings [another invasive] and robins, a native though opportunistic sort of bird.

On Saturday, robins, swarmed the thicket of pears in bloom south of the Wilson West Middle School. The trees are invading the area, some of it set aside as educational open space.

A huge swath of the trees winds along the Little Cacoosing Creek and then across Green Valley Road and along a power-line easement. The trees are thick and dominant.

They were full of robins Saturday.

But I wonder if other native birds and pollinators feel at home in the foreign species.

Bradford pear forms dense thickets that push out other plants, including native species, that can’t tolerate its deep shade or compete with it for water, soil and space, the National Park Service says.

Its success as an invader results from three things, the service says. It can produce copious amounts of seed that is dispersed by birds and possibly small mammals. Its seedlings grow rapidly in disturbed areas. And it lacks natural controls like insects and diseases, with the exception of fire blight.

Identifying these species when they are first spreading could reduce the eventual high cost of their control and eradication.

Berks County had no Keystone Innovation Zone credits in 2015

by Steve Reinbrecht

I want to know why the tech-entrepreneurial tidal wave that is obviously washing through many other small cities is passing Berks and Reading by.

In 2015, the state awarded almost $18 million to 239 companies across the state as part of the state's Keystone Innovation Zone.

They included companies in Johnstown, Erie, Williamsport, Harrisburg, Selingsgrove, Lancaster, Bloomsburg, Carlisle, with lots in Scranton and Wilkes-Barre and Erie and Doylestown.

Reading has a KIZ. 

How much did Berks get?

Zero.

Two Berks companies got KIZ credits in 2014.

The Reading Eagle had a story on its website about companies in Luzerne and Lackawanna counties getting tax credits.

But even though the Eagle is the major newsgathering organization in Berks and Beyond, it doesn't mention Berks' failure to incubate tech companies.

Why, other than the Eagle knows how to LOOK like a newspaper but the newsroom leaders don't know how to produce a REAL newspaper? Or is it the newsroom leaders' compulsion to assure everybody that everything is fine in Berks, so buy a new car?

The KIZ is an incentive program that provides tax credits to for-profit companies less than eight years old operating within specific targeted industries within the boundaries of a Keystone Innovation Zone, the state says.

“The KIZ tax credit program significantly contributes to the ability of young KIZ companies to transition through the stages of growth.”

Reading politician gets spanked for putting common sense above party loyalty

by Steve Reinbrecht

The Berks County Democratic Committee kicked City Council Vice President Donna Reed off the committee Saturday in a 29-24 vote.

The party ejected her because she supported Jim McHale, a Republican, over Wally Scott, a Populist, in the election for Reading mayor last fall.

That violates county committee bylaws.

I don’t follow inside city party politics. But hubbub about the city’s new mayor and its fallout will affect life across Berks County and is fodder for better local journalism.

It’s clear Reed has critics. She said many were rallied for Saturday’s vote.

An orthographically challenged Facebook page called “Friends for Ernie Schlegel” cited her “vulgar and repulsive actions in openly supporting a Republican Candidate in an election cycle.”

This, “along with her increasingly erratic behavior as a Committee Women, have undermined her ability to stand as a Committee Women for the Democratic Party,” the Friends site post says.

Reed, who is in her fourth term on City Council, seemed unrattled.

“People [at the meeting] for the most part were nice,” Reed said. “It was a protracted debate. I can still attend the meetings as I am an elected Dem official, and the chairman encouraged me to keep coming.”

The ousting had little practical effect on her, she said.

“Not really. Actually, [it] might enhance my reputation.”

I worked with Reed for years in the Reading Eagle newsroom and know she is smart, hardworking and dedicated to improving the city.

* This post was corrected Feb. 1 to say that Reed is in her fourth term on City Council.

Former mayor defends Reading’s Act 47 status

by Steve Reinbrecht

Last week, Reading Mayor Wally Scott blamed predecessor Tom McMahon, who served Jan. 5, 2004, to Jan. 2, 2012, for the city’s financial problems.

Real-long-time Reading Eagle City Hall Reporter Don Spatz duly reported Scott’s dissing of McMahon during his rambling hour-plus State of the City speech, but didn’t ask McMahon to respond. That’s shoddy reporting no editor should accept.

“He [Scott] said former Mayor Tom McMahon put the city in the financial stress it's in, and got it into Act 47, so the city's problems are the fault of this council and that mayor,” Spatz wrote.

In response, former Mayor Tom McMahon said Saturday that Scott doesn’t understand the city’s position.

“He clearly has not understood the financial history of the city, including budgets, contracts, pensions, negotiated or arbitrated settlements over the past 30 years, or he would know at least some of the reasons why act 47 made so much sense,” he wrote in an e-mail.

McMahon referred to then-state-Economic Development Secretary George Cornelius’ remarks about his decision to accept Reading into Act 47.

In November, 2009, Cornelius told Reading leaders:

“Act 47 isn’t a cure; it’s merely life support. Don’t sit back and think some state coordinator will fix things, or that the problems will resolve themselves. If Reading is to thrive as a vibrant economic driver for Berks County, if the city is to be self-sustaining, everyone in Berks County will have to work hard to make it happen.”

McMahon said he still believes the city needed to enter the Act 47 program.

“But I don't believe he [Scott] has the capacity to be able to visualize how to emerge from Act 47. 

“It was meant to give us a breather to avoid bankruptcy, which any sane person would want the city to avoid.

“It will be hard to replace the revenue stream it brought.

“I actually feel sorry for him in a way that he does not seem to have the tools to be able to deal with the job at hand.”

McMahon said Scott doesn’t understand Act 47, including the benefits it brought to the city by way of commuter tax.

“Wally's first month of childish blathering does not bode well for this city.”

Berks County has tried nonprofit journalism

by Steve Reinbrecht

The Reading Eagle has had recent stories and editorials about the owners of the big Philadelphia newspapers donating them to a nonprofit foundation.

In general, more people are reading the news than ever, but getting them to pay for it is the hard part. In any case, the world needs new ways to fund good journalism – which is necessary for good leadership on every level.

In a letter to the Reading Eagle, Kevin Murphy, president of Berks County Community Foundation, wrote: “Nonprofit ownership of news media outlets is hardly new. Propublica, The Christian Science Monitor and NPR have long provided this country with some of its best (and hardest-hitting) journalism. The list of nonprofit-owned media outlets is actually quite long, and their editorial quality seems relatively unquestioned.”

In fact, Berks County has tried nonprofit journalism, but it fizzled.

In 2009, Murpy’s organization raised more than $500,000 to start bctv.org, designed as a website to support investigative and citizen journalism in Berks. I left my job as a copy editor at the Eagle to become the bctv.org managing editor.

“The web-based Hub [news platform] will include in-depth reports on local issues by an independent investigative journalist, supported and amplified by regional citizen journalists. An editor will manage the Hub and provide web-based opportunities for community feedback, completing the information cycle,” according to the business plan, written by the community foundation.

We posted stories such as:

How painkiller addiction was driving people toward heroin abuse

How Reading Hospital was buying doctor practices

How the Reading School District had been rife with nepotism

Why many women don’t report domestic abuse

Why so few Latinos had elected positions in Reading

How Reading’s health needs were worse than the rest of the county

How it’s hard to get investors and tenants for downtown apartments

The business plan said the project was to “adhere to strictest journalistic standards and ethics.” 

That’s what got me in trouble. After three years, when the grant money ran out, BCTV executive director Ann Sheehan fired me for insubordinately posting a link on bctv.org after she had told me not to -- a link to a newsworthy statement by then-Mayor Vaughn Spencer. I was fired for doing journalism, but not one of the originally gung-ho supporters of bctv.org defended me, except for then-board member and former Reading Mayor Karen Miller. Another board member told me it was time to lose my ideals.

Since then, bctv.org has not had a professional editor. It has turned into a bulletin board for news releases. It seems to have little or no original content. See for yourself.

The reason it fizzled, and perhaps the reason Murphy didn’t mention the experiment in his letter, was that the wrong non-profit was selected.

Leaders at Berks Community Television had no interest in doing journalism or effectively promoting the project. Staff had no skills or interest to find sponsors or expand coverage to get more donations, or even spell names correctly. One of the colleges would have been a much better choice.

The Reading Eagle could use some competition, however it gets funded.

Half of bctv.org’s money was local, half was from the Knight Foundation, a non-profit whose goal is “promoting journalistic 

excellence in the digital age.”

It's not happening in Berks County.