Pooling One's Interest

This column originally appeared on Sunday, May 25, 2008

Word has it that the Chester County Commissioners are taking suggestions for what should happen to the vacant space they will have when they move all the judges, prosecutors, public defenders, prothonotaries, clerks of courts, tipstaffs, secretaries and veteran criminal defense attorney John J. Duffy's motor scooter to the new Justice Center.

Word has it that they'll take suggestions from just about anyone as to what to do with the vacant North Wing and Mosteller's Annex, all the way down to that dog Marley who everyone seemed to be making such a fuss over last week. (Even West Chester Police Chief Scott Bohn's family dog was said to have asked to secure a spot watching the movie-making proceedings on West Gay Street on the off chance that Marley the Mutt might need a stunt double.)

Word has it that the county would just as soon rid itself of the Mosteller Annex, which used to be a department store back when former West Chester Mayor Thomas Chambers could still play a game of half-court basketball without an oxygen tank and a de-fib machine seated next to him on the pine, because, well, frankly, because it's the ugliest building in the borough not owned by renowned landlord Stan Zukin.

Word has it that as long as the price is right, anything goes with the Mosteller site, short of the housing the future home of Andy Dinniman's Personal State Senate Library and Skate Park, with its “Before Mustache,” “During Mustache,” and “After Mustache” sections divided by floors and an animatronic greeting by a life-sized Bam Margera, bar not included.

Excuse me, but Memo to Carol, Terence and Kathi: No need to send out the RFPs. Save the postage. I've got the answer that should have been as obvious to you three commissioners as Joe Norley at a West Chester U frat party.

Two words: Community pool.

West Chester has been aching for a community pool -- where hot, tired sweaty citizens could relax themselves after a hard day's work and, as I have pointed out on many occasions, is within walking distance of South Church Street -- ever since 1983, when I, coincidentally, spent my first summer watching the temperature in my South Church Street apartment rise above 95 degrees.

There didn't seem to be much room in the borough, however, for a pool the size that could accommodate hot, tired, sweaty journalists because the space was taken up by frivolous luxury uses like houses and stores and parking lots. Now, however, opportunity is presenting itself with all the anticipatory glee of a 15-year-old hacker looking at the Downingtown Area School District's computer “security system.”

So tear down the Mosteller, dig a nice hole, get the crews to come pour some concrete, plant a few trees for shade, get Wally the Wiener Man to provide concessions, and open it up in time to provide a backdrop for the first “Swinging Thursday” event. Don't worry: We don't need anything as fancy as an Olympic-sized pool with lap lanes, because frankly, we don't lap. We float and bob and chill like a half-empty wine bottle in Marsh Creek Lake.

Word.

Change That Matters

This column originally appeared on Sunday, May 18, 2008

My friend Rich Henson, of the West Chester Hensons, once found himself pulling into a parking spot somewhere in Philadelphia without the benefit of the proper coins with which to feed the meter. Fearing what might happen if sufficient time wasn’t added to the meter, he breezed into a nearby retail store with a dollar bill in hand.

“Might I exchange this paper Washington for four silver Georges?” Mr. Henson inquired politely of the proprietor.

“Whadduz this look like, the four-quarters-for-a-dollar store?” the friendly owner rejoined. Mr. Henson, chastised, found other means of exchanging his funds.

I tell that story to make this point: If you are contemplating a trip into the Borough of West Chester from your pricey but cheaply constructed McMansion in Developmentland, it would be incumbent on you to make a quick trip to the bank and fill up your SUV’s change dish with 25-cent pieces. That simple step would lead to a better life all around for everyone.

Parking meters are central to our life here in West Chester. Check that. Parking in general, and all its accompanying systems, is central to our life here in West Chester. And we who have grown so accustomed to the Facts of Parking Life 101 take it as an affront that those of you coming here from outside the borough’s four corners are showing up unprepared for the obstacle course that is our parking code.

Hence the borough’s latest municipal motto: “West Chester: Bring Quarters.” (Signs to be posted shortly.)

You wouldn’t think of going on a vacation to France without learning how to say, “Can I have some Freedom Fries with that souffle?” in the native lingo, would you? You wouldn’t think of going to Philadelphia without $10,000 in cash to bribe a city official, would you? But yet you come to our town without the one thing that is most necessary to making your stay here run smoothly. For shame.

Waitresses at West Chester restaurants spend so much of their time filling requests to make change for dollars to feed the parking meters on Gay Street that they have been known to let the various attorneys, judges, police officers, courthouse tipstaffs, state Senate legislative aides and real estate brokers who actually pay their salaries wait overtime to get their meals served.

And we all know what happens anyway, don’t we? You, having gotten your four quarters for a dollar, return to your car only to be confronted with one of our sunny, smiling, effervescent parking enforcement officers cranking out a parking ticket because your meter had no time on it.

“But I just ran in to get change!” you explain. “Can’t you see I was just away a minute? I’m sure you can just let me slide this one time, can’t you?”

“Sure! When pigs get the vote!” comes the cheery response. “See you soon! In court!”

There are myriad tales of the disputes that arise over parking in West Chester, with equally rude and antagonistic charges on both sides of the meter: The meter-person who berates the quizzical senior citizen over some minor infraction; the blustering insurance salesman who demands the officer’s badge even though he was 30 minutes behind schedule. It’s the Mideast conflict, without Jimmy Carter.

So it is obvious why Barack Obama did as well as he did here in the recent presidential primary, his message of “bringing change” resonating so clearly with voters in the borough.

We just thought he meant loose coins.

Amish Housing Dispute Update

This article originally appeared on Sunday, May 11, 2008

An Amish landlord discriminated against a black family from Chester County when he bowed to the bigotry of another tenant and failed to rent them their picturesque dream home in rural Nottingham, the state Human Relations Commission has ruled.

Emanuel Hertzler was “naive” about state law concerning fair housing practices and did not mean the family any harm, the commission stated in a 22-page opinion in the case filed by Glenda and Raymond Brown and their children, but he violated provisions of the state's Human Relations Act nonetheless.

“It is simply wrong to allow the prejudices of a potential neighbor to trump the mandate to make rental decisions absent racial considerations,” the opinion stated. “Here, Hertzler did just that.”

The order was filed April 22. The Browns, along with one of their two sons, were awarded $5,000 for embarrassment and humiliation, $240 for out of pocket expenses, and Hertzler was ordered to begin adhering to federal fair housing practices in renting his property, including proper advertising and annual inspection of rental records.

Raymond Brown, contacted at the family's home in Atglen Friday, said the decision came as a victory for both his family and others confronted with racal discrimination in housing.

“We are pleased this is over,” Raymond Brown said. “We are pleased the commission sided with us. We just hope that people know they do have a mechanism in their defense, and they don't have to sit back and take these kind of things.”

Hertzler, of Little Britain, Lancaster County, could not be reached for comment.

The commission's decision followed a hearing in January at the West Chester Borough Hall in front of Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission (PHRC) hearing examiner Carl Summerson, attended by the Browns, their two sons, their pastor, Hertzler and four other Amish men from Hertzler's church district, including his bishop.

Under questioning from Charles Nier, assistant chief counsel of the PHRC, Glenda Brown said she had seen an advertisement in early May 2007 for a house in a local newspaper and made arraignments to meet Hertzler there. When she toured the house on Little Britain Road across the Lancaster County line from West Nottingham, she said she got very excited that it offered what she and her family had been looking for. It was in the countryside, with a large yard and enough space for all four of them.

Plus, it was $50 cheaper than the $850 rent she and her husband were paying for a row-home in he Westwood section of Valley. “It was like a picture postcard,” she said.

She said she filled out a portion of the lease application and left it with Hertzler, who promised to call and let her know if they were accepted. She said had no reason to believe they would not get the home.
But later that night, Hertzler left her a message on the family's answering machine.

“We talked it over with the neighbors there, my other tenants in the house besides you, and I'm sorry to tell you this,” Hertzler could be heard on the message as it was played back at the hearing. “But they do not want a colored family living next door.

“They are very choosy,” he continued. “They said they would move and it would cost me lots to go looking for people to move in, so I'm sorry,” he said on the tape.

It was later established that the neighbor he spoke of was troublesome man who had earlier brushses with the law, and that Hertzler was afraid of what he might do if the Browns moved in.

But Glenda Brown said the message shocked her. “That in 2007 that someone would have that type of an attitude – it was blatant discrimination,” she testified.

The commission agreed.

“Fear of a white tenant moving if an African American family moves in is not a legal excuse for a landlord's fundamental legal obligation to afford everyone an equal opportunity to secure suitable hosing of their choice,” the opinion read.

In his halting testimony, however, Hertzler defended himself, saying that an incomplete application had been the stumbling block for him, not the couple's race.

Glenda Brown had left out information on vehicles that would be on the property, and financial information about past bankruptcies or missed rent payments, he said. When he ran a credit check later, he found out that she had once filed for bankruptcy and that the couple had had some rent payment problems in 2006.

However, the commission found that those considerations did not outweigh his initial hesitation to rent to the family based on their race.

The opinion noted that Amish landlords are at times not fully versed in the law and that Hertzler seem to act with a “ misplaced paternalistic attitude” to keep the Brown's away from the neighbor who did not want to live near blacks.

“Hertzler, being Amish, can best be described as naïve,” it stated, ading tat his motivation not to rent to the Brown's “was not borne out of a personal ill will, malice, or desire to harm the Brown family.”

In assessing the penalty for the Brown's humiliation, the commission noted that there had been little testimony to show that the family suffered and physical, psychological or emotional turmoil over the matter.

Glenda Brown had testified that she spoke with friends and acquaintances about the matter, and that while hers sons were “dumbfounded” to be confronted with such racially tinged attitudes, she believed they handled the situation with maturity.

The couple said that the size of the award was not the most important thing for them, but rather the recognition that what had happened to them was wrong.

“We are excited that justice has been done,” said Glenda Brown. “We are grateful that this type of thing has been exposed.”

See original article here

Wawa Hoppers

This column originally appeared on May 11, 2008

The story that I enjoy the most from the saga of the Wawa Hoppers is the episode in which Ann and Mary speed away from the site of a street shooting in the Kensington section of Philadelphia, only to make a quick stop at the Wa on Aramingo Avenue while the sound of the gunfire is still fresh in their ears.

You may have heard of the Wawa Hoppers, the five young women who hail from West Chester — Jill Fitzpatrick, Emily Koch, Andi Sasin, Mary Speer and Ann Wuetig — and who more than a year ago began a quest to visit and shop at each of the 578 Wawas known to man — Wawas, of course, being the equivalent in convenience store circles as Tiger Woods is to golfers.

What at first blush sounds like some particularly silly attempt to gain entrance into the Guinness Book of World Records is put into serious context when the Hoppers explain that their mission is being performed in honor of a childhood friend, Maria Whitehead, who died in November 2006 of melanoma. They say they are hopeful that Wawa will provide a matching gift to the Melanoma International Foundation for every dollar the pentangle spend at one of its stores.

Whitehead was a classmate of theirs at West Chester East High School and an athletic legend in the area. She was an assistant coach for the Duke University field hockey team when she died and had earlier played and coached on U.S. Olympic field hockey teams. (For matters of full disclosure, I should note that she was also the niece of my friends Jim and Marian Vito, and I met her once at a family celebration.)

It doesn’t matter how much they spend, only that they collect a receipt. Their self-imposed rule states that only the five are part of the mission, although they will accept rides from friends. The Hoppers have as of recently visited 440 of the 578 Wawas, about 75 percent of their goal, and despite the rising cost of gasoline at the pumps seem well on their way to getting the last outlet crossed off the list sometime this year. They’ve still got the northern section above Allentown to go and the easternmost Wawa in Ocean City, Md., to take care of.

But back to the shooting.

It occurred in August and, in the spirit of letting the Hoppers play the game themselves, I’ll turn the story over to Ann:

“A few weeks ago myself and Mary were on Girard Avenue in Philadelphia at a ridiculously late hour attempting to get home. Right in front of the car, six gunshots went off, and those on the street corner flew by our car,” she wrote on the crew’s blog.

“In stressful situations I always choose the ‘flight’ response, which was obviously smart in this situation. I blindly put the car in reverse fearing that if I raised my head, a bullet would go through the window.

"Speeding off, I was oblivious to the red lights I was passing through; yet, the car came to an abrupt stop when a Wawa sign appeared in front of me. We somehow made it over to Aramingo Avenue, and I was not going to pass up the opportunity to cross that Wawa off the list.

"Mary and I ran in and out of there in a matter of one minute. There is dedication, and then there is stupidity. I think the decision to stop that night was the latter of the two.”

I would respectfully disagree.

For more about the Wawa Hoppers, visit www.wawa2010.blogspot.com.

And Now For Something Completely Different ...

This column originally apared on Sunday, May 4, 2008

Readers of a certain age will remember fondly the cartoon “The Rocky & Bullwinkle Show,” and as part of that series the inevitable exchange between two codgers sitting on a park bench watching as madness and frivolity ensues around them.

“That’s something you don’t see every day, Chauncy,” one would always remark. “What’s that Edgar?” would come the reply, followed by a description of the cartoon moose and squirrel being chased in some ridiculously menacing, and completely unexpected, way by a vaguely Eastern European couple somehow involving a lighted bomb.

That situation — albeit absent the moose, the squirrel, the vaguely Eastern European couple and the bomb — was what the folks at the Chester County Courthouse were saying to one another Thursday.

For the first time anyone in West Chester could remember, an all-female jury was empanelled to hear a trial.

The 12 women were of different ages and races, wore differently colored clothing, and had different hairstyles and hair colors. Six wore glasses, and six didn’t. But they all had in common at least one thing — the extra X chromosome.

Even the alternate juror, chosen in the event one of the other jurors had to be excused before the conclusion of the trial, was of the fairer gender.

Judge Thomas G. Gavin, in whose courtroom the jury sat, was among those to marvel at the sight. Despite years of work in the courthouse, including 22 on the bench, he said he had never come across an all-female jury and had never heard of one being seated. But the veteran jurist recognized the unique situation the jury presented, even as he apologized for keeping them outside the courtroom while he conducted other business.

“I was taught never to keep a woman waiting, and now I’ve kept 13 of you waiting,” Gavin said as they took their seats for the start of testimony Thursday. “I realize the degree of difficulty I now find myself in.”

Ultimately, the jury did not get to decide the case, as a mistrial was declared and Gavin was forced to send everyone home. Shame it was, said more than one courthouse observer, since it would be nice to know how an all-female jury would deliberate.

That question, in fact is at the heart of the history of women as jurors. The male-dominated legal community for years kept women off panels because of ignorant prejudices against their perceived weaknesses; would they be too sympathetic to judge the case on its merits and too easily swayed by emotions to render a fair verdict?

The first all-female American jury was seated in 1654, because the court needed to know if the defendant, Judith Catchpole, could have been pregnant at the time of the alleged crime.

But years and years have gone by since women starting serving on juries, and the course of American justice seems to have proceeded fairly much apace. There is no evidence I know of to show that juries with women bring back verdicts predominantly one way or another. And you never know, if there had been “Eleven Angry Men and One Calm Woman,” would we have gotten a verdict sooner, and without all that melodrama? Now our chance is gone.

And all I know is that Bill Scott was the voice of Bullwinkle. But not that Bill Scott.