Monday, June 13, 2011

Does the road toll for thee?

Here is the beginning of this week's column in The Times Herald. I've put a link to the rest of it at the bottom so you can read it all if you'd like. I guess the question to ask is, shouldn't we the people decide if Route 422 should be tolled?


“…Because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

John Donne, the English poet, may not appreciate me using the above quote to go off on a rant about the tolling of Route 422 in Montgomery County, but I found it oddly appropriate.

What has been translated into a poem was originally written by him as an essay in “Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, No. 17”

When I started researching the quote for this column I had no idea the entire essay is appropriate for an analogy to what appears to be happening with the possibility of tolling the state road.

The essay begins, “No man is an island…” and continues to convince us that we’re all somehow connected; that whatever affects one, affects us all.

Yet it appears as if the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission thinks itself an island.

Why else would the authority approach the governor’s advisory committee on transportation funding, and our own county commissioners two days later, without putting the plan before the public?

We are the pocketbook from which the commission wants to filch, so why not come to the public first?

Perhaps it is because the public is becoming too savvy for such antics.

The rest of the story.

Friday, June 3, 2011

Are you engaged?

Here are our top stories for tomorrow's print edition. Which four should go out front...and in what order?


UMASD slated to raise taxes: The Upper Merion Area School District has been hammered as a result of funding lost to property reassessments, and the district is going to have to raise local real estate taxes by 8%. Meanwhile, the district has to cut a check to GlaxoSmithKline for upwards of $2.5 million, because of a property reassessment settlement. The school board votes Monday on the property tax increase.

UhOh: Less than a day after putting one its two nuclear reactors
back on line following two unplanned shutdowns, the other nuclear
reactor at Exelon’s Limerick Generation station shut down unexpectedly
Friday morning, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

1stGrads: PJP II graduates its first class

Come on in, the water’s fine: UM supervisors approve lease agreement with Upper Merion Swim & Tennis Club – slated to open Saturday.

Politically Direct with Moon Ahn

Brochure use of logo OK: West Norriton solicitor says its ‘legal’

Held from Thursday: Lower Providence supervisors authorize grant application for streetscape study of Ridge Pike.