To residents who just received a robo-call from the Warminster Democratic Organization about the ball fields in Warminster, please know the following: 1) I dont like being political about township issues. The issues that impact our daily lives at the local government level are not Republican or Democrat issues. They are good government issues. However, I can not let lies and partisan propaganda go unchallenged. I do invite everyone that can attend the meeting tomorrow to do so. We have a lot of decisions to make in the next 3 months and we need the publics input. 2) The Centennial School District has sold the Hart School to a developer. I served on a committee last year that tried for 9 months to find a use for that property other than selling it. School Board President Jane Schrader Lynch and the other members of the committee worked very hard to find a way to keep it open space. They went to Bucks County, Penn State, private companies, everyone looking for a way to make it work. In the end, no one wanted the property. It would have cost the school district $25,000/year just to mow the lawn. Not to mention the demolition of the building and all the other costs associated with it. The decision to sell was not what they wanted to do, but it was what they had to do. I fully support President Lynch and the entire board for the decision they made. 3) The issue before the board tomorrow night is the rezoning of the property. Because it was a school and then the WREC, the property is zoned for Government use. As it has now been sold, it needs to be rezoned for residential use. That is the issue at hand tomorrow night. The township can not compel a private company to build ball fields. We can ask them to, but they have no obligation to do so. 4) I want there to more ball fields in Warminster. We need definitely need them. When the old schools were sold, we lost a lot of ball fields. The question we must answer is how do we build them? Who pays for it? To understand why this is hard for the township to fund, see #4. 5) Tomorrow night, we will discuss the pension crisis. One of the reasons the township can not afford to build ball fields is because the board majority from 2008-2011 decided that it would be a good idea to spend money we did not have during the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression. The township must be run like a business, not a charity. The impact of the decisions made during that time has had long lasting and devastating impacts. In the paper, I described it as an Armageddon scenario. This is because the pension crisis is so large that the way the township operates will never be the same. I would like to take some money and build fields. But we also need money to pay for our first responders, fix streets, maintain the parks, run the library, etc. To maintain core services is a struggle when you have to find nearly $2 million dollars to fund the pension plans. That $2 million is just for next year. In 2016, we have to find another $2 million to fund the pensions that year. This does not even touch upon the possible increase resultant in healthcare plans in a few more years when the Cadillac tax goes live. I think the best thing to do is to have the Warminster Democratic Organization and the Warminster GOP team up to help raise funds to build new ball fields in Warminster Community Park. That would be far more productive then spending money on robo-calls to try to score political points 14 months before the next municipal election.
Posted on: Thu, 18 Sep 2014 00:25:50 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015