Memos at Random


	A potpourri of miscellaneous news SCRIBBLED IN A REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK

Sunday, December 7
Delaware Day First to ratify the Constitution	Pearl Harbor Day "A date that will live in infamy"

One of the first things the General Assembly is likely to do when it reconvenes in January will be to repeal the law enlarging New Castle County Council.

County Executive Tom Gordon told civic leaders that Republicans in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives have "agreed to work the bill" and predicted that the measure "will be on the governor's desk" for her signature before the legislature begins its budget recess in late January. Gordon said his information is that she favors keeping Council at its present six districts. The Senate. where Democrats are in the driver's seat, passed the roll-back bill, sponsored by Senator Karen Peterson, by a comfortable 13-to-6 margin shortly before the end of the Assembly's 2003 session in June.

Although civic groups and even Council itself are on record opposing increasing the number of districts to 12 with a president elected at-large, previous sentiment in Dover, particularly in the lower chamber, has been against revisiting the long-festering issue. Council recently voted reluctantly to approve new districts in anticipation of the additional members being chosen at the 2004 election. After the Senate acted, Representative Greg Lavelle introduced amendments that would expand Council to nine or 11 districts. If either is enacted, the measure would have to go back to the Senate for concurrence. (CLICK HERE to read previous Delaforum article.)

Gordon quipped that the only people likely to be disappointed by the expected Assembly action "are those who thought they were going to get elected" to the new Council seats. Ironically, voter registration indicates that the six who would be successful at that are likely to be Democrats, as is Gordon.

BECOMING CONVINCED: Not only has the Hockessin 'village plan' been well received, it is serving to convince residents of the area that the proposed makeover is going to happen. "This time we have the momentum with us," said Jim Smith, the county planner who led development of the plan. "Even some of the big skeptics are starting to see possibilities." Ken Murphy, president of the Greater Hockessin Area Development Association, said that, unlike past attempts to revitalize the unincorporated town, county support has led to "a belief that something will happen." County Council is expected to enact a 'hometown overlay' ordinance early in 2004 which will allow that expectation to be realized. (CLICK HERE to read previous Delaforum article.)

The influential Council of Civic Organizations of Brandywine Hundred is expected to call for sweeping changes in the method of electing school board members.

A resolution slated for approval at its meeting on Dec. 11 asks the General Assembly to change the law so that school board seats are filled every other year at general elections in November rather than at special elections annually in May; that present five-year terms be reduced to three; and that board candidates run just in their respective geographic subdistricts instead of at-large. Generally speaking, school administrators and boards oppose all three changes. Their argument is that governing public education is too important and too complex to be left to folks drawn from partisan politics.

Brandywine Council will argue that shorter terms and having to represent only a limited area will attract more able candidates and cut down on, if not eliminate, the large number of uncontested elections. Turnouts for the elections, it said, will be significantly greater if they are held when the public is focused on voting. A further advantage of what the council sees as reform will be holding board members more accountable to their constituency. As a result, the general public will have more opportunity to learn about and become involved with public-education issues.

Facing an up-hill effort against almost-certain strong opposition doesn't phase council president Daniel Bockover. He and the council led the charge to block enlarging County Council and kept at it -- apparently to a successful conclusion -- after most were resigned to yielding to the inevitable.

PASSING GRADES, PLUS: Nine Brandywine School District teachers have been certified by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. They were among 53 teachers in the state's 19 districts to qualify for the prestigious designation. Brandywine's was the largest contingent of any; Christina and Red Clay each had seven who qualified. Nationally, there were 8,196 on this year's edition of the certification list. Making it requires a rigorous full-year program of demonstrating classroom achievement by way of videotape and successfully completing an assessment test.

Brandywine teachers on the list are: Courtney Fox, Cynthia Grant, Debra Greenstone and Kelly McKinney, at Mount Pleasant Elementary; Denise Ann Nuss, at Mount Pleasant High; Mary O'Connell and Judson Wagner, at Concord High; Mary Pinkston, at Brandywine High; and Jonathan Sypher, at Springer Middle. They bring the number of nationally certified teachers currently teaching in the district to 28. Another has left the district since getting the designation. Increasing the number of such teachers i9s one of the goals in Brandywine's long-range strategic plan.

ANNEXATION LIKELY: Wilmington will grow when County Council approves an annexation ordinance introduced at its Dec. 2 session But not many people are apt to notice it. Involved is about two-thirds of an acre of the former Harper-Thiel factory property on Broom Street at 32nd Street, which is slated for industrial redevelopment. Wilmington is the only municipality in the state which is required to have county government's approval to add contiguous territory. Consequently, its annexations are few and far between. This one, however, is not expected to draw any opposition.

KEEP IT SHORT IF NOT SWEET: The Department of Natural Resources & Environmental has told activists who testify at its public hearings to keep their remarks to the point. New groundrules issued in response to challenges to procedures followed while considering a Coastal Zone Act permit for the Sunoco refinery limit persons representing organizations to 10 minutes of testimony and those speaking for themselves to five minutes. The hearing officer is authorized to cut off any testimony not considered germane to the issue before the hearing.

Testifiers will still be permitted to ask the applicant or department staff technical questions but must do so through the hearing officer, who will determine if they are appropriate, and cannot do them in an adversarial way. Above all, they should not clutter the record upon which the decision is made. "Several permitting hearings in late 2002 and early 2003 ... are examples of hearings in which the respective records are filled with extraneous agenda-driven material from some participants which will be [sic] of little benefit to the secretary [of natural resources] for permitting purposes.

The days of doing the Christiana Shuffle are definitely numbered. But how short the time will be depends on how much the state is willing to spend and how soon.

Construction of a reconfigured Interstate 95-Delaware 1 interchange could begin in 2005, Bill Hillman told Delaforum. However, the Delaware Department of Transportation consultant was quick to caution that that is the most optimistic scenario. Although options for connecting the express highways, and eliminating the necessity for traffic to weave into a merge as it approaches Christiana Mall, have been narrowed to two, DelDOT, state fiscal officials and the General Assembly face some heavy decision-making during the coming budget-writing season.

With total cost likely to be in the neighborhood of $70 million to $80 million, the choice comes down to deciding whether to divide the job into phases, and coming in at the higher end of that range, or doing it all at once for less total cost. The phased option, however, would see a 'fly-over' connector built during the initial round. That would have the advantage of eliminating the merge problem, which everyone agrees is the major concern, sooner. "It all comes down to deciding on priorities," Hillman said. DelDOT put the options out for public comment at a 'workshop' session on Dec. 1.

Also up for decisions are two related projects -- where to build the new Delaware Turnpike toll gates and placement of additional travel lanes on I-95 between the Christiana interchange and Basin Road.

HURRY UP AND WAIT: A delay in receiving a county community grant has put the Claymont Renaissance on hold, according to Thomas Comitta, its town planner. In a presentation to its steering committee on Nov. 20, he detailed several revisions in his firm's proposal for work to be financed by the requested $49,000. After rushing to meet an Apr. 1 submission date and revising the proposal in June to eliminate pre-development work involving Brookview Apartments, Comitta said he was told on Nov. 13 that the application "is not even on the County Executive's desk" for approval.

Responding to reputed criticism that "Claymont is not as far along as Hockessin" in developing a plan for revitalizing their respective areas, Comitta said his firm could produce such a plan for Claymont in a few months. But, he added, it cannot do so "until we have been given the green light to produce that plan" and that can only happen when financing it is assured. Josh Mastrangelo, the Department of Land Use liaison, said, "The situation up here is so much more complex than what was done in Hockessin. You're talking about massive change." The recently unveiled Hockessin plan was produced by the department.

SPLASH DOWN: The long-idle indoor swimming pool at Claymont Intermediate School will be ready for use next August and will again be made available to the general public, according to Brandywine school board member Sandra Skelley. The facility is being restored as part of the renovation of the building. It has been nearly 20 years since the pool was last used by either students or the community. Claymont principal Max Frankel said renovation of the building's auditorium is expected to be completed in time to present the annual holiday concert there in December.

UNIT ON STREAM: The new sulfur-recovery unit at the Sunoco oil refinery is up and running and extracting the chemical from otherwise waste gasses. Refinery spokeswoman Carol Sloan told the Claymont Community Coalition that "there were a couple of operational issues that we've worked through ... and we don't anticipate any future issues." The company expects the new unit to emit less than the 39 metric tons a year of sulfur dioxide that its environmental permit allows. That compares, she said, with an average of 1,200 tons annually that the refinery put into the air in recent years.

The adjacent General Chemical plant, which used to buy the gas from Sunoco, has ceased operation and is now being decontaminated and secured, according to vice president Tom Testa. That is expected to take about six months. When it is done, any environmental contamination from many years of use will be eliminated, he said. The company will then "work with developers to put [the plant] back into productive use." General Chemical already has received some inquiries about possibly acquiring the facility. Meanwhile, the company's other Claymont plant will continue to produce specialty chemicals.

HERE'S A SWITCH FOR YOU: The firemen can now come down off their ladders -- but not when they're fighting fires. At the behest of the Mill Creek volunteer company, County Council on Nov. 18 approved an ordinance modifying sign regulations to allow it to replace the two large billboard signs on its station on Kirkwood Highway with electronic ones that can changed with a click or two of a desktop computer mouse. It didn't make much sense, fireman Dan Lantes told Council's land use committee, to "bring out a $400,000 piece of equipment every time we need a ladder to get up and change it."

Although 'electronic variable message signs' are capable of flashing with all sorts of bells and whistles, the changed regulations, which apply to any public service organization, say animation, scrolling and such are still no-nos. Messages have to be static and frozen for at least 12 hours. There's an exception for alerts concerning an emergency when grabbing passing drivers' attention is considered a good thing. Lantes said his company is more than willing to abide by the limitations. It beats having to run up and down the ladder every third letter of so every time there's a change in the Bingo schedule, he said.

DROPOFFS ARE STILL LEGAL: Council on Nov. 18 voted down an ordinance sponsored by Councilwoman Karen Venezky that would have outlawed drop-off and pick-up areas at child-care establishments. Instead, any new center or one that wanted to expand by more than 50% would have had to provide enough parking spaces to allow people bringing children there to park and walk with them into the building. That, Venezky maintained before by a a four-to-three count, is safer than allowing young children to get out vehicles by themselves.

Not so, argued Robert Weiner, who accused his colleague of attacking a perceived problem at one location in her district with countywide overkill 'overkill'. Penrose Hollins expanded on that, citing the proposed ordinance as an example of law makers' tendency to "legislatively address a situation ... when they're not even sure how broad the problem is." But it may have been Christopher Coons's opposition which doomed the measure. He said the practice of children being dropped off works very well and safely in most instances. He should know. He's the only member of Council who has a child who does it.

SMOOTH PATH: The popular walking and jogging oval in Bellevue State Park will be rebuilt. E.P.B. Construction has been awarded the $138,000 contract. The 1⅛ mile course will be closed from December until April, according to a state Division of Parks & Recreation official. Friends of Bellevue, a support group, raised $50,000 of the project's cost. Why, you might ask if you're relatively new to the area, is the track length measured in eighths. Long-timers know that one-eighth of a mile is a furlong and before the soft-shoe crowd took to it, the Bellevue track was used to exercise William du Pont's thoroughbred ponies.