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

The Brandywine school board received a $97.8 million spending plan for the present fiscal year, about 3% higher than what the district spent last year. The proposed budget is in balance, with revenue projected to total $99 million.

Chief financial officer David Blowman told the board at a workshop meeting on Oct. 7 that the preliminary budget provides $1.15 million to cover commitments for the first year of  implementing a five-year strategic plan and $700,000 to finance previously approved pay raises for teachers. It also will enable the district to finish the year next June 30 with nearly $1.3 million in the bank -- a balance he called less than desirable but sufficient. The proposed operating budget as presented for adoption at the board's business meeting on Oct. 17 in a new format does not cover the spending of $5.8 million in federal funds nor $49.2 million of capital spending, financed separately from operations.

The budget anticipates receiving state money based on a student enrollment of 10,696 as of Sept. 30, which has been submitted to the Department of Education.. That is a slight increase from 10,557 last year but 500 higher than anticipated. Nevertheless, Blowman said, it has been necessary to continue to cut costs. "Containment efforts have been focused entirely in [the] district office and other support services," he said, adding that nothing has been taken from the schools' individual building budgets nor central instructional services. Superintendent Bruce Harter said he will seek from the board in January some "policy decisions" relating to further trimming.

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FLARE UP: Sunoco used the flare at its Marcus Hook refinery to burn off sulfur dioxide for four hours on Oct. 6, according to the Delaware Department of Natural Resources & Environmental Control.  The department said that was necessary because the boiler at the adjacent General Chemical plant, which buys acid gas from Sunoco, went out of service. The amount of the chemical released into the air was said to be equivalent to 4,558 pounds. This was the first time in several weeks that their has been a flaring incident at the refinery, which straddles the state line north of Claymont. Both companies have announced plans to install equipment to prevent reoccurrences, but that is expected to take more than two years to accomplish.

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CALMING INFLUENCES: Arches equipped with devices to electronically measure and display the speed of vehiclespassing through them will be installed over Harvey Road at each end of its passage through the three incorporated Ardens. Along with textured crosswalks at every intersection and an additional traffic signal at Veale Road, that is the culmination of a seven-year effort to hold drivers to the posted 25 m.p.h. limit in the mile-long stretch  During a public presentation of the final plan on Oct. 2, DelDOT planner Paul Welsh said it now moves into the design phase with construction likely by the summer of 2004. He said the plan met with approval by the approximately 50 attenders at the workshop-style 'hearing'.

While more draconian measures, such as building a traffic circle, were rejected, the "visual traffic calming" techniques agreed upon meet all the conditions set down by the villages. In particular, he said, they preserve a "sense of place" in an established community with considerable pedestrian activity. On average, he said, about 50 people a day walk across Harvey Road. DelDOT has counted 9,800 vehicles a day at the west entrance to Arden. Surveys found overwhelming support for maintaining the lane-like qualities of the road. "I'm sure some [outsiders] would like to see it become a four-lane highway," Welsh said. But volunteer committees of Ardenites "were with us all the way" in coming up with the final plan.

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SWIM POOL TALKS CONTINUING: Freestyles Inc, which operates a private swimming facility on New Castle Avenue near the Delaware Memorial Bridge, is talking with the state budget office about the possibility of partnering with a coalition, which would include Delaware Technical & Community College and several swimming clubs, to operate the planned state aquatics center on Philadelphia Pike adjacent to Bellevue State Park. Freestyles owner and president Michael Ramone told Delaform there is probably a 50-50 chance that an arrangement can be worked out. Current thinking is to have a 50 meter Olympics-standard pool and a smaller 'practice pool'.

The General Assembly's bond committee has extended until January the deadline for the state budget office to submit a report on whether the long-sought project is viable. Representative Roger Roy, co-chairman of the committee, said that will be in sufficient time to decide whether the project should go forward. The state has earmarked $9 million to build the facility provided some other entity can be found to operate it without state subsidy. Ramone said there is "a great need for another swimming environment in [New Castle] County," especially for use by public and private schools. "We're trying to expedite that happening," he said. Freestyles was runner-up in bidding on two previous proposals for an operating contact.

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Thank heaven for cell phones. Now when I walk down the street talking to myself, no one turns around and stares.

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STILL WAITING: Councilman Richard Abbott charged that the delay in resolving the county's ethics code enforcement problem "has to do with politics." After policy director Emily Knearl told Council's executive committee on Oct. 1 that she is still trying to arrange a consultive meeting with department general managers, the so-called 'row officers' and union representatives, Abbott questioned why an issue labeled a crisis and "a matter of extreme urgency" at mid-summer is still pending. "I have to believe there are folks who would prefer to delay," he said. Kneral said the crux of her problem was "getting a large group of people in a room at the same time."

Council president Christopher Coons described the issue as "complicated" and denied Abbott's allegation that the matter will be allowed to carry over into next year. Abbott, who lost a Republican primary election, will not be on Council after the November election. Coons said a quick resolution is desirable but that it is "more important to get it right." Councilman Penrose Hollins took a middle ground in the discussion. "I don't want to see it dragged out, but I also don't want to rush into some system and find out that it doesn't work," he said. Councilwoman Karen Venezky chastised Abbott for his remarks, saying, "I disagree with just about everything you said." {See previous Delaforum articles Sept.18,  Sept. 11 and Sept. 9 .)

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Traffic volume on Tyler McConnell Bridge has grown by 7% -- to about 27,000 vehicles a day -- during the past 18 months, while discussion on increasing its capacity has been going on, but most of that growth has occurred outside rush hours.

DelDOT project manager Mark Coté told attenders at a workshop-style 'hearing' on planned improvements at the Barley Mill-Montchanin Roads intersection on the approach to the bridge that periodic traffic counts show about 15% increases during that period in the number of drivers using the Rockland and Thompson Bridge Road crossings upstream on the Brandywine and a 50% growth on less heavily traveled Smiths Bridge, now being reconstructed. Those figures would indicate that  more drivers are bypassing the McConnell span. Du Pont, Astra Zeneca and other employers along the Route 141 corridor also may be extending rush hours by staggering reporting and quitting times, he said.

Coté told Delaforum that volume is not yet high enough to "justify pulling the trigger on a decision" to build an additional or a replacement McConnell bridge. Construction, he said, "is still a few more years in the future," but added that design work could begin soon after federal environmental and historic-protection requirements are satisfied around mid-2003. "The idea is to postpone the need for the bridge as long as possible," he said during his presentation at the 'hearing' on Sept. 30. Enlarging the approach intersection is scheduled to begin in spring, 2003, and take about a year. Although identified as "short-term improvements" in the context of the overall McConnell project, the work is  intended to be permanent.

The hearing was told that it now takes 6½ minutes longer in the morning and four minutes longer in the afternoon to travel between the Basin Road interchange south of Wilmington and the Concord Pike-Powder Mill Road intersection by way of the roads which make up Route 141 than via  Interstate 95 and Concord Pike. Those spreads 18 months ago were five and 3½ minutes, respectively.

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NEW HIRES: The Brandywine board on Sept. 26 confirmed, without discussion, the hiring of Vincent Costello, who retired this year after seven years as superintendent of the Interboro School District in Delaware County, Pa., to be principal of P.S. du Pont Intermediate School. Costello, who holds a philosophy doctorate, succeeds Judith Curtis, who has taught and been an administrator in Brandywine since 1985, who was confirmed as the district's director of educational services. Thomas Alderson, a music teacher and band director at William Penn High School since 1982 and a graduate of Mount Pleasant High, was hired as supervisor of arts and enrichment. Curtis will be paid $94,162; Costello $85,848; and Alderson $81,997.

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McDonald's Corp. has reneged on its offer to provide several alternates to the controversial 1950s-style design for its outlet on Philadelphia Pike, according to Frank Kolling, vice president of the Claymont Community Coalition.

He said the company offered only a choice between putting up a restaurant like the one on South Union Street in the Canby Park section of Wilmington and the design turned down by the county Department of Land Use. And, he said, the proposal was given to Tom Comitta, the planning consultant for the Claymont Renaissance, and not to the civic association. As previously reported by Delaforum, Land Use general manager Charles Baker told the company in a formal rejection notice issued on Sept. 18  that "it will be necessary ... to revise and propose an acceptable architectural style to the department and the community."

At a meeting of the Claymont Renaissance steering committee, Baker cautioned against accepting the department's siding with apparent community sentiment as a license to apply over-stringent conditions to future development and redevelopment projects. "Don't go too far and create the impression that Claymont doesn't want new business or investment," he said. Coalition president George Lossé said that the organization supported most of McDonald's Corp.'s plan to replace the vintage-1979 fast-food establishment. Baker said the company's "failure to take seriously" advice that the county redevelopment ordinance requires more than token consultation with the community also was a factor in the rejection.

Signaling a possible change of attitude toward community relations, McDonald's has offered to have Ronald McDonald and other corporate mascots march in the Claymont Christmas parade on Dec. 7, the group was told.

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EFFORT TO SAVE FARMH0USE UNDERWAY: Several individuals and organizations have indicated they will mount an effort to prevent demolition of the house at county-owned Jester Park off Grubb Road near Naamans. The property was once a farm. The village of Arden is leading the charge on the grounds that if the 1820 structure is destroyed, Brandywine Hundred will lose another memento of  its rural past. Instead, it is proposed that the house be restored and a contemporary use found for it. As previously reported by Delaforum, the county maintains that the house and an outbuilding on the property are unsafe. (See previous article.)  The Historic Review Board is scheduled to consider the matter at its meeting on Oct. 9.