Memos at Random


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

PRACTICE, DON'T JUST PREACH: County Council ordered its staff and the folks who clean up after them: Bail that paper and tote it to be recycled. In anticipation of the eventual likelihood of mandatory recycling coming to New Castle County and an intention to begin discussion soon of county government's role in that, Council's executive committee on Mar. 16 unanimously agreed that it should get off on the right foot by having its offices in the Redding Building should set an example. It did so with the hopes that will spread.

Council president Christopher Coons, who chairs the committee, said he will bring the matter up the next time county and city officials meet with the idea of getting Wilmington government offices, which share the downtown building, to follow suit. He also will take the message to the county Government Center at the airport. Recycling "takes a little additional time, but it's worth it," said Councilwoman Patty Powell, who said her family does it. Coons said the point was driven home to him when he recently "found an astonishing quantity of County Council paper residing in the trunk of my car."

GETTING A HANDLE ON THE COST: Look for the cost of operating the expanded County Council to be in the vicinity of $850,000 for the two-thirds of the coming fiscal year that the six additional members will be in office. That figure -- the first official pricetag to be publicly disclosed -- was derived from a discussion of Council's budget proposal by its finance and administration committee on Mar. 16. The amount does not include the cost of renovating office space in the Redding Building, which will be charged to the Department of Special Services. It will not be an actual proposal until County Executive Tom Gordon submits his financial plan for Fiscal 2005 to Council on Mar. 23.

Main items in the tab will be $135,000 to pay the part-time Council members, $149,000 for their full-time legislative aides and $151,000 in employee benefits. In addition to the additional aides, Council members agreed to add an assistant attorney to its staff. Unable to agree on whether an assistant auditor or a finance clerk should also be added, members will ask for $250,000 of contingency money which, in part, would cover hiring one or both later. An 11-fold increase in parking costs -- from $2,500 this year to nearly $30,000 next was explained by the fact that the number of spaces that will be needed for members and staff will far exceed the number provided free in the garage beneath the building.

About 2,500 new subscribers have been added since Delaware took over management of its E-Z Pass system on Dec. 1, 2003. That brings the total to 65,000.

Secretary of Transportation Nathan Hayward said that, despite general recognition of the advantages of being able to pass through toll gates without having to stop, only 41% of drivers using the Delaware Turnpike and 44% of those who travel the Korean War Veterans Highway are using the system. In part, he explained, that is because more distant states are not yet in the network, but participation is spreading to the Midwest and South. Usage is up from 27% in 2001, but commercial vehicles, oddly enough, are grossly underrepresented, he said. The goal is to boost usage to 75%.

Delaware dropped out of a New Jersey-based consortium in large measure because of customer-service complaints. It has turned that around, Hayward said, through use of a telephone line manned around the clock with a current average waiting time of seven seconds. Toll discounts for E-Z Pass users -- $1.25 instead of $2 on the turnpike and 85¢ instead of $1 at both barriers on Delaware Route 1 -- will remain for the foreseeable future, he said. No toll collector jobs have been eliminated, but "we're handling increased volume with the same number of people," he added.

The new arrangement is attracting attention from other jurisdictions, opening the possibility that Delaware may establish a consortium of its own, but "not until I'm absolutely certain we have ours perfected to the Nth degree," Hayward said.

RESTRAINT URGED: Projected increases in state revenue "are no pot of gold," according to Secretary of Finance David Singleton who jointed with budget director Jennifer Davis in urging the General Assembly to go easy on spending the additional money. "There is reason to be cautious," Davis said after the Delaware Economic & Financial Advisory Council formally approved its updated forecast on Mar. 15. Referring to an announced Republican plan to cut some taxes, in particular the gross receipts tax, Singleton declared, "This is no time for [any] tax cut."

The advisory council reported that upward adjustments this fiscal year have totaled $298.3 million, including the effects of a restructuring of some key revenue streams. Davis, on the other hand, said pending legislation to set aside some money to meet anticipated adverse impacts of such things as Pennsylvania and Maryland establishing slot-machine gambling establishments and anticipated reductions by the Du Pont company in April affecting jobs in the state, will actually result in there being $2 million less revenue in the fiscal year beginning July 1. (CLICK HERE to read previous Delaforum article.)

You wouldn't believe that signs on every light standard in the 800 block of Market Street in downtown Wilmington read, "No parking at any time." Nor that the sign at the end of the block restricts access to commercial vehicles making deliveries. At any time on any day, there are plenty of sign ignorers with nary a meter maid in sight. And it's all free parking.

County Executive Tom Gordon said he has not given up the idea of using condemnation power to either force redevelopment of Merchants Square or turn it into a park.

In an informal 'state of the county' talk before the Council of Civic Organizations of Brandywine Hundred on Mar. 11, he said that the state has the authority to take private property for park use and, without being specific about strategy, indicated that his administration would seek to broaden its ability in that direction. Under a legal concept known as eminent domain, governments can force an unwilling owner to give up land in return for 'fair compensation' determined by a court in order to accomplish a public purpose.

"Twenty years is too long to be patient," said state representative David Ennis. who has been engaged for at least that long in trying to revive the mostly idle shopping center on Governor Printz Boulevard. Without mentioning the center's owner, developer Frank Acierno by name, Ennis said officials of the center recently rousted vehicles belonging to workers building the Bank One processing center nearby from the parking. "There was certainly plenty of open space there," he said sarcastically. State Police Capt. Dennis Doubet denied that troopers actually issued parking tags in the incident.

"We're not dropping it," Gordon replied when asked if a previous promise to force action at the center still holds.

THEY'RE TENACIOUS TOO: Claiming that is is "still not too late," the areawide civic group called for an effort to persuade state lawmakers to override Governor Ruth Ann Minner's veto of legislation that would repeal the expansion of County Council from seven to 13 members with the November election. Gordon said the additional Council members "will not provide better service or better government." On the contrary, he added, their arrival is going to provide an impetus for such things as increased public spending. "You're going to see the budget take off," he predicted.

WELCOME ACCOMMODATION: Council Robert Weiner announced that a 'boundless playground' will be a feature of the planned recreation area in Alapocas Run State Park at Blue Ball. Some 70% of the play equipment there will be designed in a way for it to be used by children whom Weiner said "usually get forgotten when playgrounds are built" -- those who are confined to wheelchairs. He said there are about 8,000 of them in northern Delaware. They and their care-givers will have an opportunity to actively participate in designing the park, he added.

CLOUTIER STATUE FINISHED: Sculptor Charles Parks has completed a somewhat larger-than-life statue memorializing Philip Cloutier and sufficient private contributions are in hand to pay for it. Ernie Cragg, a long-time friend of the late County Council president and state representative, said it will be installed inside the Brandywine Branch library and formally dedicated in April. A relaxed Cloutier is depicted reading a work by 13th Century theologian Thomas Aquinas. There is actual text, albeit in English, not the Latin Aquinas used. The library area in Talley-Day Park is known as Cloutier Complex.

New Castle County government on Mar. 10 sold $100 million worth of bonds at what chief financial officer Ronald Morrison described as the most favorable rate in 40 to 45 years.

The bonds, which will be resold in a $5,000 denomination and redeemed serially over the next 20 years, will pay interest ranging between 1.5% and 5%. For most investors, that is tax-free income. The county's effective annual interest cost is equivalent to a 3.24% annual rate over the life of the bonds. Morris said that, because the sale was negotiated with the selected underwriter, First Albany Capital Inc., the transaction was delayed for two weeks as rates in the municipals market declined. That, he said, reduced total debt service cost by $3.7 million. The bonds will be sold mostly to institutional investors.

Of the total issue, $70 million is new debt to finance capital projects and $30 million will go to refinance old debt carrying higher rates. That will reduce debt service costs by $1.6 million. A law against calling bonds before maturity more than once, prevented the amount of the refinancing and the savings from being even greater. Morris pointed out that the ability to score the fiscal equivalent of a grand-slam home run in baseball was the result of the bonds receiving top-of-the-line triple-A designations from major Wall Street rating firms, largely based on the county's financial health.

Ever wonder why, at a time when the public is being shielded from all sorts of perceived dangers, it is still permissible to have parking lots in which pedestrians don't even have as much as striped walking lanes to separate them from traffic?

The public will, in effect, be able to look over the shoulders of county government employees as they go about doing their jobs.

That is not a futuristic promise, but a present-tense proposition as a commitment to extensive use of so-called e.government is implemented, County Council's administration & finance committee was told. A redesigned county police site which is about to go on line and was demonstrated to the committee on Mar. 9, for instance, contains such data as a catalogue of recovered stolen property and photos of 'most wanted' individuals. There are 'press release'-style reports about crimes and arrests which can be accessed electronically hours before they are published or even broadcast by the media.

Separate sub-sites on the county's Web site provide departments and even units within departments 'real-time' control of posted material without recourse to webmasters, according to John Kassay, of Digital Technologies, the firm designing the sites. "Content is maintained by the people closest to what is going on," county project manager Mary Beth Thompson said. To be sure, there is still an ample serving of public relations on the sites, but what is described as top-echelon interest in Internet information technology by the Gordon administration is said to mitigate against there being much stale data. (CLICK HERE to read previous Delaforum article.)

The Brandywine school board will appoint a committee of community residents to advise it about which of its buildings to renovate and which ones to close.

An ambitious timetable accepted at a workshop meeting on Mar. 8 calls for the panel to report back by October so that a referendum to approve selling bonds to finance the district's 40% share of the cost of the third and last phase of a long-term renovation program can be held in April, 2005. That, according to Jeff Edmison, facilities director, would "maintain the momentum" of the second phase, now underway. Board president Nancy Doorey said it also would avoid having to wait a year to go to the voters and, with an operating tax referendum likely in 2007, scheduling tax-affecting votes in consecutive years.

The committee probably will have the option to recommend reconfiguring the district's four-tier grade structure. Also, Doorey said, a previous commitment to expand Lombardy Elementary "was contingent on having the enrollment" to justify it. Edmison's plan did not specifically state that it involved shutting down schools, but accompanying enrollment projections for the coming decade were well below the present 12,500-student capacity and he referred in his oral presentation to district facilities being "underutilized." He later told Delaforum that the committee will not be restricted to considering closing only those school buildings which have not yet been renovated.

Edmison will not be around to oversee implementation of the plan. He has resigned, effective Mar. 12, to become assistant superintendent of the Christina district.

Contrary to what a New York Times article reported, M.B.N.A. Corp. has not stopped work on converting the former Public Building on Rodney Square to offices, a spokesman said.

James Donahue said exterior construction will be completed, probably before summer, and interior work will go to a point where the space "will be made ready" for future use. A plan to move executive

Still up in the air is how much impact the company's reported decision to scale back its philanthropic activities. M.B.N.A.'s affiliated foundation has been a major source of grants to a wide range of public and private nonprofit organizations.