Memos at Random


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

NOT RUNNING: Neither David Adkins nor Thomas Lapinski plan to seek re-election to the Brandywine school board. Both have been on the board for five years. Adkins said that is enough and it is time for someone else to occupy his seat. As Delaforum previously reported, there are two candidates to do so -- Jeanne Best and Debra Heffernan. One candidate, James Garrity, is seeking Lapinski's seat on the seven-member board. Deadline for candidates to file with the Department of Elections for New Castle County is Mar. 4. The election will be held on May 10. (CLICK HERE to read previous Delaforum article.)

ETHICS RULES MAY BE TIGHTENED: County Councilman Robert Weiner said he will introduce an ordinance to implement the changes in county government's ethics code that were requested by the Ethics Commission. As Delaforum previously reported, the changes would give the commission investigative power involving a former employee for up to three years after he or she leaves the job. Candidates for county office would be fined $10 a day for failure to file a timely financial disclosure statement. Honorariums for speeches and public appearances would have to be disclosed. (CLICK HERE to read previous Delaforum article.)

REBUTTAL: County Council followed the rules when it held a special meeting to fire auditor RobertHicks, according to Carol Dulin, Council's lawyer. Responding to a Freedom of Information Act complaint by Common Cause of Delaware, she said a meeting notice was posted outside Council's eighth floor Redding Building office 34 hours before the meeting began at 8:45 p.m. on Jan. 25. The law requires at least 24 hours notice. In addition, she said, Council president Paul Clark telephoned selected news media representatives and Common Cause to notify them.

The posted notice, she said, explained that the meeting was needed because of "recent developments since the audit committee meeting of Jan. 20" and that was sufficient explanation why it could not wait long enough to enable providing the standards seven-days notice. A revised agenda saying that "a confidential personnel matter" to be considered at the meeting involved the county auditor was put up nine hours before the meeting, she said. "In short, the special meeting of New Castle County Council was properly called, noticed and conducted," Dulin concluded. (CLICK HERE to read previous Delaforum story.)

ANOTHER ENTRY: A third candidate has filed to run for election to the Brandywine school board. Debra Heffernan, of Edgewood, did not return telephone calls from Delaforum seeking biographical information. Also seeking the seat now held by David Adkins is Jeanne Best. So far, only James Garrity is running running for Thomas Lapinski's seat. Neither incumbent has publicly declared if he will seek re-election to the seven-member board. School board candidates are nominated on a rotating basis from nominating districts but are elected at-large through the entire school district. (CLICK HERE to read previous Delafourm article.)

NEW ARRANGEMENT: Each member of County Council will be allotted $15,000 during the coming fiscal year to distribute as he or she sees fit in the form of grants to 'worthy causes' if Council's budget proposal is adopted. That would be similar to the General Assembly's practice of allocating 'streets money' to legislators to be spent at their discretion for various projects in their districts. Until now, Council has acted as a whole on grant requests from nonprofit and charitable agencies, although they usually are sponsored by a member. The contributions line in the current budget is $82,500.

Council's finance committee on Feb. 22 approved a $3,157,910 budget request for fiscal 2006, up 11.4% from $2,833,148 in the current budget, as amended. Council was expanded from seven to 13 members last November. The proposed budget calls for $300,000 for contingencies, up from $200,000 currently. Council's budget request will be considered along with requests from county departments for inclusion in the proposed overall budget County Executive Christopher Coons will submit to Council, which has final say over how much will be allocated.

ENVIRONMENTAL LAW SUPPORTED: County Council urged Congress to back away from any proposal to take away Delaware's authority to regulate industry in its coastal zone along the Delaware River. An effort is being made to transfer jurisdiction to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. That would trump Delaware natural resources secretary's invoking the Coastal Zone Act to deny British Petroleum permission to build a pier at its proposed liquefied natural gas facility opposite Claymont. Council unanimously approved a resolution to that effect, sponsored by Councilman Robert Weiner.

NOTIFICATION LACKING: The Historic Review Board called off a 'special hearing' to consider seeking national historic recognition for Hickmans Row in Claymont. But anyone interested in attending the hearing on Feb. 23 did not learn of the postponement until arriving at the Government Center, some distance from Claymont. A Department of Land Use staff member said notice of the postponement was posted at the entrance to the room where the hearing was to have been held that afternoon. As late as the morning of Feb. 24, it was still listed as going to happen on the department's easy-to-change web site.

Edgewood Village L.l.c. was ordered to restore the section of a stone wall in the Paladin Club condominium complex which it surreptitiously had torn down more than a year ago.

In a letter to Wendy Danner, the firm's lawyer, Charles Baker, general manager of the county Department of Land Use, said he has "concluded that the wall is historic in nature and must be restored in accordance with the [Historic Review] Board's recommendation." He agreed with the board that restoration should be done in a way that the wall "appears as it did originally." No deadline was set for complying with the order. Baker also declared that a pending proposal to build townhouses on the hillside behind the wall be changed to remove destruction of the wall as one of its elements.

The issued has been pending since the board issued a decision early last summer. Residents of the complex had argued that the wall dates back to the early 19th Century and is one of a few surviving remnants of the Sellers family estate. Edgewood Village, an affiliate of Pettinaro Construction, claimed that the wall had no historical significance and that removal of part of it was not unlawful. Jonathan Husband, president of the Fox Point Association, told Delaforum that he believes the firm complied with a directive to keep the original stones (CLICK HERE to read previous Delaforum article.)

Four or five "major national developers" are in the running to buy the Brookview apartment complex, according to County Councilman Robert Weiner.

He did not identify them and declined to reveal if any had met the $31 million asking price. He said at least one has agreed to a "strategic partnership" with another firm to redevelop the commercial area fronting on Philadelphia Pike. Weiner told the Claymont Design Review Advisory Committee on Feb. 17 that all the proposals call for building "different types of housing styles ... [in a] traditional neighborhood design." They would be sold, not rented. He said Mid-Atlantic A.A.A. is eyeing the potential project as a place for mid-level employees it is moving into the Wilmington area to live.

The committee tabled the first redevelopment proposal to come before it as part of the 'hometown' zoning process after the applicant, Linda Ng, said she is uncertain whether to use the building at 3511 Philadelphia Pike for a Chinese restaurant or grocery store. Those uses require meeting significantly different development requirements. Carmine Casper, Ng's engineer, said also that nothing had been done to acquire shared parking space with the neighboring property to meet that requirement. "They have to do a little more research and come back," Committee member George Lossé said. (CLICK HERE to read previous Delaforum article.)

Announced at the meeting was a $25,000 grant "for planning and publicizing your activities" to the Claymont Renaissance Development Corp. from County Executive Christopher Coons.

Two people have filed to run for election to the Brandywine school board. Seats now occupied by David Adkins and Thomas Lapinski will be filled at the May election.

James Garrity, of Brandywood, said he will work to make the district "more sound financially," seek a larger amount of grant financing, encourage "more parental participation in the children's education, and bring "a stronger technology focus into the classroom." A native of Ridley Park, Pa., Garrity, 26, and his wife, Shannon, have lived in Delaware for two years. They have no children. He is a graduate of Salesianum School and the University of Delaware. He is employed as director of hosting services for Diamond Technologies and a part-time teacher at Wilmington College.

Jeanne Best, of Cragmere, said she decided to run when she "read about the opening." She said that she and her husband, Glenn, have "a fundamental belief that a good community needs a strong public school system." Growing up in the Newark area, she attended public schools. A 'stay-at-home mom', Best, 42, has been active as a classroom volunteer and with the Parent-Teacher Association at Carrcroft Elementary, which the two Best children, Garren and Justin, attend. Mar. 4 is the deadline for candidates to file. As of Feb. 17, neither Adkins nor Lapinski had done so.

APPEAL ENTERED: A British Petroleum subsidiary has appealed the denial of a permit to build a pier serving its proposed natural gas terminal in New Jersey across the Delaware River from Claymont. Natural resources secretary John Hughes ruled that the pier, which would be in Delaware, would violate the Coastal Zone Act. B.P. said in the appeal that that was an erroneous reading of the law. The company maintains the pier would be "incidental" to a legal manufacturing operation, which is allowed. The appeal will be heard by the Coastal Zone Industrial Control Board. (CLICK HERE to read previous Delaforum article.)

U.S. Senator Thomas Carper called upon President George Bush to take a cue from President Ronald Reagan and turn to a "true bipartisan commission" to deal with Social Security.

Speaking at the Academy of Lifelong Learning on Feb. 14, the Delaware congressman said that saved a system that was nearly bankrupt in 1983 and gave it 70 years of solvency. Republicans and Democrats can work together to achieve a shared goal if the commission is given its head and not set up to "rubber stamp what he (Bush) wants to do." Both Congress and the President should agree ahead of time to accept the commission's recommendations. If so, Carper said, "we can pass on a Social Security system to our kids that is as strong as the one we inherited."

Carper, a Democrat, said key to updating the present system in a way that will instill confidence in the rising generation that it will be around when their turn to benefit comes is to accept as a basic tenant that the U.S. treasury will repay what has been 'borrowed' from the system through its having invested in government securities. He said the concept of partly 'privatizing' Social Security by giving workers the option to invest in a limited number of relatively conservative savings funds is acceptable. But he said they should be required to 'opt into' such an arrangement rather than having to 'opt out'.

He said the present system is not near collapse and has the ability to pay benefits for the next 50 years, provided that the bonds it holds are redeemed as scheduled.