Northeast Times

Letters to the Editor:

April 8, 2004 edition

WHAT’S YOUR NUMBER?

Letters to the editor must be accompanied by your daytime and evening phone numbers for verification purposes. Letters without phone numbers cannot be considered for publication.

How about a fee
for swimming?

With all due respect to Mayor Street, I think his proposal to close down recreational centers in Philadelphia is a very bad idea.
The children need a place to go to in the summer where they can have a safe haven from the street life that exists in Philadelphia.
I would rather see the children at a playground than hanging out with the drug dealers.
Do not close down these recreational centers. I suggest that instead, the mayor propose to the people (parents) in Philadelphia a fee to go to the centers with swimming pools. This could be a minimal fee for summer membership. A minimal fee of perhaps $15 for the summer would be the ideal solution to the money deficit in Philadelphia.
Establishing a recreational fund is the better alternative to closing down these centers, which many children depend upon for summer vacation.
Joann C. Hutton
Upper Holmesburg

Come see the
new Jardel Rec

Now that a much needed improvement program is almost complete at our Jardel Recreation Center, we would like to express our appreciation to Councilman Brian O’Neill. Without his help and guidance, this project would never have reached this stage of completion.
Also, we wish to express our gratitude and appreciation to Donna McKinney, Jardel’s recreation supervisor, for all her work and dedication to our center. Thanks, Donna, for a job well done.
We hope all Burholme residents will stop by the Jardel Rec Center and see what can be accomplished when people work together and take pride in the community.
Eileen P. Callahan
President, Jardel Advisory

Section 8 story
makes him angry . . .

I just read your article concerning the Section 8 house in Lawndale (Nice mortgage, if you can get it, April 1 edition). It stated residents were angry.
I live in Lawndale and I’m past angry. I am now disgusted. I can’t believe anyone in the government could call this fair. I know Lawndale, and $155,000 is the top of the market for a home in my neighborhood. That means about 90 percent of the people who live in Lawndale don’t own a house worth that much.
Let’s really go for it and give this woman a house in Chestnut Hill, about a million and a half. Why not? It is the same principle. Give her a minivan while you’re at it. Let’s help pay her gas bill, also. Why not? The $131 she pays to own a home is half what I paid for gas the last two months.
My wife put it best when she said I feel like a sucker getting up at 5:30 in the morning to go to work so I can afford a house in the same neighborhood that’s not worth as much. I used to love Lawndale, but now I don’t know.
I am all for giving people a hand when they need it, but not such a big hand that it is more than the people giving have. All I want is a level playing field. I take pride in knowing I only have what I worked for. I hope that is not the wrong way to feel. I don’t want to feel like a sucker.
John Perillo
Lawndale

. . . but not all Section 8
people are bad

I think that too many people are complaining about us people on Section 8.
We’re all not bad; some of us are just trying to make ends meet and have disabilities that prevent us from the workforce. If only more people were understanding, this would be a better world.
If you are going to have a neighbor like me, who keeps my place clean and is quiet and does not bother anyone, then why complain? In every neighborhood, you have good and bad in all!
You can’t just pinpoint people who are on Section 8 who are bad, because that is not true! It is just like with black and white. You have some blacks who are trash and you have some whites who are trash; you have some blacks who are good and you have some whites who are good.
Did I make my point clear? You cannot judge people because they are getting help from the government and they need it, but I can see that the ones who don’t need it should not get it! Wake up and smell the coffee before it burns!
Amy Wright
Mayfair

Don’t pick on the
SEPTA workers

If it wasn’t bad enough of the Northeast Times editorial staff to disrespect SEPTA’s hard-working families, now we have an outsider from leafy suburban Warminster, letter writer Vadim Preysman (March 25 edition.)
In basketball, we call guys like Vadim a “ringer.” Why don’t you guys get together and go after the real culprits — the greedy insurance companies and medical physicians? Those people get their raises; why can’t the lowly SEPTA worker?
This is another corporate tactic that duped the Northeast Times staff and Vadim because “everybody’s doing it.” Does that make it right?
Hey, Vadim, if you think driving a bus in the urban ghettos of Philadelphia is so great, why don’t you come down from Warminster and fill out an application?
Kevin P. Kenna
Mayfair

I saw several inaccuracies in the Northeast Times lately regarding TWU 234 employees. We have been called “underskilled and overpaid” by your paper and “freeloaders” who don’t pay for any of our health benefits by one of your readers, who further states that we let the taxpayers foot the bill while we laugh all the way to the bank.
Here are some of the facts: Every one of us are paying something for our benefits, and our benefits are always under attack, just like everyone else in this country. We have many skilled workers in our union who are subject to different pay scales, of which I have not seen truly represented in the press.
These union members include mechanics, technicians and many other hard workers. Finally, we are taxpayers and veterans, service men and women, and family-oriented people who cannot afford to “laugh all the way to the bank,” because we are constantly under attack.
Timothy T. Gass
Rhawnhurst

PGW inflames the
passions of the people

Senior citizens aren’t the only ones outraged by the price-gouging weapon that is PGW.
Having recently turned 34 years old, I, too, am strongly opposed to the company’s plan to collect millions of dollars in uncollected revenues by making people like myself pay more.
Almost every day of my life, I actually drag myself out of bed and into work. How could I have possibly been so incredibly stupid all of these years?
There are surely cases where people genuinely have difficulty paying the bill. If I were a betting man, however, I’d wager my life that the vast majority of people just don’t care. And, with the blessing of Mayor John Street, the number of people who just say no to paying will no doubt increase.
Maybe I should join the growing masses and become a freeloading deadbeat, a drain on all hard-working, already vastly overburdened Philadelphians. Who am I kidding, though?
As crazy as it sounds, I’ll continue to work for a living. I guess my parents are to blame for all this.
While I was growing up, they must have instilled in me a radical, bizarre concept called personal responsibility.
Bill McDevitt Jr.
Torresdale

As you have heard by now, PGW has requested a rate increase. If approved, the bill for a typical general service residential heating customer would increase approximately $5 a month (a 4.1 percent increase). This would help pay for the gas used by non-paying “customers.”
Our mayor has stated he supports this increase. And why wouldn’t he?! He has many “brothers and sisters” who aren’t paying their bills. In fact, our mayor previously had collections and past-due accounts with PGW while gainfully employed by the city!
Since I did not vote for this mayor, I feel I have the right to voice my criticism. Those of you who voted for this “mayor” should not open their mouths. They should be the ones who pay the increase as a punishment for supporting this man!
He never had any intention of fighting for the Northeast, and will try to squeeze as hard as he can on the taxpaying, law-abiding, middle-class residents, because he knows he cannot run again!
I encourage everyone to go to www.puc.paonline.com/consumer_services/official_complaint_form_final.pdf
Complaint forms can be downloaded. Send your letter of complaint to the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission. They can be reached at 1-800-782-1110. If the PUC gets enough complaints, then maybe they will reconsider. The PUC is the state agency that approves rates for PGW. PGW must prove that the requested rates are reasonable. Voice your opinion that they ARE NOT!
Do not let this go on without a fight. First, it was our real estate taxes, now PGW rates. Next he will want to charge a fee to get movies/DVDs from the Free Library of Philadelphia!
Christine Kelly
Fox Chase

I am writing to express my concern and outrage regarding the Philadelphia Gas Works proposal to assign a “deadbeat surcharge” to paying customers such as myself.
As you know, PGW has experienced numerous administrative and financial difficulties in recent years. This proposal, by far the most insulting episode in this utility’s troubled history, illustrates that PGW’s viability has reached a critical stage that requires thorough redress by our elected and appointed officials.
If PGW is unable to successfully manage its estimated 100,000 deadbeat customers per year, how will further burdening its paying consumers help?
We’re already enduring significantly higher rates, as well as the “weather normalization” charge, whereby PGW gets to blame us for the weather if it isn’t cold enough. (Never mind the fact that we use natural gas-powered appliances such as stoves and water heaters year-round.)
And many customers who pay their bills have suffered shut-offs and $400 reconnection fees because they were at work, trying to earn a living, when PGW wanted to install upgraded meters at its tyrannical convenience.
Mayor Street supports PGW’s latest surcharge, claiming that “there is a certain part of the cost that everybody pays for goods and services that’s added as a result of the fact that some other people don’t pay.”
However, in a free-market economy, that cost is balanced by competition among vendors, keeping prices in check. We don’t have that luxury in this case.
After accommodating repeated and thinly justified rate increases, there comes a point when you’re feeding a never-satisfied monster that (along with its fellow beast, the city wage tax) threatens to drive still more residents from the city of Philadelphia.
I urge every city resident and official to call PGW to account, once and for all, for its unconscionable business practices.
Regina Christian
Lawndale

I am sick and tired of hearing about the proposed extra money to bail out the inefficient PGW financially because of deadbeats or poor people who won’t or can’t pay their gas bills.
A lot of people are receiving benefits all over the place that they don’t deserve, and nobody complains as loudly as these crybabies.
What about the senior citizen discounts at certain stores and even the discounts from PGW? Who has to pay the extra money to make sure that the bottom line is adequate? The people who pay the full price do.
How about the earned income tax credits that result in poorer people getting all their tax dollars back with even some people getting more than they originally paid in? The people who don’t receive any special credits do.
For decades, people haven’t been paying their gas bills. PGW has been saying they will begin shutting off people at a faster rate. The politicians are always saying that they will sell PGW or run it more efficiently.
The PGW situation has not changed a bit in decades. My prediction is you’ll pay the extra money, so shut up.
Mayer Krain
Modena Park

Born and raised in Philadelphia, I am one of the great, silent majority known as honest people, but perhaps W.C. Fields was correct when he called us “suckers.”
I vote regularly, pay taxes on time, drive legally, support my church and some charities, don’t do drugs, and for the most part I try to live each day as productively as possible.
I know a lot of people living in Philadelphia do the same, and because we don’t cause trouble, we are ignored. Now, the PGW and our dysfunctional Mayor Street must think we are stupid.
We are not.
For years, I knew I was paying for the deadbeats of the city and now, the powers-that-be add insult to injury. They don’t even care that I suspected as much — they’ve come out and declared it. Their ignorance stuns me!
Let me assure you that I always wanted to end my days in Philadelphia. However, I will soon join the exodus. We don’t fight the injustice; we put “for sale” sings on our lawns and get out of this mess before we can’t.
I want to watch the mayor and PGW try to rely on the deadbeats and drug dealers to raise the funds needed for this city to go on.
Hopefully, the people who do the right thing will have the last laugh on these idiots. If you don’t care about my rights, why should I stay? There is very little left in this city to keep me.
Who needs to be disregarded and disrespected? Only a fool would pay and pay and pay, with nothing coming back to them.
Rosemary Macklin
Parkwood

As I read the Northeast Times and other city papers I find the subject matter to be pretty consistent throughout all of them. PGW’s reckless mismanagement, the mayor and alleged corruption, union strong-arm tactics during city elections, driving businesses out of Philadelphia, crime in our streets and schools, and cutbacks to city services while the freebees with your tax dollars get put to no use and no return.
And now that the “brothers and sisters are running the city” I guess there’s not much of a future for salvation in this sewer hole for a city.
When you look for leadership don’t look to Councilman O’Neill, for he is nothing more than a Democrat in a Republican suit. He is very well-controlled by Democrats.
So when people write letters complaining, all I’ve got to say is good for a laugh. Fifty years of Democratic rule and we have traveled nowhere but down. So don’t cry — you elected these losers — just open your wallets and laugh. You’ll be much happier.
Joseph Montague
Bustleton

Two thumbs down
on the Woodhaven project

I had to write about this proposed expansion of Woodhaven Road. I am a Somerton resident and one who will be directly affected by the changes in the new proposal.
The traffic on my street is bad enough (and is already affecting property values and my house’s foundation) without turning the intersection into four lanes!
I wasn’t able to attend the March 23 meeting because I didn’t get the notice of it until that afternoon. I informed many of my neighbors, none of whom knew anything about it.
I have to agree with the readers who expressed their concerns about just who does Somerton Civic Association represent now? Do they think it’s a private club just for those who can get to the meetings? How is anyone supposed to know about a vote that will affect the entire community if the community isn’t notified?
It would make more sense if PennDOT put an advanced notice in the Northeast Times rather than assume that this group is representative.
Maybe there was a time they did stand for the community, but they certainly don’t in this instance. I don’t know anyone in favor of this plan. I know lots of people saying that if it happens and they could, they would move out of the city.
What a shame.
It used to be that SCA made sure the best interests of the neighborhood came first. Now I’m not so sure. I wasn’t aware that a major point of contention is that people from the FOP home can’t cross Byberry Road because of the congestion.
That can’t possibly be a motivating force behind this group’s decision to support this devastating project! It’s too selfish, especially when a simpler solution, like a stop light at Proctor Road, would make so much more sense.
What really upsets me about this plan is that our neighborhood suffers for the convenience of the suburban commuters who want to get to I-95 faster.
Why is it that long established businesses that have been in Somerton for years will be lost while they are building a Walgreen’s at the corner of Bustleton Avenue and Byberry Road? Sounds political to me.
Sure, the traffic bothers me on Byberry Road, but I’m not ready to sacrifice my community for an easier commute!
Shame on you, SCA and politicians!
Bernadette Foley
Somerton

Just so you know, this person, who has a “full brain,” is totally against extending the Woodhaven Road highway through Westwood! And another thing you should know is that all those opposed to the project do not resort to guerilla warfare, as you suggest — just intelligent information! (April 1 editorial, Just build it!)
Other than a few passionate remarks at Washington HS that may have gone overboard, most people came informed and prepared to speak in a professional manner. The Somerton Civic Association does not make any attempt to get ALL the details with this extension.
One very important example of this misinformed group is the fact that the senior citizens think this will “help” them. The truth of the matter is that this highway will run about 60 feet from their back patios that they so much enjoy in the nice weather.
Instead of having a peaceful retreat to play cards or sip lemonade, those people will have nowhere to enjoy a little outdoors, no walkway to the Leo Mall and no trees in their back yards, just a great big, noisy, dirty highway! Do you really think they would have agreed with this? Should they have known this?
I know, deep in my heart (as do many thousands of others) that this project is not the right thing to do. Perhaps 50 years ago it would have been, but not now.
Lastly, I would love to address your comment concerning the ban of trucks. Currently in the news, the state of New Jersey is attempting to ban trucks on certain roads. It has been determined by the courts of New Jersey that this would be unconstitutional, and the governor is now appealing to the Supreme Court.
So, here we have yet another theory that would only present another issue.
Christine Boerner
Huntingdon Valley

A drunken fiasco
in Mayfair

To all the Shamrock Shuttle patrons and the bar and bar owners who chose not to have security, or very limited security, that participated in this drunken event on March 13, this event was nothing more than a drunken fiasco, and I am quite sure that the people of Mayfair want it stopped.
How can the school bus companies participate in such an event? Our children ride these yellow school buses every day. My kids want to know why those people are allowed to drink and stand up on the bus, yet if they do that, they get in trouble. What are we teaching our children?
Here is what I saw firsthand at two of the bars participating: Rowdy, immature people being packed on school buses like cattle; public drinking (open containers), which I thought was illegal in Philadelphia; people urinating in the parking lot and in buses; a boy vomiting on the sidewalk three houses away from mine; people so drunk that they passed out (maybe someone should have stopped serving them alcohol before they could no longer walk or speak); a couple of fights; and large numbers of people congregating outside the bar with no respect for the residents who live there (of course, there was no one telling them to either leave or go back in the bar, and this was hours after the buses were done).
The most disturbing was at around 11 p.m., when I saw a car parked in front of my house, and two people inside were having sex. I banged on the window and told them to get off my street and do it on their own block.
I think the City of Philadelphia considers all of this a “public nuisance.”
Now, I thought it was over and that I would wake up the next morning to birds chirping and the sunshine of a new day. Wrong!
I awoke at 6 a.m. only to see trash strewn everywhere, and I don’t mean a cup here and a napkin there. It looked like a trash dump.
Why wasn’t this cleaned up before the bar closed? The same reason for all of the other problems encountered that night — no one cares, because they do not have to live here.
To all the people who live in Mayfair: do not be afraid to step up and save your community, or we, too, will become another Kensington or North Philly. Call your elected officials to stop this craziness now. Go to your Town Watch and civic meetings — the dates are always in the Northeast Times.
Fed up in Mayfair

Not too happy
with CLIP

I would like to express my disgust with the CLIP program. I have not had a personal experience with them but I know many who have. They seem to target “well to do” neighborhoods and ignore the eyesores I see each day.
There is a townhouse community along Ashton Road across from the soon-to-be Frankford Chocolates building. I know you are not allowed to put trash out before 7 o’clock on the night before your pickup, but these people seem to have trash out all the time, not just on the day before or night before, but even the day after pickup. We are not talking about a little bit of trash, we are talking dressers, boxes, trash that is not even neatly stacked and is thrown around on the small strip of grass by the road.
Poor trashmen who have to clean it up — I feel bad when I have one too many boxes around. I think CLIP should focus more on that area than someone who has a curb that is starting to fall apart, or a hedge that is 1 inch too high.
Sibahan Sanders
Pennypack