In the meantime, two local entities have organized events to give the public a chance to see or hear the candidates go head- to-head. The first will take place on Tuesday, May 5 between 8:30 and 10am on WCHE 1520AM. Morning host J. T. Morgan will referee the session and present the candidates with questions emailed in by listeners. If you've got a question you'd like them to answer, send it to jt@wche1520.com. [Listen to the debate -- added May 11, 2009.]

On a side note, if you're a true fan of political combat, then you might want to attend the candidate's forum for the Coatesville City Council primary election on Wednesday, May 6 at 7pm. It will take place at the Coatesville Senior Center at 22 N. 5th Avenue and feature, among other candidates, Democratic challenger Karl Marking, who cofounded the Northeast Neighborhood Association here in West Chester back around 2001.

There are four vacancies on the Board this year and nine candidates to fill them. One is Susan Carty, a current school board member, who won a two-year term in 2007 and is seeking a four-term this year. She and three others -- Susan Tiernan, Lisa Samuel and Deborah Liczwek -- are all endorsed by the Democratic Party, while four others -- Sean Carpenter, Heidi Adsett, Maria Armandi Pimley, and John Wingerter -- are endorsed by the Republicans. Standing somewhere in the middle is Gary Bevilacqua, an unendorsed Republican who, like the other eight, amassed enough petition signatures to appear on both primary ballots. That means that voters in both of the major parties will get a chance to vote for any four of the nine candidates. That may explain the large public turnout for the forum.

Six candidates -- Carty, Tiernan, Liczwek, Bevilacqua, Armandi-Pimley, and Wingerter -- responded to a total of seven questions and explained why they are running and what they hope to accomplishment. In order, the questions were:

1. Is creationism a science and should it be taught in our schools?

Since questions were submitted anonymously on cards and screened by members of the League of Women Voters, it was not clear who asked this question, but it seemed designed to emphasize the differences between the endorsed Republicans, who have been accused of promoting "a conservative ideology" (Daily Local News, February 22, 2009), and the rest of the field. Five of the six dismissed creationism as "not science" and all six agreed that the present curriculum should not change, although Wingerter said he "we shouldn't say it isn't somewhat scientific" and he was "aware of research studies being done on creationism ... students need to know there are other ideas out there." Carty, a former science teacher, described herself as a "spiritual person" but added that "intelligent design is not science."

This gave each candidate a chance to elaborate on their opening statements, and several of them used the opportunity to describe their goals for education. That seemed so valuable that the moderator gave each person an additional forty seconds to describe their goals. Some of them were: Carty: "make sure our students are prepared" [for life in a global world]. Tiernan: "much higher rate of literacy" and "a full graduation rate." Liczwek: a "strong, integrated curriculum that builds year-to- year from K to 12." Bevilacqua: "maintain the taxes at a reasonable amount." Armandi-Pimley: make sure that money spent produces results. Wingerter: "a priority has to be the budget."

3. Should sex education be provided in our schools, and if so, in what grade and at what age?

All of the candidates believed that sex education is necessary, and there was consensus that it should be taught in middle school and high school. Their answers differed only with respect to the content of the curriculum; Carty said it best when she called for "age-appropriate" content that includes values and promotes the "respectful treatment of others."

4. Should the district supervisory positions for music and art education be reinstated?

This question stemmed from an earlier decision to eliminate district supervisory positions for art and music education. According to Carty, the decision was made before she joined the board, but it was taken as a means to reduce costs. Wingerter equivocated, saying that art and music education are important, but that people in those positions had to have the appropriate credentials. He and Armandi-Pimley both said that they would rely on the judgement of the school district administration as to whether the positions should be reinstated. In contrast, Tiernan asserted that a district with sixteen schools, 12,000 pupils and 1,000 teachers needed people in positions to see the "big picture." Liczwek said that the elimination of the science curriculum supervisor in 2005 was what got her involved in school board issues in the first place. Bevilacqua said that the size of the system creates the need for specialized curriculum supervisors, and Carty described a state-sponsored study that found the West Chester Area School District was actually "light" in terms of the number of administrators it employed.

5. Last year the school district spent $600,00 on legal fees for due process. What would you do to reduce that?

As you might expect, everyone was in favor of reducing controlling legal fees, but the answers ranged from 'negotiating better rates from solicitors" and "watching the bills more closely" (Bevilacqua, Wingerter and Armandi-Pimley) to a detailed description of the types of legal expenses faced by the District (Carty). The three main sources are litigation of District decisions about access to special education, disputes with employees, and disputes with contractors. Carty said that the latter two categories could be reduced, but as long as federal mandates create entitlements to special education services, the number of disputes between parents and the District will continue to increase. Liczwek agreed with Wingerter that better communication between the District and parents could reduce some of the tensions that lead to lawsuits.

6. Do you support the existence of cyber charter schools?

This question seemed intended to get Wingerter, a former public school superintendent, to talk about his role on the board of with the Pennsylvania Leadership Charter School, which was founded in 2004 by a group of prominent conservatives including Jim Hanak, the director of American Family Ministries, and whose board includes Andrew Lehr, the solicitor for the City of Coatesville; and Shannon Royer, a former West Chester borough councilman and candidate for the state legislature. All of the candidates said they support charter schools as a means to offer an education to students who could not otherwise succeed in traditional schools, but Carty, Tiernan, Liczwek and Bevilacqua all stressed the need for accountability. Carty and Tiernan cited the cyber school run by the Chester County Intermediate Unit as one that has demonstrated measurable success each year, while Carty specifically named Wingerter's charter school as one that has not. Armandi-Pimley criticized Carty for directing her remarks at Wingerter, but Wingerter merely related how he had once opposed charter schools when he was a public school district supervisor, but "fell in love" with the idea after he attended the first graduation ceremony.

7. What is your position on freezing teacher salaries?

All of the candidates admitted that this is the most difficult question. Liczwek said she would ask teachers to do without pay increases as long as the economy is in crisis, while Armandi-Pimley said the District needs "to balance things because we need to get the message across to our teachers that we value them." Carty said that as a member of the School Board which is currently negotiating with the teachers' union, she could not comment specifically, but that she was "proud of the way that [the two sides] are talking to each other" and added "I don't know of any hostility."

At ten minutes before three, each candidate got two minutes to make closing remarks which were, without exception, prepared in advance. They covered their reasons for running and their goals if elected; all sounded reasonable and genuine. All stayed afterwards to talk with the crowd, which lingered to talk with the candidates and each other for more than a half an hour. By the time WCJIM left, there were still more than twenty audience members in the room plus League of Women Voters volunteers and four of the candidates.

WCJIM's take on the forum: The Republicans came prepared to refute the charge that they represent the extreme right-wing of their party, while the Democrats came to show that they are knowledgeable and competent. Meanwhile, the League of Women Voters wanted to encourage an intelligent public discussion of education issues. All succeeded.

This is the second move for the Ward 7 polling place in a year. For many years the polls were located at the West Chester Golf & Country Club on W. Ashbridge Street, across the street form the home the late of Charles Swope, former president of the First National Bank. Discussions occurred from time to time about moving the polls closer to the center of the ward, which extends all the way south to Chestnut Street, but since a move required the agreement of representatives of both parties, as well as an alternate site that met ADA and other requirements, nothing happened until the spring of 2008.

A year ago, the polls moved to the Elks Club on W. Washington Street in the far southwest corner of Ward 7. Demographically, this was about as far away from the County Club as they could go, since the new neighborhood was part of the West End that once housing the Borough's immigrant Italian community and is presently home to a racially mixed population that probably contains few, if any, members of the County Club. The Elks Club served for two elections in 2008, but according to the woman who answered the phone at Voter Services, "the Elks Club isn't available on that date."

The Borough's other polling places remain unchanged. They are:

Ward 1	Historical Society 225 N. High Street
Ward 2E	West Chester Community Center 501 E. Miner Street
Ward 2W	West Chester Borough Hall, Room #240 401 E. Gay Street
Ward 3	WCU Lawrence Dining Hall S. New Street
Ward 4	Borough Garage 205 Lacey Street
Ward 5	WCU Wayne Hall Back Lobby Rosedale Avenue & S. New Street
Ward 6	1st Presbyterian Church 130 W. Miner Street
Ward 7	West Chester Public Library 415 N. Church St.

This list is based on information provided by the Chester County Office of Voter Services, but it is not authorized by them. Send your questions or corrections about the information on this page to WCJIM. For information about any thing else having to do with voting, call Voter Services at 610-344-6410, visit their webpage at www.chesco .org, or visit their office at the Government Services Center, 601 Westtown Road, Suite 150, West Chester PA 19382.

In the midst of an answer about the development of the County's Justice Center and the resulting discussions on building height that resulted, Scott interjected "... back in the mid-90s, and it was, by the way, Thomas Comitta Associates that recommended 180 feet ... " Since this was radio, there was no way for listeners to gauge Comitta's reaction, but evidently someone in her campaign organization thought this was worth exploiting. By the end of the week, Comitta supporters began delivering the "Tall Tales" piece to Borough voters which labelled Scott's statement a "misleading accusation" and claimed:

BACKGROUND: Bill Scott served on Borough Council from 1999-2006; Carolyn Comitta has done the same since 2007. Comitta and Scott are both running for mayor as Democrats. Nobody is running as a Republican. That means whoever wins the battle for the Democratic nomination next week (May 19) will be unopposed in November, and thus assured of victory as the Borough's next mayor.

The candidates at the League of Women Voters' debate on May 11

Comitta's rhetoric became more heated last Monday (May 11) at a candidate's forum hosted by the League of Women Voters. As is customary, both campaigns placed their candidate's literature on the table at the entrance to the room, and the Comitta campaign included the "Tall Tales" piece inside plastic bags along with other more uplifting literature. But then, in response to a question about "smart growth and historic preservation" (which led one Republican observer to ask "do any of these people know what the mayor's job entails?"), Comitta said she wanted to "set the record straight" and accused Scott of failing to achieve anything during eight years of trying to reduce building height limits, pointed to her own success in just two years, and said that Scott failed because the "discussion wasn't open ... didn't included residents and developers."

The truth is somewhat different. While the current building height limits were approved by Borough Council on March 21, 2007, by which time Comitta was on Council and Scott was not, the process of getting there started back in the mid-1990s and required the efforts of dozens of people including Scott. A concise history of that effort was distributed to attendees at a September 27, 2006 meeting on height limits (read it here). It listed, among other things, an attempt on July 19, 1995 "to delete the height restriction ... failed by a 0-6 vote" but "an ordinance with 2 height zones - one unrestricted, one 225' ... was approved by a 4-3 vote." The timeline didn't mention it, but the tie-breaking vote was cast by the Republican mayor, Clifford DeBaptiste (read the public hearing transcript).

The September 2006 handout also mentioned that on April 17, 1996, "a motion to propose a zoning amendment as prepared by Thomas Comitta Associates establishing rules & criteria for the HO districts but also revising them to 180' & 90' respectively was approved by a 5-2 vote." That may have been the source of Scott's comment on the radio, since Scott attended the meeting. (So did Comitta, her husband, WCJIM and more than a hundred other people.) The minutes of the 1996 meeting are even more revealing:

It took until June 19 to pass the Ordinance (#14 of 1996) which set the new height limits. According to the meeting minutes, the votes remained the same, so it passed 5-2 with support from both Democrats on Council (Don Hurford and Ann Carroll) plus three of five Republicans. But the opposition to height limits remained strong and two years later, Council Republicans launched a new effort to raise the height limits even higher (read details). Although the proposal was "tabled indefinitely by a 4-3 vote," it showed that the issue would not go away unless a fundamental change in local government took place.

The revision of the Borough's Comprehensive Plan in 2000 offered an opportunity to document the desire for lower building height limits. WCJIM attended nine public meetings -- mostly meetings of the Planning Commission (composed of seven Republicans including party chair Craig Tucker and local developer Stan Zukin) -- to document the discussion for the West Chester Borough Residents Association. His notes show that Bill Scott, who was by then a member of Borough Council, also attended several of the Planning Commission meetings, but they do not indicate that Carolyn Comitta attended any of them.

The Comprehensive Plan was adopted in November 2000. It included, among many other things, a recommendation to combine the two Town Center height district into a single district with a maximum height of 105 feet. Meanwhile, the County announced its plan to build a large office building adjacent to the historic courthouse. As a result, by the time Council attempted to lower the height limit on November 28, 2001, the opposition was mobilized. From WCJIM's notes:

It took several more years to develop enough public support to reduce building height limits. The first step, persuading the County to place its Justice Center away from the center of town, is described in detail elsewhere on this website. Subsequent steps involved electing new people to Borough Council and making new appointments to the Borough's Planning Commission, which reviews all ordinance proposals. It also involved changing the thinking of people who promoted downtown development to support more restaurants and shops instead of just large business offices. By the time that Scott left Council and Comitta took her seat, the public perception of height had shifted enough to allow the 2007 effort to succeed.

With all this in mind, who really "owns" the height issue? To be sure, Carolyn Comitta's work as head of the Borough Council's Zoning, Business & Industrial Development Committee, and the contribution of her spouse and his firm to the creation of the 2007 ordinance, represents a considerable achievement. The result overcame more than a decade of resistance, but it was based on years of effort by many people, including Bill Scott.

As expected, both candidates won in their own wards, and Comitta won four of the remaining wards while Scott won the other two. The margin of victory was provided by Comitta's dominance in her own ward (southwest) which she won by 75 votes. That, coupled with small majorities in wards 2E, 3 and 7, plus a 2-vote victory in Ward 6, was enough to overcome Scott's 30-plus majorities in his own ward and Wards 2W and 4.

Considering the significance of the race, turnout was a disappointment to most observers. While both candidates did an excellent job of publicizing their campaigns, turnout across the Borough was only 15,3%, thanks largely to a 25% turnout in Ward 1 (northeast) and a 21.3% turnout in Ward 7 (northwest). All of this was slightly better than the County's overall turnout rate of 15.2%. One oddity -- Comitta's ward 5 was the only one whose turnout decreased since the last mayoral primary election in spring 2005.

The low turnout was certainly not due to the weather, which was nearly perfect all day, but it was probably due to a distortion introduced by last year's presidential election. Democratic registration totals swelled as a result of the Obama-Clinton primary and remained high into 2009. The largest increases occurred in wards located near West Chester University, and since they were not in session, many of those voters were absent from the Borough.

There were some other contested races that involved Borough voters yesterday. Two were on the Republican ballot, where former Borough Council member Ann Duke (Ward 3) challenged incumbent Alan Randzin for the nomination for County Treasurer. Duke won big across the County with 14,583 votes to Randzin's 9,519, and won in the Borough by a margin of 317 to 93. Frank McElwaine defeated incumbent Teena Peters for the nomination for Clerk of Courts by a vote of 13,414 to 9,458; in the Borough, the vote was 256 to 121.

The last contested election was fought by nine candidates for four vacancies on the West Chester Area School Board. To no one's surprise, the endorsed Republicans won on the Republican ballot and the endorsed Democrats won on the Democratic ballot, leaving unendorsed Republican Gary Bevilacqua out of contention. And as one might expect, all of the Democrats ran better in the Borough than they did in the school district.

All of this means that the drama in the fall 2009 election will be over school board seats and County row offices as Republicans try to hold on to their power while the Democrats seek to capitalize on the momentum they developed in 2008.

Since June of last year, the Phoenixville Area School District (PASD) has hired and lost six (6) superintendents. And according to PhillyNews.com, the district has also lost "an assistant superintendent, a business manager, a high school principal, an athletic director, a human-resources director, a special-education supervisor, and a technology director. Most recently, the basketball coach and an outreach supervisor were fired." The author declined to assign blame, but suggested that it stemmed from a plan for a new elementary school that had to be scrapped. Not surprisingly, tension resulted from the lawsuits that followed. [Kristin E. Holmes, "Job turnover alarms some in Phoenixville district" at PhillyNews.com (Aug. 12, 2009)]

The rate of turnover is lower in the Owen J. Roberts School District, but the level of public concern is much higher. It erupted in July after a five-person majority of the nine-member school board fired a popular superintendent, Myra Forrest, without cause or warning. Despite an outcry from the public, critical comments in local newspapers from West Chester to Pottstown, and the intervention of State Senator Andrew Dinniman, they refused to back down. Two weeks ago, they appointed former elementary school principal Barry Flicker to replace her, and yesterday (August 13) he submitted a letter of resignation.

The conflict between the OJR majority and the other members started after the 2008 election. That's when five candidates endorsed by the OJR Taxpayers Association were sworn in. Over the past two years, their composition has changed because one was arrested and convicted for sex crimes involving an OJR student, and a second one moved out of the district. The process of appointing replacements was complicated -- you can follow it in the school board's minutes for their June 23, 2008 and October 13, 2008 meetings -- but each time it led to the replacement of one OJRTA ally with another.

Over the past two years, the majority was able to fire the school district's solicitor, approve a new school year calendar despite the objections of both faculty and staff, commit what at least one expert called a Sunshine Law violation, appoint the OJRTA president to the board, and fire the superintendent without cause. Their reign appears about to end -- three of the five lost their spring primary election -- but in the meantime, they've still got nearly five months left.

The nominations generated concern among current board members, even though all but two are Republicans. Two of them publicly criticized their own party leaders for efusing to consider qualified candidates in favor of ideologues. Two of them, Sue Tiernan and Susan Carty, received the Democratic party endorsement and went on to place first and second among all nine candidates in the May 2009 primary.

We'll find out in about three months whether the traditional Republican edge in school board elections can withstand the turmoil generated by this year's party mominations. If it does, then we'll have at least two years until the next school board election to see if the school district can withstand the kind of behavior that has wreaked havoc in the Owen J. Roberts district.

Want to research this for yourself? Here are some links to get you started.

• www.vote4greatschools.com
• www.wcasdexcellence.org
• WCJIM's coverage of the May 3, 2009 primary debate

Next, Google any of the candidates' names and add phrases like "conservative" "property tax" and "tea party." Then start following the links.