Community Matters

I attended the Board of Supervisors meeting last night; Ray Clarke attended the school district meeting and has graciously provided his notes for use on Community Matters.  The preliminary 2012-13 school district budget was approved with a $2.5 million budget gap — continuing to cut expenses or dipping into the fund balance?  I know from [...]

Filed under: Tredyffrin Township | 5 Comments »

Pennsylvania is facing a multi-billion dollar public pension crisis – now is the time for pension reform in Harrisburg.  The Public School Employees Retirement System (PSERS) and the State Employees Retirement System (SERS), the two systems administering retirement accounts for state and public school employees, are severely underfunded and will become insolvent without an increase [...]

Filed under: Tredyffrin Easttown School District, Warren Kampf | 13 Comments »

Periodically I have posted about the Unionville Chaddsford School District (UCFSD) and their ongoing teacher contract negotiation struggles of last year.  Deadlocked contract discussions required the PA Labor Relations Board to intervene and assist with the bargaining impasse. However, even after the release of the fact-finding report, it took months for resolution and the signing [...]

Filed under: Tredyffrin Township | 52 Comments »

I attended the T/E Finance Committee meeting last night as did Ray and Carol Clarke.  However, other than one other resident, the 8-10 T/E school district teachers in the audience outnumbered us.  Presumably, as the District begins the teacher contract negotiation process, there will be a continued presence at school district meetings from the teachers [...]

Filed under: Tredyffrin Township | 8 Comments »

 There is some chilling news for public education out of Delaware County. . .  is this a ‘sign of the times’.  With no help from the state and no fund balance, the Chester Upland School District (CUSD) has announced they have no money to pay their teachers. CUSD has a cash crisis and this past [...]

Filed under: Tredyffrin Township | 15 Comments »

As is often the case, Tredyffrin’s Board of Supervisors meeting conflicted with the TESD Board meeting last night.  I attended the BOS meeting and Ray Clarke attended the TESD meeting and graciously offered his comments from the meeting. The Board of Supervisors meeting saw the swearing-in of four supervisors —  Paul Olson and JD DiBuonaventuro [...]

Filed under: Tredyffrin Township | 20 Comments »

It was interesting to read through my Community Matters posts of 2011 and the hundreds of comments but choosing which ones to include in my ‘Year in Review’ was difficult. Certain topics, including the school district and the primary and general election, were much discussed.  For a second year in a row, the sidewalks at [...]

Filed under: Tredyffrin Township | 7 Comments »

There was a T/E Finance Committee meeting last night and although the entire school board was present, the Finance Committee is Betsy Fadem (Chair), Kevin Buraks, Jim Bruce and Rich Brake. There were several interesting discussion items for me – Ray Clarke’s notes follow mine.  There was much discussion about the school district’s decreasing real [...]

Filed under: Tredyffrin Township | 24 Comments »

A couple of weeks ago, the T/E School Board voted against an EIT voter referendum question for the April primary.  (School Board members Kevin Mahoney and Anne Crowley favored taking the EIT question to the voters). I received an interesting comment from Jim Newhard in response to T/E School District’s response the November 15 post. [...]

Filed under: Tredyffrin Township | 38 Comments »

There was some forward movement on the budget last night at the Board of Supervisors meeting. At the onset of the budget discussion, Mimi Gleason apologized to the supervisors and to the public for the errors contained in the preliminary budget that was presented at the last BOS meeting.  There were math errors in the [...]

Filed under: Tredyffrin Township | 62 Comments »