Digital video is rapidly changing criminal and civil law

Photographers know that photos can lie. Something as simple as what is left out of a camera frame can change the meaning of a photograph or video. 

Photography has been in use for almost 2 centuries. And photographs have been used as evidence or proof of something for almost as long. 

But film cameras are expensive to use. There is a wait between when you can see the result, hours or weeks after the event. Digital video is cheap and much easier to use then chemically based photography. Photographs and motion pictures are now part of everyday life. 

The ubiquity of digital cameras carried by most people and used regularly and frequently might raise an awareness that photographs and videos can sometimes be misleading.

Since the beginnings of civilization eyewitness reports have been presented as evidence in public proceedings. All lawyers know that the most unreliable evidence in every trial is an eyewitness report, but eyewitnesses continue to be the basis for many criminal and civil cases because jurors believe eyewitnesses. Jurors, lawyers and judges think, erroneously, that they can tell if a witness is lying. Moreover the eyewitness may be telling the truth as he experienced it, but what he thinks he saw, is not what happened. 

We only see what we think is there and discard the other visual information. It's basic biology, the human brain can't possibly use all the information coming through the optic nerve. We would overload and basically go nuts. So the brain only "keeps" what it thinks is useful to your survival. All of this happens in milliseconds.

Too Many Bits?
Let's look at this as a computer throughput issue.  This data is based on about 150 studies [1] of the Brain and its ability to process data from the senses:

• Your Brain is fed about 11 Million Bits Per Second of raw data to unconscious mind from all of your senses.

• Your conscious mind can not exceed 40 Bits Per Second of information!  Most of the time, the conscious mind is dealing with 16 Bits Per Second.

FROM:
Does the mind record everything that comes through our five physical senses?

Everyone or almost everyone looks for the replay in football so see if the right call was made. We are learning not to trust human eyes and to trust digital "eyes". 

In a fast moving stressful event like a shooting you need several eyewitnesses to form an accurate reconstruction of the event. 

Although a digital video or photo may reveal more information than a human can, you might still need 2 or more cameras viewing the event at different positions to get accurate information. 

That bedrock of legal devices, the eyewitness. is rapidly being crushed by digital video and photography. 

Digital video and photography technology is rapidly accelerating. Very soon UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) or drones, all of them with some kind of video camera, will be a common sight. That's if you look up and happen to realize that tiny dot in the sky is a UAV. 

The ubiquity of cameras might be the most significant development in law in the 21st Century. A close second might be the digital trail that is now a part of our lives. 

Our legal system moves slowly and deliberately. 

Present day law is an ancient paper and pen system in a digital world. If you need evidence of that just look at the cases of paper attorneys bring to trials and hearings. Somehow, our legal system needs to do some catching up. 

The New York Times
Glare of Video Is Shifting Public’s View of Police

WIRED

Sandra Bland’s Arrest Footage Shows How Fallible Video Can Be

WIRED

Should Body-Cam Footage Always Go Public? It’s Complicated

Forgiveness and the Grace of God is a bedrock principle of African American Christianity

The members of the Charlestown Church forgave Dylaan Roof for his hate filled murderous act. 

Speaking directly to Mr. Roof Nadine Collier, said:

“I forgive you,” Nadine Collier, the daughter of 70-year-old Ethel Lance, said at the hearing, her voice breaking with emotion. “You took something very precious from me. I will never talk to her again. I will never, ever hold her again. But I forgive you. And have mercy on your soul.”

This excerpt from “Your Spirits Walk Beside Us” “The Politics of Black Religion” has special significance to me: 

Hortense Powdermaker undertook an extended study of black rural life in Mississippi in the early 1930s… Powdermaker was a white woman form Baltimore and a former labor organizer. She had received her Ph,D. in anthropology 1928 from the London School of Economics… 

Trained as a cultural anthropologist but with a keen interest in psychoanalysis she began her scholarly career with a close ethnographic study of a Pacific island community which became the topic of her first book. She returned to the United States and took a position as a research associate at Yale’s Institute of Human Relations. There, she pursued her interest in applying ethnographic methods to African American communities… 

Powdermaker spent a year in 1932 and 1933 living in the small Mississippi delta town of Indianola studying both white and black communities… 

The relationships that her primary informants, black women, had with their God were personal and profound, less concerned with the hereafter, and focused mainly on finding the strength for the struggles of daily life. 

Powdermaker attended both black and white churches and saw stark theological differences between the two religious communities. While white ministers preached “dread and doom.” their black counterparts pictured “with equal vividness the joys that await the godly. “For blacks, “benevolent mercy rather than stern justice” was the chief mission of their God. “The accent has shifted from Hell to heaven, from retribution to forgiveness, from fear to hope.” The Christian duty to love one’s neighbors actually had been taken to heart by black believers. 

 Much of the work of religious training was done in Sunday schools which were often taught by black public-school teachers, a fact mentioned in Johnson’s work as well. In one Sunday school, a discussion ensued around the question of whether it was possible not to hate whites. Someone answered, to much laughter, “Yes, it is possible, but hard.” The teacher expressed pity for the hatefulness of white people and warned that they would have to answer to God for their misdeeds. “If we hate them, ‘ she says, ‘we poison ourselves. Christ loved His enemies and asked for their forgiveness; we should have Christ in us.”

Ms. Savage was in Coatesville during the Obama for President campaign of 2008. 

“Your Spirits Walk Beside Us: The Politics of Black Religion,” 

By Barbara D. Savage, professor of history and American social thought at the University of Pennsylvania 

Published in 2008 by Harvard University Press.

Book with insights on black politics, religion wins Grawemeyer Award

A book filled with fresh insights on the relationship between black politics and religion has earned its author the 2012 Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Religion. 

Barbara D. Savage, a professor of history and American social thought at the University of Pennsylvania, is receiving the prize for the ideas set forth in her book, “Your Spirits Walk Beside Us: The Politics of Black Religion,” published in 2008 by Harvard University Press. 

The book introduces important new perspectives on the study of black religion and the political role of African American churches, said award director Susan Garrett. 

“Besides explaining why it is misleading to speak of ‘the black church’ given the  enormous diversity among African American congregations, Savage challenges the popular belief that black churches have been prophetic and politically active throughout history,” Garrett said.

MORE AT:
http://grawemeyer.org/news-updates/book-with-insights-on-black-politics-religion-wins-grawemeyer-award

About the alJazeera article concerning Coatesville

ALJAZEERA AMERICA

In Pennsylvania city, the poor are paying the price for a bad water deal

Beleaguered Coatesville sold its water system to a private company in hopes of fueling a turnaround that never came

July 13, 2015 5:00AM ET

alJazeera describes the main street of Coatesville: 

“Lincoln Highway, a potholed street that cuts through the heart of Coatesville, a small city less than an hour’s drive from Philadelphia.”

The Lincoln Highway is now smooth surfaced and pothole free. That’s just one step in improving the lives of people and business owners here including my own family’s and neighbor’s lives.

Coatesville’s higher than advertised water and sewer costs are not some conspiracy to raise costs on poor people as the alJazeera article suggests. 

alJazeera got it mostly correct but some of the details are missing or inaccurate. 

No one would be complaining about high water and sewer costs if there was no 2007 world wide depression and collapse of the homebuilding industry in Chester County. 

The new sewer treatment plant was designed not only to serve Coatesville and Valley Township but the anticipated flushes from thousands of people moving into the 80 planned residential subdivisions on farmland north and west of Coatesville.

If the City of Coatesville Water and Sewer Authority was not sold we would still be experiencing water and sewer rate increases and there would be no money from the sale of the system. Basically it’s a wash for Coatesville residents. 

“Building the new plant was the only way around a worsening situation. “The old plant was barely meeting its limits and would not have met the new permit requirements for phosphorus, nitrogen and copper,” says DeBalko. “In 2006, we were adding 400 to 500 houses a year, and the old plant would not have been able to meet this growth.” 

“The plant is sized to handle growth 10 years from now based on projections from the municipalities. The plant is also optimized to minimize power use...Even more serious were the maintenance issues with the old plant. “We were always worried about the coat hangers and duct tape” breaking at the old plant, says DeBalko. Lutz adds, 

“Since the old plant was built in 1932, with an upgrade in 1962 and 1988, we found it difficult to obtain parts. We often had to have parts made because they were no longer manufactured or kept in stock by suppliers. And if we couldn't get parts, we had to do whatever it took to make it work.” 

“Municipalities served by the Coatesville plant welcomed the new facility. “The old plant was limiting new growth and development,” says DeBalko.“We have given them tours of the new plant, and after comparing it with the old plant, they were very impressed.” 

Brandywine Valley Association members have toured the plant, as have middle school students. “We bring students through and explain the impact on the environment,” says Lutz. The plant staff also invites representatives from municipalities outside the region to visit and see the technology. “We like to help other plants the way they helped us when we were touring facilities and looking at different technologies,” Lutz says.” 

FROM: 

tpo Treatment Plant Operator 

A Smooth Transition 

By Trude Witham - Top Performer - Plant February 2012  

Experienced operators in Coatesville, Pa., provide the key to putting a new treatment plant to work while simultaneously running the old one

You can find hundreds of places to write articles nearly identical to the one alJazeera wrote about Coatesville.  It’s water company business as usual. Water Companies are actually in the real estate speculation business. When housing was booming in Pennsylvania groups like Delaware Riverkeeper located land that real estate speculators intended to develop by looking at proposals for water and sewer lines in Pennsylvania. 

———————————————————— 

alJazeera missed the unique and big stories here:

"The dilapidation of Coatesville is closely intertwined with the growing cost of water. Back in 2001, city officials sold the rights to the system to PAWC, in the hopes that the revenue from the sale could spark an urban renaissance. But that turnaround never came. Now thousands of low-income people must pay exorbitant prices to access a basic resource." 

The only part of the above paragraph that is true is that low income people are paying high prices for water. The rest is poor journalism. 

The sale of the water company had no link to revitalizing Coatesville. The reasons the revitalization failed is worthy of a national level news story:

When a new progressive leadership came into Coatesville City Council beginning in 2001, one of them was Carmen Green mentioned in the alJazzera article. They hired Paul Janssen as the new Coatesville City Manager. The first thing Paul Janssen did was to more than double the size of the Coatesville PD and hire Dominic Bellizzie, a former Philadelphia PD narcotics division leader. 

The Chester County drug business leadership immediately set about removing Paul Janssen. 

I believe the Saha farm property rights thing was the vehicle Chester County drug dealers latched onto for their comeback. 

Beginning in the summer of 2005 I wrote emails to about 80 people that outlined what I believed the "Bloc of Four" council would do if elected. By September of 2005 I was sure that the new council would fire Chief Bellizzie and install suspected Chester County drug leader Richard Legree into a leadership position in the Coatesville PD. 

Revitalization is bad for the drug business. Taking down the planned revitalization of Coatesville was also in the mix.  No one but me and one other person from Coatesville believed that could happen. I was laughed at. 

In January of 2006 the “Bloc of Four” took office. 

It happened almost exactly as I wrote months before. A candidate for Coatesville Police Chief Lt. Joel Fitzgerald, from the Philly PD revealed in a Philadelphia Inquirer article that City Manager Harry Walker brought Richard Legree to his interview and demanded that Richard be made a Lieutenant in the Coatesville PD. 

Law enforcement officials and journalists around the country were suddenly very interested in what I had to say. 

Coatesville's golf course battle was between the city and John Birch Society anti-"Smart Growth" anti-Agenda 21” coalition led by JBS Chapter Leader & 2 times 6th District Congressional Candidate Patrick Henry Sellers. I believe it was financed by local JBS billionaires.  Sellers also subscribes to the "American Renaissance" racist eugenics monthly. I beleive he is at the very least a White Nationalist with connections to militia groups through Larry Pratt. Pratt assisted Pat in his first run for Congress. 

Sellers organized the political campaigns of the mostly black "Block of Four" City Council. Those "Bloc of Four" council members allegedly ran for council in an effort to stop Coatesville from acquiring land for the golf course that was to be both recreational and attached to the Coatesville Marriott Courtyard Hotel. 

I believe the real and unstated reason for the "Block of Four" council was to eliminate Coatesville Police Chief Bellizzie, eliminate the narcotics division, fire Lt. Gordon, lay off 1/2 of the PD and install Richard Legree to make the drug business “good again”. I believe the "Bloc of Four" candidates were the victims of a con.

“I need Matt Gordon back” DA Joe Carroll 

Joe was responding to Coatesville City Councilperson Kurt Schenk. Joe Carroll is a very easy going person. Joe’s hands were shaking as he said this. I have never before or since seen Chester County Joe Carroll as angry as he was that evening.

https://app.box.com/s/7nfrdxcven5m3ci8nv8d 

In 2006 not only was the drug business made good again. Car trunks filled with firearms opened on 8th Avenue. Guns were mostly given to young men by,  I believe, Crips and Bloods gangs.  Gunshots were heard and bullets dug from walls on a daily basis in Coatesville. People stayed away from windows. Traffic on Lincoln Highway was sometimes blocked by drug deals in the street. Our “fake police chief” “Chief” Matthews installed by City Manager Harry Walker assured us it was just kids and not national street gangs writing graffiti all over Coatesville. On high crime weekends Coatesville had one officer on duty on 12 hour shifts due to PD cutbacks. Coatesville Vietnam Veterans woke up to the sound of an AK-47. 

Local arsonists one of them a Coatesville Assistant Chief lit hundreds of fires and brought the ATF and State Police in. The drug business suffered and one dealer that I know had to hire more lookouts because of undercover ATF and State Police. He was even forced to get a job. 

Stormfront lit up with comments about Coatesville. Pat Sellers went door to door to choose what became the Bloc of Four council members. I believe his racist self was amused by the fires. 

The fires and the national attention they brought quickly brought the drug business in Coatesville down a few notches. 

In Coatesville elected officials aren't Democrat and Republican, they are pro-drug dealer or anti-drug dealer. 

Coatesville’s current City Council President Linda Lavender Norris was 1/2 of PA State Rep. Tim Hennessy’s office staff in Coatesville. The other staff member is convicted crack cocaine manufacturer Lisa Johnson. 

Right now I think what keeps Coatesville’s economy humming along is still mostly the drug business. I think the local economy would collapse if the drug business disappeared. I think there are many people in Chester County who want to keep the drug business as it is. 

Coatesville gets the bodies from the drug business and West Chester gets the money from the drug business.  

The courtroom in this scene from “The Wire” could be a West Chester courtroom and the lawyer character Maurice Levy could be a West Chester attorney:

Maurice 'Maury' Levy: 

You are amoral, are you not? You are feeding off the violence and the despair of the drug trade. You are stealing from those who themselves are stealing the lifeblood from our city. You are a parasite who leeches off...  

Omar: Just like you, man.  

Maurice 'Maury' Levy: ...the culture of drugs. Excuse me? What?  

Omar: I got the shotgun, you got the briefcase. It's all in the game though, right? 

The Wire - Omar Testifies Against Bird

Some people condone young black men selling drugs, saying "How else can you get ahead?" Selling drugs to put yourself through school and move up the ladder is not a good career path for young black men. A few make it. Many people that try it end up in prison or worse. 

The career choice for the young people of Coatesville does not need to be a choice of low income service jobs or high income and high risk illegal drug jobs.

The potential of a Coatesville that is the business and transportation powerhouse of Chester County will benefit all income classes and races in and near Coatesville. 

There is now a coalition of people in and outside of Coatesville and even in County Government, who see Coatesville as the primary legal business, urban residential and transportation center in Chester County. 

We have 2 major rail lines, interstate links and a soon to be international business jet direct flight capable airport. I believe 60 business aircraft are now hangared at Coatesville's G.O. Carlson Airport. Hundreds of people fly over the City of Coatesville.  I wonder how many business people daydream about Coatesville's potential. 

Coatesville is a natural place as the center of commerce of Chester County. 

I do believe that the train station will be built with Senator Dinniman behind it. That the DePetris buildings will go up and other parts of Coatesville's downtown will be invigorated. 

I think all that will happen in spite of what I believe is a dysfunctional city council and a city government that has lingering pieces of corruption built into it. 

Undertaking construction in the City of Coatesville without factoring in how organized crime and corrupt public officials in Chester County will effect that construction and could hinder a construction project. 

I believe the scales have tipped.

Powerful people outside of Coatesville now want Coatesville to become the business and transportation hub of Chester a County.  

The climate here has changed. Corrupt public officials involved in the drug business and Section 8 landlords and non-profits that feed on poor and disenfranchised people no longer call the shots concerning Coatesville.  

The lucrative drug business here has been cracked open and is bleeding out. It can't die quickly enough for me. 

We might even have a new Magistrate Judge coming in January. 

———————————————

Coatesville with all its problems is a comfortable place to live and raise a family. 

When you list Coatesville’s problems you need to consider alternative places to live and their problems. For instance drug addiction and prostitution problems are about the same in Coatesville and in the affluent outer suburbs. 

A major marijuana growing business operated in a house and barn that was only 150 feet from the subdivision of $375,000 and up homes we lived in near Schwenksville, PA. It might still be operating except for a very rare downdraft weather phenomenon that caused smoke from burning marihuana chaff to spread across the town of Schwenksville, PA. 

Local school children in the Perkiomen Valley School District told us that some teenagers set up their family homes as drug and sex for sale houses when parents were away. 

Heroin and prescription narcotic drug use might be a bigger threat to young men's and young women's lives in white affluent suburbs than in places like Coatesville.

———————————————

A few years ago a man set up a blog that I could write to called Coatesville Dems. It's mostly a blog about public corruption in Chester County. I'll never run out of things to write about concerning public corruption in Chester County but I would prefer to have have a reason to write less about public/private corruption and to write more about the success of public/private community achievements in Coatesville. 

Some of the Coatesville Dems blog is opinion like this post. But most of Coatesville Dems Blog is a resource of information:

Audio recordings court documents, videos and news articles about Coatesville, drug crime, street gangs morphing to international gangs, white supremacist and militia groups, 1 percent motorcycle clubs, public corruption, the rapidly changing local organized crime scene, transportation and municipal government in Pennsylvania; especially that which is related to Chester County and the City of Coatesville. 

The Coatesville Dems Blog is mostly an information blog. It was used as the primary source for at least one academic thesis. 

You can read more about this and listen to recorded meetings at the Coatesville Dems blog. 

The DePetris mixed use residential and commercial buildings in Coatesville PA will go up.

Progress:

Demolition on Fleetwood Street for the new Coatesville Train Station. (07/09/2015)

1st Avenue and Lincoln Highway is next (07/09/2015)

Plans coming together for big Coatesville project

Jan 23, 2015, 12:15pm EST Updated Jan 23, 2015, 12:42pm EST

Natalie Kostelni

Philadelphia Business Journal

Sign on Lipkin Building, Coatesville, PA (07/12/2015)

The Coatesville City Council may be dysfunctional. The robberies here may still make it dangerous for business owners, shoppers and residents. 

City Council could hire a city manager that recommends laying off police again and "business" would be "good again in C'ville". All in the game, yo. 

That could happen but as far as Coatesville's redevelopment, this time it won't matter. 

Coatesville's redevelopment has begun. This time it will not grind to a stop. 

What is different this time is Senator Dinniman pushing hard for the new train station. A big part of that new station is downtown development. Downtown meaning between 3rd Avenue and 1st Avenue on Lincoln Highway. 

What's different this time is the county is not putting $6 M into a Section 8 remodeling project at Roymar Hall at 10th & Lincoln Highway to benefit political cronies. The Chester County government is 100% on board with Coatesville's downtown development and new train station. 

What is different this time is the DePetris development project has no one actively trying to stop it. 

Maybe,  just maybe, someone like Bart Blatstein of Tower Investments would again take an interest in building an office & condo tower on the "Flats" and bring in an upscale restaurant.  

What's different is, Richard Legree is gone and I believe most of the effective links between organized crime and public officials went with him. So I think our Police Department is relatively safe. 
SEE:

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 19, 2009

Lieutenant Gordon and "Lieutenant Legree"

Ernie Campos followed Richard Legree. RIP.

What's different is State Representative Tim Hennessey and his drug dealer office manager Lisa Johnson are gone from Coatesville. 

What's different is Coatesville is part of a legislative district that doesn't extend into Cracker country near the Berks County border. 

What's different is our new State Representative Harry Lewis is a well known and well liked teacher from Coatesville who does not have a crack cocaine dealer working in his office. 

What's different is, Coatesville's White Nationalist, John Birch Society Chapter Leader, Pat Sellers moved to Texas and can no longer bring John Birch Society money and influence together to stop "Smart Growth" redevelopment. 

Concerning the Coatesville Marriott Courtyard Hotel in Coatesville, Don Pulver said, “People were trying to stop us every day. You had to fight to do the work.” 

SEE:

TUESDAY, MARCH 1, 2011

The revitalization of the City of Coatesville is beginning. There was a concerted effort to kill it before it was born.

AND:

Mr. Pulver, “Everything’s touch and go today. Everybody’s trying to stop us every inch of the way. But we refuse to be stopped.”

From:

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 2010

Mr. Pulver, “It has to happen, now or never.”

And this, about the empty lot at 3rd. Avenue and Lincoln Highway where the Chetty Builders Pennock Place building was supposed to be built: 

SUNDAY, JANUARY 17, 2010

Was Ernie Campos at Chetty Builders Headquarters in December of 2005?

 It's been a long time coming:

Chester County won't be able to plop more Section 8 housing into Coatesville like $6M Roymar Hall

The New York Times 

The End of Federally Financed Ghettos 

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD JULY 11, 2015 

"The Supreme Court issued an important ruling last month when it reminded state and local governments that the Fair Housing Act of 1968 bars them from spending federal housing money in a manner that perpetuates racial segregation. 

Last week, the Obama administration took an even more important step — one that has already changed the decades-long discussion about how to combat residential segregation. It rewrote the rules under the provision of the act that requires state and local governments to “affirmatively further” housing goals by making real efforts to cope with the cumulative results of the discrimination that confined black Americans to ghettos in the first place. 

For the new rules to be effective, federal officials need to make clear that local governments can lose federal housing aid if they persist in dumping subsidized housing into depressed, racially isolated communities instead of putting more of it in integrated areas that offer better schools and job opportunities. 

The fact that it has taken nearly 50 years since the law’s passage for these common-sense changes to materialize is all the more distressing, given that federally sanctioned housing discrimination has played a central role in racial ghettoization. 

The Fair Housing Act was intended to break down historic patterns of segregation. But it was undercut from the start by federal officials, including presidents who believed that segregation was the natural order of things. With the threat of sanctions almost nonexistent, many state and local governments confined subsidized housing to poor minority neighborhoods and found it quite easy to hide these wrongful practices behind ineffective, vaguely worded rules and loose oversight…. 

The rule is a warning for governments and nonprofit housing developers that have an interest in building as much subsidized housing as quickly as possible and that have been roundly criticized for building too much of it in depressed areas and speciously calling the process “revitalization.” Builders will no longer be able to take the path of least resistance, avoiding better neighborhoods out of fear of not-in-my-backyard crusaders." 

More At: 

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/12/opinion/the-end-of-federally-financed-ghettos.html

SATURDAY, JULY 26, 2014

SECTION 8 HOUSING, REAGAN, COATESVILLE AND DRUG DEALERS

“In his first year in office, Reagan cut the budget for public housing and Section 8 rent subsidies in half.”

The allowance for Section 8 housing is a fixed amount and is the same anywhere in Pennsylvania. 

Coatesville has the lowest real estate values in Chester County and the lowest cost rental housing.  So most Section 8 housing is here. 

Section 8 housing was designed to allow low-income people to be integrated into middle class areas. 

Reagan saw to it that low-income people were segregated into ghettos thus making it much easier for organized crime to prey on poor people to run their narcotics industry.  

In Pennsylvania a qualified family can get a subsidy of $1234.00 for a 3-bedroom apartment. If Reagan didn't cut that in half it would be $2,468 and a low-income family could live in almost any area of Chester County.    

In Chester County I believe there are links between Section 8 housing (HUD), landlords, (some of those landlords non-profit organizations) and the organized crime drug business in Chester County.

Chester County Commissioners, State Rep. Hennessey and HUD proudly spent $6 million refurbishing Roymar Hall, a Section 8 apartment building in Coatesville.

I believe there is an effort to keep real estate values in Coatesville low, to concentrate low income people, especially black low income people in the City of Coatesville and sustain the illegal drug industry in Chester County, PA. 

Roymar Hall reopens in Coatesville (video)

SEE:

TUESDAY, APRIL 27, 2010

SIX MILLION DOLLARS WORTH OF LOW INCOME HOUSING FOR COATESVILLE

Mimi Wealer of the CYWA gave a presentation about Roymar Hall.

Chester County is mighty proud of what they’re doing for us here in Coatesville.

Mimi Wealer of the CYWA got Six million dollars to put into rehabilitating a property that’s worth Six hundred thousand dollars.

All of this money was spent without any input from the City of Coatesville City Council or any of its residents. In fact the CYWA and County said that it was rehabbing an apartment building to be rented at market rates.

How nice of the County and the CYWA to surprise all of us in Coatesville and concentrate most of the Counties low income Section 8 housing in here.  

They were surprised and shocked to find that we in Coatesville had some concerns that the CYWA was putting more Section 8 poor County residents into Coatesville, instead of say; Tredyffrin Township.

It is after all, Six Million Dollars worth of Section 8 housing and we know that the lower classes don’t like to mix with the upper classes in say, Tredyffrin Township. The lower classes might even think that’s discrimination if they were mixed in with the upper crust.  And we all know that the County would not discriminate by income or race.

There are a variety of income levels. There are twenty four apartment units. One bedroom is five hundred fifty nine dollars.  The top level 3 bedroom apartment is capped at eight hundred dollars rent.  All of it section 8 housing. It’s County, State and a lot of Federal Stimulus Money.

It’s all government money for the taking. Right?

I am sure that all of the Six Million Dollars is in good hands.

Listen the CYWA's presentation here: