Every so often a chunk of rock falls from one of the AMTRAK bridges in Coatesville onto the road below.

There are probably earlier references to AMTRAK’s falling bridges but I remember that City Councilperson Marty Eggleston commented on the chunks of stone falling from the bridges at several Coatesville City Council meetings. The quote below is from the minutes of the Coatesville City Council meeting of Monday November 13, 2007:

“Mr. Eggleston asked if the $1.3 million dollar grant money for the train station includes the bridge. Mr. Walker replied no. He stated he has met with Amtrak regarding the bridge. Mr. Eggleston voiced his concern on more traffic in the bridge. The bridge is falling apart and pieces are landing on the road below. Mr. Walker announced that Amtrak and Penndot do not have the money to maintain. He stated he replied to them that it is unacceptable. He stated the need for political power to put it in their budget to help get the dilapidated bridges fixed. Mr. Eggleston stated it is a safety issue because it is the gateway to the downtown area. It needs to be a priority. Mr. Walker explained that people need to continue to contact the state representatives.”

 Minutes Coatesville City Council Meeting Monday, November 13, 2007

So far no one has been injured by the falling rock.

My neighbor and hard working Coatesville resident Brian Pietropaolo thoughtfully drew up a letter to send to Mr. Dennis Fencil Division Engineer, Mid-Atlantic Division informing him “of the visual and structural condition of several bridges located in the City of Coatesville, PA.”

It’s here:

AMTRAK Generic.docx

For more information See Matt Baker’s blog post about the letter:

Letters to Amtrak – Need your help!

 I would also suggest sending a copies of the letter to:

Senator Robert P. Casey, Jr.

2000 Market Street, Suite 1870

Philadelphia, PA 19103

Senator Arlen Specter

600 Arch Street

Suite 9400

Philadelphia, PA 19106

Congressman Jim Gerlach

111 East Uwchlan Avenue 
Exton, PA 19341

I would also suggest sending an email copy of the letter to the Southeastern Pennsylvania First Suburbs Project

SEPA First Suburbs Project 
P.O. Box 1246 
Lansdowne, PA 19050 
Email: firstsuburbsproject@gmai.com
Phone: 267-977-9654

HUD Inquisitors and First Suburbs

There are some civic minded real estate developers that want to do something to assist the very large and fast growing block of people who need affordable housing. After years of planning and subdivision approvals those developers are doomed to appear before the inquisitors at their local HUD office. By this time they may realize their business model of actually trying to help people may be a financial disaster for them and the developer himself may soon be in need of low income housing but it’s too late to turn back.


I heard about the dreaded HUD inquisitor woman in Philly who wants all housing proposals printed out completely including the sections and subsections referred to. The result is an entire day spent at Kinko’s and suitcases full of paper. And after a long wait the HUD inquisitor has revisions and another long wait and reams of paper at Kinko’s, more revisions and so on. While waiting for the results of the HUD inquisition, grants and financing run out and the developer’s plans go the way of the Titanic. The home ownership dreams of middle income people who would own those planned homes go down with that ship.


I can imagine HUD inquisitor woman’s office. A maze of paper columns piled five foot high with a desk lost somewhere in the maze. That’s the impression that I have of HUD in Philly.


If that developer had an organization like First Suburbs to go to bat for him and get the Deputy Secretary of HUD in DC to nudge the inquisitor in Philly his development might not have sunk.


Helping communities deal with the HUD inquisitor by going directly to HUD in D.C. is one thing that First Suburbs can do for small communities like Coatesville.


At the City of Coatesville’s City Council Meeting last night there was an interesting discussion of how the Southeastern Pennsylvania First Suburbs Project could help the City of Coatesville.


Coatesville City Manager Ted Reed, “Mr. Hudson, as a matter of fact has attended a meeting two weeks ago of First Suburbs with the HUD regional deputy director in Philadelphia to present concerns to her. And so we have been participating as we can because they have been inviting us to come. They feel that Coatesville is very critical to their particular areas of concern.”


City Council President Ed Simpson, “Do you feel that it is a good committee?”


Coatesville City Manager Ted Reed,


“There are actually three areas; one is transportation, one is schools and the third is actually HUD and the low income housing that seems to be concentrated in just a few municipalities as compared to the rest of communities. Coatesville for example has approximately, so I am told, 51% of Section 8 housing, of all Section 8 housing in Chester County. So 51% of Section 8 housing in 1.6 square miles of the County and that’s Coatesville….
First Suburbs is attempting to try to get a fair share of low income housing spread throughout the County rather than concentrating it in one or two small areas.


Mr. Hudson went to, as I said, to the HUD office to discuss with them those concerns about spreading out this subsidized housing. Would you like to speak to that?”


Assistant City Manager Kirby Hudson,


“One of the points, actually there are two points that really hit close, not only to Coatesville but also to the municipalities that Mr. Reed just spoke of, Norristown, Pottstown. Two points, one being that the whole idea of Section 8 was never to overburden any one particular area. The voucher system was designed for people so that they have a certain amount of money so that they can go pretty much anywhere and assimilate into the surrounding area.


My concern has always been that the enforcement side from the Housing Authority is not there and hasn’t been there for quite some time. Sure it’s there to open up the contract and for the beginning recent part of. At one time years ago when I used to work for the City of Chester Housing Authority you had regular annual visits and a lot of those things have gone by the wayside in HUD because of funding as well as going to third party organizations. So there’s some slippage there.


The second part that’s a problem specifically in this area of Chester County is that the voucher does not afford someone to stay in the County. So realistically someone who has gotten their roots here and their family is there, they can’t afford to stay anywhere near this area even if some of these municipalities opened up their areas and allowed a wider range of people to move in.


So First Suburbs Project is moving to help spread that out, to try to force HUD to put more money into the voucher system and then to stop also overloading places like Coatesville with all the Section 8 vouchers simply because this is the only place that’s affordable.


Coatesville City Councilperson Jameel Brazzle, “Does it work?”


Mr. Hudson, “Does what work?”


Mr. Brazzle, “This program?”


Mr., Hudson, “This program is just starting.


Mr. Reed, “I think it’s about two years old, but another interesting that we found out is, you actually you actually had contact with Washington’s HUD Office.”


Mr. Hudson, “Yes. Because of this organization it was the deputy Secretary of all of HUD that made a call to this office, the regional office in Philadelphia and demanded that they see all of us.


I can tell you this, not as bad as AMTRAK but I will say that HUD at this level, it’s very difficult to get a call to some of these folks. And they have no choice but to listen to the Feds in 


D.C. So they actually see that actually see that there are some issues.
If it weren’t for this organization, the power of this organization, we’d still be sitting with cement shoes in the mud.”


Mr. Reed, “This organization is gaining power as well as gaining respect…When the Deputy Secretary of HUD out of Washington calls the regional office and says ‘meet with these people’ somebody’s hearing something in Washington.”

A recording of the First Suburbs discussion at last night's Coatesville City Council meeting is here:

First Suburbs City council.mp3

THERE IS MORE CONCERNING FIRST SUBURBS ON THIS BLOG AT:

HUD PUBLIC HOUSING AND FIRST SUBURBS DISCUSSION AT THE COATESVILLE CITY COUNCIL MEETING WEDNESDAY, APRIL 28, 2010, At this meeting on April 28th listen to City Council President Ed Simpson:

“It seems like everything is funneled toward certain geographic areas. And what that does is goes against, I think, everything that HUD stands for which is; to try and eliminate segregation.  But right now what you are doing by funneling into certain areas. You’re basically segregating… I think we need to jump on this.”

The hybrid and all electric propulsion future of flying

Everyone except for conservative Republicans and Democrats knows we are quickly running out of fossil energy. And the price is going up for what is left.

In the aircraft industry many technological solutions are emerging most of them involving electric motors. 

Boeing has the SUGAR Volt program with two aircraft:

Subsonic Ultra Green Aircraft Research (SUGAR) Volt concept

Icon II for supersonic flight over land with low noise

See, Envisioning Tomorrow’s Aircraft  

In lighter than air aircraft hybrid airship weapons systems there is the: 

Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle (LEMV) by Northrop Grumman 

In the corporate category lighter than air hybrid aircraft there is corporate air yacht Aeroscraft

In sport flying and general aviation electric powered aircraft we have the Yuneec E430 due to go into production next year.

And Sikorsky has the Sikorsky Firefly Electric Helicopter demonstrator maybe it will be built in Chester County PA

See Riverseeker blog concerning Gas pipelines and drilling in Pennsylvania

Pipelines and Tax Dollars

Global Economic Distress and Coatesville’s revitalization-Don Pulver

At the meeting sponsored by the Western Chester County Chamber of Commerce, the Brandywine Health Foundation and the Chester County Chamber of Business & Industry on July 21, 2010 (The goal is to make a spark a spark that continues) Mr. Pulver expressed his concern about the economy in this excerpt transcribed from his talk:


“The other really key thing in terms of areas like this is what I call global economic distress…The good part about that is that it qualifies us for public funding. And I’ll tell you that without public funding this would be no-where. And in fact, the funding that we have now for the hotel alone twenty three million dollars only nine million of it is private money and the balance is in essence public grants and low interest subordinate loans. And it can barely make it at that…


And then the other thing that’s important to revitalization, which is not true now, is to have the national situation be in a positive way, a growth economy. We don’t have growth; we have no confidence, so that makes it harder. When we started here we did, so that’s why we started.


Anyway, the goal of all this, from our point of view is to create a spark. A spark, in other words a reason to redevelop the area. And not only to spark it but to make it so it continues. And that’s where the hotel and the office come in. If you get those two in there it’s much better than either one by itself. It’s one and one equals three… The goal, it’s not our goal, it’s good for the area, is that we attract imitators and competitors and that gets the ball rolling… When we came here we tried to tie up as much land as we could… but we didn’t get much, but here we are. “


Mr. Pulver’s main talk is here, his comments on the economy begin at 06:50:

https://app.box.com/shared/pme11y900h

One out of six Americans are unemployed. 

Our infrastructure, highways, railroads, ports, power generation and power transmission lines are literally crumbling and falling apart. Our communications networks are at least a decade behind other developed countries. We are thinking about solar, wind and other non-carbon energy generation while China and Europe have been installing non-carbon energy generation for more than a decade and construction is growing rapidly. Our Federal Government could take the lead and jump start those industries and get people back to work and get the economy moving again and keep more bridges from falling down.  

Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman’s Op Ed column in today’s New York Times is “Defining Prosperity Down”. Mr. Krugman is concerned that our government may conclude that unemployment is structural and permanent in today’s economy.  

We can do something about it in Pennsylvania.  All that it takes here is a large voter turnout and Democrats will win. If there is the usual low turnout the Teabaggers and the wealthy one percent could be the big winners here. 

So if you want the economy of the Clinton day’s back, come out and vote.

Did you ever hear of a get out of Codes violations free card?

My wife and I lived in downtown Philadelphia in late 1960 and 1970. The police, fire inspector and pluming inspector would allegedly go to each landlord and ask for a $100.00 donation for each building the landlord owned, $300.00 for each building.

I learned this from my landlord, Olaf Mattson, Olaf was a Swedish immigrant who retired from Boeing. He worked with Igor Sikorsky on the first helicopter. 

Mr. Mattson had 2 buildings on Green St. between 22^nd and 23^rd. Mr. Mattson said that because he didn’t pay the yearly donation to the police, fire department and plumbing inspector all of our apartments were inspected and up to code. I guess the plumbing inspector and fire inspector only actually went to places that didn’t pay up.

It was different with the Philly Police.

In those days the City of Philadelphia actually had a street sweeper on Green St. The street is one way. There was no parking on the South side on Tuesday between 7am and 4pm and no parking on Thursday between 7am and 4pm. The street sweeper actually got there around 2 in the afternoon.

The Philadelphia Police Cars have numbers on the roof. Car 914 would arrive on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 6:40am. I watched as two Philly PD officers would get out the car and walk up and down the block writing tickets on all cars that would, in just a few minutes, be parked illegally. Mr. Mattson only owned 2 buildings on the block and there were other landlords but, I guess that didn’t matter.

Betsy and I walked everywhere or sometimes took a bus. The only time the car was used was for food shopping or a suburban trip. Most of the time we started the car to drive from one side of the street to the other on Monday and Wednesday. Sometimes I would look out the window and see that we forgot to move our car the day before and then rush down the steps. At exactly 7am the two officers would get out of car 914 and put the pre-filled out tickets on the cars. I’ll let you decide if it was because as he told us, Mr. Mattson wouldn’t donate $100 to the PD when the PD Superintendent allegedly came by.

I guess you can find some landlords anywhere who don’t want to be bothered with fixing stuff. In the Philly that I knew 40 years ago the codes officials went to the landlords and allegedly collected their “donations” up front. I guess they just never showed up to inspect buildings. I imagined inspectors as fat guys with their feet on the desk smoking cigars in City Hall.  

I think it works differently here in Chester County. We had landlords in Philly. In Chester County they are called “investors”. The people that don’t want to fix stuff like to be called “investors” also, but most people would probably call them slumlords. 

The codes inspectors here actually do their work and issue tickets for codes violations. But as you can see by going through court documents some landlords are issued a ticket for the very same violation over and over year after year. Sometimes hundreds of code violations issued to the same “investor”. The results are usually not guilty or dismissed. Being a codes officer in Chester County must be a frustrating occupation.  .

That is why I am asking, is there a “Get out of Codes Violations Free” card? Can you get it from your local Republican Committee person? Do judges give them out in person?

It’s just interesting that the same “investors” have identical codes violations for the same properties repeatedly, tickets are issued, there is a not guilty or dismissed note on the court documents and the places appear to never get fixed.

Anthony Weiner for President

He gives the Republican Congressional snakes their due:

My apologies to the snakes, we should not be comparing them to the low life Republican Congressmen or Senators.