The Reading Parking Authority needs a watchdog

by Steve Reinbrecht

Things are worse at the Reading Parking Authority than the Reading Eagle reports.

In the big, wide world, these events seem remarkably dull and unimportant. But cases like these are the “broken windows” in city government that need to be fixed right away so crooked people know the public cares about integrity and is watching.

Keeping an eye on fiefdoms like the parking authority and Reading Redevelopment Authority is a good job for local journalism.

The Eagle did have the amusing story about how the recently hired supervisor of operations was fired because the job doesn’t exist and he can’t speak English well enough.

He was hired by the new parking authority interim executive director, Rei Encarnacion, who is the guy Mayor Wally Scott couldn’t get City Council to hire as city managing director. And we know employees were stealing quarters.

The parking authority is important because it sets meter rates and hands out tickets to keep people from hogging spots. It also is responsible for maintaining millions of dollars worth of taxpayer-funded parking garages, where deferred maintenance will be more expensive maintenance. 

And the city depends on the parking authority to fork over big wads of cash to balance its budget every year.

I think the big story is that the authority’s finance manager, Christina Gilfert, quit about three weeks ago. She’d been there for almost 15 years and my guess is she had been crucial in running the authority.

She wanted to comment only briefly, saying she decided to leave -- she wasn't pushed out -- and is happier now. She said things had been bad since the board fired executive director Larry Lee in late 2012, after former Mayor Vaughn Spencer reorganized the board.

The subsequent executive director, Patrick Mulligan, apparently sort of drifted away from the job in November.

I called the parking authority Monday morning to ask about Gilfert, and was put on hold for more than six minutes before I could even say hello.

Steve Price, the authority’s lawyer, told me in an e-mail he was “not at liberty to discuss this personnel issue at this time.”

The Eagle could follow up to shine a light on irregular hiring practices at city agencies.

How was the job advertised? Let's see the applicant’s résumé and the job description to see if a reasonable person would consider him qualified.

Oops!

by Steve Reinbrecht

Update

The Reading Eagle never lets the facts stand in the way of a good cliché.

Another citizen journalist sent the Eagle a letter about this article about the Presbyterian Church in Reading.

The writer, former pastor Melvin Sensenig, said church leaders decided to leave Reading only because of a financial problem connected to an outside lender. 

“Neither cultural/ethnic change, declining membership nor declining congregational giving were factors in the decision to close the church,” Sensenig wrote.

He said it started 11 years ago.

“Christ Presbyterian began with no members in 2005.”

The article sort of missed what Sensenig identified as the real story:

“Our 10 years of city ministry demonstrated that with reliable financial partners and a humble understanding of how issues of race, class and poverty affect the gospel in America, a church can grow and thrive in Reading.”

   
++++++++++++

Once again, the Reading Eagle depends on a citizen journalist's letter to the editor to get the facts straight.

Pissed off by Berks lawmakers’ anti-abortion putsch? You can’t get rid of them

by Steve Reinbrecht

Berks County’s state representatives split 7-2 on party lines this week to advance a bill that would further restrict abortions in Pennsylvania.

All seven Republicans who represent part of Berks voted against a motion to hold hearings on the bill:

Barry J. Jozwiak          Jerry Knowles           Gary Day

Mark Gillen                   Jim Cox

David Maloney             Ryan E. Mackenzie

Berks Democrats Mark Rozzi and Thomas R. Caltagirone voted to delay the bill and hold a public hearing.

Republicans Cox and Day are on the Health Committee and joined the 16 members who successfully voted Monday to move the bill – introduced four days earlier, on Friday, April 1 – out of the committee.

Gov. Tom Wolf is likely to veto it if it reaches his desk.

If you oppose this Tea Partyish activity by your Republican state representative, tough luck. 

All of those who represent Berks are running unopposed in the primary and general elections.

On the abortion bill, critics wonder why there is such a hurry and warn that this fast-tracked bill reflects nationwide efforts to chip away at women’s right to abort their fetuses.

According to Pennlive, the bill, if adopted, would make some of the biggest changes to abortion policy in Pennsylvania in the last 20 years.

Opponents including Planned Parenthood said it would “mark the biggest attack on abortion rights in Pennsylvania since the current Abortion Control Act took effect in 1994,” Pennlive wrote.

The ever-squeamish Reading Eagle had a wire story about the repellent subject, which included no Berks elected officials.

For their comment, Berks voters could go to Pennlive.

"One Republican member, Rep. Jim Cox of Berks County, told about he and his wife's rejections of ‘options’ doctors presented them with after a diagnosis at 20 weeks of severe health problems with one of their five children.

“Cox said they did not abort, and his family has been made the richer for it.

“ ‘To me, it's as simple as right and wrong,’ " Cox said. " ‘We should be in a position, as a legislature of creating policy that defends life, and if there's any question as to viability that should be left in God's hands.’ "

Always with the God thing – for eons, a comforting message from the powerful to the powerless – if you do what I say, the supernatural force will come to our rescue.

The Berks Democratic Party is wasted not to have anybody to oppose Republicans – they must see this opportunity – coattails are flapping.

And who’s happy with state government as it stands? What other remedy but to vote the bums out?

Harry Deitz’s religiosity embarrasses Berks County

by Steve Reinbrecht

Why does the Reading Eagle have a man so focused on his narrow religiosity at the helm of its newsroom, leading a struggling newspaper in a community rich in diversity – including diverse faiths?

And why does it let editor Harry Deitz wave his narrowness in our faces? I don’t mind at all his deep faith, if he’d keep it private. Many of my heroes* are and were very religious.

But using his bully pulpit as a pulpit to comment on Christianity offends me. He could use his weekly spot on Page A2 to comment thoughtfully on real issues. As the leader of an award-winning newsroom for so many years, he must have a lot he could say.

He missed his calling as a preacher – he’s shown he can write a sermon every week. But when the Eagle is the face of Berks County, Deitz’s topic on Sunday presents us as closed-minded and backward, even bigoted.

“I still pray that there will be a revival in the church that reaches into the world around us,” he writes.

But in his 1,000-word screed Sunday about the importance of religion, he never mentions Islam or Judaism, and I know that some Jews and Muslims live in Berks County and might be reading his opinion piece.

It’s clear Deitz is speaking only to Protestants and that “the church” here is very constrained. He’d argue that his religion is the only correct religion.

He writes: “Where there was a church building in a neighborhood, there was sanctuary.”

But how could a newsman thinking about “church” these days not consider that for many children, churches were houses of horror where they were abused, shamed, and frightened? 

And Deitz is personally insulting every Berks County atheist and agnostic with his preaching, implying that we’re missing out on a lot of life.

Why does Deitz want to alienate and divide so much of the community? As editor, he could spend his week writing his Sunday piece about local politics or economic development or the arts scene.

Deitz doesn’t realize that in the public sphere, religion is not the answer. In fact, it’s more often the problem. That’s one way faith becomes extreme, when the powerful overtly or covertly press it on people, perhaps in editorials such as this.

Executive journalists should focus their work on the needs of the community, not insulting people by using their position to push their superstitions.

And there is always Matthew 6:5:

“And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.”

---------------------

* Jesus, my Latin teacher, my in-laws, Einstein, J.S. Bach, G.M. Hopkins, T.S. Eliot, F. O'Connor, J. Coltrane.

I’m more worried about plant invaders than Islamist invaders

by Steve Reinbrecht

There is a forest stretching through my neighborhood, all one kind of tree, an invader from East Asia that pushes out the local plants.

Bradford pear trees [Pyrus calleryana] are pretty. They brighten up our neighborhood this time of year. Also known as Callery pears, the tree is native to East Asia. Developers installed them among homes and businesses all over the United States.

But now, experts warn against planting them, mostly because they break catastrophically if not pruned when they are small. And they grow happily everywhere, spread by birds, especially starlings [another invasive] and robins, a native though opportunistic sort of bird.

On Saturday, robins, swarmed the thicket of pears in bloom south of the Wilson West Middle School. The trees are invading the area, some of it set aside as educational open space.

A huge swath of the trees winds along the Little Cacoosing Creek and then across Green Valley Road and along a power-line easement. The trees are thick and dominant.

They were full of robins Saturday.

But I wonder if other native birds and pollinators feel at home in the foreign species.

Bradford pear forms dense thickets that push out other plants, including native species, that can’t tolerate its deep shade or compete with it for water, soil and space, the National Park Service says.

Its success as an invader results from three things, the service says. It can produce copious amounts of seed that is dispersed by birds and possibly small mammals. Its seedlings grow rapidly in disturbed areas. And it lacks natural controls like insects and diseases, with the exception of fire blight.

Identifying these species when they are first spreading could reduce the eventual high cost of their control and eradication.