Chester CountyPRESS
www.chestercounty.com
Covering Avon Grove, Chadds Ford, Kennett Square, Oxford, & Unionville Areas
Volume 151, No. 25
INSIDE
60 Cents
Wednesday, June 21, 2017
U-CF approves budget Two thumbs up for upcoming school year By John Chambless Staff Writer
The Unionville-Chadds Ford School Board put their final stamp of approval on a budget for the upcoming school year at their meeting on June 19. Kennett Square Life The budget, passed by a magazine vote of 7-1, calls for revenues of $84,918,161 and expenditures of $84,932,572. The real estate tax will be 28.41 mills per dollar (or $2.841 per $100 of assessment) on the assessed value of taxable real property in Chester County, and 23.63 mills per dollar (or $2.363 per $100 of assessment) on property in Delaware County. In remarks before the New immunization requirements for local vote, board member Gregg
Lindner commented, “I’ve said a couple of times that I have full agreement with what the learning plan is for the year, but the concern I had is the reserves, which have shrunk quite a bit. I’ve been on the board for six years. I’ve voted for four budgets to make sure that we added to the reserves. In order to fund the next five years, it’s going to require tax rates that may be somewhat modest, but they will be beyond what we voted in favor of for much of the past decade. The chances of this board voting in favor of that are nonexistent. So my concern is that over the next couple of years, either we’re going to have to reduce the plans that we have for building
maintenance, for instance, or we’re going to have to cut things, and we’ve been through that back in the 2009 time frame. “I made a proposal to add $100,000 to the tax rate, which would have taken the rate up to about 2.35 percent, which would still be under the Act 1 Index,” Lindner added. “I’m going to vote ‘no’ on the 2.16 percent budget. But I want everyone to understand that I agree with the spending plan.” Board member Jeff Hellrung, who presided over the meeting in the absence of board president Victor Dupuis, said, “The board, every year, is trying to fund the program, both Continued on Page 2A
Photo by Richard L. Gaw
Carli Hunter poses just moments before she and her classmates received their diplomas as part of Avon Grove High School’s 89th annual commencement exercises, held June 13 at the Bob Carpenter Center in Newark. For a complete story and additional photos, see Page 4A.
students...8A
Round two of cell tower hearing delayed for another month By Richard L. Gaw Staff Writer The long-awaited follow-up conditional use hearing that held the fate of a proposed construction of a 130-foot-high Restoring the Red Rose wireless cellular comInn...1B munications tower in Landenberg in its clutches
got a reprieve Monday night, as the attorney for the applicant asked for and received a continuance to an issue that has gathered a lot of opinions – and emotions – since it was first announced. Township solicitor Vince Pompo told the audience gathered at the
New Garden Township’s June 19 meeting that the township had received a letter from Christopher H. Schubert of the firm of Riley, Riper, Hollin & Colagreco, requesting that the hearing be delayed until the board’s July 17 meeting, in order to communicate with other
“parties in the matter, in order to identify alternative sites on the property for the construction of the cell tower, as well as utilizing a technology that could camouflage the cell tower,” Pompo said. If built, the proposed tower would be operated by Eco-Site, Inc.,
a Durham, N.C.-based supplier of wireless and infrastructure solutions, for the purpose of providing more cell phone coverage in the area. It would be constructed on the site of the former Little Stenning Farm, located at 1511 Yeatmans Station Continued on Page 3A
The phorid fly in Chester County
Experts, action committee meet to discuss solutions By Richard L. Gaw Staff Writer
Major Andrew Wyeth retrospective opens at the Brandywine...2B
INDEX Opinion........................7A Calendar of Events......2B Obituaries..................3B
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© 2007 The Chester County Press
For the third time, the phorid fly, the pesky nuisance that has infiltrated a significant portion of the Harrogate North community in Landenberg and other parts of southern Chester County, went on trial last Thursday afternoon, as State Sen. Andrew Dinniman and Rep. Eric Roe met with local residents and experts on phorid fly research to get an update on the fly’s continued presence, and scientific research related to its possible eradication. Six representatives from the 247-member Phorid Fly Action Committee (PFAC),
gathered around a table at the New Garden Township Building on June 15, sideby-side with representatives from the Chester County Department of Agriculture, the county’s health department and conservation district. The meeting also invited Eric Toedter of Kaolin Mushroom Farms, who has been studying the phorid fly migration and breeding patterns as part of his role with the American Mushroom Institute Integrated Pest Management Group, and Dr. Nina Jenkins, a senior research associate in Photo by Richard L. Gaw Entomology at Penn State. State Sen. Andy Dinniman hosted his third meeting with members of the Phorid Fly Dinniman, who serves on Action Committee on June 15, which invited experts to discuss potential solutions Continued on Page 3A
to the continued infiltration of the phorid fly into residential communities.
Working on a dream Dylan Coyle has had some extraordinary sports broadcasting experiences, even though he graduated from Oxford Area High School only three weeks ago
Property tax bills are on the way By Uncle Irvin
Courtesy photo
Dylan in the booth with Flyers broadcasters Jim Jackson and Bill Clement.
By Steven Hoffman Staff Writer Dylan Coyle was working toward his dream of becoming a sports broadcaster long before he walked across the stage and accepted his diploma from Oxford Area High School on June 2. According to his father,
Bill, when Dylan was growing up they would watch a lot of sports together and the boy was always paying careful attention to the play-by-play announcers and color analysts. He listened to their descriptions and internalized how they spoke to each other and how they communicated to an
audience. Instead of trying to copy Chase Utley’s batting stance, young Dylan would emulate Harry Kalas, the Hall of Fame baseball broadcaster for the Philadelphia Phillies. “He always loved announcing,” Bill explained. “He would always be imitating Continued on Page 2A
Come early July, you will get a piece of mail at your home or business. You will note that the piece of mail resembles a computerized bill. That’s what it is -- a bill for your 2017-18 property taxes from your public school system. Chances are that this bill will be higher than any other year, by about 2 to 3 percent. You will get this bill whether or not you have any children at all, or have 10 children. You may be 85, living alone in the family homestead, or 45 in a million-dollar mansion. This bill will probably have the least amount of state aid ever. The state of Pennsylvania is broke – $3 billion or more over the 2016-17 budget limits. Chances are 100 percent that you are being asked to pay too much by bleeding-heart school board members set on excellence – at the expense of reasonable costs. Also to blame are our careless County Commissioners, who have failed to reassess county real estate to assure parity -- a violation of the state constitution. Have a great summer! (Uncle Irvin’s column is his opinion only, and is not a news story.)