September 21, 2006 Issue                                       

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©2006 The Chestnut Hill Local

Opinion

When the news is in the news

When I took this job three months ago, I was determined to steer the Local away from the parochial reporting that has often weighed it down for our readers. There has long been a tendency for this paper to get caught up in the politics that take place within the walls of this office. When you’re located across the hall from the Chestnut Hill Community Association, there’s no shortage of excitement.

But it’s important to get past it. There are a lot of people in Chestnut Hill, Mt. Airy, Wyndmoor and Lafayette Hill who need news about what’s happening here. They need news about crime, land development, business and real estate. They need to know what’s happening with their neighbors, with local arts, schools and restaurants. There are many things in this corner of the city that go unnoticed by larger media outlets. It’s our job to be on top of that.

Yet, this week we are reluctantly in the news again. This time we are struggling with a series of unpaid bills that were piled up and waiting for me when I walked in the door.

Our front-page story is primarily about the more than $25,000 worth of unpaid invoices we owe to Press and Journal, our printer. In addition to that amount, we have more than $26,000 in outstanding invoices from the Chestnut Hill Business Association for health insurance premiums. The CHBA, a local insurance broker for many businesses in Chestnut Hill, has evidently paid Independence Blue Cross on our behalf.

This is frustrating for us here at the Local for a number of reasons. First, this paper is consistently making more money than it is spending according to the regular financial reports that have been produced here for at least the last four years. During that period, we’ve generated roughly $40,000 in profits. It’s not an amount that would make a corporate CEO proud, but in terms of a not-for-profit community newspaper, it’s an accomplishment.

Which brings me to the second frustrating point: We have no idea what has happened to this money. It’s worth noting that we have no reason to believe that anyone here enriched him or herself; we have no evidence of theft or fraud. Instead, it appears like we are the victims of negligence, placed in a tenuous position by powers outside our control. We are unable to get our hands on money that should be available.

Some might ask why this is news. Some could view the Local’s cash flow problem as an in-house concern. I feel that any situation that threatens a local business or institution is newsworthy. Our current debt problem with our printer is a situation that had the potential to shut us down if emergency measures weren’t taken. It’s not pleasant to be in the news, but we can’t hide facts.

In the next month or two, we will unravel this mess and figure out where the money was spent, how it was spent and put in safeguards to make sure it doesn’t happen again. And the Local will be able to save and spend the money it earns in a way that will advance the Local, including, but not limited to, paying its bills.

Pete Mazzaccaro

Opinion: A circle of Dominoes
By Ed (Saint Saens) Feldman

We writers are a lazy bunch. Why do exhaustive research when the perfect metaphor presents itself in all its’ splendor before us? So I put aside my original opinion piece for today, a tale of the Chestnut Hill Business Association’s “Art Squad” attempts to censor my duck (available for viewing at the SAFEST CORNER in the neighborhood — the always open flower shop at G-town and Cresheim). Their attempt to marginalize my work has made it the safest animal on the hill. Two other ducks were vandalized the first night. Hey Hillers, want a safe neighborhood? How about less dark banks? And more stores run by people not afraid of the dark?

But more about that another time. Now it is Easy Metaphor Time.

While the Chestnut Hill Business Association’s Zoobalicious event this weekend culminated in the placement of dozens of animals inhabiting our avenue, animals without the usual unsavory byproducts of such creatures fouling our streets, another two-leg mammal has left his droppings, in the form of signs that advertise store rentals for “Check-Cashing, Dollar Stores, and Discount Electronics.” These signs say as much about the personality of their author as they do about the businesses listed in their text. The author’s name is Richard Snowden. He owns Bowman Properties. His vacant storefronts dot the hill. He had these signs placed on Friday night, under cover of darkness, on these properties. His should be well known to you, for he is the original reason, the first domino, in the comedic tragedy (or is it tragic comedy?) that has engulfed the Hill for the past year. Before I found out about the rampant cronyism on the CHCA board, there was Snowden. Before I found out about large sums of money spent, without board approval, for “training” programs run by peoples’ friends, there was Snowden. Before code violations on the building that the CHCA owned were ignored for months by Sanjiv Jain, (owner of Legacy Real Estate), property manager of that building, resulting in a $2,600 fine that he refuses to pay, there was Snowden.

You may remember a three part investigative article in the Inquirer a few years ago in which local easement and conservancy laws were exposed as benefiting only wealthy landowners rather than the general public. Richard, his business and a number of large properties for which he secured easements were used as an example of how those laws could be exploited. Later Bowman Properties was exposed as a tax scofflaw by the Inquirer in conjunction with a series of stories on pay-to-play politics that brought around the federal investigation and conviction of attorney Ron White and former council aide, Steve Vaughn. No libel suit was ever brought against the Inquirer. Nor were any threats by Richard against the Inquirer reported.

But prior to the Inky’s first easement piece (and WHAT has happened to the Inquirer?), the Local had done its own three-part series on his activities on the Hill. Some of the activities cast Richard in a less than flattering light. This made Richard angry and he started demanding things. He demanded an apology, “above the fold on the front page.” He demanded the writer of the piece be fired. His name is Pete Mazzacaro.

And from sources too numerous to be listed, I have learned that Richard threatened to “rent his properties to check cashing stores and nail salons and turn Chestnut Hill into a ghetto.” This is an insult to the following groups; owners of nail salons, owners of check cashing emporiums, “ghetto” dwellers, and Chestnut Hill residents. Make no mistake, if these articles contained falsehoods, than a libel suit would have been called for, but no such action was taken. So Richard brought pressure to the CHCA board. He wouldn’t fight the Inquirer but the Local… well I’m reminded of the Cowardly Lion going after Toto; “anyway, I’ll get you Peewee” (Don’t you just love these animal metaphors?)

And in a series of actions that typified the courage and First Amendment defense by the Board under the stewardship of Maxine Dornemann, Stewart Graham, and so many members of the Action Alliance, they folded like a Circus tent. The Publisher’s Committee started telling Local staff what they could and could not write. People like Joe Pie, who had as much experience working at a newspaper as my cat (although I have caught him pouring over the Times), began hanging around the Local, acting like Joe Pulitzer, but sounding more like Joe Stalin. George Parry was quoted as saying “the Local should be like a church news letter.”

New positions were created and filled by staffers sympathetic to the board’s fealty towards power rather than an adherence to Freedom of the Press. Local business staffers, bookkeepers and other non-editorial personnel made life miserable for Local staff who had been putting out a paper without this newly minted interference for some time. It was all too much for Jim Sturdivant and he quit. He should have, in the words of Walter Sullivan, told the interfering parties to “go to hell.” But he didn’t, and what followed was a period of incompetence at the Local so profound and embarrassing that common decency and selective amnesia precludes its description.

Things got better under Lea Stanley, a fine editor and nice lady, but those who perpetrated these original acts of siding with Richard Snowden, his money and his pique, rather than a Free Press were still in their positions on the Board and at the Local. That’s when I got angry. And apparently a lot of you got angry too. Because, more than any other single issue, the muzzling of the Local that began over “L’affaire Snowden” became a rallying cry that created the Second Opinion Caucus that won a majority of Board seats in May’s election. Our first order of business was to set the Local right.

THAT HAS BEEN DONE. Pete is the Editor. Morale at the Local is high. Those who were complicit in the aforementioned shenanigans are gone, powerless, or in hiding. But it all began with Snowden. And now on the weekend that all of Chestnut Hill has eagerly anticipated (ah! - the scent of sweet, dripping, sarcasm); a week that brought a personal warning to me about offending anyone by naming my duck Doctor of Hypocrisy, from the Print Shop’s Chris Lane, who has repeatedly defended Richard Snowden in these pages, this was the weekend that Richard Snowden decided to take a Mastodon-sized Dump on all of us. And when I saw these signs, after the Business Association Art Squad “approved” my duck, I asked Bob Previdi and another member what to do about these offensive, racists, insulting signs. They said, “Don’t call attention to them.” Did I mention that they were six feet by four feet with red lettering? Hey Bob, maybe you should have sponsored an Ostrich. Well, what are WE going do about this? I’ve noticed that every animal on the Avenue lacks certain anatomical accoutrement necessary for a continuation of the species. It’s time for all of us to check OUR equipment.

P.S. To whom it may concern: You spelled “Canard” wrong on my plaque.

Ed Feldman is a member of the Chestnut Hill Community Association board and is also a member of the recently reconstituted Local Publisher’s Committee.