and her store website: ) and her gf Hannah at Falafel Bar as they were on their way home from a wedding in Denver. Two hours of intense brain sharing about everything from crazy friends to natural gas well drilling to the proposed closing of North Penn High School. I guess I need to get some of my brain energy out before I can focus again...
The Southern Tioga school board is going to choose whether to renovate or close the high school I (and my parents, aunts & uncle) graduated from. Closing the high school would mean busing kids in grades 9-12 to the schools 10 miles north and south and renovating the elementary school into a pre-k to 8th grade facility. It's a $17M vs. $27M project according to the feasibility study, but it looks like there's a lot of waste/unnecessary stuff in the high school renovation part that is inflating the cost. I created a facebook fan page five days ago for "Save North Penn High School!" and already have 440 fans and my dad and few friends have asked me to create an ad in the free weekly classifieds paper to promote the cause. I don't have access to the feasibility study these proposals are based on, which prevents me from having solid substantive arguments. The best I've got so far is "closing NPHS will negatively impact educational outcomes for students" and "closing NP means the death of Bloss." It'll be interesting.
Liz has been focused on the impacts of natural gas well drilling that's happening all across PA. There was a massive fish kill a few weeks ago in a formerly healthy stream on the West Virginia-PA border caused by dumping of untreated hydraulic fracturing waste water into an abandoned deep coal mining hole. The West Virginia DEP-equivalent says that it caused by a naturally occurring golden algae bloom - exactly the same cause proposed by the responsible company - but the PA DEP says it's from the waste water and wants the company's US EPA permit revoked. NY has halted all drilling - smarties! She's set up an information session with our county planner (possibly retired - i forget) for tomorrow night. I'm hoping a lot of people will show up and learn about the environmental devastation that's happening elsewhere so that we can be on guard in Tioga County. Companies are already drilling and spilling the frac water - we're getting reports from the local DEP office - 8,000 gallons of this toxic stuff. I'm so frustrated that so many people haven't learned from the devastation of the mines - the Tioga River, which runs through Bloss, is a dead river because of acid mine drainage.
And now I must return to the grey and gloomy world of law school... someday I'll get paid for the analysis work and the resulting legal actions, right?
Yes, taxpayer money - in PA, schools are primarily financed with local property tax revenues, with the state contributing about 36 percent of funding across the state and the feds a very small percent (6%, maybe?). Because the population is sparse (36 people per square mile in the county), property taxes are quite high relative to the value of the properties.
I've asked for a copy of the feasibility study - we'll see if they'll give it to me... My guess it's available for "public inspection" by going to the school district office and asking. The PA Open Records law makes it necessarily public information, but they can also charge a hefty per-page copying fee. We'll see.
Unfortunately, I'm not a lawyer so I can't challenge it, and by the time I am, it'll be too late. However, in general, there's not a lot of citizen/public interest legal action happening in Tioga County partly because folks don't have the resources to file cases or know when its appropriate to file, and many lawyers don't want to challenge their friends - people in power. We're working on challenging the school board to listen to the residents - writing letters, attending school board meetings... but I don't know how effective it'll be. Really, I need more info before I can contribute much more.
But I don't understand. If the feasibility study was conducted to evaluate the alternatives to spend public money (I assume this is taxpayer money, yes?), it should be availably publicly for all to see and assess for themselves. Wasn't there a public debate about this? Why isn't there a public challenge/case in court yet if this many people from the community strong against the option they are considering?