Celeste Zappala, center, and son Dante, right, both of Mount Airy,
react to the passing of President Bush’s motorcade
outside the presidential ranch in Crawford, Texas last Friday.
(Associated Press photo by LM Otero)
by MICHAEL J. MISHAK Celeste Zappala never thought she would spend her vacation with President Bush. But the veteran peace activist from Mount Airy found herself camped out on a country road in rural Texas last week, just outside the president’s Crawford ranch.
The death of her adopted son, Sgt. Sherwood Baker, had brought her there. Baker, a Pennsylvania National Guardsman, was killed in Baghdad last year while providing security for the Iraq Survey Group, a coalition-led team charged with searching for weapons of mass destruction.
He was the first member of the state Guard to die in combat since World War II. His military service was extended when the Iraq war began in March 2003, just weeks before he was set to be discharged.
by MICHAEL J. MISHAK In the wake of the second set of assaults to rock Chestnut Hill in as many months, a small group of neighborhood business and community leaders sought assurances and offered help at an impromptu meeting with police brass last week.
The meeting, organized by Maxine Dornemann, president of the Chestnut Hill Community Association, came on a day when the neighborhood found itself under the microscope of the local media, who had descended on the Hill to report on a recent series of assaults and robberies perpetrated by a roving group of teens.
Gathered around the table were: Anne McNally, president of the Chestnut Hill Business Association, and local restaurateur Paul Roller. Two City Council staffers — Stewart Graham, chief of staff to Councilman Frank Rizzo and Stephen Johnson, an aide to Councilwoman Donna Reed Miller — also attended.
Emotions were running high in one of the city’s safest neighborhoods last Wednesday after it was revealed that at least four men had been beaten and robbed by teens traveling in packs of up to seven in the span of a week. The attacks bear similarities to a spate of muggings reported on by the Local last month.
by AMY BRISSON In a long and contentious meeting last Monday night, the Springfield Township Board of Commissioners voted to hold a second public hearing in September on the proposed Tecce tract development, despite the protests of a crowd opposed to the hearing.
Many in the audience came ready to oppose possible developments on the Tecce tract, at 9303 Ridge Pike in the Springfield Panhandle section of the township, and the Boorse tract, at 10 Camp Hill Road in Oreland. They insisted on being heard, despite the board’s assertion that that it was not the time for a public hearing on either issue.
Fred Tecce, owner of the 41-acre swath of open space along Ridge Pike near Northwestern Avenue, has sought for over a year to amend his property’s AAA zoning, a sprawl-limiting regulation that restricts development to low densities. At a public hearing last October, developer James A. Nolen III proposed building 64 twin homes and an age-restricted community comprised of 24 condominiums on the tract. The number was reduced to 66 total units after the public mobilized to oppose the plan at the hearing.
A conservation group called the Friends of the Springfield Panhandle opposed Tecce’s request and declared at last year’s hearing that a change in AAA zoning would be “spot zoning,” a practice, often ruled by courts to be illegal, in which zoning changes benefit a sole property without clear benefit to the public. The group said the proposed development was inconsistent with the township’s 1998 comprehensive plan and would harm the ecological balance in an area that includes steep slopes and wetlands.
Celeste Zappala, center, and son Dante, right, both of Mount Airy,
Hill leaders push for more police