Save the panhandle

Two recent Local pieces, the Michael Mishak article "Reservoir plan riles residents" (Aug. 26) and the opinion piece "Can We Remove the Elephant?" by Michael H. Novak (Aug. 12), illustrate the real estate development pressures facing Upper Roxborough. Unfortunately, these pressures extend to the adjacent suburbs, where a similar development proposal threatens to permanently change the character of the Springfield Panhandle, a unique section of Springfield Township bordering Roxborough, Whitemarsh and Fairmount Park. There, a 41-acre parcel known as the Tecce tract has been proposed for a zoning change and development as a high-density age-restricted community.

Citizens will have the opportunity to express their views on this proposal on Sept. 28, when a public hearing will be held at 7 p.m. at the Springfield Township building, 1510 Paper Mill Road in Wyndmoor.

The common theme between the Roxborough pressures and the Tecce proposal appears to be the failure, on the part of the developers, to appreciate the importance of their targeted parcels to community character, ecological balance and regional quality of life. In the Tecce case, this failure is evidenced by the developer’s desire to enact an entirely new zoning amendment, called "CRD - Age Restricted." Unlike the current zoning, this new proposal would allow multi-unit apartments, steep slope construction, setback reductions and other provisions, driving overall density to almost 3.5 times the current permitted level. A development even approaching the features allowed by the proposal would dramatically disrupt the character of an area that has evolved, since the time of William Penn, as a quiet, low density, quasi-rural neighborhood closely connected to Fairmount Park and the Wissahickon Valley.

Despite the Panhandle’s relative obscurity, the Tecce proposal is a critical issue for everyone who values our area’s open spaces or cares about the future of the Wissahickon Valley. The proposal threatens many remaining Springfield Township open spaces because it seeks to overturn the recently enacted Cluster AAA ordinance, which encourages land preservation and was applied to many large township tracts, including the Flourtown Country Club and the Tecce property. Because the property lies just uphill from Forbidden Drive, the proposal threatens the Wissahickon creek through increased storm water runoff and the adjacent Andorra Natural Area through impacts to its ecosystem.

The Friends of the Springfield Panhandle has formed to bring attention to this issue, organize the community’s priorities and seek a more balanced outcome. To learn Comments may be e-mailed to fosp@comcast.net.

Most important, attend the meeting on Sept. 28 to help us turn back the rezoning proposal and seek a more reasonable outcome.

Brennan J. Preine
Friends of the Springfield Panhandle

Support Bush

The Germantown Republican Club promotes all local, state, and national Republican candidates in the 2004 general election, and strongly supports the campaign to re-elect President George W. Bush.

The Trustees of the Germantown Republican Club

Katie Worrall: professional journalist

It is my understanding that September 10 marked the date of departure from the Chestnut Local of Katie Worrall, long-term employee and editor for the last several years. My contact with Katie began almost three years ago to the day, when I submitted my first opinion article for publication written just two days after September 11, 2001.

Sorting through the just-available information and condensing it with a long-standing interest all things political and governmental, I blended the two into a somewhat emotional and highly charged critique of what I believed we lost and how it happened. Surprisingly, Katie called me and told me it she thought it was well written and would print it in the next issue. Prominently placed the following Wednesday, it was the first of many commentaries and letters I have submitted and have appeared in the pages of the Local.

By no means has Katie printed everything I have submitted and it should be pointed out that another local newspaper refused to print “The Day the Music Died,” citing it as too controversial. From my perspective, Katie Worrall understood the primary purpose of an editor and a newspaper and handled that obligation with professionalism rarely found in mainstream, let alone local editions.

Accurately printing the news and offering editorials and opinions from varying perspectives separates serious journals from the majority that provide local news — and many in the national arena who cannot help mix news and opinion and only preach what they consider the majority would like to read, or even worse, think they should read. I believe Katie knew that offering the same old pabulum, refined for local consumption, was a disservice to the community. Challenges to accepted practice and positions make for informed citizens.

It should be said that Katie did not simply accept what was written without fact checking and wanted supporting information when controversial statements or statistics were supplied. Correcting mistakes in grammar was a Chestnut Hill Local strong suit, and few newspapers matched the accuracy and correctness found in the Local during her tenure.

The demands of running an independent, full service, local newspaper and covering all bases is a tall order few can fill. I believe Katie’s dedication, professionalism and fairness made the Local the far above average journal it had been. She will be missed.

Jim Foster
Mt. Airy

Déjà vu?

As we read letters to the editor (including mine) regarding the coming election, I would like to tell about the “prediction” made by Abraham Lincoln about the results of a “coming war” and how it will affect all of us.

“I see in the coming future, a crisis approaching which unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war [Iraq?], corporations have been enthroned, and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign, by working on the prejudices of the people, until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic is destroyed!”

Above, in a letter to Colonel Wm. F. Elkins on Nov. 21, 1864.

It would be interesting to learn whether readers feel the above is a true prediction of what is happening in the United States today.

Gerald Samkofsky
Chestnut Hill

Monitor religious schools

Once again, practitioners of Islam have sickened the world with their barbarous attack on school children in Russia, killing over 300. While not every Islamic believer is violent, there obviously is a significant cadre of Islamic clergy that countenance, instigate and inflame the kind of barbarism highlighted by 9/11 and then again in Russia.

It is time to ask, and get answers to, hard questions here in the U.S. What is being taught in the sectarian Islamic schools here at home? Who and what are being presented as role models to the young and not so young children in these schools? A country that can pass a “Patriot” Act that enable the Justice Department to find out what I read had better be willing to insure that we are not producing home-grown Jihadists behind the walls of these schools.

Freedom of religion is not a suicide pact. Now that school has opened, let’s get in there and pro-actively check this out, rather than once again finding ourselves in a reactive position. Since these schools are tax-advantaged, they are not truly private.

Richard Saunders
Mt. Airy

Let’s give Iraq a chance

For those of us who fear that Iraq may not be “ready for democracy,” let’s remind ourselves that when we began to build ours some 225 years ago, the right to vote and the reins of government were to be held only by white, male, Protestant property holders. Women were deemed incapable of intelligent political discourse, and our first attempt at a constitution, the Articles of Confederation, was a total failure.

We didn’t have a constitution until six years after the end of the Revolution. From then on, it took 76 years and a civil war to put an end to slavery and assure ourselves that we’d be a single nation; 133 years to grant women the right to vote; 167 years to outlaw racial segregation in our public schools; and some 175 years to achieve our current framework of civil and voting rights guarantees.

William Will
Chestnut Hill