Meeting Room

The former council meeting room in Ridley Park Borough Hall soon will be renovated with the idea of turning it into a new home for the borough Police Department. A drop ceiling and new lighting fixtures will be installed in the room. Borough Hall was built at Ward and Cresswell Streets in 1896. At Wednesday night's council caucus meeting, Councilman Edward Wolff said the original ornate ceiling "would not be touched. " Wolff said the Ridley Park Historic Commission had asked the council not to disturb the ceiling or the rest of the room during the renovations.

Haverford Township commissioners Monday night agreed to spend nearly $10,000 to spruce up their meeting room with new carpeting and arched doorways, even though they acknowledged they eventually may have to move out of the cramped room. The board rejected Commissioner Wilton A. Bunce's assertion that members should scrap plans for the current meeting room, which is housed in a small building behind the township hall, and build a larger room above the police station. "I think it's a very poor idea to refurbish this particular room," Bunce said.

Haverford Township Police Chief William McNasby was not amused by the recent suggestion that the township commissioners build a new meeting room for themselves on top of the police station. The station, in McNasby's eyes, is a hellhole. And if any construction takes place, McNasby wants it done to improve conditions for the force. "In the summer," McNasby wrote in a recent letter to the commissioners, "small insects infest overhead air ducts in the investigations office. They fly and drop on the officers while working, creating, at the least, an unsettling if not an unhealthy situation.

After more than 30 years in the workforce, Carmine DeSopo has built up quite a varied work sheet, including jobs as a gas station operator, international tour director, janitorial service supervisor, jailhouse teacher, and horticulture expert. That's in addition to his duties as superintendent of the Burlington County Special Services School District, which he has led since 1972. This year, he added another job to the list: marketing director, and chief booster, of the school district's new meeting and conference center.

Two of the three Montgomery County commissioners said yesterday that their fifth-floor meeting room at the Norristown courthouse is neither large nor comfortable enough for their needs. And they disclosed a plan to spend up to $1.2 million on an office reconfiguration that would, among other things, get them a new one. "My support for this project is to get a better meeting room for the commissioners: bigger, with sound . . . just a more appropriate space to have public meetings," said Democratic Commissioner Joseph M. Hoeffel 3d. "I think this room is inadequate.

There was no day-after, position-by-position review of the Eagles' loss at Atlanta this week. Instead, it came to light yesterday, there was a team meeting called Monday by head coach Rich Kotite. There was thought-provoking dialogue about the reasons for the Eagles' three-game fall to mediocrity. "I think it was more important that we put our heads together and talk," Kotite said after yesterday's spirited practice, "and the players picked up on it. I thought it was important that we realize where we're at and what we need to do to get where we want to be. "We just all talked about where we're at, and how everybody has to take care of their own business.

Quien es mas macho? Isaac Cruz, 41, opinionated and proudly traditional, seemed to be the answer. Sitting restlessly in a second floor meeting room at Aspira, a North Philadelphia advocacy group, Puerto Rico-born Cruz insisted that while he is a man of tradition, he is not a machista, an adherent of that centuries-old code of male dominance called machismo. "The problem is that ladies are always trying to control the men," said Cruz, a member of Aspira Corps, a community-service project run by Aspira.

The Lower Gwynedd Board of Supervisors has cast its die for the interior decor for the new $3.1 million municipal building on Bethlehem Pike. At a special session Wednesday night, the board reviewed suggestions from Wischmann Design Associates, the Rittenhouse Square firm it's paying $14,000 to arrange the floor plan, help pick the color scheme, buy desks and chairs, and provide the carpeting. The supervisors have budgeted $110,000 for the interior design. Last month, the supervisors chose the brick-face and shingles that will adorn the building, which is expected to be completed in the fall.

Graham Finney, chairman of the city Planning Commission, said he was in a bad mood yesterday. He said his mood was particularly bad, considering that the commission has been asked to recommend doubling the money to build a meeting room at the Chestnut Hill Library, Germantown Avenue near Rex. "This is the original camel in the tent," Finney said of the library meeting room project. "In a town with so many needs in an area with so many meeting spaces, this is absolutely ludicrous.

There's an unusual work in progress at the new Mount Laurel Library, and it's a collective effort: Students of the Harrington Middle School are painting a mural on the wall of the building's meeting room. The library's board of trustees asked the art class in Harrington's Special Talented Enrichment Program to submit sketches, and a drawing by Amanda Constantino, 12 - showing a variety of animals in a forest-like setting - was chosen. The task now is to transfer her conception to the wall - in the proper proportions.

TRENTON — William Scott Jr. was concerned about a housing development being built near his Montclair home by a politically connected nonprofit. He filed an open records request to try to figure out how the nonprofit secured a big government construction grant from Essex County, even though it applied past the deadline. His request was rejected by the county. So he appealed to the New Jersey Government Records Council (GRC), which hears such cases. Twenty-one months later, he watched as the GRC voted on his case in a meeting room in Trenton.

While it's nice, Temple's Edberg-Olson Hall isn't on par with some of the nation's premier college football practice facilities. But once the $10 million expansion and renovations are completed July 1, there likely will be plenty of satisfied people at 10th and Diamond Streets. The upgrade "is twofold," Owls coach Steve Addazio said Friday amid the construction. "It's got a big effect on recruiting. But it's also functionality. You need a state-of-the-art training room to give your players the best opportunity for rehab and to be able to come back from injuries and protect their bodies.

CALL IT what you want - a clearing of the air, a cleansing of the soul, a blackboard session - the 76ers and their coaches met yesterday for close to an hour at their practice facility at Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine to discuss the differences in the team that started the season with a 20-9 record and the one that has won just six of its last 18 games. After Wednesday night's loss to the New York Knicks, coach Doug Collins wouldn't pinpoint any reason for the recent skid, particularly when asked about his use of Evan Turner.

Despite a raucous disruption by Occupy Philadelphia protesters, the city Board of Health approved amended regulations Thursday for groups that feed the homeless outdoors. Groups will be required to obtain a permit from the city and to have at least one member receive free food-safety training from the Health Department. Health Commissioner Donald F. Schwarz said he expected the new rules to be enforced around May 1. The regulations come as the city proceeds with a ban in city parks on feeding the homeless and others who want free meals.

HARRISBURG - The man with the neatly combed hair and the carefully pressed blue suit blended in well at Wednesday morning's meeting of the all-white, mostly over-45, and mostly male Marcellus Shale Advisory Commission. That is, until he abruptly interrupted the discussion to call the commission's chairman, Lt. Gov. Jim Cawley, a "prostitute. " The interloper was perennial Harrisburg activist Gene Stilp, who came to accuse the commission, assembled last month by Gov. Corbett, of being a tool of the oil and gas industry.

As he vacuumed new carpeting in a soon-to-be-unveiled meeting room inside the greatly expanded Convention Center, Pat Taylor felt a sense of accomplishment. "It looks really nice," Taylor, 18, of Downingtown, said as he paused in his work, looked up, and surveyed a room that just three months ago was still taking shape. "It feels great that we can make a room like this beautiful," said Taylor, a member of Laborers Union Local 57. The $786 million expansion of the center - described as the city's "dream house" when it was being developed two decades ago - is 87 percent complete, on track, and on budget for its highly anticipated March debut, said Joe Resta, project executive for the Pennsylvania Convention Center Authority, which is overseeing the expansion.

At precisely 10 p.m. Saturday at the American Philosophical Association's sprawling conference in the Philadelphia Marriott - the annual mass gathering of those who practice the world's oldest non-conclusive profession - a philosophical point was made. Evondra Acevedo, the academic group's employment coordinator, had announced that the "Candidates' Room," where graduate students and others apply for teaching jobs, was closed for the night. She'd been going since 3 p.m. A sign announced that the room would close at 10 p.m. She asked the 11 candidates still seeking service to come back in the morning.

Decades later, head injury's effects still felt I agree with the editorial "Heads up on head injuries" on Nov. 26, and I am living proof to the long-term effects of a concussion. My concussion did not occur during a sporting event. Ten days short of my 10th birthday, in 1974, I was hit by a car in front of my house. I spent three days in the hospital and an additional week out of school. To this day, I suffer from bouts of depression, chronic fatigue, and difficulties with memory.