Meeting Room

After 35 years, Anthony A. Mandio's annual reappointment as solicitor for the Bristol Borough School District had become almost routine. So school board officials were determined to make this year different. At the board's May 21 meeting, Mandio's reappointment was marked by a series of commendations through plaques, letters and even videotaped messages. Current and former colleagues, school board members and family surprised Mandio by packing into the board's meeting room when his reappointment came up on the agenda.

Keeping track of locations for township meetings has prompted both chuckles and grumbles from residents and officials alike in Bensalem. Several years ago, when the municipal building was renovated, the township's meeting room was transformed into offices for the Department of Licenses and Inspections. Since then, the council can be found at either the Bensalem Library, senior citizens center, high school, Valley Elementary School or the Wood River Village retirement complex.

If the room in which politicians meet reflects their standing in the community, then some of the commissioners of Haverford Township are feeling a little low these days. They look around their meeting room, which is behind the township building, and they see dingy walls, a scruffy red carpet and neon lighting that subjects all activity to a harsh glare. When the citizenry shows up - as it does in force for controversial planning and zoning decisions - there is never enough room to accommodate them.

The Morrisville Borough Council has voted to bar the local Parent-Teacher Organization from holding a "haunted house" in the borough library, citing inadequate emergency exits. "The potential for danger here is strong," Councilwoman Patricia Schell said Tuesday. "That building is just not appropriate for something like this. It should be held in a high school cafeteria, not in a building where there's only one way in and out. " Schell cited the possibility of panic among young children.

Smoking has been banned from meetings of the Upper Uwchlan Board of Supervisors. The board agreed to the ban, suggested by resident Cliff Schultz, by a 3-0 vote at its meeting Monday. Schultz, who said he quit smoking three years ago, said he proposed the ban because he was bothered by cigarette smoke at a recent meeting. Resident Cy Frame, a smoker, protested that the supervisors had never complained about smoke from the cigarettes of John Good, the township solicitor, who sits at the supervisors' table in the front of the meeting room.

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.

A district justice here has found that the husband of Mary Swick, who ran an unsuccessful campaign for East Fallowfield supervisor last year, was guilty of harassing the sister of Sharon Scott, the woman who beat out Swick for the supervisor's seat. Senior District Justice Donald Brown ruled that Ronald Swick had harassed Paula Davis, Scott's sister, during a Feb. 15 supervisors' meeting at the East Fallowfield township building. Brown said he was basing his decision on East Fallowfield Police Chief Pete Mango's testimony.

Willingboro's nonresident teachers, armed with a judge's ruling that would allow them to speak at school board meetings, were greeted at last night's meeting by private security guards with video equipment, barricades and a new tactic to effectively silence their contract complaints. Declaring "emergency conditions," school board president Elmer Corda hired a private security force of 11 men, who are paid between $12.50 and $18 an hour, to keep order at the meeting room, which has been the scene of teacher protests over the past two weeks.

After 35 years of renting office space from the fire company, the Borough of Riverton finally moved Dec. 9 into new quarters of its own - a former municipal garage rehabilitated to reflect the Victorian look of the historic community. Because of delays in the delivery of new office furniture, the move came six weeks later than targeted but went off smoothly with the help of a mostly volunteer labor crew. The mayor, five of the six council members and assorted private citizens showed up to help, as did members of the Public Works Department.

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.