Modifications

For rowing aficionados planning to partake in the 75th annual Dad Vail Regatta, president Jim Hanna wants you to know that the race is still on - with just a few minor alterations. Yesterday, practices were canceled due to a mixture of inclement weather and river conditions, leaving questions about today's proceedings. Officials decided to push the start time from 7 to 8 a.m. to accommodate the hundreds of teams and onlookers expected along Kelly Drive today. In addition, teams will race in a head-to-head format as opposed to the traditional side-by-side style that, according to Hanna, allows for a "safer way to row given the current conditions.

One question kept nagging 12-year-old Scott Dorfman as he began preparing for his bar mitzvah. Looking up at the bimah, where he would one day be called to read from the Torah, he wondered, "How am I going to get up there?" Scott has cerebral palsy and must use a motorized wheelchair. Doors and steps, while providing building access to most, represent barriers to him. Luckily for Scott, the congregation at Shir Ami was not insensitive to his problem. During a special Shabbat service Friday, members celebrated their commitment to making the synagogue more accessible to handicapped people.

Considering the hoops that too many borrowers have to go through to obtain mortgage modifications, the news from the Treasury Department wasn't encouraging. In an April 24 report to Congress, the Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, reported that homeowners whose mortgages had been modified under the federal Home Affordable Mortgage Program were defaulting "at an alarming rate. " Data from the Treasury Department, which oversees HAMP, showed that the longer a homeowner remained in the program, the more likely he or she was to re-default out of the program.

ALFREDA WILLIAMS has been on the front lines for a long time, shepherding through some tough battles. Williams is a senior foreclosure counselor for HomeFree-USA, one of many agencies approved by the Department of Housing and Urban Development to help people save their homes if possible. She has seen the ugly side of the expensive and predatory mortgages that helped create the housing crash we've been trying to recover from for several years. "The hardest thing for me is working with the older clients who have owned their homes for years," Williams said.

The roar of racing cars may finally be coming to Fairmount Park. After many false starts in the past 20 years, the Fairmount Park Commission has given preliminary approval to a Vintage Grand Prix, to be held around Memorial Hall either late next spring or in August. The commission has given preliminary approval to several racing proposals in the past two decades, but each was eventually rejected because of safety modifications necessary to accommodate speeds in excess of 150 mph. The modifications were seen as too costly and detrimental to the park environment, according to commission spokesman Richard Nicolai.

A local Girl Scout troop watched Yardley government in action Tuesday night, and appropriately enough, a new child-care center won unanimous approval from Borough Council members. Scheduled to be opened by early summer, the facility will occupy about half of the American Legion Post 317 building, at 215 S. Main St. The building is owned by the Oak Grove Home Association, and licensed day-care providers Katrina and Michael Brunner of Lower Makefield Township will operate the center.

Practicality and aesthetics in property subdivision prompted members of the Wrightstown Planning Commission to make final modifications to the township's subdivision and land development ordinance. The major change involved restricting flag lots, properties that have limited road access and usually feature an extended right of way that runs past neighboring road-front property. "They're impractical, they're expensive, and they're not good for planning," said Planning Commission member William Perry.

After more than a year of debate on whether to install two-way radios on school buses, the Rose Tree Media School Board is scheduled to vote on the issue tonight. Recommendations made at Tuesday's meeting raised a question, however, about what type of system should be installed. Consultant Thomas Crowley told board members that a system that allowed buses to be identified individually should be installed in the district's 66 buses. Crowley said "IDer" systems allow individual drivers to maintain an open line to the main switchboard, a capability that simpler two-way systems do not have.

With fresh evidence that voluntary mortgage modifications aren't working, a national lawyers' group is urging the government to let the courts fix bad loans. "Court supervision of loan modification is needed, and unlike so many of the responses to the foreclosure crisis so far, there will be no cost to the taxpayer," Henry Sommer of Philadelphia, president of the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys, said Thursday. A study last month of mortgage-servicer reports to investors by Alan White, Valparaiso University School of Law professor, showed that of 3.5 million subprime and slightly less-risky Alt-A mortgages examined, 10 percent were in foreclosure, and another 10 percent were delinquent.

Read their lips. Higher taxes may be a distinct possibility for the residents of Easttown Township. According to the township Board of Supervisors, a gap of approximately $250,000 is expected in the budget for late 1990. Unless sufficient cuts can be made in township expenditures between now and when the budget is completed in mid-October, residents in Easttown can expect a tax increase, it was announced at a meeting Monday night. Supervisor Anson Taylor said, "First you look at the taxes now on the books and estimate what they will provide next year.

Considering the hoops that too many borrowers have to go through to obtain mortgage modifications, the news from the Treasury Department wasn't encouraging. In an April 24 report to Congress, the Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, reported that homeowners whose mortgages had been modified under the federal Home Affordable Mortgage Program were defaulting "at an alarming rate. " Data from the Treasury Department, which oversees HAMP, showed that the longer a homeowner remained in the program, the more likely he or she was to re-default out of the program.

ALFREDA WILLIAMS has been on the front lines for a long time, shepherding through some tough battles. Williams is a senior foreclosure counselor for HomeFree-USA, one of many agencies approved by the Department of Housing and Urban Development to help people save their homes if possible. She has seen the ugly side of the expensive and predatory mortgages that helped create the housing crash we've been trying to recover from for several years. "The hardest thing for me is working with the older clients who have owned their homes for years," Williams said.

If Lisa Fiorilli were a contestant on Let's Make a Deal , Bank of America's latest offer might have made a little more sense to her. Behind curtain 1 would be a mortgage-loan modification - with few details beyond what it will cost to claim it: $1,513 a month for the next three months. Pay the first installment by Thursday, the bank says, or lose out. And behind curtains 2 and 3? Maybe the mortgage modification she thought she was getting last year, under the federal Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP)

IN THE REGION ResCap hires in Ft. Washington Residential Capital L.L.C., the bankrupt mortgage unit owned by Ally Financial Inc., plans to hire as many as 125 back-office employees to help process mortgage applications, according to its chief executive officer. About 100 of the hires will be in the Fort Washington, Montgomery County, office, with 20 to 25 more targeted for the California cities of Burbank and Costa Mesa, Thomas Marano said in a phone interview Thursday. The new hires will process loan files for originations and modifications, said Marano, who's also chairman of ResCap.

"After extensive deliberations with the board, I recommended to them that I was no longer the right person to lead Sunoco as it progresses to the next phase of its future. " - Lynn L. Elsenhans, announcing she will step down as chief executive officer of Sunoco Inc. after leading the Philadelphia company in winding down its oil-refining businesses. "She was brought here to do something, she did it, and now she's going. I know a couple thousand people who wouldn't mind helping her pack.

One recurring theme in reader questions, especially from creationists, is that Darwinian evolution can't explain big changes - the invention of fur or feathers, kidneys or brains. These readers don't see how such innovation could possibly come about through random spelling errors in DNA, no matter how many millions of years they had to accumulate. ". . . the concept of 'descent with modification' cannot generate more complex systems . . . the old adage that if you give 1,000 monkeys 1,000 years to randomly type we could get the works of Shakespeare is false.

The Obama administration said Thursday that it was withholding financial incentives from three home-loan servicers needing to substantially improve their performances in the government's mortgage-modification program. The three are Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo, according to the Treasury Department, which oversees the Home Affordable Modification Program. Treasury's review of first-quarter performance by lenders that participate in the voluntary program also cited Ocwen Financial as needing substantial improvement.

Dear Harry: Our family has hit on very hard times. Both my brother and my husband have lost their jobs in the last year. To make matters worse, my brother got scammed in an attempt to get his mortgage payments spread out over a longer period than the eight years remaining on the original schedule. He gave someone $500 up front to get a promised deal for 15 years with a lower interest rate as icing on the cake. The guy cashed my brother's check and disappeared. The TV station that carried this guy's ad was never paid, either.

Newton Conover, behind on his bills after a series of illnesses, thought he found the help he desperately needed when Hope Now Modifications of Cherry Hill promised to secure lower mortgage payments. Instead, Conover, 65, of Galloway, was among 514 customers in New Jersey and other states who fell victim to a company that preyed upon those looking to avoid foreclosure on their homes and who paid large fees for services never provided, state officials said. On Wednesday, the New Jersey Attorney General's Office announced the company, which also uses the name Hope Now Financial Services Corp.

The state of the U.S. housing market, and its immediate future, came into sharper focus Wednesday through economic reports pivoting around the now-expired federal tax credits for buyers. April 30's deadline for the credits helped boost pending home sales for the third consecutive month, the National Association of Realtors said, citing data reflecting signed sales agreements rather than closings, which lag one or two months behind. The index the Realtors' group uses to measure pending sales rose 6 percent in April, to 110.9.