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Prompted by a criminal investigation of Planning Board Secretary Joseph Iuliucci, the Winslow Township Committee met behind closed doors last night to discuss a demand for his resignation and to consider drafting a code of ethics. The session was the first since Camden County Prosecutor Samuel Asbell said Monday that he would investigate reports that Iuliucci cleared the way for development of a 13.3-acre tract that he and a partner later sold for $100,000. After ending the closed portion of the meeting, committee members adopted a resolution saying the township would cooperate with Asbell's investigation.

After more than three hours of testimony before City Council's Committee on Transportation and Public Utilities, Council member Augusta Clark yesterday gave SEPTA a backhanded pardon. The issue was whether SEPTA allocates its operating subsidies between its regional rail and city transit divisions in a way that discriminates against the city commuters who use its buses, trolleys and subways. "I think there has not been equal distribution, but I could not say that it was unlawfully discriminatory based on what I heard today," Clark said after the hearing.

Chester County's top planner warned members of a northern Chester County conservation group not to relax their vigilance against rampaging development in the county. "Sustain the kind of things you've been doing," George W. Fasic urged members of the French and Pickering Creek Conservation Trust. Fasic, director of the Chester County Planning Commission, was speaking at the trust's annual meeting, held Wednesday night in the West Vincent Township Building. Fasic said groups such as the trust were needed as a counterbalance against "the development mode.

City Planning Director Janice Woodcock yesterday skewered Council members for what she called an intrusion of politics into public-health decisions facing the Water Department. Council yesterday unanimously overrode the mayoral veto of a bill that would subject the Water Department to zoning board approval to build underground sewage storage tanks within 1,500 feet of any home, and prohibit the city from building those tanks at all within 1,500 feet of homes in two Council districts.

The explosion of growth in rural areas of Chester County has surprised county planners, according to the executive director of the Chester County Planning Commission. Regional development usually follows roads that lead to cities, George Fasic told the East Nantmeal Township Civic Association during a presentation on municipal planning last week. But, he said, Chester County is experiencing a "filling in," or increasing development between major roads. Quaint, rural villages traditionally surrounded by farms are threatened by urban- and suburban-style development, which Fasic characterized as "continuous sprawl.

Richard G. Bickel of Ardmore has been named director of long-range planning for SEPTA's planning, development and real estate department. Bickel will be responsible for the development of a long-range plan for SEPTA service, capital improvements and financing. He will implement the plan in coordination with SEPTA's operations division and government agencies. Bickel's responsibilities also include parking lot development and the preparation of a design standards manual for the transit authority.

In the first stage of a lengthy approval process, the Philadelphia City Planning Commission supported a zoning change yesterday so Foxwoods Casino could build a slots parlor at the Gallery shopping mall. At the meeting in the Academy of Natural Sciences auditorium, several residents expressed anger that a decision had been made before anyone knew what the project would look like or what impact it could have on the surrounding area. "Slow down!" implored John Chin, executive director of the Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corp.

At a raucous and sometimes profane public meeting Friday night, critics denounced plans for the President's House memorial under construction on Independence Mall. City and project officials, who had not conducted a session to update the public on the oft-delayed project for almost three years, sought to present a newly revised interpretive plan for the site where George Washington and John Adams conducted their presidencies and Washington held at least nine enslaved Africans. But before Emanuel Kelly, principal of Kelly/Maiello Architects & Planners, designers of the memorial at Sixth and Market Streets, could discuss the status of construction, he was interrupted by a chorus of loud complaints over the use of a white-owned general contractor at the site, and a torrent of criticism over the site's overall presentation of the black experience.

To many, the headlines about Thursday's Supreme Court decision in Kelo vs. City of New London - "Court Authorizes Seizure of Homes" - must sound un-American. But in upholding a city's right to take private property as part of an economic redevelopment plan, the court affirmed principles as old as the Constitution. There should be no doubt that the Constitution permits the government to take private property without consent in some instances. The very same provision of the Constitution that protects the right to private property - the Fifth Amendment - also provides that the government may "take" private property for "public use" so long as it pays "just compensation.

For the third time in 20 years, the city Planning Commission yesterday revised its master plan for Penn's Landing, which dictates the size and scale of buildings along the city-owned section of the Delaware waterfront. The plan had called for several high-rise office and hotel towers around the existing Great Plaza - a concept left over from a proposal that aborted in 1990. But the unanimous commission vote clears the way for the latest, most up-to-date suggestion for Penn's Landing - a two-story, three-block-long "family entertainment center" of shops, restaurants, movies, ice rinks and an amphitheater to be developed by the Indianapolis-based Simon DeBartolo Group.