Red Tape

On Wednesday morning, roofer Dennis Carey put the finishing touches on the new roof at the Junod Playground in Parkwood. It should have been a happy moment for the folks at the recreation center on Dunks Ferry Road, who had waited five years for just this event. No longer will workers have to worry about getting hit in the head by a falling ceiling tile. No longer will the 200-odd neighborhood youngsters who frequent the center have to dodge buckets as they shape ceramics.

Despite a law requiring the Defense Department to buy commercial goods off the shelf when possible, the Pentagon continues to require its suppliers to meet reams of mind-numbing requirements for the most mundane items. Take, for example, the T-shirt. The Pentagon now issues 30 pages of tiny print to its suppliers on how white the T-shirts must be, how many stitches per inch their seams must have, and even what kind of bags to use for packing them. Excessive specifications have angered members of Congress, who recently heard the Pentagon's top clothes buyer concede that only seven of the 8,000 items he purchases are bought commercially, without pages of Pentagon particulars mandating every detail.

This is a story about cash on a wet tin roof. It's about cash scratched up by a mall developer to fix a leaky roof at a city recreation center in the Far Northeast, cash that can't be spent because of red tape. "It's frustrating. It's just extremely frustrating," said Kathy Dieckmann, volunteer president of the Junod Recreation Center Advisory Council on Dunks Ferry Road in the Parkwood section. The roof at the center has been leaking for about five years, and the city has no plans to fix it because of budget constraints.

Running a community Kite Day isn't as simple as going down to the five-and- dime store, buying all the flying machines and string in stock and handing out the fragile contraptions free to the kids who show up. First, permission from the Federal Aviation Administration is needed. "You have to tell them how big the kites are, how high they're going to fly and how close you are to an airport," said Fred Durso, 46, who was the government relations coordinator for the Knights of Columbus Kite Day in Gloucester Township this weekend.

For a month, the young Egyptian had been trying to pay the speeding ticket and get her driver's license back. First, she was told to go to the Nile Delta city of Banha, where the license was issued. In Banha, she was told that because she lived in Cairo now, the matter would have to be resolved there. In Cairo, the police said they could not return her license until she paid the fine. In Banha, of course. She decided to forget about the old license and apply for a new one. At the local driver-testing center, a friendly policeman waived the road test, signed the necessary papers and directed her to the cashier's window.

Camden Mayor Dana L. Redd created a "one-stop" growth team last year to try to attract businesses and development to increase the city's low tax base - $22.7 million for the $173 million 2011 budget. Despite Redd's proclamation last week in her "State of the City" address that the ombudsman and Business Growth and Development Team - comprised of city planning, development, code and legal officials, and nonprofit developers from the Cooper's Ferry Partnership - had made about 200 contacts, only a few projects have come to fruition.

There is a happy ending to the story of the Swarthmore couple who had been fighting red tape in an effort to get their adopted Nicaraguan daughter into this country. James and Judy Shepard-Kegl got the necessary visa for their daughter Luisa on Jan. 10. The trio flew into Philadelphia International Airport from Nicaragua on Monday night. In late December, Judy Shepard-Kegl went to Nicaragua to complete the adoption. According to the couple, the Nicaraguan officials were extremely cooperative, but U.S. embassy officials were not. "I spent the first couple of days in Nicaragua finishing the adoption procedure," said Judy Shepard-Kegl.

I spent four hours of a recent workday on the phone trying to find a drug treatment center for a cocaine-addicted friend. Although he was in a crisis and threatening suicide, no one would help because he did not have insurance or a medical assistance card. I called the Department of Public Welfare, Gaudenzia House, Giuffre Hospital, the Diagnostic Rehabilitation Center, the Cocaine Hotline, St. Mary's Hospital, the Office of Mental Health and Retardation, the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP)

Bernard Spain said he expected a little cooperation from City Hall when he expanded his business. After all, he is chief executive of Spain's Inc., which owns 33 stores and employs 370 people in the city, and pays, well, a lot of taxes. But when Spain's tried to open a new Hallmark Cards store in Northeast Philadelphia this month, he said the company was treated like a criminal. The Department of Licenses and Inspections angrily threatened to prevent the opening because Spain's forgot to apply for electrical and sprinkler permits, although a building permit had been issued.

While in Europe we want to visit some cities in East Germany that are rich in the history of Bach and Luther. Can this be arranged after arrival in West Germany? Whom do we contact? You need to make at least some arrangements in advance if you want to visit such cities as Leipzig, where Johann Sebastian Bach was a choirmaster and where the Bach museum is located, or Wartburg, where Martin Luther is said to have thrown an inkwell at the devil. It is possible to obtain tourist visas at East German border points and elsewhere in Europe, but you are likely to need proof of prepaid hotel reservations as well as other application information.

Montgomery County hopes to revolutionize the way constituents connect with county services. A new program aims to streamline services for residents, who often need help from multiple agencies and are at a loss about where to begin. "There are people who just don't know what to do. Or people who've been told five different things and not been successful," said Eric Goldstein, director of the Behavioral Health/Developmental Disabilities Department. Instead of the typical "silo" approach - in which each department works in isolation and constituents must figure out the system on their own - the county wants to have a one-stop shop in each community where a constituent could speak to a single person.

A Delaware County woman who voluntarily distributes free food to children from her driveway has run afoul of officials in Chester Township who say her efforts violate zoning ordinances. If Angela Prattis, 41, a married mother of three and the youth director of her church, does not come up with $1,000 to pay for a zoning hearing within the next year, she'll be barred from feeding young people next summer, officials have said. "It's unbelievable," said Prattis, a trained volunteer with the Archdiocese of Philadelphia's Nutritional Development Services, which supplies lunch and snacks five days a week.

A Delaware County woman who voluntarily distributes free food to children from her driveway has run afoul of officials in Chester Township who say her efforts violate zoning ordinances. If Angela Prattis, 41, a married mother of three and the youth director of her church, does not come up with $1,000 to pay for a zoning hearing within the next year, she'll be barred from feeding young people next summer, officials have said. "It's unbelievable," said Prattis, a trained volunteer with the Archdiocese of Philadelphia's Nutritional Development Services, which supplies lunch and snacks five days a week.

THEY ARE FINALLY going to build that Urban Youth Academy we were promised 23 months ago, first multisite campus, first cold-weather city. The light at the end of the cluttered, narrow tunnel may be a bulldozer after all. "We're going to get it built," Frank Robinson growled the other day, "and we're going to do it right!" Frank Robinson? Yep, that Frank Robinson, MVP in both leagues, first black manager in major league baseball. Robinson's voice always had gravel in it. His tone always had steel.

AS SOMEONE WHO relies on public transportation, I can appreciate why people embrace the one-stop shopping experience when visiting their local Wal-Mart or Target stores. The prices are hard to beat and it is convenient. While reflecting upon the consequences of shopping at megastores, I realized it is going to be tough to change my purchasing habits in support of locally owned businesses, and it dawned upon me that the majority of Americans are contributing to the destruction of the middle class because most of us incorporate Wal-Mart or Target into our weekly shopping routines.

Camden Mayor Dana L. Redd created a "one-stop" growth team last year to try to attract businesses and development to increase the city's low tax base - $22.7 million for the $173 million 2011 budget. Despite Redd's proclamation last week in her "State of the City" address that the ombudsman and Business Growth and Development Team - comprised of city planning, development, code and legal officials, and nonprofit developers from the Cooper's Ferry Partnership - had made about 200 contacts, only a few projects have come to fruition.

Pat Toomey is a Republican U.S. senator from Pennsylvania Over the last year, I have traveled across the commonwealth listening to the concerns of hardworking Pennsylvanians - employees, small-business owners, entrepreneurs - and the message is too often the same: Government is getting in our way. Today, excessive government regulations are making it difficult and more expensive for employers to hire and create jobs. Federal red tape is imposing burdensome, unfunded mandates on local cities, townships, and counties.

This one ranks right up there as far as excessive celebration goes. The NFL (No Fun League), playing it strictly by the book, fined Saints running back Pierre Thomas $12,500 for a uniform violation and a touchdown celebration in which he placed a bow on a football and gave it to a fan during Monday night's game against the Atlanta Falcons. The fine for the celebration is $7,500. Thomas also violated NFL policies by wearing Christmas-themed green and red tape on his black and gold Saints uniform, and his fine for that is $5,000.

They never thought the day would come. After five years entangled in bureaucratic red tape, community organizers in Cramer Hill were ecstatic to finally see the decrepit, vacant house next to St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church and School razed and cleared away Tuesday morning. An environmentally friendly playground is to be built early next year on the River Road lot, which faces the community garden. Known as Ron's House, after its last owner, Ron Hurlburt, who died at 57 in 2006, the house has been the subject of constant disputes among the city and the church and officials from Camden Churches Organized for People (CCOP)