Wows & Scowls
Wow: The taxpayer and enhance public safety appear to be the big winners as the Fayette County Court system shifts toward using Web cameras that permit magisterial district judges and police departments to arraign criminal suspects. This cuts down tremendously on the cost of transporting prisoners and those charged with crimes to a judge’s office for arraignment. And most of that cost is borne by county property owners through their municipal and county real estate taxes. President Judge Conrad B. Capuzzi, who heads the county court system deserves credit for approving a modern technology that saves money. But why hasn’t Uniontown District Judge Mark Blair chosen to participate, when eight of his peers have? Scowl: A report lists Pennsylvania among 43 states that fail to make college education affordable. The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education found that families here spend too much of their annual incomes paying for public and private colleges, with the average family forking out 26 percent for a child to attend a community college, 39 percent to attend a public college or university, and 75 percent to attend a private college. Those numbers don’t include financial aid, which in some cases can be substantial. Tuition is skyrocketing to the point where many too students graduate saddled with thousands of dollars in debt.
Wow: In the “how time flies” department, Uniontown Police Chief Kyle Sneddon is retiring Sept. 15 after 24 years with the city police department. Sneddon has taken an investigator’s job with the state of West Virginia. During his tenure, which stretches back to the early 1980s, the city and the nature of law enforcement has changed. But we agree with the assessment of the affable Sneddon given by Mayor Jim Sileo:”He gave everything he had to his job … He has been a very good servant to the community.”
Scowl: The Springhill Township supervisors have exposed some of the gamesmanship involved in Crystal Springs Development Inc.’s request for a zoning change that would clear the way for hundreds of homes to be build in a tax-free Keystone Opportunity Zone. Supervisor Brent Robinson said he and his peers were asked which of two housing plans they favored, one for 500 homes or one for 300 homes, and that they were not asked in they favored having homes in a tax-free zone. The supervisors opposed a 2003 rezoning precisely because it would permit some residential housing on the site. But former county Commissioners Ronald M. Nehls and Sean M. Cavanagh approved that request, wooed by an upscale golf course complex that – surprise!- never materialized.