IT DOESN'T TAKE a genius to see that eastern Delaware County was sliced way too thin.
Drop a quarter on a county map and it might cover two or three municipalities, most of them entirely self-sustaining, with their own police department, fire department and elected council.
Some of the boroughs are so small that they're better measured in acres than square miles. Elections can be decided by a few hundred voters. Your councilman is your neighbor.
But small-town governing isn't easy when you live in the shadow of a hulking city, when your sewer lines are collapsing and your tax base is shrinking.
And in the balkanized boroughs that hug the Southwest Philadelphia border, politicians tend to spend half their time wrestling with urban sprawl, the other half wrestling with each other.
"It's always been rough and tumble, because you're dealing with rough-and-tumble people," said Diane Leahan, a William Penn School Board member from Darby. "It's 'Rock 'em, Sock 'em Robot' politics."
Close-quarters, hand-to-hand combat is often the norm in Delaware County's inner-ring municipalities, where clashing personalities and shifting demographics continue to fuel some of the region's fiercest power struggles.
"Sometimes," Leahan confided, "I find it exhausting."
Yeadon & Colwyn
Yeadon
But tempers have been flaring in the neighboring boroughs of Yeadon and Colwyn, whose governments have, at times, appeared to be on the verge of collapse.
"These three towns, what is our problem?'" Brown said. "It's like a disease that is spreading. It originated in Darby and has spread to Yeadon, and now Colwyn. Who's next?"
Yeadon (estimated population 11,367) is recovering from one of its most tumultuous years, sparked by the election of a convicted felon to council and his subsequent appointment to the committee that oversees the police department.
Terry McGirth pleaded guilty in 2003 to stealing more than $100,000 from the Chester County kidney-dialysis company where he had worked. He said he found God in prison and managed to get elected in Yeadon, even though he was on probation.
"He should have never been sworn in," said Lacy Wheeler, a Yeadon attorney who frequently attends council meetings. "Then, when he was appointed to be head of the public safety committee when he had a criminal background himself, that kind of decision did not sit well with members of the community."
While on council, McGirth was charged with harassing borough Finance Director Terri Vaughn. He pleaded guilty to that charge in September. Vaughn has since been fired, and the state Attorney General's Office is investigating whether she misappropriated funds.
McGirth was kicked off council in July after Delaware County District Attorney G. Michael Green filed a court motion to have him removed. The state constitution bars a person convicted of an "infamous crime" from holding office.
Then things really got out of hand.
After McGirth was ousted, his council allies refused to show up at council meetings, deciding to wait out a 30-day window during which the mayor - a McGirth foe - could have appointed McGirth's successor and shifted the balance of power. The boycott prevented the council from forming a quorum and effectively shut down all council business, pushing infuriated Yeadon residents over the edge.
McGirth's faction was slaughtered at the polls last year.
Dolores Jones-Butler, who is beginning her first term as Yeadon's mayor, said she hopes that with five new council members, the borough will be able to put last year's turmoil behind it.
"We're trying. We're taking baby steps," she said. "We have not eliminated all of our problems, but they're not as massive as they were last year."
Colwyn
In May 2008, the 103-year-old Colwyn Fire Co. No. 1 was disbanded. Then council invited controversy the following month by hiring as a consultant a former councilwoman who pleaded guilty in 2006 to aggravated assault of a borough police officer.
Last September, Colwyn officials fired the borough manager after eight months on the job, then terminated longtime police Chief Bryan Hills following a standoff over police staffing and overtime.
"It seems if they would just put down their political philosophies and try to work together for the betterment of the community, things would be better," said Otis Hicks, a seminary grad student who lives across from Colwyn's borough hall.
Tonette Pray, the first black councilwoman in Colwyn, which is now controlled by Democrats after decades of Republican rule, said last week that "racism and bigotry" are behind some of the political clashes, which she said began to spiral out of control when she tried to hire more black police officers.
In recent months, Pray said she has been concerned for her safety. A large crowd of protesters stormed borough hall in October to support the deposed police chief, shouting "Bring Back Hillsy!" Pray said there were "skinheads" at the rally, and that one of the protesters told her, "I could hurt you anytime."
"We have no protection here, and nobody can give us any protection," she said.
The same month, Pray said, someone put a listing on Craigslist that said everything in her home was free. "People were coming to my house and knocking on my door," she said.
Former Colwyn Mayor John Fitzgerald, a Republican who retired last month, dismissed Pray's racism claim as a red herring.
"If there's racism, it's with her, not anyone else," Fitzgerald said. "You just have people that got elected and they're incompetent. They don't know how to run a borough. They fly by the seat of their pants and get themselves in budget trouble."
Hills, who is appealing his termination through arbitration, plans to file a federal civil-rights suit against Pray, claiming that he was fired because he is white. The "grossly understaffed" police department is down to one full-time officer, he said.
"It's a shame," Hills said. "People want their police department back."
Pray says she's trying to move away from the "Hatfield-McCoy mentality" that she blames on disgruntled Republicans who want to see Democrats fail in order to regain power. But she isn't one to back down from a fight, either. The phrase "turn the other cheek" isn't heard often in the Darby-Colwyn-Yeadon political arena.
"Whenever you're first through the door, you have to have very tough skin," Pray said. "I love where I live and I'm not going to let anyone scare me or drive me away."
Allegations of racism, and reverse racism, have also arisen over the years in Yeadon and Darby, which are predominately black.
When Brown was mayor, some black council members took to calling her a "plantation mistress," and Yeadon will soon be facing another lawsuit from Christi Vitullo, a former part-time employee who claims she was denied a police secretary job because she is white.
In 2006, a federal jury found that that the borough illegally used race as "a motivating factor" in hiring a black woman over Vitullo. She was awarded about $100,000 in damages and attorneys' fees. Borough officials had said they were only trying to diversify the police department to reflect the community, which is about 80 percent black.
Vitullo was subsequently fired and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled in 2008 that Yeadon officials had fired her in retaliation for filing the discrimination suit, a claim the officials deny. She and the borough were unable to reach a monetary settlement on the EEOC case, so she's planning to sue Yeadon again in federal court.
0 comments:
Post a Comment