2008 News

June 5, 2008

“A Scenic Slice of Bucks County History”
Bi-Monthly Commissioners’ Meeting Held Inside 158-year-old Tinicum Barn

As the Board of Bucks County Commissioners conducted its June 4 bi-monthly agenda business inside the 1850-vintage barn at picturesque, 132-acre Tinicum Park, birds chirped merrily in the surrounding maple and oak trees. The setting provided a most-appropriate backdrop for the commissioners’ annual presentation of the Bucks County Conservation District awards. The 2008 recipients included the Cooks Creek Watershed Association (accepting was Board of Directors President Scott Douglas) and Carol Sautner of Warrington (conservation individual of the year, accepting on her behalf was her mother, Anita Conrad).

“It’s always nice to be recognized, and it is an inspiration to do more,” Douglas told Commissioners Jim Cawley, chairman, Charley Martin and Diane Ellis-Marseglia, LCSW. As the president of the Cooks Creek Watershed Association, Douglas oversees multiple environmental protection and improvement projects, working closely with community members and the Palisades School District. More information about the Cooks Creek Watershed Association is available on the organization’s Web site, www.cookscreekpa.org.

Mrs. Conrad detailed her daughter’s grass-roots effort to mobilize her Freedom Valley Girl Scout troop to clean up the Bradford Lake Reservoir in Warrington. The clean up has grown into an annual community-wide clean up that includes approximately 250 participants. Mrs. Conrad lauded the effort as an example that “one small individual can do a big job.”

The meeting also included the presentation of the 2008 edition of “Fresh from Bucks County Farms: A Guide to Roadside Markets & ‘Pick Your Own’ Farms” to the commissioners. Scott Guiser, horticultural educator for the Penn State Cooperative Extension, highlighted the annual “voluntary” publication, which features information about 63 Bucks County farms that offer natural delicacies from heirloom tomatoes to sweet corn to maple syrup. Guiser also highlighted the 2007 “word of the year” from the New American Oxford Dictionary, which was locavore – or “someone who seeks out locally grown food.” The Fresh from Bucks County Farms is available through the Penn State Cooperative Extension, the Commissioners’ Office of Public Information (55 E. Court St., fifth floor), and on the Bucks County Web site's Farms index.

The resolution portion of the meeting featured unanimous approval of most items for seven departments and the tabling of one other. By a 2-1 margin, with Commissioner Ellis-Marseglia dissenting on two of the individual items, Commissioners Cawley and Martin approved receipt of more than $500,000 of interest earned from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania through the federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA).

Noted Commissioner Cawley, “Any time the federal government wants to give us money, I will take it.” According to Board of Elections Director Deena Dean, who gave a comprehensive briefing on the HAVA funding, the additional monies can be used to offset the initial 2006 purchase of the county’s Danaher electronic voting machines, to purchase an extended warranty on the machines, and for matters of voter/poll worker education and accessibility.

The commissioners also approved a $117,000 Emergency Management Performance Grant Agreement that helps to defray a portion of salaries within the Emergency Management Agency. Also approved was a list of amendments to the Health Department’s rules and regulations that were generated by a meeting with Sesame Place officials on May 27. These amendments involved terminology, closures, safety ropes, disinfection equipment, hot tubs and spas and posting of public information.

During the chief operating officer’s report, David Sanko addressed several items, including ongoing Human Resources searches to fill the director of the Youth Center and director of the Health Department positions. Mr. Sanko also touched on the Pennsylvania state budget, which remains a work in progress that will have a direct impact on Bucks County departments, particularly Children & Youth and Juvenile Probation. The state’s current fiscal year ends on June 30.  After several taxpayer complaints, Sanko also offered a consumer alert that the county commissioners are not sponsoring any telephone town meetings.

For a full audio account of the June 4 meeting, please go to the link on the commissioners’ meeting page.