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Election Season Again

Come on ye childhood heroes!
Won’t you rise up from the pages of your comic-books
your super crooks
and show us all the way.
Well! Make your will and testament. Won’t you?
Join your local government.
We’ll have Superman for president
let Robin save the day.

It is election season again, and we have a big one open locally: Magisterial District Judge. This is the “minor judiciary” in Pennsylvania. A friend of mine, attorney Kelley Gillette-Walker is running, so I am somewhat biased. (Incidentally, she is the first Republican I’ve ever supported for any office. As a lifelong Democrat, this is A Big Deal.) Since judges are technically non-partisan, she is cross-filed as a Republican and Democratic candidate. (Local voting information is available here.)

I have never missed an election. Even when I lived in England for nine months, I still managed to vote for Al Gore and *cough* *gack* Joe Lieberman. Needless to say, we get a lot of campaign mail. One we got this past week struck a chord with me — and not in a good way.

Steven Smith, a local mortgage settlement broker, has decided to throw his hat into the ring. You can see a PDF of the letter I got in the mail here. From the letter:

I stand firm in my religious convictions, I walk in my commitments, and I remain transparent to those around me.

Somebody is pandering to the religious vote. This is not a bad approach in this area. If Dayton, Tennessee is the buckle of the bible belt, then Central PA is that hanging bit you can never seem to tuck into the belt loop on your dress pants.

I have no idea what “walk in my commitments” and “remain transparent” mean, but I can smell Fundamentalist code words from a hundred meters. I wasn’t raised in that particular faith tradition, but I did have enough religious exposure growing up to have an allergic reaction to such things. What I do know is that the Magisterial District Judgeship is a secular post in a secular government. I just hope all of the candidates recognize that and, should they win the election, act accordingly. I am fine with a judge having religious faith, but that can’t take he place of judgement, reasoning, and the fair interpretation and application of the law.

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Time to Stop the Bleeding?

The New York Times: U.S. Budget Deficit Shrinks Far Faster Than Expected

WASHINGTON — Since the recession ended four years ago, the federal budget deficit has topped $1 trillion every year. But now the government’s annual deficit is shrinking far faster than anyone in Washington expected, and perhaps even faster than many economists think is advisable for the health of the economy.

That is the thrust of a new report released Tuesday by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, estimating that the deficit for this fiscal year, which ends on Sept. 30, will fall to about $642 billion, or 4 percent of the nation’s annual economic output, about $200 billion lower than the agency estimated just three months ago.

Can we stop the hemorrhaging now and get back to the business of governing?

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A Town in Transition

Q: What do you call a fire in Bellefonte?

A: Gentrification.

I’ve been telling that joke, and variations on it (“The history of Bellefonte is a history of fires”) for years. In the wake of the Hotel DoDe and Garman Opera House fires last year, Bellefonte is moving forward. Lots of people aren’t happy. Myself, I’m sanguine about the matter. I’m so used to nothing good happening around here that my expectations are automatically set pretty low.

Today brings news that the Bellefonte Industrial Development Authority, the Borough group charged with figuring out what to do with the Garman, the DoDe, and the Cadillac Building a block south of here, have voted to accept Ara Kervandjian’s workforce housing project, dubbed the “Bellefonte Mews” plan, over a proposal from a group of 20 Bellefonte residents associated with the Bellefonte Historical and Cultural Association. The community members aren’t happy that we are losing one of these buildings in particular, the Garman. Believe me when I say I feel their pain. I love this town, and eyesores like the pit where the Bush House was really irk me. Unfortunately, reality is intervening in the vision of our town as some sort of arts mecca. There is real and actual demand for housing in our area. For a theater… not so much.

Even during the relatively prosperous late 1990s, the Garman didn’t seem profitable. Even before the previous owners took on more debt than the facility could support, you could tell it wasn’t going to make it. We saw lots of great movies there. My wife and I went as often as we could. I think the first film we saw there was the often-overlooked and emotionally difficult Monsoon Wedding. I remember seeing the midnight premiere of the first film of the Lord of the Rings trilogy there, too. We sat in the balcon for that one. But none of that seemed like the sort of business volume that would sustain a theater, restaurant, hotel, meeting rooms, and planned IMAX.

Long-time residents may also remember when the Garman did dinner theater. That didn’t work out either. And when they found mold, I knew the project was (and should be) doomed. Mold abatement alone would cost more than a community group could possibly afford.

Hotel DoDe
This is the view from the front door of my office. That is the porch of the County Courthouse on the left. Nice view, huh?

I won’t miss the eyesore across the street from my office, although the white boards they put up in place of the burnt-out windows are an improvement.

The CDT article notes that the project is collectively being called “Bellefonte Mews.” This name bothered me at first. I found it casually insulting to its residents. The CDT article defines the term as “stables on buildings in the 19th century that are present on these buildings,” a sentence that is clearly at grammatical odds with itself (and par for the course with our poor-man’s Grauniad). The association of workers with horses felt wrong. But further research revealed that English mews are often quite sought-after residences. I just hope we aren’t importing the problems we’ve seen at the Beaver Farms Apartments into downtown.

All of that being said, I’m not happy to see these buildings go. Part of the charm of Bellefonte is lost every time we have a fire and tear down an old building.