The South Central Democrat

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Welcome to The South Central Democrat newsletter, a source of up to date information about the counties and municipalities of South Central Pennsylvania. This newsletter is written, edited, and published by the members of the South Central Young Democrats, and while they a branch of the Democratic Party, great care is taken to report the facts without bias. All author opinions are labeled under dedicated opinion headings.

Issue 1: March 16th, 2025

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South Central Newsletter

Mid-March Edition
Knowing is half the battle

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In the Past

What to watch for

The continued fight for trans and non-binary rights rages across school boards throughout the commonwealth, and reporting from the West Shore School District continues to indicate that this is an ongoing issue. In this issue, Andrew Bowman reports that public sentiment is in favor of continuing to protect local children, in spite of the questionable moves that the West Shore School Board has made in the past year.

The Kost Road Trailer Storage plan is likely to boil over into angry residents at the next Board of Supervisors meeting, which is on the 26th at 6:30pm. Residents of Leibys Mobile Home Park are unlikely to take kindly to a drop-lot being built in their backyard especially considering this plan was filed moments before developments like these were banned from being constructed near residential areas.

During the Cumberland County Democratic Committee general meeting this month, Cumberland County Commissioner Jean Foschi warned residents to keep a weather eye on the horizon for news about the I-83 toll bridge. While many counties, municipalities, and businesses sued to prevent the tolls, it is likely to resurface as funding from the federal government dries up under the current administration.

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Coming Up

Want to contribute?

Do you attend school board, local government, or volunteer organization meetings? Are you capable of unbiased reporting? Can you read and write? Congratulations! You are qualified to write for The South Central Democrat. All you need to do is find the Newsletter chat in the SCYD Discord server and let us know. Even if you have no interest in taking notes during meetings, you can still help us populate our Wiki with information about organizations and people who are active in our area.

Letter From The Editor

My wife and I attended the Empty Bowls charity event last week which is run by Project Share of Carlisle. For $25 a head, you get a handcrafted ceramic bowl, a few different varieties of all-you-can-eat soup, and good conversation. This event runs every March, and the limited number of tickets usually go on sale in early February.

The director talked at length about just how far $25 can go, providing dozens of families with food, local produce, or take home lunches. So not only is the soup good, it is also for a good cause.

Project Share's mission statement:

Our Mission is to reduce food insecurity for neighbors in the greater Carlisle area by offering access to nutritious food, program and a support network that promotes self-sufficiency, fosters dignity and instills hope.

Warning

We are very new to this, so please be patient while we figure out how to run a periodical. We are in the process of sorting out our tech, developing a way to subscribe for updates, and are in search of more members to report on their local area.

We welcome constructive criticism in the SCYD Discord server.

Government

Cumberland County

Silver Spring Township

2025-03-06 Silver Spring Township Planning Commission Meeting

Submitted by Adrian Garcia

Kost Road Trailer Storage

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Proposed location highlighted in orange, Leibys Mobile Home Park visibile to the north.

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A representative of Brinkash Associates brought forward a plan to construct a trailer storage lot and repair facility on a 43 acre plot of land between Kost Road and Appalachian Drive (Parcel 38-08-0571-032). This vacant land is currently being farmed, and is on the boarder between Silver Spring Township and Monroe Township. To the north is Leibys Mobile Home Park, where at least 15 trailers will boarder the proposed facility. The facility will store up to 385 trailers and also contain an office/repair shop. The applicant was seeking four waivers:

  • SLDO 603.10: Marking parking spaces and interior drives
  • SLDO 603.16: Interior landscaping
  • SLDO 603.22: Parking space size for large vehicles
  • SLDO 604.02: Curbing

All waivers seemed reasonable to staff and the Planning Commission as the ordinances in question are aimed at more traditional commercial developments.

Commission member Randy Duncan asked the representative if residents in the adjacent trailer court were informed of these plans. The representative indicated that they have not been in contact with any adjacent lots, as this is not required by the ordinance for this type of development.

When asked if this business would have 24/7 traffic, the representative indicated that they did not know. When asked if this business would be illuminated 24/7, the representative indicated that they did not know. When asked if the trailers would be empty, or if the contents would be valuable, the representative indicated that they did not know.

Given the uncertainties, multiple members of Planning Commission, the representative from Cumberland County, and the Township Engineer, Aaron Moyer, voiced their concerns about screening between this proposed facility and the trailer court to the north of the property. While the plan did indicate the code-required visual screening (one row of low shrubs, one row of evergreen trees) along the periphery, the developer was asked to work with Township Staff to provide additional screening on the northern side of the property. Commission member Doug McDonald noted he lived near a freight terminal and the experience was incredibly noisy, and while this isn’t a terminal, the uncertainty about operating hours concerns him.

The lime-green boarder around the facility is a mix of 6 foot tall Arborvitae and Red Maple

Also of concern to members of the Commission was the lack of a security fence on the plans, especially with the property being against a residential area where children live. After much pressure from multiple members of the Planning Commission, someone (I believe to be the applicant’s lawyer) took the microphone and said that they would be adding a perimeter fence to the plans.

During public comment, resident Clarence Bouchat took the stand to point out that the timing of this plans filing was impeccable. If filed just a day later, it would have been under a new set of ordinances requiring that this type of development be placed 500 feet away from residential lots. Had this been filed under the new ordinance, this property would be entirely unsuitable for this project. He also indicated that his Woodlands Buffer proposal, which the Board of Supervisors recently decided not to codify, would be a perfect tool to rectify this conflict between residential and commercial/industrial.

Despite the concern about fencing and additional plantings, no conditions were added to the plans. The planning commission recommended approval on all wavers, and unanimously voted to send the plan to Board of Supervisors on a Ron Secary/Doug McDonald motion.

Ordinance 2025-3 Revising Warehouse Use

This ordinance, seemingly a direct response to the SIlver Springs Trade Center debacle, aims to return warehousing back to a conditional use as it was before 2020. It was indicated by Scott Maldonado, Lead Land Development Specialist in the Community Development department, that this ordinance was written by the Board of Supervisors and Solicitor Sholtz.

Interpretation

There was quite a lot of cross talk and back and forth between the Planning Commission, Scott Maldonado, and Supervisor Laura Brown during her comments, and I was unable to fully understand the history. It is clear that there is quite a lot of backstory that I am not privy to, so I will try my best to interpret and apologize if this misrepresents the facts.

The reason for the initial change boiled down to the fact that many warehouses constructed in the 80s and 90s simply ignored the ordinances, and were therefore non-conforming structures. This meant that if a warehouse expanded or performed significant exterior renovations, they were required to go through Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors, causing a lot of administrative overhead. In order to correct this and make these buisnesses conforming, the ordinances were amended in 2020 to make warehouses by-right. Supervisor Brown stated that she was unaware that these changes were being made when the 2020 refresh of ordinances was done, while Maldonado stated that this change was presented to the Board of Supervisors.

This change precipitated the Silver Spring Trade Center.

The Planning Commission opted not to comment on this ordinance, as it had only just been issued to them in the days leading up to the meeting. Comment will instead be provided at the April meeting.

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Upper Allen Township

2025-03-05 Upper Allen Township Board of Commissioners

Submitted by Andrew Bowman

On the innocuous side, the meeting began with the 2024 Zoning and Planning Commission Report, which reviewed the development projects undertaken in the area over the past year. As the township is winding down from a construction boom, this report contained a relative dearth of information compared to years past. In fact, the report’s only highlight was a single zoning change to 14 acres of the Autumn Chase Planned Residential Development (PRD) from R1 to R2 to match the rest of the project. According to Jennifer Royer, the Community Development Director, this change will have minimal effect on the design plans for the plot of land as the R1 zoning designation only allowed single-family housing, which is what this land is going to be used for anyway. Review of the zoning designation directory confirms this.

After this, the police and fire departments each gave updates on their activities. The police chief reported that the department has finally received a new patrol car that was ordered all the way back in late 2023. Thereafter, the fire chief reported on the status of certification training and fielded concerns from the board regarding the possibility of full-structure fires in multi-unit residential buildings.

These reports then gave way to talk the discussion of ordinance amendments. These ordinance changes were largely benign and had to do with specific wording, however there was some public concern about the accessibility of these ordinance changes to the public. This presented the board an opportunity to showcase the revamped township website, which has been designed to help citizens find the information they need to know. In this case, specifically, they directed the member of the public to the government section of the website, which includes a page dedicated to ordinance amendments. They also showed a way to be alerted when new ordinance changes are proposed by using the E-Notify button at the bottom of the page, and announced that an online system for residents to book Upper Allen Township’s public parks is in development.

Speaking of parks, this topic served as the center of a somewhat lengthy debate as Assistant Secretary Eric Fairchild expressed a desire to open an investigation into an alleged violation of the Pennsylvania Sunshine Act committed by the Parks Department in 2021. The department had entered into a closed meeting with the landscaping company Derck & Edson regarding a design proposal for the Generations Park at 1340 Eastern Lisburn Road. This desire was opposed by Executive Vice President Richard A Castriano Jr. and solicitor J. Stephen Feinour, who argued that, while the meeting was private, it did not fall under the purview of the Sunshine Act as it was not an official meeting. It was instead a meeting between the landscaping company and certain members of the Parks Department, and that no deliberations or official actions took place during the meeting. Solicitor Feinour, also argued that it was up to interpretation whether the specific group that met with D&E held enough authority to fall under the Sunshine Act’s jurisdiction. Fairchild responded by contending that deliberations had, in fact, occurred as the members of the Parks Department asked questions about D&E’s design proposal. There was no clear resolution to this debate. As a footnote, it should be stated that Derck & Edson did receive the contract for the park design.

As for future matters, the board is closely watching the Soland vs East Bradford Township case currently before the State Supreme Court, which has the potential to expand the Des Minimis power of zoning hearing boards to issue waivers for slight dimensional deviances to also include slight deviances in land usage. The board seems very interested in seeing how this plays out, though they went into executive session before I could ask much about it.

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Schools

West Shore School District

2025-03-13 West Shore School District Board Meeting

Submitted by Andrew Bowman

The West Shore School Board met to discuss matters affecting the district as spring rolls in and thoughts of the next school year begin to become relevant. The meeting started with recognition of the district staff for excellence in their work. Most notable among them was Kelly Kauffman, a teacher at Fairview Intermediary School, who has been spearheading initiatives aimed at improving the school and helping students from less fortunate backgrounds. There was also high praise for the district’s wrestling teams, which have been doing incredibly well this year, as well as a student art exhibit in the conference room showing off student creativity from all grade levels.

On the subject of business items, the main topic at hand was the transportation contract selection. While the school district historically ran its own transportation, they partnered with First Student in 2013 to handle transporting children to and from school. Despite the twelve-year relationship, this year the district is poised to make the somewhat tough decision to switch to Rohrer Bus Services. According to the somewhat recently formed Transportation Committee, Rohrer was chosen out of the three applicants for the contract because they had the most detailed plan for the district, including for the transition from First Student, including provisions to offer current transportation staff jobs in the new system. There were some public concerns however about the cost, as Rohrer presented the most expensive option to the district by a margin of a million dollars. One driver also expressed concerns about pay cuts and possible demotions in the changeover, to which a member of the transportation committee spoke to her about after the meeting.

Beyond this, other business and informational items were largely benign. The board reported that they have reached a Memorandum of Understanding to receive assistance should they require help with refugee students and, keeping with the theme, the board announced that they were promoting “Inside Out and Back Again” by Thannha Lai, which recounts her experience as a child refugee of the Vietnam War who couldn’t speak English at first.

The refugee-related news wasn’t all great, however, as a member of the public reported that Church World Service, a group that assists refugees in the area, has had to furlough most of their staff due to recent spending freezes. This freeze leaves just 11 employees on the clock as the organization prepares to receive 50 Afghan families who assisted the US military, and are therefore no longer welcome in Afghanistan. Another member of the public, Terry Michels, delivered an impassioned speech regarding the recent Department of Education cuts, describing them as an abandonment of school districts and burdening taxpayers even further. I spoke with her afterward and she told me that she is planning to run for school board in region 2 (Lower Allen area) against conservative Board President Kelly Brent, who played a large role in the controversial solicitor firing last year.

As for the gender debate that dominated my report from two weeks ago, I’m glad to report that the two public comments made on the subject this meeting were in favor of transgender and nonbinary dignity.

Writer's Note

In my public comment, I raised the idea of renovating bathrooms to eliminate design flaws that cause safety issues, such as having gaps in the restroom stall walls and doors and locks that are prone to becoming misaligned. After the meeting, one board member said that they have been curious about this sort of solution and would like to implement it if the details can be worked out.

I would also like to shout out West Shore Unified for their continued work civically engaging in the school board process to protect the dignity of all students in the West Shore School District. To learn more, visit their website, where you can find information on how to participate and support their mission.

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Organizations

Cumberland County Democratic Committee

2025-03-08 Cumberland County Democrats General Membership Meeting

Submitted by Katie Pritchett

The General Membership Meeting for the Cumberland County Democrats was held at the Mechanicsburg Middle School. Sixty-two committee members were in attendance, as well as seventy-nine guests. This was the first full meeting since the 2024 Election. County Chair Matt Roan offered welcoming remarks to attending Precinct Committee Persons and guests, encouraging attendees that it is okay to be outraged about the current political climate. Roan also encouraged attendees to get more involved at a local level and working to reach friends and neighbors who may not be as politically involved so that Democrats can win more elections.

Roan also encouraged attendees to pay attention to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court Race and to vote to retain current Democratic Justices and to consider running for office or get involved with one of the existing subcommittees within the Cumberland County Democratic Committee. Current 2025 candidates were offered an opportunity to speak during the meeting, and petitions were available for attendees to sign. During her report, Comissioner Jean Foschi asked attendees to keep an eye on further plans for the I-83 bridge, as there may be plans moving forward to make this a toll bridge.

Nate Davidson, State Representative for the 103rd District provided a legislative update for bills he is working on in the state house, including one which would increase the window for survivors of sexual assault to press charges on their offenders, one which would offer assistance to low income households for water utility bills, and a homebuyer tax credit bill.

Reports for the various subcommittees, including finance and strategic planning were provided during the meeting as well. The CCDC reports that this year will be a “research year” as they are looking into a software database to store information to use in the future. Attendees were also encouraged to sign up for the CCDC’s newsletter and mailing list and to consider joining a subcommittee to help turn Cumberland County blue.

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