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Welcome to everyone’s favorite reality TV show.

Two ordinances moved tonight and both eventually got there unanimously. But the ICE ordinance almost got eaten by a petty procedural fight first…& that fight is really about grievances stemming from the reorganization that happened a couple meetings ago.

34 people signed up for public forum. VP Noah Fields motioned to take the first 30 minutes and push everybody else to the end of the meeting. Councilman Kyle McIntyre voted no.

There was a bit of a squabble, but eventually nobody else spoke to vote down that motion. Hats off to Kyle for wanting to allow all public commenters to get their word in up front…and not have to wait 2 (or in this case 3) hours to do so.

Noah kept scoffing…like it’s unreasonable to think public commenters shouldn’t have to wait THREE HOURS on important matters.

The ICE ordinance is intro’d with the vote Sept 16th

Ordinance 2026-12, limiting the use of township resources in aid of federal civil immigration enforcement, was introduced and advertised. Public hearing and final vote Sept 16th.

President Billups read a statement supporting it. Then McIntyre gave one helluva speech thats honestly worth watching.

He built it around walking into Upper Darby High School as a kid. The beauty in the diversity of classmates and friends. Friends whose parents were born in Philly, Vietnam, Liberia, India, Bangladesh, Mexico.

Kyle: “Nobody handed us a lesson plan explaining diversity. We just lived it.”

He continued…imagine the kid next to you carried something home you didn’t. Told not to answer the door, couldn’t have friends over and families talking quietly at night.

“There are moments in public office when you’re asked to vote, and then there are moments when you’re asked who you are.”

He closed his intro with “ICE out of Upper Darby. Justice for Parady La.”

Then it got ugly…

Marion came in HOT and went after Billups on process procedure.

He was bitching about the agenda review. He claims on Sunday, she said only two items would appear, the lease purchase agreement and the quick ticket program, and then quietly added the ICE ordinance to the agenda the next day under her own section. He also spoke for council members and claimed that other council members were “equally stunned.”

FYI — “other council members” is just Noah…

He also thought it was some sort of “gotcha” that McIntyre publicly said he wrote 80% of it in December before he was sworn in.

I’m sorry Marion…that’s called being…ummm…prepared? It seems to be working.

They are getting more done since they broke up the duo of Harry and Llo- I mean Marion and Noah.

Billups countered by letting Marion know that he is inaccurate. She said that the ordinance went through committee, edits happened with Upper Darby Police Department Superintendent Bernhardt, it went through Public Safety with DiNofia Bozzone and Bantoe. “Just because you weren’t informed, that’s not accurate. But because you don’t sit on that committee, sir.”

And let him know that he has had this ordinance since January. Not just last night.

Then Noah Fields entered the fray to try and echo the same…

ALSO, when Billups was queuing him to speak next, she referred to him as “Vice President Van-”

McIntyre then busted out the binders and laid out the timeline in detail. Binders went out Jan 1st, and the ICE ordinance was literally the first tab...he said there are email records from every month since. He pointed to a June exchange where somebody raised concerns about mask provisions that were never in the ordinance…

Marion and Noah never read this stuff.

Kyle also said if the mayor hadn’t stepped in, it never would have gotten done, because he was “ran around the bush constantly, told that it was moving forward. For months, for weeks, it went nowhere until I had to start talking with Ed.”

Kyle explained the lengthy process where the ordinance went through Legislation and Intergovernmental Affairs…then Public Safety…then the solicitor for initial redlining, back to both committees, then to Superintendent Bernhardt for final edits, then back to the solicitor for a third time. Kyle also said he committed up front to accepting whatever Bernhardt wanted, unconditionally.

Then he called out Marion and Noah for sitting on council, lying and playing politics with peoples civil rights.

I submitted a RTK request for this internal communication.

Kearney showed up

State Senator Tim Kearney came to speak in support. He said that of every issue his office has received calls and comms about since the start of 2025, ICE actions and presence in UD is the most frequent topic.

He said the ordinance doesnt overstep township authority, and that it provides clarity in a situation with a lot of gray area. He made sure to say that this isn’t about local law enforcement and even praised the working relationship with Bernhardt.

In Harrisburg he and colleagues have introduced ICE out legislation to ban 287(g) agreements statewide, prohibit ICE from Commonwealth property, keep schools, hospitals and houses of worship safe from ICE arrests, and protect polling places.

He also said that ICE contributes nothing to Upper Darby except fear. And for people, that means fewer shopping trips, missed doctor appts, missed work days, and worse off public safety.

The quick ticket ordinance passed

This ordinance passed unanimously.

Seventeen violations and enforcement starts Jan 1st…and starting next week anyone who gets a notice of violation for one of the 17 also gets a yellow sticker warning them that in Jan there will be a fine.

You can read it in depth here, but the violations are: accumulation of trash/debris, code official, construction debris/materials, dumpsters without auth, failure to clean up animal waste, failure to obtain required permits, failure to post required permit placards, failure to secure vacant or unoccupied structures, graffiti defacement, hazardous materials, high weeks, improper dumping (and no not ballots…), improper storage of hazardous material, and improper storage of trash containers/recyclables.

If one gets three tickets in a calendar year, then the township does the work itself or hires a contractor, then invoices the property owner. If that person doesn’t pay, it becomes a lien.

For enforcement, appeals go to Singh or the assistant director. 1st time violators get a warning consideration. Routine violators get denied, and from there it’s the Court of Common Pleas, etc.

One more thing

For the 3rd time, a resident tried to raise something absolutely insane. He described coming home in July to find a neighbor in his apartment building butchering a goat in the common stairwell…with blood everywhere.

Council was speechless and didn’t know what to say, and neither do I.

Sept 16th

ICE ordinance public hearing and final vote. Show up.

Until next time on The Real Housewives of Upper Darby…👋

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Note: Meetings are still being held at 1pm during the workday. Email council members to let them know your displeasure.

Announcements

I’m going to skip the announcements, because again…there wasn’t much of anything to note and I want to immediately touch on…

Council Accepts $1.4mil Drone Surveillance Grant Despite Privacy Concerns

The county accepted a $1.45mil Counter-Unmanned Aircraft Systems grant for drone detection. Almost all but a fraction of it goes to Axon Dedrone RF-350 and RF-560 sensors, portable deployment kits, software licensing, training, installation & five years of maintenance.

Axon…yes that Axon. The company competing with Flock and getting governmental contracts at a rapid, rapid pace.

Basically, the county is getting federal money to purchase tech that can detect and respond to drones.

Councilwomen Joanne Phillips and Christine Reuther both voted against accepting it.

And their objections were VERY MUCH straightforward…and obvious.

Phillips three concerns were privacy, compliance and the long term cost it’ll have on taxpayers.

Phillips compared the technology to “Flock cameras for the sky.”

Flock cameras have already sparked tons of debate over who gets access to the data they collect and how that information can be used. Phillips having similar concerns with a split council shows there are serious concerns here.

What the hell is this system going to collect? who is going to have access to it? and what’ll happen to that information?

They are accepting one time grant money but the county is taking on training, reporting, policy obligations, etc that don’t just go away once the grant runs out.

The federal grant pays for the initial equipment, but Delco will eventually be responsible for operating andmaintaining it. There could be additional training costs, maintenance expenses and ongoing costs.

Phillips said: “You’re not supposed to look a gift horse in the mouth, but I’m looking at this more as a Trojan horse, not a gift horse.”

Reuther echoed much of the same.

She said she doesn’t believe the county should auto accept every grant that comes its way. She also questioned why the county was acquiring the tech without a specific or defined need and use case.

The council members supporting the grant argued that drones are becoming increasingly common and that emergency services and law enforcement need a way to determine whether drones operating over Delco are even allowed or authorized.

One member brought up a recent incident in Chester County where an unidentified drone was flying around a neighborhood and looking into peoples homes and local law enforcement couldn’t determine who was operating it…which is insane and a good use case.

Nobody wants someone flying a drone outside their bathroom window while they are taking a shit.

The three in support also emphasized that the county will not deploy it until written policies governing it are established. Okay cool…well then why are we approving the tech before those policies are in place?

If we are serious about privacy protections here…the public should know the EXACT rules before the equipment is purchased.

I don’t go and buy a Ring system for my house with the thought of… ‘using it in the future.’

What data will be collected? How long retained? … Who can access it? Can other law enforcement agencies request it?

What role does the private vendor have in handling the information?

& like I mentioned before…what happens when the federal grant ends?

These questions are the bare minimum residents should expect when their government is purchasing new surveillance tech.

Phillips and Reuther 100000% got it right.

A federal grant isn’t always automatically a good deal.

If the county needs this equipment, make the case. for. it.

Tell us exactly what the technology can do and how it’s being regulated. Put strict privacy rules in place. Explain the ongoing costs.

Give the public everything. Instead, they’re accepting the grant now and figuring out the policies long term arrangements later??

Completely backwards.

And especially considering how often government tech contracts become permanent once the initial round of grant funding disappears.

The vote ultimately went forward.

We should absolutely want government to have the tools necessary to keep people safe.

But…we should also be the people asking the necessary questions and there are A LOT here.

Presentation: Delaware County Public Defender’s Office

The biggest and longest presentation of the early afternoon came from Delaware County Public Defender Taylor Dunn.

He went into the staff and roles and their mission: representing people who cannot afford an attorney while also addressing the issues that frequently land people in the criminal legal system in the first place.

One cool thing he touched on was that the Delaware County public defenders office is becoming an attractive destination for lawyers, highlighting specifically recruitment and retention.

They also created a Harm Reduction Unit consisting of two attorneys and two social workers, which is designed to respond to clients struggling with opioid use disorder & connecting them with treatment.

The goal is to get people out of jail more quickly, avoid forcing people to detox while incarcerated & keep them connected to treatment after release.

Public Comment

Colonel Jenkins, Department of Military and Veterans Affairs. Air Force birthday flag raising is Sept 18th at noon at the courthouse, and he’s looking for a veteran or family member who served in the Air Force to give a couple minutes of reflection. He’ll be back in two weeks to speak on veteran suicide prevention.

Charlie Alexander, Broomall. Back on Don Guanella, asking about why the gates closed and the park signage are down.

He also went after Womack on his back taxes. He said it’s wrong for Womack to be taking a paycheck from the county while owning back taxes.

And then looked at the camera to tell people that there are (3) seats up for county council.

With (2) warring factions within the Delco GOP, the entertainment value for their 2027 primary will be there.

Karis Coker, Concord. Opened with her usual “no more debt,” then onto her Board of Elections gripe with James Allen.

Kathy, Edgemont. She opened on meeting access. Public comment went from five minutes to three, and now evening meetings are gone. Her quote: “How are the working people going to voice their opinion?”

Then the cyber attack. Two months in and residents don’t know what was accessed. Whether it was records…tax information…election data?

She said she’d file a Right to Know but expects it denied, appealed, and answered with a creative response that admits she’s entitled to the records and withholds them anyway.

She’s not wrong about the RTK process…almost every single one of my RTK requests go down the same path.

Morton resident. Ten questions, mostly on county spending related to undocumented residents?? and then whether Delco is a sanctuary county, etc.

The Fox News comment.

Phil, Clifton Heights. Said the new Clifton Heights school opened without an American flag in the parking lot. Then went into his tax delinquency that grew from $1.2k to roughly $3k.

$126mil in New County Debt

Council held the first reading of an ordinance authorizing up to $126mil in general obligation debt.

The borrowing is part of the county’s ongoing Capital Improvement Plan.

Up to $120mil would fund ongoing and new capital projects, while the other $6mil would be used to refinance existing county debt.

Council explained that the $126mil figure is a max amount and that the final borrowing amount could be lower.

Officials also mentioned that this is the third and final planned set of borrowing connected to the CIP.

Joanne Phillips emphasized their inherited infrastructure problems, and deferred maintenance just to bring county facilities up to standard.

Also to note: the borrowing for this is separate from the proposed green infrastructure bond referendum expected to appear on the November ballot.

That referendum would ask voters whether they want to authorize additional borrowing for green projects beyond just the county owned facilities.

Consent Agenda Items (Quick Summary)

Grants & funding

• $1.45M Counter-Unmanned Aircraft Systems grant (July 2025 – Sept 2028) for drone detection. $1,411,350 of it goes to Axon Dedrone RF-350 and RF-560 sensors, portable deployment kits, software licensing, training, installation & five years of maintenance. Can be deployed at fixed locations or moved around the county.

• $1,153,680 JRI-2 grant from the PA Commission on Crime and Delinquency, April 2026 – March 2029.

• $4,145,259 amendment confirming Delco’s drug & alcohol allocation from the state for July 2026 – June 2027. Braided: $1,675,830 federal substance abuse block grant, $1,649,921 state general assistance, $503,104 opioid targeted response, plus gaming fund, compulsive gambling treatment & State Store Fund money.

• $237,316 in additional SOR IV funding for recovery support services targeting 18-24 year olds.

• $141,566 PCCD grant application for mandatory services to victims of juvenile offenders, calendar year 2027. No match, non-competitive.

• $129,500 in Interactive Gaming Revenue Authority grants, plus a separate $25,000 one-time grant to the Delaware County Bar Foundation for pro bono services and underserved community development.

• $53,542 to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia for the Community Asthma Prevention Program, aimed at asthma self-management and remediation education for Delco families.

• $40,602 RASA/Victim Services grant application for Court Financial Services, 2027. State funded, no county match.

• $5,637 PEMA Hazardous Materials Response Fund grant for chemical PPE. Note the county has to add its own money to cover the difference, because PEMA sets the grant amount without regard to what the equipment actually costs.

Purchases & contracts

• $354,686.53 ratification of a CDWG hardware purchase for IT. Ratification means it already happened.

• $122,302 in Dell hardware for Children and Youth Services.

• $102,876 for two 2026 Toyota Grand Highlander Hybrids for the Health Department, purchased through COSTARS with ARPA money.

• $41,409.67 to renew LeaseAccelerator lease compliance software for the Controller’s Office through 2029.

Facilities

• Advertising the Yeadon Wellness Center flooring project, phases 2 and 3 carpet replacement plus debris removal.

CDBG reallocation

• Canceling $162,000 in 2023, 2024 and 2025 funding allocated to the Student-Run Emergency Housing Unit of Philadelphia. Reallocating $30,000 of it to Public Works for a bus shelter at George W. Hill.

Intergovernmental

• Service agreement with Chester County for youth shelter and detention services, July 2025 – June 2027.

Also

• 2027 county holiday schedule approved.

• Andrea White and Nancy McCormack appointed to the Drug and Alcohol Planning Council, three-year terms.

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Ordinance

Upper Darby Township Council is advancing an ICE ordinance this week, and Councilman Kyle McIntyre came on to walk through what’s actually in it.

First reading is this Wednesday. The public hearing and final vote are Sept 16th.

Upper Darby passed an ICE resolution back in February, this is the ordinance.

McIntyre says he wrote about 80% of it in December, before he was even sworn in.

His framing on why this is a local issue and not a federal one: about 1/4 of Upper Darby is immigrant or foreign born and that’s over 20,000 residents. “Upper Darby is immigrants. I can’t separate those two.”

Hes clear ICE isn’t new here, but what changed is the scale and the shift away from judicial warrants toward civil detainers and people getting picked up off the street. There have been at least 300 residents lost this year, a majority of whom he says committed no crimes. And one Upper Darby resident died in ICE custody.

He also says Police Superintendent Bernhardt supported it and worked on it directly.

A provision nobody else has

Most ICE ordinances handle 287(g) agreements and stop there. McIntyre argues that leaves a gap, because your police department shares information with neighboring ones. If one of those neighbors signs a 287(g), they’ve got a back door into your systems and youd never know.

So Upper Darby’s ordinance triggers an auto review of every municipal agreement the township has with any agency that signs a 287(g). He says it’s a first of its kind provision and that even Philadelphia’s ordinance doesn’t have it.

He points directly at Lansdowne to explain the risk. Lansdowne just passed an ICE ordinance, but its constable reportedly holds a 287(g) agreement, and the constable isn’t a borough employee. Does UDPD’s police force have a voluntary agreement with that constable?

“Because our borders are swiss cheese, I have to be cognizant about this. Access to information in Upper Darby is a privilege that you must be aligned with our values to receive.”

He also brought up the fact that nothing hypothetically could have stopped Upper Darby from signing a 287(g) and becoming a staging ground for ICE operations targeting Philadelphia.

The masking workaround

A municipality can’t tell federal agents to take off their masks. So the ordinance requires Upper Darby police to remain identifiable while they are exercising police authority.

Which means masking becomes ICE’s giveawar. If someone’s covered up, you know they’re not UDPD.

He also frames this as a human trafficking and impersonation issue, because right now anybody can put on a vest and take someone off a street and nobody would know the difference.

He acknowledges this ordinance contains some of the first written provisions governing the police department’s operations, which he sees as a transparency win independent of the immigration piece.

What else is in it

Limits on collecting and sharing information. A ban on township property being used voluntarily as an ICE staging location, which he says is lifted from Philly’s ordinance. A training requirement, which he says was a deficiency in the city’s version. And a formal request that federal agents identify themselves and not mask while operating in the township. They can ask, but enforcing it is a different story.

Something else that is pretty big…Upper Darby police will track ICE activity and share it publicly. He says, right now when someone disappears, nobody knows if it’s a missing persons case or an ICE arrest, which wastes police resources and leaves families with nothing. He also wants residents calling 911 rather than confronting agents themselves.

Connection to November

He connects this to the November election, and expects ICE activity around polling places.

Most polling locations in Upper Darby are government or township property, which is exactly what the staging provision covers.

He’s also been talking with the school district, and says Clifton Heights would need its own ordinance for the protections to hold across the school district’s footprint.

And he makes an economic argument…when residents stop going outside, shopping, and eating out, and when families won’t visit relatives here because they’re afraid of getting picked up, that hurts the township’s economy too.

His hope is that this becomes a model ordinance. He says a lot of municipalities have been waiting to see what Upper Darby does, and expects Lansdowne to go back and amend theirs after seeing it.

The dates

First reading Wednesday, Sept 2nd. Public hearing and final vote Sept 16th.

Upper Darby’s International Festival is Sept 19th. The plan is to have the ordinance passed and bring it there.

New monthly thing. A few residents have started covering their own townships and/or school boards. Once a month I’ll be rounding up what they have reported on.

If you live in their municipality and/or have kids in the school district they cover…please subscribe to them.

And of course, if you want to start one for your town…email nick@delcorising.com.

Middletown & Rose Tree Media School District

Middletown Observer, by Paul Lopreiato

K-1 Center debate is underway. There have been numerous Planning Commission meetings related to the new proposed K-1 center for RTMSD. Traffic is the fight right now. The commission voted 5 to 0 to give the district more time…again. Next date is Sept 8th. The district’s community meeting on traffic is Sept 14th at Springton Lake.

No warehouse at the Franklin Mint site. Outrigger withdrew its appeal August 10th. They filed while Middletown was mid rewrite, which entitled them to the older ordinance. Now…any future development follows the current code…which bans warehouses.

Bond rating upgrade & new trail proposed. The township received an upgrade in its S&P municipal bond rating, which is expected to give the township around $144k in savings. A representative from Friends of Turks Head Trail spoke about a proposed trail project that would connect West Chester Borough to Middletown and the group claims to have support from SEPTA.

Marple Township

The Marple Monitor, by Greg Weber

Neighbors say Delaware County Intermediate Unit (DCIU) employees have taken over their streets. (6) residents spoke August 10th over the shortage of spaces.

Marples data center ordinance got pulled from the August agenda due to substantial changes. There is a continued public hearing Sept 14th at 7pm.

Marple Newtown School District

The Marple Monitor, by Greg Weber

A softball coaching decision ate two straight board meetings. Coach Mike Snow wasn’t fired…his (1) yr contract ended and the district has everyone reapplying. Players wanted him back. A resident separately alleged a board member’s daughter’s club team got field access she couldn’t get, and the board president identified himself as that member…

The district’s written policy sets rental rates for fields it doesn’t charge for. And the reason there’s still no coach is that every candidate the admin wanted to recommend has been removed or withdrew.

Haverford Township

Open Haverford by Evan Cantiello

The Haverford School wants a road. A resident warned that the school’s deal with Waverly Heights could require closing Penn Road and turning taxable property into tax exempt land. The plan goes to the Planning Commission Sept 10th.

The zoning rewrite hearing is Sept 8th.

Ridley School District

The Ridley Review, by Ryan Wright

This launched just this month. Ryan’s a Ridley resident and parent in the school district. This is his effort to learn about the school district and bring people along.

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Kyle McIntyre, Upper Darby councilperson and chair of planning and zoning, on why every development fight is decided before the developer shows up.

Zoning basics: by right means no hearing for residents. Special exception isn’t a denial tool, it’s approval with conditions. Spot zoning is determined by surrounding properties, not lot size, which is why the Mozino tract doesn’t qualify.

You can’t ban a use, and you can’t de facto ban it through requirements. Every municipality that tried to fight smoke shops lost, Philadelphia included. So on data centers, McIntyre’s play is the strictest possible ordinance, passed now. Shapiro’s executive order means no state permit without local approval, but once a land development application is filed the code is frozen and the project is grandfathered.

Upper Darby’s real exposure isn’t a big complex, it’s micro data centers and home Bitcoin farms nobody has coded for. Western Delco, Chester, and Upper Providence are the vulnerable ones. Strategy note: argue electricity and stormwater, not water consumption.

On Flock, he’s drafting four provisions. Ordinance not resolution, specified location and data, stated purpose argued publicly, and a sunset. He calls it a three-part package with the ICE ordinance and a police oversight board, and says all three have to pass.

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What the county asks when these ordinances through

First off, shout out to David Director for making me aware of this meeting. I could only make part of it but the part I could make they discussed the first data center ordinance to come before them.

So every data center ordinance that a Delco municipality writes goes to the Delaware County Planning Commission for review before it can be adopted.

To be clear…they have not seen a single data center proposal come in. Only ordinance updates.

Zero applications countywide, and municipalities are racing to write rules before the parasites shows up. Luckily everything is paused until municipalities can figure it out.

The ordinance review I sat through was Newtown Township’s. They set data centers as a conditional use rather than by right. 35 foot height cap, 300 feet from homes and sensitive receptors (which are churches, hospitals, schools), 150 feet from other nonresidential. Requiring heat, water and energy impact studies, etc.

County staff recommended adoption with four specific changes…require closed loop cooling, add a utility curtailment agreement, require a site commissioning plan, and fix a conflict where the accessory use definition and the substation definition set different standards.

Noise gap

A Newtown Square resident, John Butler, had a fantastic point and asked whether anything sets noise levels.

The ordinance requires a full sound study, but no limit.

The residents’ point is that the problem isn’t peak decibels, it’s the constant hum, 24/7. He said residents in central PA drove to Virginia and slept in their car at a facility’s property line taking decibel readings.

A planning commissioner backed him hard. Asking, what about somebody walking their dog, or trying to sleep? Staff ended up offering something stronger than a decibel cap. They recommended the ordinance require no sound or hum impact on any sensitive receptor.

Great example of public comment actually working. It also shows how flimsy this all is…Newtown requires a study of the noise and says nothing about what happens if the study comes back bad..

Nobody knows what holds up in court

The county’s own guidance says 500 feet. Newtown proposed 300. Asked why 500, staff said theres no case law and 500 seemed middle of the road.

then: “case law will clear this up pretty quick, but we need the cases to get to the court.”

A commissioner said…so we’re voting to approve or disapprove things that are being tried right now.

Yes..forty nine municipalities guessing at what’s defensible against a multibillion dollar industry.

And “we need the cases to get to the court” just means that we need guinea pigs.

• Full disclosure: I spent longer than I’d like to admit figuring out how to spell “guinea pigs.”

It definitely won’t be Radnor. It’ll be a borough of 3000 people in a working class neighborhood with a part time solicitor, because that is who these companies seem to pick on. Same reason Blackstone’s lawyers wrote to Lower Chichester.

Josh Shapiro handed the industry a sales tax exemption on computing equipment, told everyone Pennsylvania is open for business, and then left all municipalities to negotiate one by one.

Show up at your township or borough’s next meeting…ask them if their zoning code address data centers, and who’s working on it.

I’m building a network of residents willing to keep an eye on their own township, borough, and/or school board.. if interested, please email me at nick@delcorising.com.

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Thanks to Pete Bannan at the Delaware County Daily Times for bringing this story to light.

Blackstone wants to put a data center in Trainer…

Link Logistics is the company inquiring, which sounds like a trucking company. Link Logistics was founded by Blackstone and they own roughly 3000 warehouses, do business across tons of markets, and leases/contracts with more than 7000 businesses.

What’s happening

The property being inquired about is a 24.4 acre stretch along Ridge Road near the Congoleum plant. About 90% of the land sits in Trainer, and 10% in Lower Chichester...so it spans (2) different municipalities.

On April 8th, Matlawski of McNichol, Byrne & Matlawski wrote to Lower Chichester on behalf of Link Logistics. The letter says they’re exploring “an alternative building design,” and that “the alternative use would be as a data center.”

Then..it asks the township for a zoning opinion?

It says that Lower Chichester’s zoning ordinance doesn’t define a data center at all. So the company’s lawyers say it’s simply an industrial use, permitted by right and that they’d comply with all the district restrictions..

On July 22, Lower Chichester’s zoning officer said he couldn’t comment because he didn’t have enough information.

THREE and a half months passed since the lawyers letter and the zoning officer STILL doesnt have enough information??

At Mondays Lower Chichester commissioners meeting, board President Rocco Gaspari Jr explained.

Officials had met with Link Logistics about a warehouse. A 443,000 sq ft facility. That proposal needed Lower Chis sign-off, then the company changed lawyers and changed what it wanted to build..

Gaspari said township officials haven’t met with the company since, because they hadn’t found an opportunity to do so.

Pitch a warehouse..get the township to sign off…and then hand them the money for infrastructure. And then coming back asking for a zoning opinion on something else entirely…is absurd.

I’m not saying that was the original plan, I don’t know that. But a township that took money for a sewer line is in a much worse position than one that didn’t, and it’s Blackstone here.

We don’t know how much money, what the agreement was, conditions, etc.

Lower Chi President

Credit to Lower Chi president for going after Governor Shapiro for the “PA is open for business” posture and the 100 data centers already proposed statewide. He did note the PA House passed a bill calling for a (6) month moratorium so local governments can write their own ordinances…though he’s worried about the township getting sued.

And he (rightfully) blasted the jobs pitch, pointing out that construction jobs are temporary.

He told residents to come and ask questions, and said decisions won’t happen behind closed doors. He also said…Lower Chi and Trainer haven’t met yet to discuss but that a conversation needs to happen.

Lower Chi were reached out to by the company in April..how have they not met?

He’s right about the jobs though. A data center is a building full of servers…once it’s up, staffing is basically a security team, maintenance crew, and some techs. Dozens of jobs…not even triple digits.

Shapiro finally moved

On Tuesday the governor FINALLY issued an exec order tightening data center regulation, after taking heat for months and months.

Developers now have to sign a binding legal agreement adhering to guidelines Shapiro laid out in February, such as pay for their own power, hire locally, be transparent with local governments and adhere to high water conservation standards, and the Governor’s Responsible Infrastructure Development framework.

Shapiro also said that he is removing all data center projects from our state’s fast track program and that going forward, they would be ineligible. He also said nondisclosure agreements for data center projects will NOT be allowed in the state.

If they dont adhere, they go last in line for state review and lose a state exemption on sales tax for computing equipment.

Insane that we even have this state level exemption…it was part of an argument by the governor for “economic development,” but these things are supposed to buy jobs…in theory. These don’t birth that many permanent jobs..and this technology needs upgrades every few years. So it isn’t even just a one time incentive to get mostly temporary jobs. Completely indefensible.

At the same time, we can’t fund school districts after the state was told by a court that our public school systems are unconstitutionally underfunded.

And that’s why Shapiros order is weaker than they are making it out to be…this red tape should’ve been law from the beginning.

He doesn’t get to be pro data center, then see which ways the political winds are shifting, slap red tape on the situation and get all the credit.

He’s clearly eyeing the 2028 presidential democratic nomination.

What I filed

Here is my Right to Know request with Lower Chichester Township:

And another one was sent with similar language for Trainer Borough.

Go to the next council meeting and ask questions!

I’m building a network of residents willing to keep an eye on their own township, borough, and/or school board.. if interested, please email me at nick@delcorising.com.

• Find your municipality’s covered newsletter here.

Note: County Council is back to their bi-weekly scheduled programming after this last summer meeting…but they are still scheduled for during the work day at 1pm.

Not only is this limiting speech, but it is also limiting who can run for council. If you have a day job, you can’t even make the monthly meetings…and this is supposed to be a part time job.

Chair Richard Womack noted council held an executive session yesterday on litigation matters. He also recapped national night out with Springfield police and the fire department.

Councilwoman Elaine Schaefer opened with announcing that the Sustainability Commission has three vacancies. Two public seats & one municipal rep seat that can go to staff or an elected official from any Delco municipality. Deadline for Apps is Sept 4th.

Dr. Monica Taylor thanked the Health Department for a Back to School Bash in Yeadon.

Vice Chair Christine Reuther touched on the Delco 10 Miler that is on October 4.

Presentations

Office of Judicial Support. OJS is the filing office for the Court of Common Pleas. They handle civil filings, family including custody and divorce as well as criminal.

Family e filing just launched Oct 15th and of PA’s 40 largest counties, Delco was the only one without criminal e-filing.

Cyberattack update

Executive Director Barbara O’Malley gave a detailed update.

The county discovered the attack on June 26th when its managed detection and response service flagged suspiciuos network activity. CrowdStrike’s endpoint detection is what caught it. The county took the network offline, and called in state and federal law enforcement.

The county’s findings are that attackers gained remote access on June 26. No evidence of unauthorized access to the county email system or phishing emails. And no activity since the network was secured.

But…the attackers did access data maintained within the network. The county is still determining what types, and will be notifying those affected if personal information was involved.

O’Malley also said their post 2020 upgrades let the county restore its network and data “in a safe and secure manner that did not require us to rely on a decryption key or other outside tools.”

In 2020, the county’s insurer paid the ransom and the public really only got told about a $25k deductible. The county has not said whether it paid anything, or how much.

Public comment

Charles Alexander, Broomall. He asked how many times pipes have burst at the Lima facility, and read from the Declaration of Independence. Then he asked why juveniles are being sent across state lines under an expensive agreement.

Then he got to Don Guanella and asked why are there no trespassing signs and a new closed gate on a county park as well as why the Archdiocese of Philadelphia are listed as owner on several parcels of the 200+ acre property?

Robert, Swarthmore. Thanked Councilwoman Schaefer for leading on preserving Don Guanella/ Delco Woods, calling it a lifetime legacy item.

Then he described taking his father, a veteran, to get a veterans ID. Going to the courthouse to then be told to go to Drexel Hill. At Drexel Hill they’re told the new county office doesn’t talk to people directly, it’s via phone only. Then they had to drive back to the government center for the photo…His point was that his dad had him, but alot of seniors don’t.

Reuther explained the program is a partnership between the Recorder of Deeds and Veterans Affairs, that the VA office moved to Upper Darby where most social services now are, and that the Recorder of Deeds passed away and the office is under a transition.

Kathy, Edgemont. She worked as a poll worker, so the county has everything on her. She doesn’t know if her Social Security number is out there, etc. (2) months in, no notice or guidance on whether to lock anything down.

Her comparison was Home Depot and Target, whom sent notices telling people exactly what was released and who to contact. And she asked directly whether the county paid a fee again, & whether taxpayers are on the hook for millions in cybersecurity.

Exec Dir O’Malley responded that sharing more could expose the county to further risk, that they’re working with insurance, privacy attorneys and cybersecurity experts on what’s responsible to disclose…and that she’d come back once the review is complete.

Alana, Glenolden. Proposed an emergency floating hospital on the Delaware River between Lester and Chester to fill the gap for the missing trauma center…& proposed it be funded by a $1 toll on Wanamaker Avenue, plus grants and other sources. She emphasized it wouldn’t be a full hospital, but a stabilization point before transfer.

Even though it has been done in other parts of the country…the floating hospital is not happening. Governing this, between the rivers Port Authority and the state, would be a nightmare.

But she’s proposing valid solutions...which is more than most are doing. Prospect Medical Holdings closed Taylor and then Crozer Chester within a week of each other last spring, which included a trauma center.

Consent Agenda Item Callout

The county is cutting $391k out of a Mobile Crisis contract and revising the scope of work…two weeks after Ugochukwu Ilodigew was killed in Aldan following a 3:30am call that a Horizon House worker had visited days earlier.

Consent Agenda Items (Quick Summary)

All of these were covered in detail at Tuesday’s preliminary agenda meeting, but here are the quick hits.

Mental health, crisis & drug and alcohol

• Elwyn of PA and Delaware contract value cut by $391,656, term extended through June 2027, and the Scope of Work for Mobile Crisis services revised. Funded 97.94% by the Human Services Block Grant.

• $506,489 added to MVP Recovery LLC for budget revisions, service additions & a newly licensed location. Paid entirely out of the Opioid Settlement Fund.

• New contract with Drug and Alcohol Rehabilitation Services Inc. for inpatient treatment for adolescent males (July 2026 – June 2027).

• Two separate amendments bringing county drug & alcohol contracts up to PACDAA rates for prevention and inpatient services.

• Mental Health Partnerships contract decreased by $120,679, extended through June 2027.

Housing & human services

• Community Action Agency of Delaware County contract decreased by $158,830, extended through June 2027. Braided funding: $980,757 in CYS Special Housing, $455,355 HOPWA, $150,000 Affordable Housing Fund.

• $95,900 to Keystone Digital Imaging for secure document disposal, scanning & indexing (Aug 2026 – June 2027).

• $210,450 to Data in Action LLC dba DNA Global for “evaluation services,” 76% federally funded through Delinquency Prevention.

Health Department

• $56,650 to The Foundation for Delaware County to continue Doula programs for at-risk birthing families.

• $47,500 to Health Care Solutions of Delaware Valley LLC for strategic consulting on workforce development, wellness & training.

• $34,200 to renew AchieveIt, a cloud performance management platform, bringing that total contract to $136,800.

• $28,000 to the CocoLife Foundation for pregnant and postpartum support services.

• Rate bump for Overbrook School for the Blind vision services, $30.58 to $31.50 per unit, across two contracts.

• New agreement with Bright Beginnings Early Intervention LLC for Early Intervention eligibility evaluations.

Capital & facilities

• $10,610.81 change order to Weatherproofing Technologies for roof restoration & HVAC replacement at George W. Hill, pushing that contract from $17,110,022.43 to $17,120,633.24.

• $3,602.93 in change orders for the Health Department’s Yeadon administration office renovation (ARPA), now $94,602.93.

• $1,195.09 change order on the Government Center fire alarm replacement, now $2,403,230.63.

• No-cost extension for McCormick Taylor to finish design on County Bridge #149, Hilldale Road over Darby Creek in Upper Darby & Lansdowne. Act 13 / Marcellus Shale money.

Tax refunds

• $756,251.84 in 72 court-ordered refunds across 21 municipalities, covering 2021 through 2026.

• $14,578.98 refunded to 38 property owners for overpayment.

Appointments

• Theresa Napson-Williams, Caroline M. Campbell, Jordan Kelso & Julia Millichap to the Children and Youth Services Committee, three years.

• Marta K. Driscoll & Regina Courtney to the Delaware County Authority, five years.

• Marcie Bramucci reappointed to the Visit Delco Board.

• Elleanor Jean Hendley reappointed to the Women’s Commission Board.

I’m building a network of residents willing to keep an eye on their own township, borough, and/or school board.. if interested, please email me at nick@delcorising.com.

• Find your municipality’s covered newsletter here.

I’ve filed a Right to Know request with Springfield township for this. I’ll publish whatever comes back, including the denials.

What actually happened

Springfield Township commissioners voted unanimously to have Solicitor Byrne research and draft a data center ordinance.

They were honest that under Pennsylvania law you have to make a place for every legitimate use.

The chair pointed at townships in Chester County and Montgomery County already sitting on data center applications. He said that they will be pulling ordinances from other municipalities and going to seminars on what you can and can’t do.

He publicly said the process from here is…develop draft, then goes to Springfield’s planning commission, then the Delaware County Planning Commission, then a public hearing, then a board vote.

Why file a RTK?

It’s the Springfield Board of Commissioners…they have a history of being untrustworthy. Closed door meetings, violating sunshine laws, etc.

I spoke to Jim McLaughlin (Springfield resident), and he told me that they have burned the public’s trust in how they handled the hospital, the new Wawa on Baltimore Pike, and the new micro hospital on State Road. Other residents had concerns that we dont have any transparency as to where the EIT funds are going to.

Jim also said that there are no deliberations taking place in open meetings that he’s attended, and that there are concerns amongst residents that there may be deliberations taking place outside of open meetings or in “executive session.”

McLaughlin has served on the Delaware County Solid Waste Authority, as vice president of a school board and was most recently Democratic candidate for Springfield Board of Commissioners in the last election.

Commissioners did say four separate times that there are no applications are pending.

But…“no application has been filed” and “nobody has contacted us” are two completely different statements, and seems like something this board would slither around.

We shall see…I asked for the emails. Correspondence with any data center developer, operator, or site selection consultant going back to Jan 2025. Pre application meetings…any inquiry about a specific parcel etc.

The EIT thing

Springfields earned income tax collection started July 1. Residents have been vocal with the board about transparency…wanting to know where the money goes and how much is coming in.

There was a public comment asking whether there’d been any movement on the matter and the only answer given was delivered on behalf of the Commissioner who wasn’t there…that he’s been working on it with township IT and that website pages are.

More public comment

Karen asked whether residents could petition to keep them out entirely.

You can’t. The PA Supreme Court has said repeatedly you can’t exclude a legitimate use, so you cant prohibit it, but you can make it as difficult as possible to go anywhere residents wouldn’t want it.

The best tool a Pennsylvania twp has against a use its residents don’t want is basically just obstruction. Zoning language written carefully enough to be annoying to the point where its not worth it for the developer.

Harrisburg wrote a system where municipalities are required to find somewhere for every profitable use.

Nobody knew what was on the agenda

This agenda is laughable…

The agenda lists “data center ordinance” with no detail about what it was, plus something called an MMO…

One lady said to put more information in the agenda, so people who care show up instead of finding out afterward…

Great idea. Will they do that?

By the way, MMO is the minimum municipal obligation, the pension contribution the township is required to make.

What to do

Watch out for the draft. It goes to Springfield’s planning commission and the county planning commission before it hits a public hearing, and by then the language is mostly set.

Ask Springfields board now, in writing, for…water and power usage caps written into the ordinance, a noise standard measured at the property line. And a requirement that any applicant fund an independent utility impact study.

I’m building a network of residents willing to keep an eye on their own township, borough, and/or school board.. if interested, please email me at nick@delcorising.com.

• Find your municipality’s covered newsletter here.

Edit — I made some corrections & added “local” in various instances where appropriate and changed the article title and subtitle since the original was a bit confusing.

William Penn School generates about $9,411 per student in local tax revenue taxes.

Radnor gets $26,211 per student in local tax revenue.

Radnor residents pay half the tax rate and generates almost triple the money per student…

Lansdowne, Yeadon, Darby, Colwyn, Aldan and East Lansdowne are taxed at double the rate Radnor pays, and it generates a third of the money per student.

It’s a regressive tax on being underfunded. The less property wealth a community has, the higher the tax rate has to go…and it still doesn’t get remotely close. This funding system is COMPLETELY broken and Harrisburg is to blame for the neglect.

The 2026 allocations

Spotlight PA published the 2026 allocations less than two weeks ago. 500 districts splitting $565mil in adequacy and tax equity funding, on top of $8.3bil in basic ed money. Every district guaranteed at least $50k whether they need it or not.

All of it comes because of the 2023 Commonwealth Court ruling that PA’s funding system was so unequal it violated the state constitution.

The court said the system was unconstitutional and then handed the fix back to the legislature without telling them specifically how to fix it.

The commission that took it up split. Democrats put the statewide gap at $5.4bil and wanted it closed in seven years. Republicans rejected it, and are the reason we are going to be paying it down using a smaller number and a longer clock.

Sooo seven years became nine thanks to the PA GOP.

Dan Urevick Ackelsberg, who litigated the case, put it this way…a kid starting kindergarten now will be in ninth grade before their school is funded adequately.

Republican legislative leaders were named defendants in that case. They lost, and then got to set the repayment schedule...

The commission only recommends. The number that actually matters is the one in the budget every June, and nothing gets into the budget without the Senate &….Republicans run the Senate.

There is no plan. Only a court ruling that nobody’s enforcing and a negotiation every June. The “nine years” is just the pace Harrisburg is on right now…so the plan and the timeline CAN change at any time. Let’s get Dems a trifecta in November and apply grassroots pressure so they have no choice but to make this a top priority.

The money outside the formula

Ian Karbal at the Capital Star reported a few days ago that for the third year straight, the budget routed money to a few districts completely outside the formulas.

This year it’s $8mil to four districts. Muhlenberg in Berks, Morrisville in Bucks. Steelton-Highspire in Dauphin, and then Whitehall-Coplay in Lehigh.

Last year, there was only one district that got it. William Penn got $5mil through a provision.

What the $5mil buys

In early 2025 William Penn was staring at a $9.2mil funding shortfall…meaning, their costs are higher than the money it has available from taxes, state funding, and federal grants. They cut academic interventionists, assistant principals and office secretaries to cut back $2.5mil and STILL have a shortfall. Sooo the staff who sit one on one with kids (who are behind) were cut.

They hired an outside entity to evaluate this and their math showed that closing that gap locally would take a 17.9% property tax increase, which William Penn legally is not able to do…OR they get $10.4mil more from the state.

This is just a disaster…it’s more expensive to be poor than rich. Your insurance goes up, it costs more to borrow, etc.

When the state went past its own budget deadline, William Penn literally had to take out loans and pay interest to cover payroll the state owed them. There were a couple dozen other districts that had to do the same.

It’s insane that underfunded districts have to pay a premium to survive Harrisburg’s dysfunction…and they are still in the red.

What it costs the kids

Children First looked at the districts in Delco. In Upper Darby, Southeast Delco, William Penn and Chester Upland, only about a third of third graders read on grade level…on the other hand, Haverford and Wallingford Swarthmore, almost all of them do.

Studies show that third grade reading is the single best predictor of whether a kid graduates.

The fact that PA forces municipalities to fund schools off local property wealth is the sole reason we are in this inequitable school funding situation.

Needs action

Funding the gap in seven years is laughable…let alone nine and the party that lost were the ones that got to extend that timeframe to nine years.

Property tax as the base of school funding needs to be killed and reformed, because everything else is just triaging. Counties are handcuffed and can only tax homeowners because Harrisburg designed it like that…

The money is there and there are various ways to get there. It’s really about who in Harrisburg has the political will.

Quick catch up for newbies. The Mozino tract is a roughly 15 acre wooded parcel off State Road in Drexel Hill, the last unprotected forest in Upper Darby. Greg Lingo’s Rockwell Development wants it rezoned into a new “Community Mixed Use” district for townhomes, apartments and retail. He could build 56 single family homes there tomorrow without asking anyone. Residents have packed meetings since June asking the township to preserve it, and not one person has spoken in favor of the rezoning at any of them. Separately, on August 5, council removed Marion Minick as President and replaced him with Michelle Billups.

So…a lot happened

Council is tabling the CMU ordinance, Greg Lingo said he’d sell the Mozino tract to the township and named a number. And Marion Minick…one week after being stripped of the council presidency, stood up and declared himself an absolute NO and called for it to be open green space.

Noah Fields sent a public letter, and named the Mayor

Fields emailed committee members and residents Sunday about the August 5th reorganization. He went on and on about his credentials and then said that Mayor Ed Brown told him directly that he wanted Minick out as council president because he was worried Minick might run for Mayor someday.

That account is disputed by others in the building, and Brown has not addressed it publicly.

And he also says members were pressured to back the removal & that one was threatened with their spouse’s financial situation being dragged through the mud.

Minick dropped a bomb

He started with committing to building Upper Darby’s future, & pivoted to green space.

He called it the last remaining forest property in the township and declared himself a no vote.

Marion Minick was Council President for the first seven mnths of this year. This ordinance moved through nine drafts during his presidency. He had the gavel that entire time and there’s no record of him using it to slow any of this down.

One week after losing that gavel he comes back HOT with a speech about underground tree root networks and groundwater recharge.

It’s like he “reverse Fetterman’d” into the correct position.

The Save the Mozino coalition doesn’t need Minick to be sincere. It really just needs him to be a vote the right way. Whatever’s driving it…residents who have been hammering the need for it to be open green space since June…it just got a useful ally.

Lingo named a price

The coalition has spent months arguing for preservation without knowing whether the property was even purchasable. Lingo is the contract purchaser, and Bonnie Hallam said the coalition learned a sale might be possible only a couple days ago.

Asked directly for a ballpark, Lingo said eight million dollars. He said he’d be a willing seller. He also said that as a taxpayer he doesn’t think raising taxes to buy it is a good use of money.

Then he asked council to vote yes to advertise anyway, framing it as flexibility. Speakers jumped on that quickly to explain why it’s backwards. If the CMU passes, the property gets more valuable and acquisition gets harder.

The township asked for the density. Not the developer.

Rita LaRue, Director of Community and Economic Development, walked through the history of the project. Then…

“Upper Darby Township, specifically community and economic development, asked the developer to consider a higher density use.”

And on the ordinance…

“The developer brought us the first draft.”

It’s been known (only via RTK’s) that Rockwell’s attorney drafted this ordinance. And now Rita confirmed this publicly during a presentation…and added that the high density use request came from the township asking for it.

Who is the one driving this thing?

My Right to Know appeal…

Upper Darby is withholding the CMU draft ordinance from me under the statutory exemption for “internal predecisional drafts.” The townships own engineering consultant, states that the text amendment was prepared by Klehr Harrison Harvey Branzburg LLP on behalf of Rockwell Drexel LLC.

The township is claiming an agency draft exemption over a document…written by a private applicant’s law firm. And Wednesday Rita confirmed that the developer brought them the first draft. That contradiction makes absolutely zero sense whatsoever and already went in my reply to the Office of Open Records this week.

The Planning Commission didn’t write its own recommendation. The majority position is drafted by Community & Economic Development and adopted verbatim. The letter says those in favor “with no changes to the draft letter prepared by the Township’s Community & Economic Development Department.” Chair Roken signed the majority letter while also signing the dissent he wrote himself, also supported by Lee Jordan.

Wednesday, LaRue presented this as “layers of independent review,” so the staff, the engineer, the solicitor, the county planning commission, the township planning commission, all comments consolidated. But the Planning Commission’s recommendation is just CED’s own letter.

The county said revise and resubmit. Delaware County Planning Commission recommended revise and resubmit on the map amendment, with ample public feedback and an actual plan first. The parcels “Future Land Use’ designation is Wooded Land. Protecting existing woodlands ranked fourth in Upper Darby’s own comp plan survey. County staff also asked for ‘50-foot riparian’ and wetland buffers, steep slope limits, and tree replacement. None of it is in the draft.

The rezoning permits far more than 143 units. Per the documentation I received…max density is 13.5 units per acre net. The file contains three different acreage figures, sooo that’s somewhere from the high 170s to just under 200.

The concept plan showing 143 binds nothing. Zoning is what’s permanent.

Save the Mozino coalition

They brought the point that nobody has done the hydraulic analysis to know what development does here, and the township’s own comprehensive plan already calls its streams impaired.

The township’s own environmental advisory council can’t read the developer’s studies before council votes on the developer’s ordinance. Mine came back 1 of 8.

Dolores Lombardi, former Shade Tree Commission chair, said Natural Lands Trust met with the mayor and CAO around 2020, and they said Upper Darby checked every. single. box for grant eligibility, and even offered to write the grants. The township never followed up.

Five years ago a land trust offered to do this for free and nobody called back??
That’s why “we don’t have the money” has never been an honest answer.

Council remarks

McIntyre was pretty direct about the two tracks we currently have running. He said they are doing everything possible to find money and make a deal, and at the same time fighting for affordable housing if that falls through.

He got Lingo to commit to 20% of rental units as affordable, and got him to consider a tree preservation and “payment-in-lieu” amendment.

It’s a hedge. If acquisition fails, the fallback is a negotiated development with a set aside, and…Rockwell knows the fallback is acceptable. Which means the pressure to actually close on $8 million comes from residents, not from council. And payment-in-lieu doesnt get back decades of natural growth.

Residents have been playing from behind ever since the burden of proof shifted from the developer to the residents. Lingo and UD’s Community and Economic Development have been trying to ram this thing through.

UD is overdeveloped and have ample commercial corridors that need revitalizing.

Anything less than preserving the Mozino tract in Upper Darby as open green space is a failure by all members of council. And Marion Minick just came in with a zinger to try and play savior.

What happens now

Tabled is definitely not dead.

It can come back at any meeting and honestly, given the rhetoric of council it seems like development is most likely.

Lingo asked the coalition for a package and the conservation orgs say six to twelve months. Now closing that gap is pretty much the whole fight from here.

General Notes:

Know someone who should be running for office? Email me at nick@delcorising.com.

I’m building a network of residents willing to keep an eye on their own township, borough, and/or school board.. if interested, please email me at nick@delcorising.com.

• Find your municipality’s covered newsletter here.

Read more

What’s confirmed

Around 3:30am Thursday, August 6th, Aldan police responded to a 911 call on South Clifton Avenue.

Per the Mayor, the officer encountered an adult male armed with a knife, deployed a Taser, then pulled out his service weapon and struck him.

We don’t have enough information but seems strange, no??

The man was taken to Lankenau Medical Center, in Wynnewood…in Montgomery County and pronounced dead. The officer went to nearby Mercy Fitzgerald for minor injuries and was reassigned to admin duty. The Delaware County DA’s office is running the investigation & the borough won’t release anything else while it’s active, so we have minimal information for a while.

Who has faith in Rouse’s office to be transparent?

Driven out of the county to die..

He was pronounced dead at Lankenau Hospital, in Wynnewood, in Montgomery County. So this poor victims’ mother spent Thursday morning driving to a coroner’s office in a county she doesn’t live in...

And the ambulance e routing was definitely correct since a gunshot wound goes to a trauma center, not just the nearest ER.

The problem…

is that the nearest trauma center to Aldan is 6.5 miles away in another county, because Prospect Medical Holdings closed Crozer-Chester Medical Center in May 2025 and Taylor Hospital a week before that. Delaware County, the fifth most populous county in Pennsylvania, has NO trauma center. Riddle and Mercy Fitzgerald are what’s left over and neither is for trauma.

Prospect Medical Holdings borrowed money to pay themselves. Then they sold the buildings out from under the hospitals to cover the loan. THEN they charged the hospitals RENT to sit in buildings the hospitals used to own.

Prospect’s CEO cleared $128 million. Leonard Green and its investors took out something like $658 million in fees and dividends. Leonard Green sold its stake in 2021 and valued it at $10 million on the way out the door.

Everything they did unfortunately was legal. Pennsylvania officials were even warned about the 2019 deal and had no authority to stop it, because this state does not review private equity transactions in healthcare…

And the ambulance carrying him even drove past former Delaware County Memorial Hospital to get there. Prospect closed that ER in November 2022. It’s not a trauma center, but Prospect’s stated plan was to convert the building into an inpatient behavioral health hospital with psychiatric beds…and it never opened. It’s been literally just sitting there empty ever since.

The last thing to happen there was probably the Crozer 8 being arrested for peacefully protesting the hospital closure.

Again…not a trauma center, so he wouldn’t have been able to go there, but the man who had a behavioral health worker inside his house a day or 2 before…was driven past the unopened building that was falsely promised to be a behavioral health hospital, on his way out of Delaware County entirely, because there was nowhere in this county to take him.

Infuriating.

General Notes:

Have a tip about a story? Submit it here.

Know someone who should be running for office? Email me at nick@delcorising.com.

I’m building a network of residents willing to keep an eye on their own township, borough, and/or school board.. if interested, please email me at nick@delcorising.com.

• Find your municipality’s covered newsletter here.

Two things happening at once here. The first is that Upper Darby Township Council members have been at odds with each other since January.

The second is the Mozino tract, a roughly 15 acre wooded parcel in Drexel Hill and the last unprotected forest in Upper Darby. Rockwell Development Group (Greg Lingo) wants it rezoned into a brand new “Community Mixed Use” district so it can hold townhomes, apartments and retail. The zoning ordinance that would allow it was drafted by Rockwell’s own attorney. Residents have packed council meetings for months asking the township to preserve it instead. My Right to Know request on it came back with 1 of 8 items filled and I’m waiting on my appeal to the state.

Marion Minick is out as council president & Michelle Billups is in

Seven months into a term, Upper Darby Township Council reorganized its leadership. Council voted to reopen the officer positions, then elected Michelle Billups president over Minick, kept Noah Fields as vice president, and elected Danyelle Blackwell secretary.

Minick got four votes for president. His own, Fields, Myron McNeely, and McMahon. Everybody else went Billups.

For vice president…Kyle McIntyre nominated Melissa DiNofia-Bozzone, but Fields survived by one vote. David Bantoe and Danyelle Blackwell were the (2) that defected to oust the President but not the VP.

The bloc that just removed the president then turned around and reelected his vice president…negotiated deal or a miscalculation?

The case for reorg

McIntyre actually explained what happened: council leadership is supposed to facilitate the work of all eleven independently elected members, apply procedures consistently, keep meetings professional, and let every member participate equally. And clearly a majority lost confidence that the current leadership could do that.

&…ordinances have been facing repeated delays while other legislation moved fast. A proposal to use eminent domain against the firehouse was advanced without committee review, without consultation with council members, and w/o any financial plan behind it. He also brought up restrictions on members’ participation and speech, and political pressure directed at people who disagreed with leadership or spoke out of turn…

“So unfortunately, it left us with the only check that we actually have, which is reorganization.”

Favoritism, favoritism, favoritism…that’s exactly what council majority is confirming. Some ordinances get slow walked, some skip committee. Members who talk out of turn get brushed to the side.

Now…I have to question whether this is the exact machinery that carried the developer written zoning ordinance to a 3-2 planning commission recommendation while residents were told to “be patient.” Seems to be the process failure that produced the Mozino fight. Fair to say these two are connected?

Fields gave a eulogy instead of a defense

Fields used his time on a four minute story about his years as an EMT, growing up just outside of Philly, and discussing nuanced stories as a child. And then closed with “I pray we use this room wisely.”

He did not defend Minick, nor did he address a single thing that was about to be voted on.

Very performative and strange…glaring and pointing at those in attendance acting like the residents owe him something? Confusing.

He gave a speech about compassion at a meeting where his own constituents were begging him not to hand one of their last forested green spaces to a developer, and he never mentioned the forest.

Mayor Ed Brown just thanked Minick for his service and in old business afterward, Minick offered some words.

Public Comment

I wrote this a little out of order since half of public comment was before the reorg.

But before the first half of public comment…council was in disarray and had to break for recess. Throughout the public comment period, Noah Fields looked to be ignoring residents so he could focus on politics, repeatedly texting and signaling to Blackwell to check her phone.

The first time…even a ding went off on her phone. At least silence it.

During the second recess just before the reorg, Noah was visibly not happy with Melissa, Brian and Kyle. Was VP Noah Fields texting President Minick for one last recess call just so he can keep courting votes?

Faith Zerby, scientist with Delaware Riverkeeper Network, read from Marple Twp’s own Dec 2020 resolution, using a parallel situation when those supervisors voted 7-0 to deny a developer using Pennsylvania’s Environmental Rights Amendment to protect what was then Don Guanella Woods and is now the largest park in Delaware County.

Jamie Watts crushed it again…using the countys own 2022 open space study. Mozino is 15 acres with close to 100% canopy cover and roughly 2k mature trees. And also brought up the fact that proximity to open space increases property value rates.

A few others pointed to preserving it for stormwater management to reduce flooding. Lee Jordan said the township should be redeveloping vacant eyesores, not gutting a forest. Bonnie Hallam pointed people to savethemozinoforest.org and to lawn signs, and encouraged people to join the fight. Check out my interview with BOTH Lee and Bonnie here!

And Becky Duggan, to council: “If you guys are selling out for this Mozino tract, I hope it’s worth it.”

Special Mozino meeting next Wednesday

McIntyre announced that there will be a special council meeting on Wednesday, August 12, dedicated entirely to the Mozino tract. Council, community members, and the developer…on the record. But it was also said that he and someone named Brian met with the developer recently, shared community feedback, and came away “optimistic.” He thanked the developer for listening and hearing out the community’s concerns. And closed with “I think at the end of the day, we’re gonna get something good for this community”

A couple meetings ago Kyle said “I support continuing to look into how we can and if possible, acquire the property” and admitted he might get in trouble for saying it. Last night he was optimistic after a private meeting with Greg Lingo and predicted something good for the community.

Those are not the same position. It doesnt make me think that he has changed his stance on acquiring…buttt it does make me wonder if the ‘acquire camp’ is powerless here.

“Acquire the land” is public ownership … “something good for this community” is a negotiated site plan with the developer.

Somewhere, somehow between mid July and last night, the frame seemed to slide back from whether Rockwell builds to how Rockwell builds.

I want to be fair to him. McIntyre is the only council member who has ever said acquisition out loud, and he seems to be the one who forced a dedicated public meeting.

Show up Wednesday August 12th @ 7pm: 100 Garrett Road

The treasurer resigned

Council accepted the treasurer’s resignation and now has thirty days to appoint a replacement. Billups proposed for collecting resumes and interviews.

I have not verified the claims that one public commenter laid out so I wont go into too much detail, but there are allegations of governmental favors and ties to the treasurer’s family. Another speaker said the treasurer is in default on more than $40,000 in Upper Darby taxes and owes the federal government around $230,000.

General Notes:

Have a tip about a story? Submit it here.

Know someone who should be running for office? Email me at nick@delcorising.com.

I’m building a network of residents willing to keep an eye on their own township, borough, and/or school board.. if interested, please email me at nick@delcorising.com.

• Find your municipality’s covered newsletter here.

Before I write this, I wanted to point out that I don’t currently have all of the information. I did put in a detailed Right to Know request with Delaware County DA’s office for the following:

A few years ago, Delaware County DA’s Office began building what local law enforcement calls a “real time crime center” … a cloud based surveillance hub driven by a company called Fusus. The plan, basically only reported on by WHYY at the time, was to cover parts of the county with camera equipped street poles, connect them through Fusus software, and then invite residents and businesses to opt their own private security cameras into a police accessible network…

It started in Chester and the surrounding areas like Chichester, Eddystone, and Marcus Hook. The DA at the time, Jack Stollsteimer asked County Council to accept a $1mil grant from the states commission on Crime and Delinquency to pay for the poles, cameras, as well as the software.

The Fusus spftware takes ordinary cameras and makes them searchable and “smart”. Object recognition for people and specific vehicles, and integration with tools like license plate readers, gunshot detection, and drones. It takes all of the private feeds that would normally sit siloed on everyone’s separate systems and funnels them into one central location that police can watch whenever the hell they want.

Also…there have been NO countywide public input meetings before this got underway, and little public information about the infrastructure being built. The DA mentioned it briefly to County Council while asking them to accept the grant money lol and that was pretty much the extent of the public process.

Why it matters

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has tracked Fusus deployments across roughly 150 jurisdictions nationally, lays out the core problem cleanly. When police fold privately owned cameras into a real-time network, they gain access to footage that would otherwise require a warrant and a court’s permission. Because the cameras are privately owned, departments can sidestep the records retention and deletion rules that govern their own equipment. And it happens, almost always, without community conversation or oversight.

NOBODY is against catching the person who shot up a block or stole a car. The problem is that the DA’s office is being deceitful…”keeping us safe” is the justification for building permanent surveillance infrastructure, watching everyone rather than a suspect, and would come with no limits on how the footage is stored, searched, etc.

A “real time crime center” is simply capturing everyone and sorting it out later lol & once the infrastructure exists, so the poles, software, AI, integrated private feeds…the temptation to expand what it’s used for is obviously enormous and it won’t be stopped.

I mean, since the Patriot Act passed…look how far the federal government has taken that.

Object recognition built to find a stolen Mercedes can find a protesters car.

Where it went first

Chester, Chester Township, Chichester, Eddystone, Marcus Hook.

Just blatantly racist…the surveillance infrastructure got started out concentrated in the county’s lower income, most heavily policed, and most disproportionately Black/working class communities. The same exact Chester that hosts the trash incinerator burning Philly’s garbage…the same Eddystone being lined up for an LNG export terminal being advanced under NDAs and back door meetings at the governors office with John Kane and Dave Delloso. I mean come the fuck on…its the same communities that absorb every burden the wealthier, whiter parts of the county would never accept in their own backyards.

And now they get the cameras first too.

Surveillance tech getting piloted on the people with the least power and time to refuse it…simply justified by the higher crime rates that decades of economic and social disinvestment produced.

Need answers

The county and the DA’s office should be able to answer everything in my Right to Know request. What happens to the private cameras residents opt in? Can they even opt back out, and who else can access that feed. Is there any sort of civilian oversight, or does one elected prosecutor control the entire infrastructure?

The fact that these questions don’t have easy public answers…three years into the program, is the wrong & concerning.

Part 2 to come when my Right to Know request comes back. What’s in it, what’s left out, if i’m appealing to the state, etc.

General Notes:

Have a tip about a story? Submit it here.

Know someone who should be running for office? Email me at nick@delcorising.com.

I’m building a network of residents willing to keep an eye on their own township, borough, and/or school board.. if interested, please email me at nick@delcorising.com.

• Find your municipality’s covered newsletter here.

• Show your support for preserving the Mozino Forest

• Save The Mozino Forest website

General Notes:

• Have a story/tip about a landlord, developer, zoning issue, corruption, or neighborhood safety concern? Submit it here — we verify every submission and the ones that check out become stories we track or action alerts.

• Interested in running for office OR know someone who should be? Please reach out to me at nick@delcorising.com.

• EDIT: I’m building a network of residents/writers willing to keep an eye on their own township, borough, and/or school board.. if interested, please email me at nick@delcorising.com.

In this episode, I sat down with Lee Jordan and Bonnie Hallam, two leaders in the fight to keep the Mozino tract in Drexel Hill as open green space. Lee is the vice chair of the Upper Darby Planning Commission; Bonnie is the recently retired chair of the township’s Environmental Advisory Committee. We covered what’s actually on the parcel, how a for-profit developer came to write the township’s own rezoning ordinance, the economics of paving over the last big piece of green space in Upper Darby, and what winning could actually look like. Here’s the conversation for those who’d rather read than watch.

What’s actually there. The Mozino tract is about 15 acres of forest with 65-year-old trees and the Colin Brook creek running through it. It was originally part of the Collinbrook Farm before being subdivided, and Mr. Mozino bought it in 1960. It’s private property — Lee and Bonnie haven’t set foot on it — but from the adjacent Collinbrook Church land they’ve seen the deer, birds, and mature canopy up close. It’s also fragile: steep slopes and the creek mean only about 60% of it can even be built on. And it’s not just any lot. As I noted in the conversation, it’s the last open space parcel over ten acres left in Upper Darby, and it has sat in the township’s comprehensive plans as land worth acquiring going all the way back to 2004.

Two paths into the same fight. Lee came to it about a year ago, when developer Rockwell Development brought a plan to the Planning Commission — the first she’d heard the land was even for sale. Bonnie has been tracking Upper Darby’s open-space fights for years. She’d joined the successful effort against an apartment complex on the nearby Thompson tract, which is what first made her and others realize how few of these spaces were left. Back then, former Mayor Keffer had set aside ARPA money to acquire both the Thompson and Mozino tracts and was seeking matching county and state funds — but the budget got redirected, and open space came off the table. Bonnie kept going to Planning Commission meetings, which is how she caught wind of the Rockwell plan and started showing up to say no.

The vote, and a first-ever dissent. Lee was one of only two commissioners — alongside president Jeff — to vote against recommending the Community Mixed Use (CMU) rezoning. Her reasoning: the comprehensive plan that supporters kept citing also stresses how little open space Upper Darby has and calls for redevelopment of existing properties, not developing the green space that remains. She and Jeff also flagged concerns about spot zoning — everything surrounding the parcel is R1 single-family homes — and the legal exposure that comes when an ordinance is changed to benefit one developer. For the first time either of them can remember, the two dissenting members documented their reasons in a written appendix so council could see exactly why they voted the way they did.

The developer wrote the ordinance. Here’s the part that should stop people cold: the rezoning ordinance was written by the developer’s own attorney. Lee described a Planning Commission meeting unlike any she’d sat through — the township brought a solicitor (they never have one), the developer brought what looked like three attorneys, and the residents showed up representing only themselves. What the rezoning does, in practice, is flip the burden onto the community. As things stood, Rockwell could already build roughly 56 single-family homes by right; to do mixed use, the developer would have had to go to the zoning board and prove a hardship — a tough case, since you know what you’re buying. Instead of that route, the township pursued a zoning map amendment, and suddenly it’s residents who have to fight. I also submitted a right-to-know request and got back essentially nothing of substance — only Greg Lingo’s own email describing what the commission decided. The commission never received an independent staff analysis of the project.

Not anti-development — anti-this. Both were emphatic on this point. They support community mixed use; it already exists all over Upper Darby, and there’s a mixed-use project underway right now on Walnut Street with retail downstairs, affordable apartments upstairs, and green space around it that everyone’s happy about. Their objection is the parcel, not the concept. Bonnie’s question for anyone worried about housing: why put high-end housing on the last piece of forest when the township needs affordable housing everywhere — and CMU-driven redevelopment is exactly where that affordable housing belongs? There’s no shortage of places that could actually use it: 69th Street, the old Sears, the tired corridors that keep turning into ghost towns.

The economics. Lee’s sharpest argument was financial. A big new development looks great on the books right away — a quick tax bump — but as roads, services, and school seats age and fill, the long-term maintenance costs fall back on existing residents. She served on the Upper Darby school board and knows the district is at capacity even with a new middle school coming; adding hundreds of homes’ worth of students isn’t fair to the kids already there. And she framed it as a public safety issue: State Road is already hard to move on, a micro-hospital is going up less than a mile away, and the nearest full hospitals are Riddle or Lankenau. Pack in that many homes and a medical emergency on that road becomes genuinely frightening.

The linked fight over affordability. When I raised council’s own data — that roughly one in five Upper Darby households spend over half their income on rent — Bonnie’s answer was that developing Mozino does nothing to solve it. High-end housing on a fragile forest parcel isn’t affordable housing. She also read resident Noah Field’s early appearance at the Planning Commission, where he backed the rezoning before neighbors even spoke, as more about supporting the idea of community mixed use than this specific site.

A path to actually saving it. This is where there’s real hope. The Save the Mozino Forest group formed in late June/early July and Bonnie announced it at the July 15 council meeting. Bonnie also leads the Tree Tenders of Upper Darby, who’ve planted more than 2,000 trees over seven years — about what’s standing in that forest, though she’s quick to note new saplings can’t do the work of 65-year-old trees. Some of the region’s foremost conservation groups are reportedly ready to help fund a purchase, with a meeting set with Kyle McIntyre — chair of the planning, zoning, and building code committee — who has publicly said he supports saving the forest. His support is helping stall any council vote while the funding package comes together. Council member Brian O’Neill, who represents the district, and Melissa Dinofio Bazone, head of the environmental and public health committee, are also expected at that meeting. And a conservation bond on the November ballot could unlock county matching money; Bonnie went to county council, where Elaine Schaeffer voiced support, and the county had once earmarked Greenway funds specifically for the Mozino tract before the acquisition fell through.

What winning looks like. Their vision splits two beautiful ways. Lee imagines an environmental center and a walking trail connected to the adjacent Collinbrook historical site, where 12,000 students a year already come to learn — a place kids could reach by public transit without leaving the township, instead of driving to Haverford for a walking path. Bonnie could happily see that, or she’d be just as satisfied letting the forest regenerate toward a 100-year forest, planting now so young trees can succeed the old ones and the land keeps cleaning our air and water and cooling the neighborhood. What neither wants is litigation — a waste of township money — which is the realistic worst case if council passes the CMU. First, they want to convince a majority of council to step back and table it.

How to get involved. The single most useful thing before council votes: reach out to council members, send letters, and show up to meetings — and wear green. There’s power in numbers, and at the last meeting residents literally stood up to be counted. Spread the word to neighbors, church groups, anyone, because a lot of people still don’t know this is happening. And sign the petition. As Bonnie put it, council needs “cover” to vote no — they have to see that an overwhelming majority of the township opposes developing this parcel, not just a handful of speakers. Find the action steps and the petition at SaveTheMozinoForest.org.

Have a tip about this story? Submit it here.

• Have a story/tip about a landlord, developer, zoning issue, corruption, or neighborhood safety concern? Submit it here

• Interested in running for office OR know someone who should be? Please reach out to me at nick@delcorising.com.

• I’m building a network of residents/writers willing to keep an eye on their own township, borough, and/or school board.. if interested, please email me at nick@delcorising.com.

Don’t sign the GOP’s minority representation petition. There’s other ways to fix it.

The Delco GOP is circulating a petition to amend the countys Home Rule Charter and guarantee the minority party at least two free seats on County Council. They’re saying that this is a “bipartisan, citizen led good government initiative.”

It’s not.

They’ll tell you Delco is the only one of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties that doesn’t have minority representation.

“have” not “guarantee”

That last part is true, but you still shouldn’t sign it. Because the local party selling you this “reform” is the same party that ran this county as a one party machine for a. loooooong. time, and the fix they’re offering is just (2) guaranteed seats at a table they can no longer win their way onto.

They don’t care to alter their policy platform to be more appealing to voters, they want freebie handout elected seats.

They are theoretically opting out of competition lol

A healthy party that keeps losing changes. It actually cares about why voters rejected it and rebuilds a platform people actually want. The Delco GOP isn’t doing any of that. They’re not rethinking a single position…they’ve decided the problem is that voters get to decide who sits on council.

So instead of doing the work to become a party people want to vote for, they want more government and more guaranteed seats for the loser, no public persuasion required. Of course, it’s easier to try and modify the rules than to change the platform…and make sure the party that’s given up the fight still comes with a seat on council.

What the petition does

The GOP petition being passed around guarantees (2) council seats to whichever party comes in 2nd place.

A Republican could finish a distant second with 35% of the vote and still be handed a seat a majority of voters specifically declined to give them. The GOP is saying that they are entitled to power by law even when they can’t earn it at the ballot box.

Guaranteed minority representation sounds fair on the surface, but it just rewards the losing party.. not for winning arguments or fielding good candidates, but simply for continuing to exist as the county’s opposition.

Why now…?

For 150 years, Delco was a Republican machine…during all of that time, the Delco GOP had exactly zero interest in guaranteeing the Democratic minority a seat. The idea never. ever. ever. came up. Mandatory minority representation simply was not a problem as long as the minority were…the Democrats.

The Republicans discovered these checks and balances once they became the minority. The machine cracked before COVID and shortly after, Democrats held all five seats. And now…the party that ran this county for a century and a half is suddenly, deeply concerned about diverse viewpoints on council.

This really isn’t a principled conversation lol if the Delco GOP genuinely believed in structural checks on county power, they’d support a reform that opened seats up to real competition. They haven’t proposed anything like that. They’ve proposed a guarantee for themselves, specifically.

There are better options

There are other fixes for this single party dominance, that are not just handing free guaranteed seats to the losing party. It’s making the seats competitive.

There’s more than one way to do that, and I’ll be honest that I don’t think there’s a single perfect answer. We could elect council by district instead of at large…an independent commission divides the county into council districts and lets the voters in each community pick their own representative.

But maybe this creates a situation where council members fight for “only their turf” with no care for the greater good of the county?

I don’t know if it’s possible, but maybe we could move to even more staggered terms that make it harder for one wave to sweep everything.

And then there’s ranked choice voting or other systems that stop a bare majority from taking 100% of the seats would be ideal, but that requires the states help.

But my point is that it is reasonable to argue about which of these is best.

And what separates all of them from the GOP’s petition is that none of them guarantees a party anything. They change the rules of the competition, not to give free seats to the losers who don’t like the result.

District elections force every council member to answer to voters in a specific place. A genuine progressive could win a district and so could a genuine conservative. If the GOP actually wanted checks and balances, they’d be pushing for one of those reforms. They’re not…because every one of them would still require them to win. They’d rather be handed two seats than earn them.

What signing costs you

When someone hands you this petition, you MUST understand what you’re being asked to endorse. Not “more voices on council” OR “checks and balances.” You’re being asked to support a constitutional guarantee that a party the voters keep rejecting gets two seats anyway, forever, no matter how badly it loses.

Don’t sign it. And the next time someone tells you county council needs real accountability, agree with them and then tell them the answer is a more fair, more competitive system. Whatever shape it takes…not a guaranteed seat for a party that can’t win one on its own.

Have a tip about a story? Submit it here.

I wanted to be clear, this isn’t a job or a paid position. It’s you starting your own localized outlet for the good of the people in your area. It will be a network of us.

Delco Rising is building a network of residents who keep tabs on their own municipality

Local govt in Delaware County exists at the municipal level, each with its own council, agenda, meetings, its own budget, zoning fights, etc. Sets of decisions about your taxes, roads, what happens with your local green space and your public safety.

I cant go to all of them. And bad decisions get made… not in secret, but in public meetings that hardly annybody attends, and if they do, they aren’t providing the information for others.

What I’m looking for

I’m building a network of residents across Delco who are willing to keep an eye on their own township/borough, and/or school board meetings. You don’t need any sort of background being a reporter and you don’t need to be an “expert” in anything.

You really just need to be willing to keep an eye on your municipality’s agendas, attend or watch the meetings, and take notes. I can help you with everything else.

Keep track of what’s on the agenda, what passes, and what residents were upset about. That’s really it.

I promise you nobody else is doing this. You’d become the regular set of eyes on a specific municipality, which is worth more than you’d think.

You don’t need to be a great writer (just willing) & you really don’t need to be political. You don’t even need to agree with me on everything. You just need to care about where you live & be willing to pay attention to what’s happening there…for everybody else in your community who isn’t.

The more municipalities we have eyes on, the more of these stories get caught before the decision is already made, so catching it early enough to do something about it. I will help to amplify things that deserve countywide attention.

Note: I’ll keep your identity private if you want it protected. Nobody has to know you’re the one flagging things.

How to reach me

If you’re interested, reply to this email OR email me at nick@delcorising.com and tell me which township, borough or school board you’d be willing to keep an eye on.

We are recruiting candidates for county council

Three seats are up in 2027…Monica Taylor, Elaine Schaefer & Christine Reuther. Not looking for someone who wants to manage the county via establishment, machine politics. We’re good on that. Instead looking for someone who wants to push the boundaries of what’s possible at the county level…coordinating with local state officials to push them to act on things the county can’t.

If you are interested in running for office OR know someone who should be…please let me know nick@delcorising.com.

• Have a story/tip about a landlord, developer, zoning issue, corruption, or neighborhood safety concern? Submit it here — we verify every submission and the ones that check out become stories we track or action alerts.

• Interested in running for office OR know someone who should be? Please reach out to me at nick@delcorising.com.

• If there is someone you would like me to interview for the podcast, also email me at nick@delcorising.com.

Delaware County Council passed a resolution putting a green infrastructure bond measure on our upcoming November 3rd ballot. The question will be asking voters if the county can borrow up to $120mil to finance land conservation. So protecting water quality in rivers/creeks, wildlife habitat, conserving trees for air quality & wetlands to prevent flooding, providing greenways and parks, as well as protecting natural areas from development.

To put the financing in context…the estimated cost to the median Delco homeowner is $24 a year. Yes $24 a year.

The money would fund preserving and restoring natural lands, wetlands, flood arwas, and wildlife habitat. Improving or creating parks and recreation areas. As well as funding the county’s existing Greenways Grant Program.

It does have a built in accountability provision that says the debt requires “full public disclosure and annual independent audits of all project spending.”

How it works

This is electoral debt, so it can’t happen unless voters approve it. A YES vote authorizes the borrowing & a NO vote blocks it. The county can then borrow up to $120mil.

The resolution also commits the county to working with municipalities, nonprofits, and community organizations on conservation.

Now, this is genuinely good policy. I’m of course going to vote yes and I encourage everyone else to do so.

Delco is one of the most developed counties in Pennsylvania. It has admitted that the lag behind our neighboring counties on green open space. A dedicated $120 mil fund for conservation is exactly the kind of investment we should make, and $24 a year for the median homeowner sounds like a pretty good deal for what open space actually provides in flood control, water filtration, public health, and even property values. This is an easy decision.

The opposition

The NO vote camp on this is already coming from the local Republican Party. Debt, more taxes, overreach, etc. They say the county already carries too much debt, and that $120 mil is a blank check. They will either choose to ignore the $24 a year or claim that it is a trojan horse for bigger increases later.

It’s $24 a year to save green space that we can all share…let’s not forgot how far behind this county was once Democrats took office for the first time in ~150 years.

The bond does not let the county seize anyone’s land. The fund gives the county the ability to compete with developers for land when it comes up for sale, instead of watching every green parcel default to whoever wants to pave it…Right now, the only party with the money to move fast on these parcels is the developer. That isn’t overreach..

The rest of the opponents are simply against any and all new public spending regardless of what it buys them. It’s the same exact instinct that shows up every time a community is asked to invest in something that a group of people personally won’t use.

“I’ve got mine, I’m not paying for yours.”

It’s a small, isolationist worldview that asks the county to just stay frozen in time..

There’s a version of this same instinct with the Rose Tree Media K-1 center where older residents who don’t have kids in the district anymore and don’t want to pay for a new school. Same logic as the anti bond crowd … “my kids are done, I’m not paying for yours, and I def don’t want to pay for something I won’t personally use.” Clown mentality.

The timing

The county has had this open space problem for years and the Greenways program has existed since 2019 and been chronically underfunded. But why now?

Prob a coincidence but the Mozino tract fight in Upper Darby has been packing council meetings for months. Bonnie Hallam, the retiring Upper Darby Environmental Advisory Committee chair, went to county council to tie the Mozino fight to this exact green infra ballot measure. Communities across the county are organizing against development of their last remaining green spaces. Residents consistently rank open space as a top priority.

Does it go far enough…?

The county should be more aggressive in acquiring land and putting it under permanent democratic control…rather than just protecting it from development. Pennsylvania already lets counties create land banks by ordinance. Venango County did it in 2014 & Delco doesn’t have one. A real land bank with purchasing power could pull tax delinquent & vacant land off the speculative market & transfer them to community land trusts governed by local residents who actually live there.

It would also mean the county building & owning affordable housing directly through its own Housing Authority instead of just subsidizing private developers to … maybe include some? And a green infrastructure program could mean the county going after other pieces of land like Mozino tract outright rather than hoping a nonprofit intermediary scrapes together the funds in time.

The only problem is that Pennsylvania won’t let counties tax the entities actually extracting wealth from this place. So no assessment on private equity landlords and no pollution tax on the corporate polluters committing environmental racism in Chester. Counties can ONLY raise proprety taxes to raise revenue. And it’s by design…Harrisburg wants everyone reliant on them. Therefore every good thing a county builds gets financed by homeowners…

What to do

Vote YES YES YES.

The bond measure is 100% the right policy. There isn’t an opposition argument that holds up against $24 a year for permanent conservation. Preservation is also much much cheaper than the flooding and public health costs of paving over the last green space in the most developed Township…in one of the most developed counties in the state.

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Under the last seven year contracts, which expired June 30th, Philly sent roughly 40% of its trash to be burned, mostly at Reworld’s Delaware County facility. The city didn’t finish awarding the new contracts in time, so Sanitation just extended the old ones by six months.

What the city says it did

For the first time, officials from the Dept of Public Health & outside experts weighed environmental impacts when evaluating bids. Five companies bid. The city says it considered cost, disposal capacity, operational capability & environmental performance.

“environmental performance”

The Director of the Office of Sustainability, claimed that her team did a literature review & talked to experts about burning versus landfilling and came to the conclusion that there is not a clear consensus of the relative health/environmental impacts between incinerating and landfilling.

The city hired a consultant to add questions on environmental justice, and the envir planning director for Sanitation, said the consultant compared landfilling & incineration & found them “essentially equal.”

“Essentially equal” …

It was pointed out that the consultant leaned on an EPA tool built to estimate greenhouse gas emissions ONLY, not for fine particulate matter or heavy metals. The city basically compared carbon output... Sintana Vergara, an environmental engineer at Swarthmore who studies waste management, told WHYY that incineration tends to release heavy metals & carcinogenic pollutants & poses a greater risk to human health than landfilling.

The money

Between October 2025 & March 2026, Reworld spent over $100k lobbying City Council & Mayor Cherelle Parker’s admin.

Councilmember Jamie Gauthier led a bill last year that would’ve banned city contractors from burning waste. But pulled it from a vote at the last minute in January after Reworld employees & union officials testified it could jeopardize up to 120 jobs.

City sanitation leaders opposed the bill saying that we need more data, and that limiting options raises costs for taxpayers.

And the jobs argument landed, because it always lands, it’s the only argument that works and Gauthier pulled her own bill. I’m not going to act like that’s an easy call or that she was wrong. But a company running an incinerator in a Black city with some of the worst air in the region gets to use 120 jobs as a shield, but the people who breathe the emissions don’t get a vote or say in either citys process. Chester didn’t sign this, nor do they get to approve/disapprove it. Philly City Council does, while they send the pollution to Chester.

Environmental racism.

Promise to do better later

McGrath said the city hopes to launch pilot projects turning food waste into biochar or “bioslurry” that could run through wastewater treatment plants.

Seven years of burning Phillys garbage in Chester, & in exchange…excitement about potential…Chester residents can look forward to the bioslurry…

Why does 40% of a citys waste have to be burned in the poorest..most polluted municipality in the region? Chester has ELEVEN major pollution sources. Childhood asthma is about three times the national average. Liver & bile duct cancer rates are 91% above national.

Zulene Mayfield & CRCQL have been fighting that incinerator since literally the early 90’s … when the largest trash incinerator in the country landed a block from her neighborhood. Thirty four years later, Philadelphia is still doing the same shit.

Delco gets no say

Philly City Council votes on this. Delaware County residents live with it and that’s it.

Chester takes 40% of Philadelphia’s household trash & gets emissions, asthma & cancer rates in return…no say in whether the contract gets approved, and no vote on the mayor who took the PAC money.

MEANWHILE…Chester is helping fight a proposed LNG export terminal next door in Eddystone, advanced under NDAs with no public process and secret meetings.

This is literally deemed a sacrifice zone in a class war. This is the place where the costs of everybodys convenience gets physically deposited into people’s lungs causing cancer, & political geography drawn up so that the people absorbing the hit can never vote on it.

Philadelphia gets rid of its trash. Reworld makes millions in profit. Parker gets campaign contributions. While Chester gets the dioxins.

Mike Ewall’s assessment: “unjustifiable from a health and environmental perspective, from a racial justice perspective. What they’re doing is just wrong on every level.”

The contract still needs City Council approval.