"Going Green" With Diane And Steve

The Bucks County Courier Times reported today on last night’s debate between incumbent Repug county supervisors Charles Martin and Jim Cawley and Democratic challengers Steve Santarsiero and Diane Marseglia. The theme of the debate was the environment; the debate was sponsored by the Sierra Club (and don’t assume that automatically means a tilt towards the Dems, since they supported Mikey Fitzpatrick last year in the U.S. House election).

There are a couple of points I want to highlight in the article, and the first is based on this excerpt…

Martin, who has been a commissioner for more than 12 years after being appointed in 1995, said the county has elevated 55 homes and acquired 100 homes as well as created a task force in response to flooding. Santarsiero noted the task force was formed nine months after the last in a series of three floods.

Well, did the task force issue a report or recommendations of any kind, aside from elevating 55 homes and assuming the cost of 100 more? Was there any consultation with other state or federal agencies as to a preparedness plan of some type?

Also, the incumbent commissioners touted their record of open space preservation, but Steve noted that, though 10,000 acres have been preserved in the last decade, 28,000 had been developed over the last six years.

I spoke with Steve briefly about this, and he noted that he had created cited a regional plan for Chester County, PA devised so that they may to create open space or use property in a variety of environmentally friendly ways (Steve is an environmental lawyer). The county provided incentives for individual municipalities to work within the regional plan and provide input to the plan as well. As it is now in Bucks County, whenever we need open space, we issue a bond to buy it back, and the county doesn’t have enough money to do that for every piece of property that needs that designation.

There is no regional plan in Bucks through which municipalities can use easements or other means to preserve open space or use land to come up with some other means to curb sprawl, such as building a children’s park or something else within the regional plan framework, according to Steve. And coordination among municipalities in Bucks is bound to save money over time as opposed to the cost of inaction on this from the current county commissioners.

All of this makes perfect sense to me (and as noted, last night’s debate focused on the environment; we haven’t even touched on the Danaher voting machines approved by Martin and Cawley that do not provide a paper backup, among other issues).

To learn more about Diane and Steve, click here.