Greater Harrisburg's Community Magazine

Bad Neighbor Policy: Pennsylvania, don’t be like Bob

Illustration by Rich Hauck

I once had a bad neighbor named Bob.

Bob kept his house meticulous but only because, I became convinced, all of his waste and unwanted whatever ended up on my property.

Gunk from his gutter-cleaning, clippings from his grass mowing, leaves from his raking, loose papers from his trash regularly found their way into my backyard.

One time, after a blizzard, he shoveled snow off his roof—directly onto mine. Often, his dog pooped on the walk in front of my house, and he just left it there.

When I confronted Bob about his bad behavior, his response was, “I’ve lived on this block for 30 years!”

As if a person could be grandfathered in to being a jerk.

Unfortunately, I thought about Bob recently as I watched a state Senate hearing on the commonwealth’s refusal to pay a stormwater fee that all other residents, businesses and organizations in Harrisburg have to pay.

As Bob was a bad neighbor to me, I thought, so is the commonwealth of Pennsylvania to the city of Harrisburg.

“Almost immediately after we rolled out our stormwater plan, the commonwealth issued notices to us, Capital Region Water, that it would not pay the user fee on any of its properties in Harrisburg,” CRW board Chair Marc Kurowski told members of the Senate’s Environmental Resources & Energy Committee.

The state government, Kurowski testified, is shirking its responsibility to the tune of $32,246 per month or $386,956 per year.

Who suffers? As usual, the people of Harrisburg do.

“The absence of that fee forces that to be covered by other members of the community, including residential ratepayers and commercial businesses,” Kurowski said. “The financial burden just doesn’t hit our residents. It also clearly inhibits our ability to make upgrades to meet clean water requirements and puts tremendous strain on our operations.”

Surprised? Not me. The state’s bad neighbor policy is longstanding and legendary, dating way, way back.

In the early 20th century, the commonwealth condemned and then demolished one of Harrisburg’s oldest, most densely populated neighborhoods, displacing thousands, to build a few office buildings and a large, sparsely used park.

Then, in the 1950s and ‘60s, road expansion and highway projects destroyed more of the city, shredding apart neighborhoods to benefit state workers who had moved to the suburbs.

Today, I think there’s a general consensus that what happened in that distant past was wrong, or at least wrong-headed. But, bizarrely, the state never seems to learn, as recent events have shown.

The commonwealth could be, and should be, a partner with its host city, conferring regularly with city stakeholders and agreeing to policies that are mutually beneficial.

Instead, we get preposterous proposals like doubling the size of I-83 through the city—destroying yet more homes and businesses and more of the city’s tax base—and tolling the South Bridge, which is almost certain to gridlock city streets as drivers opt for toll-free spans like the Market Street and Harvey Taylor bridges.

I find the case of the stormwater fee particularly galling.

For years, CRW has been making improvements to its antiquated, combined sewer system to try to meet state and federal clean-water rules. The stormwater fee is an essential part of paying for this wildly expensive endeavor.

The commonwealth, meanwhile, is one of the greatest contributors to the problem. Each year, millions of gallons of filthy, oily water flow off its 5.4 million square feet of impervious surface, much of it directly into Paxton Creek and the Susquehanna River.

When it rains, all of this polluted runoff finds its way, untreated, into our waterways, often mixed with human waste, which is the very problem that CRW is trying to fix.

But instead of meeting its obligation to its own capital city and our shared environment, the commonwealth hides behind small-minded rationales, claiming the fee is a tax—which it isn’t. In fact, before CRW separated it out, the stormwater expense was wrapped up in the sewer bill, which the state regularly paid.

You know, it’s bizarre.

When the Wolf administration took office seven years ago, city officials welcomed the change with open arms, hoping for good things from their fellow Democrats. But it hasn’t turned out that way at all. Instead, we got a massive highway expansion, proposed bridge tolling, environmental negligence and irresponsible foot-dragging as the city tries to improve safety on dangerous, state-owned roads like Forster and State streets.

Meanwhile, one can argue that the best thing to come out of the commonwealth recently has been letting Harrisburg extend its extra taxing authority. And that was approved by the Republican-controlled legislature. Go figure.

This may come as news to the commonwealth, but it does not live in a self-contained bubble. It is embedded within a city, and it shares services, roads, sidewalks, sewers, etc. It’s way past time for the state government, finally, after all these decades, to own up to the responsibility it has to this community.

In a way, I was lucky. After a few years of living next to Bob, I sold my house, moved away and mostly forgot about him. But the city of Harrisburg can’t move away. It can’t escape, like I could, from a thoughtless, badly behaved bully of a neighbor.

Lawrance Binda is co-publisher/editor-in-chief of TheBurg.

 

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