Apartments OK’d: Harrisburg council approves Harristown, other projects.

April 10, 2018 | by Lawrance Binda

This downtown Harrisburg office building is slated for apartments.

Another downtown apartment project received the official go-ahead tonight, as Harrisburg City Council agreed to a residential conversion on Pine Street.

Council voted 5-1 to allow Harristown Enterprises to proceed with converting the circa-1952 office building at 124 Pine St. to a 25-unit apartment building with commercial space on the first floor.

The lone no vote came from council President Wanda Williams, who stated that she would refuse to vote affirmatively on future Harristown projects until she was satisfied that they contained what she considers to be affordable units.

“I will not be voting for any of these projects,” she said.

With the affirmative vote, Harristown can move forward with purchasing the six-story, 30,000-square-foot building from current owner Keystone Human Services, which has it on the market for $1.5 million.

Once the sale is complete, Keystone is expected to lease the building until it can find a new home, meaning that the office-to-residential conversion probably won’t begin until early 2019, according to Harristown CEO Brad Jones.

The Pine Street project, Jones has said, will consist of 18 one-bedroom and seven two-bedroom units that will range from about 700 to 850 square feet in size. He expects rents to be about $1,095 to $1,395 a month. The project includes 19 off-street parking spaces, which would be rented separately.

Over the past few years, Harristown has converted several other downtown office buildings to residential use, adding about 60 apartment units in all.

At tonight’s meeting, City Council also approved a resolution that will allow broadcaster ABC27 to construct a 3,500-square-foot addition to its Uptown Harrisburg building. The project entails consolidating three parcels at 3235 Hoffman St. and at 560 and 600 Alricks St., demolishing several existing structures on the Alricks Street parcels and adding to the main building on Hoffman Street.

In other action, council passed an “aerial easement agreement” with Harristown, allowing the company to continue to string about 580 lights over S. 3^rd Street between Market and Chestnut streets. Harristown hung the lights last year after receiving temporary authorization from the city. Since then, several evening block parties have been hosted on the street.

Council also approved a $2 million, 10-year loan from the state Department of Transportation Infrastructure Bank to fund the repair and improvement of streets, including accessibility upgrades, in south Harrisburg.

Lastly, council passed a resolution allowing New York-based Smart City Media to install about 25 digital kiosks in downtown and Midtown Harrisburg. The kiosks will display city-based information such as events, businesses, dining options, schedules and history, with Smart City footing the $100,000 cost per kiosk, said Councilman Cornelius Johnson. The displays will contain advertising, with the revenue split between the company and the city, he said.

“This is also a revenue driver for the city,” Johnson said.

Burg Blog: Sinclair’s Slippery Slope

April 9, 2018 | by Lawrance Binda

Piles of newly printed Burgs await delivery on a recent distribution day.

Recently—and rightly—Sinclair Broadcast Group has been hammered publicly for forcing its employees to read an Orwellian, insincere homage to press freedom.

For the most part, the criticism has centered on the threat to 1^st Amendment freedoms posed by a powerful corporation supporting and mimicking government propaganda. Although, locally, John Micek, PennLive’s editorial and opinions editor, last week lamented the personal toll it’s taken on some of his broadcast media friends and drinking buddies.

All of this criticism is fair, though it understates the profound magnitude of the crisis we face. This threat has its roots in the consolidation of media and the consequent loss of local control, as shockingly few companies, located in distant cities, now own your “local” broadcaster and newspaper. Therein lies the foundational danger to freedom of the press.

In the town where I grew up (about 18,000 people) in the 1970s and ‘80s, we had numerous news choices. Two free weekly newspapers covered my close-in New Jersey suburb. In addition, two daily newspapers overlapped the town, and many people also read one or more of the large New York papers.

Some of these papers were more liberal or conservative, but nearly all were independently owned, took the news business seriously and tried to cover stories responsibly and objectively. This is no longer the case.

Today, one of the weeklies is dead, the other owned by a big newspaper chain. One of the daily papers merged into the other one, and, a few years ago, the combined entity was taken over by giant Gannett Co.

The broadcast world has experienced similar consolidation, so much so that one behemoth (Sinclair) is now attempting to take over another one (Tribune Media).

In itself, size or even consolidation isn’t necessarily evil. It’s only potentially evil, but, unfortunately, we now seem to be reaching that potential.

Media consolidation actually has been occurring for a very long time. Locally, New York-based Advance Publications took over the Patriot-News in 1947. However, until recently, readers hardly knew that. The Patriot-News continued to operate much as it always had—as a local newspaper, with the corporate parent exercising a light touch. So, almost all operations remained in Harrisburg: the reporters, editors, designers, sales people, back-office staff, etc.

That operating model changed significantly starting in 2012, after Advance mandated that the Patriot-News print just three days a week, yielding to a new “digital-first” entity called PennLive. Since then, it’s pulled back significantly from local reporting, deployed reporters to distant cities, centralized many operations and changed its approach to what gets covered and how.

With Sinclair, we are now witnessing the troubling next step in the centralization and corporatization of “local” news—the risk of distant, gigantic parents mandating not only business and operational models but what is actually said and covered.

What is stopping Advance (which also owns most of the Perry County weeklies) or Gannett (owner of the York and Lebanon papers, among many others) or ravenous GateHouse Media (which two years ago bought the Central Penn Business Journal) from imposing its editorial will? Nothing really. Yes, this is a slippery slope argument, but, as we’ve seen from Sinclair, which increasingly has told its local properties which “packages” to run, it is now a clear and present danger.

The answer is, of course, more local, independent media—more voices, more approaches, more viewpoints. As corporate behemoths increasingly taint and corrupt local media, there must be a revolution from the bottom up throughout this country. As founder of TheBurg, I know how difficult it is to start and sustain a news company, but it is now the only option.

Please know that the news business is not one for the fickle or feint of heart. This is serious stuff, and it will take a Herculean commitment in terms of local capital, leadership, reporting and sales talent and, vitally important today, community support. With the breakdown of the ad-based revenue model, the news business—always tough—has become even harder, and new media outlets will need to be very creative in how to support their operations financially.

However, it is absolutely necessary. To sincerely paraphrase Sinclair’s own insincere corporate-speak: Our democracy itself is at risk.

Lawrance Binda is co-founder and editor-in-chief of TheBurg, the winner of 16 Keystone Professional press awards in 2018, including the Sweepstakes Award. He still wishes Facebook and Google would stop playing games and get serious about helping local journalism.

Planning Commission “has not served citizens well” and needs to be replaced, Mayor says.

April 6, 2018 | by Lizzy Hardison

Concept designs for the city’s Comprehensive Plan, which is currently more than a year behind schedule.

The never-ending story of Harrisburg’s comprehensive planning process could soon be in for a plot twist, if the mayor gets his way with City Council.

Harrisburg Mayor Eric Papenfuse told members of council on Tuesday that he intends to replace all seven members of the city’s Planning Commission, a volunteer board that makes recommendations to council on zoning, land use and other planning matters.

The Planning Commission is also tasked with preparing a comprehensive plan and submitting it to council for approval. It’s been three years since Harrisburg launched its comprehensive planning process, and the project is currently more than a year behind deadline due to disputes between a planning consultant and the city.

Papenfuse blames the Planning Commission for failing to furnish a draft plan for review. His solution is to gradually replace the entire board.

“I do not think the current planning commission has served the citizens well,” Papenfuse said recently. “I can only replace two a year, so it will take four years.”

And that’s only if City Council confirms all of his appointments. Council tabled two of his nominations at Tuesday’s work session: Christopher Nafe, a sustainability manager for the city, and Joseph Link, a former city engineer.

Nafe and Link would replace commissioners Anne Marek and Ronnie Shaeffer, whose terms expire this year, said Planning Commission vice-chair Vern McKissick.

Ausha Green, a council member who also serves on the planning commission, said she recognizes the mayor’s right to nominate board members. However, she is reluctant to bring on new members while the commission is in the process of reviewing and editing the comprehensive plan.

“The timing is not right,” Green said. “More time will be spent bringing someone up to speed rather than getting work done.”

McKissick, who is an architect by trade, agreed that the mayor’s efforts to repopulate the planning commission did not come at a good time.

“It’s ill-advised, but we don’t have a say,” McKissick said.

Council members also bristled at the fact that Papenfuse had picked current and former city employees as his nominees.

Harrisburg City Code allows two city employees to sit on the planning commission. Papenfuse argued that Green, as a council member, counts as one city employee. He believes that appointing another will improve communication between the Planning Commission and the city’s planning bureau.

“The advantage of having another city employee on the commission is that he can actually work with the planning director and has time and expertise to get things done,” Papenfuse said.

Green acknowledged that her role on Planning Commission has led to better communication between City Council and the Planning Commission. She also said she will judge any nominees on their own merit, and won’t discount them if they work for Harrisburg.

But Councilman Cornelius Johnson suggested that Papenfuse’s nominees could create the perception of administrative overreach.

The idea that city officials have tried to wrest control of the comprehensive planning process has permeated much of the discourse about why the project has lagged. Bret Peters, the consultant and lead author of the plan, told TheBurg in December that his relationship with city officials dissolved after they asked him to change recommendations in his draft. They also accused him of failing to pay subcontractors (a charge Peters denies.)

Papenfuse and City Solicitor Neil Grover insist that Peters was fired after submitting material behind deadline last year. Peters says he assiduously followed the terms of his contract but suspended it in 2016, after city administrators allegedly failed to provide timely feedback on drafts.

For his part, Papenfuse rejects the idea that city officials could overstep their role in the planning process.

“The problem with our current Planning Commission is that they see the city as an adversary rather than a collaborator,” Papenfuse said. “This false doctrine… flies in the face of all municipal planning efforts throughout the commonwealth, and is why we don’t have a comprehensive plan yet.”

Even so, Johnson thinks it would be inappropriate to appoint more members of the city’s staff to the Planning Commission. He also said that the commission shouldn’t shoulder all the blame for the delays in the comprehensive planning process.

“The administration played an active role in selecting the [comprehensive plan] consultant, so they share a lot of the responsibility on where our current status is now,” Johnson said. “I think it’s unfair to blame solely the Planning Commission and say they are not doing their job. I don’t think the ultimate answer to solve the problem is to replace everyone.”

The mayor still believes that his nominees will add expertise and a sense of expediency to the volunteer board.

“I tried to suggest two individuals who actually have the time, energy and expertise to roll up their sleeves and get a working draft of a comprehensive plan to City Council,” Papenfuse said. “I’m afraid the current group doesn’t have a clue what they are doing.”

Flower Finds: A burst of color at the Broad Street Market.

April 6, 2018 | by Norah Griffiths Johnson

Rather poetically, in November of last year, the west end of the Broad Street Market suddenly looked as if summer had shown up half-a-year early.

Credit goes to D. McGee Design Studio, the embodiment of Dolores McGee’s lifelong love of plants. Her stand is now the first thing market-goers see as they enter the courtyard end of the brick building at the market.

“It’s surprising the number of people who come through the doors and say, ‘Wow! Look at all this color! What are these?’” McGee said.

With an arresting display of buckets brimming with vibrantly colored blossoms and greenery, the stand is hard to miss (or resist). As we talk, she shares a colorful and particularly formative experience she had as a child.

“I was lying on the ground in my grandmother’s garden, gazing up through the flower heads waving atop their long green stems,” she said.

The beds, she said, were exploding with irises in blue-violet, dazzling yellow and peach, juxtaposed with white dahlias and zinnias.

In addition to her grandmother, McGee credits former market flower vendor, Margaret Kocevar, and a few other people along the way, for nurturing her love of horticulture.

“My grandmother was really the key to my interest, and I ignored it for decades,” McGee said, laughing. “I think you tend to do that—especially my generation. You tend to not look at the things that make you happy. You look at the things that will make you money, without realizing they don’t necessarily make you happy.”

Following the more traditional track, McGee pursued an HR career that spanned 25 years.

“I mean, how far removed is that?” she said.

But, during this time, she took dozens of horticulture classes—from botany to biology, plant ID, soil development, landscape design and sustainability, to name just a few.

“Had I been smart about it and taken them all from one institution, I’d have another degree,” she said. “But I still had fun.”

Gradually, McGee began sharing her knowledge and love of plants with the world, eventually branching out to events, workshops, weddings, a range of custom floral design. Through this, she slowly built a client book via mostly word-of-mouth referrals.

Along the way, she took classes at Longwood Gardens and attended conventions and seminars to bolster her knowledge of the mechanical elements of elaborate floral design—think 10-foot arches composed of greens bedecked with dangling tendrils of aromatic blooms and exotic varieties of orchids. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, you can spot a custom-ordered, miniature version of this sort of thing sitting at McGee’s stand, waiting for a lucky customer to pick it up.

As her knowledge base grew, so too did her creativity. In the early days, McGee admits it took some time to hit her stride and really develop a signature style.

“I tried to mimic the FTD thing, and that didn’t really work for me,” she said. “But then I started doing what I wanted, and people really loved it. Then my imagination just sort of went wild.”

Since opening, her biggest challenge is one common to many fledgling businesses— figuring out what and how much to stock.

“It’s one thing to do events,” she explained. “You know exactly how many flowers it takes to do x-number of bouquets, centerpieces, etc. But figuring out what people who come to the market will buy? Sometimes what I think will sell just sits there—like red roses!”

She quickly gestured towards a bucket where a few unlucky blooms still lingered, days after Valentine’s. So far, she’s discovered, it’s the more exotic, unusual, varieties that seem to most consistently strike the fancy of market-goers.

For awhile, development and logistics surrounding set-up and the opening of the stand took the majority of McGee’s focus, but she is gradually getting back into doing workshops and events, which present a great potential for the creativity that she loves.

In addition to all this, each year, she conducts a number of educational presentations for horticulture groups throughout the area. Sustainability—specifically around diminishing the effects of storm-water runoff, preventing soil erosion and combating non-permeable surfaces—is her sweet spot.

“That’s my thing,” she said, grinning. “I am very committed to this effort.”

So, amid the splendor, what are her favorite flowers?

“Tropicals,” she said, without missing a beat. “I love tropicals. They are so wonderful to work with.”

People tend to assume, she explained, that orchids and other tropical varieties are extremely delicate.

“But they aren’t really, especially if processed and handled properly,” she said. “And many of them will dry well—maybe not to their livehttps://www.dmcgeedesignstudio.com. form—but to something that is usable and just as lovely as when they were alive.”

McGee Design Studio is located in the brick building of the Broad Street Market, 1233 N. 3rd Street, Harrisburg. For more information, call 717-756-0503 or visit www.dmcgeedesignstudio.com.

As cities cope with cyber crimes, local IT directors prepare their defenses.

April 5, 2018 | by Lizzy Hardison

Photo by Dani Fresh.

For almost two weeks, the city of Atlanta has been in a “hostage situation.”

That’s how Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance-Bottoms described a March 22 ransomware attack that has spread through the municipal computer systems, causing serious disruptions in several departments of city hall. The attack crippled Atlanta’s courtrooms, disabled online bill payments, and forced many public employees – including the Atlanta Police Department – to keep records with pen and paper.

Security experts have long known that local governments are vulnerable targets for cybercrimes. But the attack in Atlanta, followed by a March 28 hack that disabled 911 services in Baltimore, show that many municipalities have failed to mount adequate defenses for their local computer systems.

“Networks fall into two categories: those that have been breached and those that will get breached,” said Jason McNew, president of Gettysburg-based Stronghold Cyber Security. “This is definitely a public safety issue and municipalities need to take it seriously.”

A 2016 report from Pennsylvania’s auditor general found that cybercrimes are certainly on the minds of government leaders across the state. Sixty-five percent of municipalities reported being concerned about cybersecurity threats, and 55 percent said they needed more resources to improve their network’s defenses.

As it turns out, though, many municipalities across the country operate with outdated or nonexistent cybersecurity programs. A 2016 study by the International City/County Management Association found less than half of local governments surveyed have a formal cybersecurity policy, and only 34 percent have a written strategy to recover from breaches.

The city of Harrisburg is among the municipalities that has neither. Steve Bortner, Harrisburg’s director of information technology, said that updating policies has been a priority of his since he took the helm of the IT Department in July 2017.

Harrisburg does have an information security policy, but it’s more than 10 years old and has “very little reference to anything related to cyber security,” Bortner said.

The city is also developing a written strategy for recovering from breaches.

“These policies are things that I guess had never been a priority,” Bortner said. “There are several other IT policies that we are trying to make current.”

Bortner explained that the city’s working cyber-security policies are embedded in other IT guidelines that govern computer usage for employees. New employees pledge to follow these policies, but Bortner said that there isn’t formal training for employees when they’re hired, nor are there regular cyber security trainings for staff.

McNew recommends that all cybersecurity policies and procedures be updated annually to keep up with emerging threats and industry best practices. He also urges his clients to hold annual, mandatory cyber-security trainings for employees.

“The analogy I like to make is that it’s like a safety program,” McNew said. “If my clients do safety training, I tell them to do the cybersecurity training at the same time.”

Bortner said the city has considered implementing mandatory employee trainings, but it would likely require a costly third-party vendor. The IT department does conduct phishing tests, when they send out suspicious emails to see if employees click on them, which he said were “fairly successful.”

An attack on Harrisburg’s municipal computer network would likely hit email and phone communication systems first, Bortner said. Other city applications run on mainframes that are connected to a different internet network. According to the city website, the mainframe systems run city operations such as insurance claims management; field reports for all service calls for police; billing systems for property real estate taxes, and codes licenses, permits, inspections and complaints.

“It depends on the nature of the attack as to what would be impacted, but not everything would be adversely affected,” Bortner said.

For instance, courts in Harrisburg would likely be safe if the city’s system was breached, since the Magisterial District Judges offices are run by the county. Dauphin County has a cyber security policy and an incident response plan that are updated yearly, according to IT Director Tom Guenther.

Bortner pointed out that almost all of the information that Harrisburg stores is public information, either published online or obtainable through a right-to-know request. But most hackers who target municipal governments aren’t after sensitive data.

As was the case in the Atlanta ransomware attack, most cybercrimes aim to hold computer systems hostage from city employees. The hackers who contaminated Atlanta’s IT system demanded $51,000 in bitcoin to end the attack; city officials have not said yet whether or not they have paid it.

Since every city relies on some form of IT infrastructure, hackers can afford to be indiscriminate when launching attacks, McNew said.

“Hackers troll the internet looking for targets,” McNew said. “Your data may not be interesting to them, but it’s interesting to you, and if they get a toehold in your network they can compromise it.”

Bortner said that the recent scourge of municipal cybercrimes hasn’t led him to reevaluate the city’s defense systems. He reports that finances have not been an issue for the IT department, and he’s fairly confident that Harrisburg could weather an attack with the systems it currently has in place.

“I believe we would be in a position to reckon with an attack,” Bortner said. “It would be a triage situation, but we have the knowledge and the resources to address a breach in the event that we have one.”

TheBurg Captures 16 Press Awards, Including Prestigious Sweepstakes

April 5, 2018 | by Admin

For a third straight year, TheBurg has captured the prestigious Sweepstakes Award, one of 16 Keystone Professional Awards that it won, it was announced today.

The Sweepstakes Award is given to the publication that performs best in its category in the annual peer-judged press awards sponsored by the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association.

TheBurg won honors in numerous categories for its work last year, including for reporting, column writing, headline writing, illustration and photography.

City reporter Lizzy Hardison and Editor-in-Chief Lawrance Binda won the most individual honors, both earning four awards.

“Our competition is very tough as we’re up against papers in major metros, including Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, with much larger staffs,” Binda said. “So, winning 16 awards, including the Sweepstakes, means a lot to us. It validates the hard work we put in all year.”

Other winners included TheBurg’s Creative Director Megan Caruso, former senior writer Paul Barker, illustrators Brad Gebhart, Rich Hauck and Ryan Spahr and photographers Dani Fresh, Ben Miller and Eduardo Pitino.

The awards will be handed out on June 2 at the annual Keystone Press Awards banquet, attended by newspapers from throughout the commonwealth.

Below is a full list of TheBurg’s 2018 Keystone awards with links to some of the award-winning entries.

First Place Awards

General News: Lizzy Hardison, “Thousands of Dollars Later, campaign yields no finance report and one unhappy candidate”

Ongoing News Coverage: Lizzy Hardison and Lawrance Binda, Election Raffle Coverage

Headline Writing: Lawrance Binda

Feature Photo: Ben Miller, “Parkour Playground” (photo only)

Graphic/Photo Illustration: Brad Gebhart, “Sit, Stay and More” (illustration only)

Second Place Awards

News Beat Reporting: Lizzy Hardison, Harrisburg City Beat

Feature Story: Lizzy Hardison, “New Cops on the Block”

Headline Writing: Lawrance Binda

Photo Story/Essay: Megan Caruso, Dani Fresh, “Teacher, Student, in Tune” (one of several photos)

Sports Photo: Ben Miller, “Parkour City”

Graphic/Photo Illustration: Rich Hauck, “Farewell Washington, Welcome to Harrisburg” (illustration only)

Honorable Mention

Investigative Reporting: Paul Barker, “Penalty Phase”

Columns: Lawrance Binda (“A Matter of Trust,” one of the three columns submitted)

Sports Photo: Eduardo Patino, “Family Dance” (photo only)

Graphic/Photo Illustration: Ryan Spahr, “Illustration of Bernie”

To see all the Keystone Award winners from throughout Pennsylvania, visit https://panewsmedia.org/Events/contest/keystoneprofessional.

Weekend Roundup with Sara Bozich

April 5, 2018 | by Sara Bozich

Happy Weekend!

It’s a pretty low key weekend for us, which is somewhat needed following Easter and busy workweek. We’re hosting some friends for dinner on Saturday (what should I make?), so that will mean a trip to the Market.

Plus, I’m looking forward to ZerØday’s 3 year anniversary on Sunday — they’re buying you your first beer!

What are you doing this weekend?

(more…)

HACC finalizes 2018-19 budget, tuition to rise by $6 per credit hour.

April 3, 2018 | by Lawrance Binda

The HACC Midtown II building in Harrisburg.

HACC students will have to pay a bit more for the next academic year, as the college plans to raise tuition and fees to close a budget gap.

The Harrisburg-based regional community college announced late today that its board of trustees has passed a $142 million budget with an average 2.9-percent tuition hike.

“HACC faces enrollment challenges similar to other colleges and universities across the commonwealth and throughout the country,” HACC President John J. “Ski” Sygielski said in a press statement.

Sygielski said that HACC faced a $1.7 million shortfall for the 2018-19 academic year. The board then raised tuition and fees to yield an extra $2.4 million, he said.

HACC’s tuition will increase by $6 per credit hour for sponsoring, non-sponsoring and out-of-state tuition rates.

So, for an in-state resident who lives in one of the 22 sponsoring school districts, tuition will increase from $174.25 to $180.25 per credit hour (3.4 percent increase). For non-sponsored, in-state residents, tuition will go from $211 to $217 per credit hour (2.8 percent increase). Out-of-state residents will pay $262 per credit hour, up from $256 (2.3 percent increase).

There also will be a $25 per-credit-hour increase in tuition rates for “College in the High School” and dual enrollment programs, and a $1-per-credit-hour increase in technology fees for students.

Sygielski also said that the college would reduce expenses “that are directly controlled by the college” and would try to identify outsourced projects that could be brought in-house. Cost-cutting should save the school almost $1.5 million, he said.

Separately, TheBurg reported today that some arts classes have been targeted for elimination, leading to a petition drive among students to have the cuts restored.

The 2018-19 budget also includes a 2-percent salary increase for employees.

“This modest increase recognizes the hard work contributed by HACC employees to the success of the college,” Sygielski said.

In addition to its Harrisburg location, HACC has campuses in Gettysburg, Lancaster, Lebanon and York. For more information, visit www.hacc.edu.

Following temporary cuts, HACC students call on administrators to restore arts electives.

April 3, 2018 | by Lizzy Hardison

Ariana Bronson, Rod Dixon, and Shawna Purdy-Beaver are among the HACC arts students who are protesting the cuts to arts elective courses for the Fall 2018 semester.

Shawna Purdy-Beaver was 43 years old when she first sat behind a pottery wheel. After raising two daughters as a single mother, she began taking classes in photography, ceramics and glass blowing to pursue her passion for the arts.

Four years later, Purdy-Beaver is working towards dual associates degrees in Arts and Business Administration at Harrisburg Area Community College (HACC). She hopes one day to open her own arts education facility in Harrisburg.

“I want a facility where you can come and learn at any age,” Purdy-Beaver said. “If you’re 80 and you want to learn glass, it’s there. If you’re 20 and you want to learn ceramics, it’s there.”

But right now, she and a cadre of her classmates have a more immediate concern—convincing administrators at HACC to restore classes that were dropped from the fall 2018 course catalog.

HACC announced on March 23 that it would not offer six of its art elective courses—two ceramics courses, three glassblowing courses and one introductory silkscreen printing course—in the fall semester. The announcement came three days before course registration opened.

Students say they felt blindsided by the reduced offerings. A petition calling for HACC to restore the courses had garnered almost 16,000 signatures by April 2. Written by a group of HACC students, the petition argues that HACC offers an affordable, high-quality arts education that’s unrivaled in the area.

“Communities with access to art programs are more vibrant and healthy, and community colleges, like HACC, have an enormous impact on the lives of people across our community and region to access this education,” the petition reads.

Jennie Baar, dean of Academic Programs at HACC, said that the community college plans to bring the courses back on a rotating basis in future semesters. She reported that changes to federal financial aid guidelines have affected the ability of students to enroll in elective courses, which has led HACC to reduce some of its elective offerings across different departments.

“The entire administration is in support of the liberal arts at HACC, and what we’re trying to do is maintain our quality of education and our access to affordable education,” Baar said. “I’m hoping that in the next few weeks, we’ll be able to provide students with a host of other options.”

Barr explained that students cannot use federal financial aid to pay for courses that do not contribute to their degree. Most degree programs do require electives—for instance, an arts student like Purdy-Beaver can apply a ceramics elective to her arts degree and can therefore pay for it with financial aid dollars. But students outside of the arts degree program cannot use financial aid dollars to take arts electives.

HACC administrators recently reviewed fall 2018 schedules to determine if any current courses were not part of degree programs, according to a March 28 statement. As a result, six art electives, as well as electives in other disciplines, were cut from the fall schedule.

Baar said that HACC will continue to offer some non-degree elective courses under its workforce education and continuing education divisions. She is also working with members of the art faculty to set a reliable rotating elective schedule, which could take effect as early as next spring.

Even so, students enrolled in the Associate in Arts (AA) program say that the cuts will disadvantage students who wish to transfer to four-year institutions, or those who are honing their crafts as working artists.

“HACC offers arts facilities that nobody else in the area has,” said Ariana Bronson, a ceramics artist pursuing her AA. “We have better facilities than four-year institutions and at a better price. Without HACC, I would have gone to a four-year college I couldn’t afford.”

Bronson has taken advanced ceramics at HACC once for credit and is currently auditing it for a second semester so she can build her portfolio. She planned to take it again in the fall until she learned the course had been cut.

“Without advanced ceramics, my work for my portfolio ceases,” Bronson said. “I need the facilities to make work and to put it into my portfolio.”

Once she finishes her AA, Bronson plans to apply to a four-year institution to complete her bachelor’s degree in fine arts. She said that limiting arts courses will deprive students of facilities and mentorship and make them less competitive for scholarships.

Rod Dixon, who has been pursuing his AA at HACC for four years while working full-time, fears his education in glass-blowing will be put on hold next semester. He’s taken two glass classes at HACC and was hoping to take a third, more advanced glass course in the fall.

“These cuts will get rid of advanced crafts class in glass, which is the class I am taking to build and perfect my skills,” said Dixon, who hopes to one day open a glass studio and retail business. “My goal is to take what I learn at HACC and turn it into my next career. A big part is having access to instructors and classes and facilities to be able to do that, and, without it, my future plans are likely not going to be a reality.”

Purdy-Beaver agreed that the advanced course offerings are critical for students who want to perfect a craft. She pointed out that students get unlimited access to studios and facilities as part of their tuition—access that they could lose if they can’t enroll in courses.

“The thing about the arts is that you have to keep working on it,” Purdy-Beaver said. “The time you have to put in to blow glass, paint, draw, make ceramics or do metalworking – it’s hours and hours of your life, in and outside the classroom. You need open access to the facilities.”

Purdy-Beaver and Dixon added that even with robust course options, students who work full-time or raise families have significant constraints on their schedules. They say it could get worse with fewer course offerings.

“I haven’t registered for next semester yet because the classes I need aren’t there,” said Dixon, who can only take evening and weekend courses.

The students who discovered new and unexpected passions at HACC say they’ll keep working to bring back the arts classes – not just for themselves, but for future students too.

Alexis Reisch, the student who drafted the petition after HACC announced its cuts, said that she took a glass elective on a whim and fell in love with the art form.

“If I was starting at HACC this fall, glass wouldn’t be an option for me,” Reisch said. “This affects current students and anyone who comes to HACC in the future.”

Cops & Community: Harrisburg introduces its community policing team.

April 3, 2018 | by Lizzy Hardison

Harrisburg police Cpl. Josh Hammer and new community policing coordinator Blake Lynch

“Less suit and tie, more jeans and Jordans.”

That’s the message that Blake Lynch wants to send to the public as he settles into his new role as the Harrisburg Police Bureau’s community policing coordinator, a civilian position that he assumed on March 26.

Lynch will share his title with Cpl. Josh Hammer, the officer who has been leading Harrisburg’s community policing program since David Botero vacated the civilian coordinator position last June. Lynch and Hammer said that Botero did not have a designated police officer counterpart, but they hope that their new partnership will let them cover even more ground in the city.

“This is a clear sign of how important the community is to our mayor and our police commissioner,” said Joyce Davis, Harrisburg’s director of communications. “No mission more important than making sure we have the trust of the community, and now we have two people assigned to build that up.”

As the civilian community policing coordinator, Lynch is charged with building trust in the city’s Police Bureau by serving as a liaison between the police and the public. He said he’s spent the first week of his tenure acquainting himself with different neighborhood associations and nonprofit groups across the city.

Soon, he hopes to start building rapport with residents and neighborhoods that might have a distrust of the police.

“I’m not a police officer, but I have the full backing of the police department,” Lynch said. “As people continue to establish trust with us… I hope we can close more cases.”

“Blake will be able to communicate and get into groups that might have a trust breakdown,” Hammer added. “If they don’t feel comfortable coming to us, we hope they will feel comfortable with Blake.”

Ultimately, Hammer and Lynch hope that a comprehensive community policing program will generate tips, cultivate informants and even cut down on crime. Lynch hopes to partner with local non-profits to create youth engagement programs, which would be aimed at reducing criminal mischief and juvenile crime.

“Our job is to make it easier for our patrol officers,” Hammer said. “If we build relationships and earn trust, it’ll help us down the road.”

Hammer said that there are no immediate plans to assign more officers to the community policing division.

You May Also Like

You May Also Like

You May Also Like

You May Also Like

You May Also Like

You May Also Like

What are you doing this weekend?

You May Also Like

You May Also Like

You May Also Like

You May Also Like