TheBurg Podcast, Aug. 28, 2015

August 28, 2015 | by Admin

Welcome to TheBurg Podcast, a weekly roundup of news in and around Harrisburg.

Aug. 28, 2015: This week, Larry and Paul take the podcast to the streets and try to address a most vexing question: is the city’s recovery plan working? With City Council and the mayor back in town, they also discuss this week’s council meetings and a forum on a tree replanting planned along Front Street. Try to guess where this was recorded – as a hint, they explain it in, like, the first five seconds.

Special thanks to Paul Cooley, who wrote our theme music. Check out his podcast, the PRC Show, on SoundCloud or in the iTunes store.

TheBurg Podcast can be downloaded by clicking on the date above or by visiting the iTunes store. You can also access the podcast via its host page.

City To Replace Trees Lost in Street Repaving

August 25, 2015 | by Paul Barker

Two of the trees marked for removal in Riverfront Park, as part of a Front Street resurfacing project .

Harrisburg will replace trees cut down along Front Street as part of a state repaving project at a three-to-one ratio, beginning with the planting of 30 trees late this fall, city officials said Monday night.

Erik Josephson, who was hired as the city’s full-time arborist in May, said that the plantings will continue over the next three years and will help improve age and species diversity in Harrisburg’s tree population.

The plantings will also replace 16 trees that have either been removed or are scheduled to be removed as part of an extensive state repaving project along Front Street, which had previously prompted concerns from residents who wanted to preserve the landscaping of the historic river walk and ensure the public had a say in the project.

The initial planting is expected to take place in November and will include swamp white oaks, yellowwoods, serviceberries and American elm hybrids, Josephson said.

The city recommended those four species to property owners on the east side of Front Street, whose permission the city needs for the plantings. Josephson said six owners had already given their blessing to the planting of new trees on their property. No permission is needed for the west side of the street, which is occupied by the city-owned Riverfront Park.

Josephson, Mayor Eric Papenfuse and city engineer Wayne Martin fielded questions from a crowd of around 30 that had gathered on the second floor of the Civic Club downtown for a public forum on the replanting plans.

Among the topics of discussion were city rules on tree removal, which require residents to obtain a $5 permit before removing trees or trimming branches larger than two inches in diameter.

The officials also said the city is looking to revisit its shade tree ordinance, to hire additional tree-tending staff and to improve the tree canopy citywide by removing dead trees and adding new ones to increase its total tree cover from under 30 percent to a recommended 40 percent.

Papenfuse said he will seek funding in next year’s budget for additional help for Josephson, noting that there are city employees trained to trim and remove trees but that they are frequently overwhelmed with other public works needs.

Representatives of the city’s environmental advisory council also announced a series of meetings this fall to discuss both trees and broader goals to “green the city.” They are scheduled for 6 p.m. on Sept. 15, 23 and 28 and Oct. 8.

TheBurg Podcast, Aug. 21, 2015

August 21, 2015 | by Admin

Welcome to TheBurg Podcast, a weekly roundup of news in and around Harrisburg.

Aug. 21, 2015: This week, Larry and Paul talk about the latest court filings in the lawsuit over Harrisburg’s gun laws, a corruption-case appeal to the Supreme Court that might impact the criminal investigation into former Mayor Reed, and, on a lighter side, an abundance of murals.

Special thanks to Paul Cooley, who wrote our theme music. Check out his podcast, the PRC Show, on SoundCloud or in the iTunes store.

TheBurg Podcast can be downloaded by clicking on the date above or by visiting the iTunes store. You can also access the podcast via its host page.

TheBurg Podcast, Aug. 14, 2015

August 14, 2015 | by Admin

Welcome to TheBurg Podcast, a weekly roundup of news in and around Harrisburg.

Aug. 14, 2015: This week, Larry and Paul talk about a less-discussed side of Steve Reed, the former mayor who was also an active neighbor and volunteer after leaving office, as well as the latest Harrisburg crime statistics and new residential developments downtown.

Special thanks to Paul Cooley, who wrote our theme music. Check out his podcast, the PRC Show, on SoundCloud or in the iTunes store.

TheBurg Podcast can be downloaded by clicking on the date above or by visiting the iTunes store. You can also access the podcast via its host page.

Teens Clean Streets, Sharpen the Saw in Summer Program

August 14, 2015 | by Paul Barker

Kevin Porter, one of five interns who worked with 45 area teenagers in a summer environmental jobs program that ended Friday.

Harrisburg’s streets are a little cleaner, and the pockets of some its young people lined with a little hard-earned cash, thanks to a summer environmental program that wrapped up Friday with a lunchtime ceremony on Allison Hill.

The four-week program, administered by the Harrisburg Housing Authority, brought together 45 area teenagers and five college interns with a schedule of green projects, leadership classes and visits with local business owners.

Participants pulled weeds and cleared flower boxes at neighborhood gardens, picked up trash from city streets and the riverfront, and picked and washed vegetables for delivery to a soup kitchen, among other projects.

They also took a leadership class centered on the book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens” and went to a series of “learning lunches” at area restaurants, whose owners spoke to them about topics like etiquette and what it’s like to run a business.

The program paid a $1,000 stipend to each student and intern, in checks handed out alongside certificates at a closing ceremony that packed the upper floor of Rookie’s, a Derry Street bar and restaurant and site of one of the program lunches.

It was funded with proceeds of a $1-per-ton charge on waste dumped at the Harrisburg incinerator after members of the city’s environmental advisory council lobbied for City Council President Wanda Williams to include it in this year’s budget.

Bill Cluck, a member of the advisory council, said he’d been initially disappointed to see the jobs program left off the budget proposed by Mayor Eric Papenfuse, given what he saw as the success of a 25-student pilot program last summer.

Council ultimately voted to double the program’s budget to $60,000. The money funded the stipends plus $10,000 to cover administrative costs of the housing authority, which provides affordable housing in its 1,700 apartments citywide.

“I am certainly proud of all of you,” Williams told participants. “I see we have 50 this year. Next year in my budget, we’re asking for 100.”

On Friday, applause and laughter greeted students as they stood one at a time to share stories from the program and pick favorites from a list of habits like “put first things first” and “begin with the end in mind.”

“The one that spoke to me most was ‘sharpen the saw,’” said Airian Chester, a ninth-grader at Dauphin County Technical School. “Because I’d come home and say to my mom, ‘They had us walking everywhere!’ But then, the next day, I’d be refreshed and ready to go.”

“The kids started off real quiet. They didn’t really know each other,” said Kevin Porter, a program intern who will be a senior this year at Millersville University. “You could see the program was actually helping change these kids’ personalities.”

Reed Remained Active, Engaged After Term, Friends Say

August 12, 2015 | by Paul Barker

Former Harrisburg Mayor Stephen Reed leaving court the morning of his arraignment.

Not long after Stephen Reed left office in 2010, after 28 years as Harrisburg’s mayor, he disappeared almost completely from the public eye.

There were exceptions to his relative silence—that April, he sat for a three-and-a-half-hour interview for a history project marking the city’s sesquicentennial—but as the months passed, and the city descended into fiscal crisis, he became known as a recluse who rebuffed interview requests and made few public appearances.

Yet this portrait, according to friends and neighbors, is incomplete. They say that, though he left the political stage, Reed maintained an active civic life, giving generously of his time and insights to neighborhood projects and local charities.

In the wake of the sweeping corruption charges he now faces, their accounts help form a more complex picture of Reed, a local titan once dubbed “mayor for life,” as someone others knew as a devout Catholic, generous neighbor and active volunteer.

“He’s not a recluse by any nature,” said Jon Castelli, a fellow member with Reed of a local council of the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal organization devoted to charity. “He’s been very active. He comes to all our functions.”

Reed has been a dues-paying member of the group’s cathedral council, attached to St. Patrick’s downtown, for years, though he got more involved after leaving office, Castelli said. He is a knight of the fourth degree, which entails a level of special devotion and a focus on patriotic programs, like collection drives for veterans.

Castelli and other members said Reed has regularly participated in council meetings and charitable projects, including working at pancake breakfasts, packing gift boxes for soldiers and staying overnight at a city homeless shelter as a volunteer.

For the past several years, Reed has also been a dedicated member of Midtown Square Action Council, a neighborhood organization in historic Midtown, which includes the Cumberland Street home he has owned since 1975.

“He’s been a really good member,” said Janetta Brenner, a neighbor and fellow member of the group. “Because he has an incredible memory. Whatever resource we were looking for, he knew where to find it.”

Brenner recalled Reed was instrumental in helping secure grant funding for streetlight banners, and noted that he always came to the turkey dinner the neighborhood holds each winter at the Green Street Salvation Army.

“When he spoke, he sounded like a resolution,” said Kurt Knaus, a member of both the neighborhood group and the cathedral council. “But at the end of the day, he had a real interest in helping the groups, which were focused on helping the city or local residents.”

Such remarks show a side of the former mayor almost entirely absent from the extensive grand jury report released on July 14, the same morning Reed was arraigned at a municipal court on 17 criminal charges.

The report, though it noted Reed “did much that was good for the city of Harrisburg and its residents,” ultimately told the story of a politician who exploited his “near absolute control” over city institutions to spend heedlessly on personal interests.

It portrayed Reed as an iron-fisted ruler, who allegedly bribed City Council members and, on one occasion, abruptly fired an engineer who offered a disagreeable opinion. And it invoked state corruption laws in its critique of a governing style that a county judge, in an opinion two decades prior, had once called “Machiavellian.”

This picture is far from the Reed they saw at meetings, his neighbors say. “You’d have never known there was a mayor or former mayor in the building,” Knaus said. “He never tried to dominate. Where he could offer value, he did.”

“We hope it’s not true, but of course that will be for the courts to determine,” Castelli said of the charges, noting the council had not discussed them.

Whether or not Reed sensed the extent of the state’s investigation, the charges may have surprised him. His supporters on Wednesday launched a website to solicit funds for his legal defense, calling the allegations against him “outrageous” and a “travesty,” PennLive reported.

Brenner, who said she thinks Reed made mistakes, but never with bad intentions, recalled his presence at one of the neighborhood group’s committees meetings on a Monday night in July.

“He had wonderful ideas, ways to raise money, ways to do this,” she said. “It seemed like he was going to run with some of them.”

He was charged the next morning. Before the next meeting, he’d resigned.

More Apartments: Harristown to Add to Downtown Housing Revival

August 7, 2015 | by Lawrance Binda

Harristown plans to renovate this row of buildings (except Walker’s) into high-end apartments and retail.

New apartments continue to spring up in downtown Harrisburg, as Harristown Enterprises plans to add 23 more units near Strawberry Square.

Harristown expects to start this fall on the renovation of a six-story office building at 18-22 S. 3rd St., which also houses El Sol Mexican restaurant, which will continue to operate. The building will feature 15 high-end, one-bedroom apartments, each measuring about 800 square feet.

Directly across the street, Harristown will renovate historic townhouses at 19, 21, 23 and 27 S. 3rd St. Those three-story townhouses will contain eight, one-bedroom and two-bedroom apartments, as well as commercial space on the ground floors.

The building at 21 S. 3rd “may be dedicated” to a new downtown co-working space of about 5,700 square feet, according to Brad Jones, president and CEO of Harristown.

This is the second time recently that Harristown announced it would convert downtown commercial space to apartments. Last month, it received City Council approval to renovate 21,000 square feet of office space and another 6,000 square feet of loft space to 22 apartments above a stretch of shops along N. 3rd and Market streets in Strawberry Square.

“We believe the market for high-end and unique apartments in the downtown is very strong, and we look forward to continuing to grow the downtown residential population,” said Jones.

All of these projects are slated for completion in spring 2016.

Over the past two years, downtown housing has experienced a rapid revival, with numerous office-to-residential conversions. Most recently, WCI Partners completed its Walnut Court Apartments, a 21-unit project at Walnut and Court streets that opened in July and is already mostly leased, according to WCI President David Butcher.

Harristown will partner with Select Capital Commercial Properties for a portion of its most recent project.

This historic office building is slated to be renovated as an apartment building.

TheBurg Podcast, Aug. 7, 2015

August 7, 2015 | by Admin

Welcome to TheBurg Podcast, a weekly roundup of news in and around Harrisburg.

Aug. 7, 2015: This week, Larry and Paul talk about a vast records request the legal team defending former Mayor Reed has served on city hall. They also discuss the recent shootings involving off-leash dogs on a Midtown street.

Special thanks to Paul Cooley, who wrote our theme music. Check out his podcast, the PRC Show, on SoundCloud or in the iTunes store.

TheBurg Podcast can be downloaded by clicking on the date above or by visiting the iTunes store. You can also access the podcast via its host page.

Burg Blog: Gun Shy

August 7, 2015 | by Lawrance Binda

Harrisburg police Cpl. Ty Meik (right) speaks with organizer Jay Bowser during a recent meeting at Zeroday Brewing Co.

Harrisburg police Cpl. Ty Meik (right) speaks with organizer Jay Bowser during a meeting at Zeroday Brewing Co.

On Wednesday night, a group of concerned Midtown residents gathered at Zeroday Brewing Co. to discuss what recently has become the talk of the neighborhood—the shooting of two dogs, in just two months, by a fellow neighbor who is a Dauphin County parole officer.

The meeting featured a guest speaker, Cpl. Ty Meik, a Harrisburg canine officer, who, the organizers hoped, would shed some light on the matter, even if he could not discuss specifics (Meik repeatedly said he had no information on an investigation into the parole officer’s actions—or even if one was occurring).

It was interesting to hear Cpl. Meik speak. He clearly was concerned about the incident, as well as the community around him, and urged residents to be both cautious and vigilant.

However, I left the meeting with greater unease than when I arrived. Near the end of the hour-long discussion, the topic evolved from the specific to the general—from the actual case at hand to a broader debate about using deadly force when “feeling” under threat—including when your dog might be under threat.

Among this group of 20 or so, a division emerged between those who felt that firing a gun when sensing a threat was appropriate versus those who did not think so.

I was solidly in the latter category.

At 52 years old, I’m not a young man. I grew up just over the Hudson River from Manhattan when the Bronx was burning and “Escape from New York” seemed less a movie than a prediction. I lived in Washington, D.C., during the crack war and “Murder Capital” years, walking everywhere, even when the city logged more than 500 homicides in just one year.

Yet not once, in all those years, did I feel the need to pull out a gun and start shooting.

Did I feel uncomfortable at times? Absolutely—and not infrequently.

I’ve had groups of young men stare me down menacingly. I’ve had people shove me onto the sidewalk for no reason. I’ve had countless panhandlers aggressively beg for money, even threaten me. I’ve had random people mutter, swear at and even spit at me. I’ve lived on streets where people openly dealt drugs. I’ve had many dogs run at me (most harmlessly).

In other words, I’m no stranger to uncomfortable, even threatening situations, which, unfortunately, are nearly always a part of life in an American city. Yet, somehow, I’ve managed to survive, even prosper, without firing a shot.

Which is why I felt such discomfort when Meik—a solidly built, well-armed man wrapped in a bundle of protection—said that one’s sense of threat was relative, and, if that sense was strong enough, shooting a gun might be justified.

So, I thought to myself, should I have shot a gun when, as a freshman in college, a clearly unstable man punched me in the head as I was walking to the National Mall? Should I have shot a gun when a man followed me down the street and wouldn’t stop harassing me? Should I have shot a gun the one time I was mugged at gunpoint (the robber, clearly a junkie looking for a fix, stole $35 and ran away). Should I have shot a gun when my cousin’s dog bit me so hard in the stomach—and wouldn’t let go—that I needed stitches?

What is the threshold of threat that justifies using deadly force? And could those situations be resolved more peacefully?

I believe that, in each of the many threatening situations I’ve encountered, shooting a gun would have vastly escalated the situation. Someone, today, would be dead. It well might be me.

I have respect for Cpl. Meik and the difficult job he has to do. Having met him, I don’t feel disconcerted that he carries a gun everywhere, including, as he bluntly stated, into his church and his kid’s school. He seems responsible, caring and well trained.

But some people—many people—are not like Cpl. Meik. They are easily threatened and sense great danger when other people see an easily resolvable situation.

This is why I left the meeting so distraught. I have difficulty understanding how one person can feel so threatened by dogs that he pulls out a gun and shoots them twice in two months.

To me, there’s nothing relative about using deadly force. Shooting a gun is the most serious action a person can take, so he’d better be sure there are no alternatives. He should be carrying a gun only if he has the maturity and intelligence—even in the heat of the moment—to distinguish between a solvable problem and a genuine threat to life.

Reed, Fighting Corruption Charges, Enlists Open Records Law

August 6, 2015 | by Paul Barker

Attorney Henry E. Hockeimer, Jr., left, and former Mayor Stephen Reed after Reed’s arraignment July 14 on corruption charges.

The Philadelphia attorney representing former Harrisburg Mayor Stephen Reed has filed a wide-ranging set of requests for city records, enlisting the state’s right-to-know laws in Reed’s defense against corruption charges, TheBurg has learned.

Henry E. Hockeimer, Jr., of the Philadelphia law firm Ballard Spahr, sent the open-records requests to city hall between July 20 and July 28, a week after Reed was arraigned on racketeering charges stemming from a state grand jury probe.

He asked for a vast array of documents, including Reed’s correspondence with various officials and advisors, minutes and agendas of several years’ worth of meetings, files related to city borrowings and current Mayor Eric Papenfuse’s communications with law enforcement and reporters.

The requests, themselves a matter of public record once submitted, were provided to TheBurg in response to a right-to-know request.

The purpose of the records request is not clear. Under state law, requesters are not required to provide their reasons for seeking records. Hockeimer, reached late on Thursday, had no immediate comment, except to say he had filed an appeal for parts of the requests the city had denied.

But in building their cases, defense attorneys sometimes assert the right to review government records to survey the evidence gathered against their clients and build stories that counter the ones told by prosecutors.

“The state’s investigation is the state’s investigation. It’s not the defendant’s investigation,” said Ion Meyn, a visiting assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin law school and a former faculty member at the Wisconsin Innocence Project. “To rely just on what the state has investigated would be a mistake.”

The state’s initial disclosures about a case “should trigger successive, targeted, and written demands that are reiterated on the record, deepening accountability,” Meyn wrote in 2014, in an article for GPSolo, a publication of the American Bar Association. “A counter-investigation is essential to checking the state’s work.”

Nonetheless, the use of open records requests by defense lawyers does not appear to be widespread in Pennsylvania, according to Erik Arneson, director of the state open records office.

In part, that may be because one of several exemptions in the law, pertaining to records of a criminal investigation, is “broad enough that there’s not much to be gained” from making such requests, Arneson said.

At the same time, records that were deemed public before their connection to any criminal investigation generally remain public after charges are filed, he said.

In Reed’s case, Hockeimer sent a series of four open records requests to Harrisburg city hall, asking for documents in detailed lists that appear to stem from allegations in a grand jury report that was made public July 14.

On the basis of the report, Reed was arraigned that morning on 17 criminal charges encompassing 499 individual counts, including theft, bribery, deceptive business practices, criminal solicitation, evidence tampering and misapplication of entrusted property. Topping the list was a racketeering charge, a first-degree felony.

The report alleged that Reed, the seven-term mayor of Pennsylvania’s capital, used public borrowings to divert fees to pet projects, like acquiring Western-style and other artifacts. It portrayed the former mayor as heedlessly leading the city deeper and deeper into debt in the service of personal interests with little or no public benefit.

Reed, speaking the morning of his arraignment, said he had not been a part of any crime. “I devoted my life to the city of Harrisburg, and I look forward to waging a vigorous fight against these charges,” he said.

In his requests, Hockeimer targeted documents that appear to be related to specific allegations. For example, he asked the city for files related to “the City Council special projects fund created in 2003,” which the state has alleged was created as a bribe to secure council votes for a new borrowing on the Harrisburg incinerator.

In another example, he asked for the personnel file and travel records of Richard Pickles, a former city police captain whom Reed allegedly deputized to collect artifacts on cross-county road trips that were paid for by the city.

Some of the requested records are likely to be voluminous. One list includes a request for “all records including, but not limited to, documents, notes, correspondence and files” related to eight separate years of bond offerings. The closing documents alone for a single bond offering can run to many hundreds of pages.

In the case of some records, it’s not clear on what basis Hockeimer believes them to be in the possession of city government. For instance, he asked for records that current Mayor Eric Papenfuse provided to the Patriot-News, the FBI, the state police and the state attorney general between the fall of 2007 and the present.

Papenfuse did not take office until 2013, though he was briefly a board member of what was formerly the Harrisburg Authority, a governmental entity, before resigning in the fall of 2007. In 2009, during a campaign for city council, he claimed publicly that he had been assisting the FBI’s public corruption unit with an investigation into Reed.

Attorney General Kathleen Kane gave credit to Papenfuse’s persistence when she announced the charges against Reed last month. “Sometimes the squeaky wheel gets the grease, and he wouldn’t let it go,” she said.

Harrisburg solicitor Neil Grover said Thursday that he could not comment on the requests, saying the city was in the midst of a legal review.

The grand jury probe, which was extended by court order to January 2016, is ongoing.

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