Tag Archives: Metro Bank Park

February News Digest

Budget Passed Again

For a second time, Harrisburg has passed a 2016 budget, which was largely unchanged from the version approved last year.

By a 6-1 vote, City Council last month OK’d a $60.4 million spending plan that adds 36 new positions, most in a newly created Neighborhood Services division. Councilwoman Shamaine Daniels was the sole member to vote no, stating that she believed the budget total was too high.

Council passed a budget in December, but reopened it a month later after three new council members took their seats. The new version is almost identical to the original, but it does give raises to a handful of city workers pending a study of pay equity in city hall.

The budget factors in about $3 million from a planned tripling of the local services tax (LST) to $156 per year for each person who works in Harrisburg and earns more than $24,418 annually. At press time, council still needed to approve the LST increase.

Commonwealth Court Judge Bonnie Leadbetter, who must approve changes to the city’s financial recovery plan, already has signed off on the tax hike.

Harrisburg Mayor Eric Papenfuse regards the LST increase as a way for commuters to contribute more to the city’s financial stability and to fund improved services, particularly for sanitation and road maintenance.

 

Stolen Firearms

Three antique guns were stolen from the National Civil War Museum in Reservoir Park last month, taken from an NRA-sponsored exhibit there.

A pair of Colt revolvers, dating to 1860 and 1861, was owned by the city, while an engraved Henry rifle from 1861 was on loan from a private donor, according to museum CEO Wayne Motts.

All three firearms were claimed to have once belonged to Simon Cameron, a Harrisburg native who served as President Abraham Lincoln’s secretary of war at the beginning of the Civil War. They were on display together as part of a “Guns & Lace” exhibit that was sponsored by a $25,000 grant from the National Rifle Association.

Police Capt. Gabriel Olivera confirmed that the thief made entry by breaking through a window and then breaking into the display case to remove the guns. The theft was not detected until hours later due to an apparent failure in the museum’s alarm system. Olivera added that the precise nature of the security lapse was not yet clear.

Olivera said surveillance footage captured images of a male thief, but that the images are not clear and that police are not yet releasing them because they “would not be of any use.” Police have not ruled out the possibility of an inside job, Olivera said.

The city released the following information identifying the weapons:

  • A .44 caliber M1860 Colt Army Revolver with serial number 11708.
  • A .36 caliber Colt M1861 Navy Revolver with serial number 1825.
  • An M1860 Henry Repeating Rifle with serial number 115, manufactured by the New Haven Arms Company and engraved with the word “Cameron” on the receiver.

 

Council Rethinks Pot Penalties

Harrisburg’s marijuana laws may soon change as City Council last month introduced a bill to reduce penalties for possession of the drug.

The city administration’s proposal would change possession from a misdemeanor to a less-serious summary offense and ease penalties to $100 for a first conviction and $200 for a second. After a third offense, possession again would be considered a misdemeanor crime.

Mayor Eric Papenfuse supports the change, saying too much city police time is occupied by low-level drug cases. He said he also doesn’t believe the change would encourage drug use, a charge leveled by some opponents.

At press time, a council committee was slated to consider the issue for further action.

 

Serious Crime Declines

The rate of serious crime in Harrisburg fell significantly last year, the Police Bureau said last month.

“Part 1” crimes declined by 17 percent in 2015 compared to 2014, the police said. These crimes include murder, rape, assault, burglary, theft and arson.

Of these, robbery fell from 283 to 228 reported incidents; assault decreased from 1,328 to 1,233 reported incidents; and theft dropped from 1,235 to 875 incidents.

Harrisburg tallied 19 homicides in 2015, the same as in 2014. However, three of those murders were categorized as self-defense, meaning that criminal homicides actually went down.

 

New Home for City Islanders 

The Harrisburg City Islanders will make FNB Field (formerly Metro Bank Park) their home stadium for the 2016 season.

The city-based soccer team will play 10 home matches at the City Island ballpark, which also is the home stadium for the Harrisburg Senators. Another five home matches will be played at Clipper Magazine Stadium in Lancaster.

For the past two years, the Islanders have been looking to move out of the Skyline Sports complex, also on City Island, because the team considered it too small and lacking in basic amenities, such as bathrooms.

Mayor Eric Papenfuse said that the city, which owns the stadium, may benefit financially through increased ticket, sales and parking fees, especially if the move leads to greater attendance at Islanders’ matches.

Separately, First National Bank last month announced the stadium would be renamed FNB Field, as F.N.B. Corp. recently merged with Metro Bank’s parent company, Metro Bancorp.

 

Housing Sales Improve

The Harrisburg area continued to see improvements in housing sales, the Greater Harrisburg Association of Realtors (GHAR) reported last month.

Region-wide, sales totaled 557 units in January, compared to 501 in January 2015 and 448 in January 2014. The median price increased to $152,000, $4,000 more than in the year-ago period.

In January, Dauphin County tallied 185 sales at a median price of $134,000, compared to 177 units and a $132,000 median price in January 2015.

In Cumberland County, 201 units sold for a median price of $174,000 against 179 units at a price of $160,800 in January 2015, GHAR said. Perry County sales were also up, totaling 27 units for a median price of $147,000 versus 18 units at a price of $144,950 for the year-ago period, according to GHAR.

 

So Noted

Bricco, a downtown Harrisburg restaurant, plans a series of events and specials to celebrate its 10-year anniversary. These include special pricing, dining events and a new menu. For all the details, visit www.briccopa.com.

 

Changing Hands

Berryhill St., 1249: R. Eisner et al to E. Graves, $37,000

Berryhill St., 2116: Secretary of Housing & Urban Development to M. Wijaya, $31,000

Cumberland St., 1322: E. Brinkman to D. Brotz, $114,900

Derry St., 2416: S. Moose to I. Class & Y. Aguayo, $45,000

Derry St., 2513: L. Parker to R. Tortorelli, $59,900

Edgewood Rd., 2300: B. & C. Mark to T. Paradise, $195,000

Green St., 1425: M. Araujo to J. Miller, $95,000

Green St., 1701A: R. Myers to J. & V. Wills, $180,000

Green St., 2959: D. Jamieson to D. & V. Moore, $202,900

Hoffman St., 3214: M. Angelo to J. Gantt & H. Mahmood, $109,900

Hunter St., 1609: T. Vo to D. Vo, $160,000

Kelker St., 422 & 434, 1821 Fulton St. and 1820 N. 5th St.: Hamilton Health Center to Christian Recovery Aftercare Ministry, $250,000

N. 2nd St., 321 & 209 South St.: B. Hattingh to VMV Smart Solutions LLC, $425,000

N. 2nd St., 1509: J. Tang to Vortex Properties, $105,000

N. 3rd St., 3205: Secretary of Veterans Affairs to H. Pontius, $42,000

N. 4th St., 3211: J. Kardisco to D. Cameron, $89,000

N. 17th St., 1001: Miracle Group Inc. to E. Price, $80,000

Parkside Lane, 2906: R. & V. Eaton to R. & K. Riley, $210,000

Penn St., 1522: S. Faridi to M. Lindsay, $133,000

Regina St., 1414 & 2139 N. 4th St.: SNL Realty Holdings & Touch of Color to NJR Group LLC, $71,500

Rudy Rd., 1916: R. Wagner to J. Burno, $53,000

Rudy Rd., 2413: J. Boutselis to PA Deals LLC, $55,000

Rumson Dr., 2586: PA Deals LLC to J. Tucker, $80,000

S. 19th St., 14: C. Butler to M. Martinez, $45,000

S. 25th St., 729: R. Wylie Jr. to 729 25th Street LLC, $170,000

S. 26th St., 733: T. Navas to E. Lowe & S. Fuentes, $72,000

State St., 213: Douglas, Hassler & McKillop to Legion Premier Properties LLC, $247,000

Susquehanna St., 1725: M. Gojmerac & C. Roma to B. & K. Martin, $94,000

Verbeke St., 309: S. Rosso to R. Green & D. Govender, $113,000

Wyeth St., 1406: A. Van Dyke to PA Deals LLC, $82,000

 

Harrisburg property sales for January 2016, greater than $30,000. Source: Dauphin County. Data is assumed to be accurate.

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TheBurg Podcast, Jan. 29, 2016

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

To listen to this week’s episode, click here.

Jan. 29, 2016: It snowed! Larry and Paul talk about the cost of all that shoveling and plowing, and they give their takes on the city’s response to the epic storm. They also discuss the plans of the City Islanders to play home soccer games at the Senators’ ballpark next year. Then, Paul talks with Capital Region Water CEO Shannon Williams about her company’s efforts to engage the community and reduce flooding and sewer overflows with a campaign called City Beautiful H2O.

TheBurg Podcast is proudly sponsored by Ad Lib Craft Kitchen & Bar at the Hilton Harrisburg.

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

Podcast bonus: During her appearance on the podcast, Shannon Williams discussed her reaction to the water crisis in Flint, Mich. To further inform the public about lead monitoring and the water supply, Capital Region Water has prepared a fact sheet, which you can access here.

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Treasured Island: Many people have high hopes for the future of Harrisburg’s City Island. But can its players paddle in the same direction?

Screenshot 2015-06-01 08.41.10One evening in March 1986, Mike Trephan was at the reception for his own wedding, at Catalano’s bar and lounge in Wormleysburg, when he got a call from then-Mayor Steve Reed.

“He says, ‘Michael, the river’s coming up,’” Trephan recalled. “‘You’ve got to move—’” Trephan knew what Reed was talking about: the hull of what was to become the Pride of the Susquehanna riverboat, a hulking metal frame that was perched on a City Island beach, unmoored. For the past year, Trephan and a group of local businessmen had been working to build an old-fashioned passenger boat to augment the city’s riverfront attractions. Trephan, who had recollections of taking a ferry to City Island as a child, called it “an old memory becoming a new dream.” He got off the phone and, along with his wife, headed for the island.

Rising waters had imperiled the project once already. Months before the wedding, the river had torn the boat from where it was docked on the west shore, wedging it against a pier of the Market Street Bridge. The disaster prompted a Patriot-News reporter to liken the riverboat to the Titanic—a display of hubris that was doomed to failure. But the hull was rescued and relocated to the island, and Trephan, after coaxing more positive coverage from the paper, kept the project and its capital campaign alive. On his wedding night, he got to the boat before the swelling river did. “And who shows up and helped us? Mayor Reed,” Trephan said. “We were all dressed up, but we got the boat tied up. I think he’s the one that brought ropes over, if I’m not mistaken.” The boat stayed anchored to the island.

The riverboat was just one piece of City Island’s transformation under Reed. For nearly a century, the island had been a recreational site for city dwellers, following the 1890 construction of the Walnut Street Bridge. According to Eric V. Fasick’s “Harrisburg and the Susquehanna River,” a collection of images of the river published earlier this year, the newly granted access led the city to develop bathing beaches, playgrounds and baseball diamonds there. By the time Reed took office, however, in 1981, the island had fallen out of use and acquired a reputation for prostitution and cruising. Trephan called it “disheveled,” though, he hastened to add, it “wasn’t as bad as people say it was. It just wasn’t developed.”

All that changed under Reed. In 2010, giving an interview for a local history project, Reed recounted his search for an enterprise that would have a “catalytic effect on changing the image and perception of the city.” “You needed something that had universal appeal,” he said. Waterfront investments, he went on, were “almost no-brainer types of developments. Once you do them, people will come. You build it, they will come.”

Trephan got involved after talking to the mayor during Kipona, the city’s riverfront festival over Labor Day weekend. Trephan had charted helicopters for the festival, and, as he and the mayor observed the long line of people waiting for a ride, Reed asked about other ways to improve the riverfront. Trephan ventured a suggestion for a ferry. That idea blossomed into the campaign for the riverboat, which Trephan spearheaded, along with other acquisitions—a railroad circuit and steam train, purchased from a bankrupt Vermont millionaire; an antique carousel. The crowning achievement was the construction of a new ballpark and the acquisition of a minor-league franchise.

Trephan, now in his seventies, looks back on the redevelopment of City Island as an emblem of Reed’s vision and follow-through. “He was a doer,” he said. “People knew that if he said he’d get something done, he would.” More than that, though, he recalls it as a story of political and geographical unity. The mayor “didn’t give a shit what your political party was,” he said. In the case of the Pride of the Susquehanna, he “probably got that done with 80 percent Republican help.” Trephan wanted the boat to be a project of both shores, and, when it came time to incorporate a nonprofit to manage it, he lobbied for the name to include “Harrisburg Area,” as opposed to just “Harrisburg.” (In a history of the riverboat, which Trephan put together in 2007, he wrote that it “might have been the first time that the east and west shores ever came together on a community project.”)

The renaissance on the island has largely endured. The Senators still play ball in the stadium, now dubbed Metro Bank Park. The Pride of the Susquehanna is paddling into its 27th year. But in recent months, both the private sector and local officials have begun looking to improve its offerings. Much as it did in 1986, when its mayor showed up to save a stranded boat, the city is considering what sort of businesses can flourish there, and how the government should help.

 

 

Last November, a group of land-use experts met over two days in downtown Harrisburg to contemplate City Island’s future. The Urban Land Institute, a global nonprofit, had convened them to tackle a question: was the island was being used to its full potential?

Urban Land Institute panels are meant to provide planning advice, as the institute puts it, “in an atmosphere free of politics or preconceptions.” Susan Baltake, the executive director of its Philadelphia council, which oversaw the City Island panel, told me the institute “gives cover to elected officials, who don’t want to be the ones telling constituents what to do.” The panel, which included lawyers, engineers, designers and real estate and construction professionals, among others, toured the island and interviewed 51 “stakeholders” representing the various constituencies with interests there. The result was a report that George Asimos, a local real estate attorney for the law firm Saul Ewing, and the panel’s co-chair, said he hoped would be “an informed, open-minded, no-agenda catalyst for action.”

The report affirmed the island’s present recreational use, while highlighting its immense potential. It called for a form of centralized management and urged the city to develop a long-term master plan. Among other ideas, it recommended pursuing additional programming at the island’s sports facilities and exploring winter activities and a year-round restaurant. It strongly urged the city to work with the City Islanders, a professional soccer team, to improve their stadium, which is underwhelming, despite the view of the Harrisburg skyline from its bleachers. The report also included a few of what Asimos called “blue-sky ideas,” including a “Museum of the Susquehanna” to celebrate the river’s ecology.

“City Island is a well-loved place,” Asimos told me. “It is unique and tremendous in its location, and in the fact that you can walk and drive to it.” But, he noted, the island’s amenities are “not planned in a uniform way.” The island didn’t have a consistent signage system, and the natural resources were integrated haphazardly. “It’s crying out for a unified master plan,” he said. Brad Jones, the president of the downtown development nonprofit Harristown, which led the request for the Urban Land Institute study, said the panel learned that vendors shared more or less the same wish list. They wanted the island to be “clean, safe and beautiful,” and they would like “maybe a little more marketing.”

Where does city government fit into these objectives? In 1984, before the rapid development of the island under Reed, the city petitioned the Urban Land Institute for a similar report. This time, the request came not from the city but from Harristown, with the backing of the Dauphin County commissioners and the regional tourism bureau. The difference is small, but it may say something about a divergence in priorities. Since Mayor Eric Papenfuse took office, he has clashed with these entities over spending on development and tourism. Though he was interviewed for the report, he took little interest in it. “I don’t think it told us anything we didn’t already know,” he told me, describing it as “one of those things the county likes to spend money on.” (Dauphin County paid $15,000 for the study.)

More to the point, Papenfuse has begun his own examination of the island, focusing less on potential for future development and more on the status quo. The city recently engaged a contract lawyer to go through the city’s permits with island vendors. The Urban Land Institute report recommended giving vendors longer permits, to encourage investment—yet the city recently notified vendors that their permits would be extended provisionally, for one year only. Jackie Parker, director of the city’s Department of Community and Economic Development, which encompasses the parks division, said she expected ultimately to renew them. But, she added, “We’re taking a look, because they’ve been on the books for a very long time, so we felt, and so did the vendors, that there were some things in there that they’d like to discuss and, you know, make some changes.”

Opening the permits may simply be about ironing out wrinkles; most of them date back a decade or more. But it may also reflect a deeper reconsideration of the vendor-city relationship. Under some permits, the city pays the vendor’s electric bill. Many contain a profit-sharing provision—if the vendor earns above a certain figure in a given year, a percentage of those profits goes to the city. But the city has rarely, and perhaps never, collected money under the provision. (One city official suggested such profit-sharing was never meant to be enforced, but rather was a way of making permits for private use of city-owned land more politically palatable.) Vendors, meanwhile, have found the one-year term puzzling. “As a business owner, how do you take a one-year permit to the bank to get a loan?” one vendor asked me.

These concerns are especially prevalent in the case of the asset that dominates the island—the minor-league baseball stadium. The city renovated the ballpark in 2007, matching an $18 million state grant with $18 million in borrowed money. (Around the same time, Reed sold the Senators to a private investor for $13 million, representing quite a coup, as the city had paid less than $7 million for the team a decade before.) Reed claimed that, under the deal, the city should expect ongoing revenues from the ballpark of $500,000 per year. In fact, the city now loses money on the stadium, largely because annual debt payments on it exceed the year’s rent and tax revenues by around $200,000. One city official described the arrangement as a “naked put—the city has all the downside.”

More worrying to Papenfuse, the stadium permit requires the city to pay for facility upgrades, potentially at very high cost to taxpayers. “You have a major scoreboard outage, you have an elevator go down, and you could suddenly have a million dollars in a year that the city’s on the hook for,” he told me. The Senators are supposed to pay the city a portion of parking revenues and stadium naming rights, but the city hasn’t received the money for about a year now, because it’s been siphoned off to pay for repairs. Papenfuse has been meeting with Mark Butler, a local businessman who bought the team earlier this year, and said he feels optimistic about the negotiations. He called the team “good partners” and pointed to its nearly $400,000 annual lease payment, which he acknowledged was costly. “From their perspective, they have the highest lease payments of any team in the league,” he said. “But from our perspective it doesn’t work, and the city can’t fill the gap.” (Butler did not respond to requests for an interview.)

The Urban Land Institute aspires to apolitical advice, but it is difficult to sever political considerations from the use of public land. Asimos, though he said the mayor’s task force didn’t come up during the panel, said the “fact that City Island is still costly to the city” did. In the fall, absent a renegotiated ballpark permit, Papenfuse will go before City Council and ask members to budget for the stadium’s capital repairs—and thus balance the city’s island subsidy against other spending priorities. I asked him what his long-term goal was for the island. “I’m not sure we can achieve it, but the goal is to get it to be—it doesn’t need to make any money for the city, but it shouldn’t be a financial liability to the city,” he said. “And right now, it’s a huge financial liability, with a sort of question mark for how high it can go.”

 

On a Thursday in early May, around noon, three men in red T-shirts and matching pants left a small, gray shed on the island, near the Walnut Street Bridge, and climbed into a Department of Corrections van. An escort drove them past the stadium towards the beach at the northern end. There, behind the putting greens of a miniature golf course, they spread out at a picnic table for lunch.

Jeff Palkovic opened Water Golf in 1990, making him one of the island’s longest-running attractions. A few years ago, when the city was nearly bankrupt, Mike Trephan organized Palkovic and several other businessmen into a loose committee to help take care of the city’s parks, including the island. A fellow board member of Trephan’s worked in corrections, and she connected the group with a community work program at the Camp Hill prison. Since then, Palkovic said, he has spent hundreds of hours working with the prisoners to maintain the island—cutting back overgrowth, painting facilities, even clearing a walking trail on the west shore.

These efforts raise the question of what the proper relationship is between city government and private businesses, particularly private businesses that rely for their livelihood on public land. The island is a city park, and it falls to the city to maintain the public areas. When the city can’t afford the maintenance, how far should businesses go to keep up appearances on their own? Trephan, who approached former Mayor Linda Thompson with the offer to help early in her term, said she initially seemed suspicious of his motives. Trephan told her he wanted to help because the parks were “what our forefathers left us, and it’s up to us to keep them going.” “All of a sudden, she completely changed her demeanor,” he recalled. “I only had 10 minutes with her—we sat there for an hour, hour-and-a-half talking.” After their meeting, he said, Thompson “helped me anywhere she could.”

Vendors have more recently taken the initiative in marketing and promoting the island. For the past year, they have held monthly meetings to discuss issues ranging from the island’s appearance to branding, signage and security. They meet either on the riverboat or at a ballpark conference room and are typically joined by the city’s parks and recreation director, at least for part of the time. Jackie Parker compared it to a downtown merchant’s association—“they really are starting to work together as a group, which is cool,” she told me. But the businesses also seem to want to ensure their insights and experience are respected. “I want to work as partners with the city,” Steve Oliphant, who owns Susquehanna Outfitters, which rents watercraft and offers river tours, told me. At the same time, he added, the parks administrators were newcomers, while most of the vendors had been on the island for 10 years or more. “They should be coming to the businesses that exist and working as partners. We want to help, too. Have input. Not feel like decisions are made in our absence, and they’ll tell us how that works out.”

“I think the city and the mayor are so overwhelmed with trying to fix things,” Palkovic told me. “There’s a hundred things to do and they can do 10 things.” Still, he reminisced about an earlier era of cohesion, when the island, under aggressive city management, seemed to pick up momentum. Each new vendor drew visitors to the island, and, as a result, everyone’s business improved. Tina Manoogian-King, the longstanding parks and recreation director under Reed, “ran it with an ironclad fist,” he said. “But you know what? You knew what to expect and you knew it was gonna be really, really good.” She was especially ardent about vendors cleaning up trash. To this day, after fireworks displays on the island, Palkovic goes around with a blower to clean up fallen debris. “And I have no problem with that,” he said. “Because I want the island looking good, so when you come, you’re impressed.”

Speaking to vendors and city officials, I wondered how much Papenfuse’s approach to the island was informed by his views on Reed’s legacy. His approach to the National Civil War Museum set one kind of precedent. When he asked the county to cut its funding, he described the museum as a financial waste that should never have been constructed. What Reed saw as a worthy investment, Papenfuse now saw as a crippling obligation. I asked him—did he feel the same way about the stadium and the Senators? “I think it’s distinct,” he told me. “Because there’s no question the Senators bring a benefit, and that perhaps at one time you could make an argument that a city or municipality could subsidize a sports team.” When it came to City Island, it wasn’t that he didn’t see the value of the investment. It was that he believed he had a more pressing obligation to the bottom line. “When we have debt that we absolutely have to pay, and we’re hundreds of thousands of dollars short on a yearly basis,” he said, “we don’t have the luxury of looking at the soft economic impact of that. We have to come up with real numbers.”

Last month, on a nearly perfect spring night, I went to a Senators game. I was early, and while I waited for my wife and our friends, I stood near the gates and watched a crowd stream in from the parking lots and over the bridge. The first time I’d seen the Senators play, before I moved here, I found the experience charming—the kids’ contests between innings, the ads for local businesses on the Jumbotron, the lights strung up on the Walnut Street Bridge. Now, though, it struck me as an emblem of a much more complex legacy.

I thought of something Mike Trephan told me. We’d been talking about the uniqueness of Harrisburg’s riverfront, and the beauty of the island, but had gotten sidetracked on his estimation of the Reed years. He was aware of the incinerator and related borrowings that, late in Reed’s tenure, wrecked the city’s finances. He would entertain the suggestion of bad governance, but he didn’t doubt for a second the mayor’s motives. “Everything he did, he did for the city,” Trephan said. He paused a moment, then set these thoughts aside. “Ah, it’s a great place, City Island,” he said, as if it was all that mattered.

 

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Can of Corn

teameast  teamwest

Late Monday afternoon, while Washington’s spending bill languished in the Republican House and the federal government drifted towards shutdown, Tim Solobay, Democrat of the Pennsylvania Senate, was in right field in the City Island stadium, doing side lunges.

He was wearing an orange Team West jersey that sorted him by chamber and district number (SOLOBAY, S-46), along with white crew socks and black-and-white Adidas trainers that looked to have been preserved intact from the 1980s.

The first-ever Capitol All-Stars softball game was slated to start at 5:30. It was 4:15.

“I got here at 4 o’clock,” Solobay said. “I was going to go to the batting cages, but they were closed.”

The game would mix members of both parties in the House and Senate in a seven-inning match in Metro Bank Park. Lynn Deary, president of Pennsylvania Legislative Services, was inspired by the Congressional Softball League, which has been organizing casual games in D.C. since 1971. Deary had partnered with the Pennsylvania Cable Network to organize the event, with proceeds benefitting Feeding Pennsylvania and Hunger-Free Pennsylvania, the state’s two largest nonprofits for hunger relief.

Mike Stack (Democrat, S-5) walked over, wearing a backwards ball cap and track pants. Stack, who serves Philadelphia, had been assigned to Team West to help keep a balanced roster. “Those guys, they look like they got their shit together,” he said. He was referring to Team East.

The senators started lobbing a softball. Mike Brubaker (Republican, S-36) approached, his jersey tucked into his blue jeans. “You guys are lookin’ good,” he said. While Solobay rolled grounders, the speakers boomed the Bangles. “Walk like—an Egyp-shun.

In the Team West dugout, technicians for PCN set up for the broadcast. A communications triumvirate—Bob Caton, spokesman for the House Democrats, Steve Miskin, spokesman for the House Republicans, and Erik Arneson, the communications and policy director for Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi—would be calling the game on live TV.

“They are three really funny people,” Corinna Wilson, PCN’s vice president of programming, had said before the game. She estimated that grouping them for the broadcast would make for lively commentary. She was correct. Late in the game, when Jim Christiana (Republican, H-15) snagged a Pileggi fly ball, Arneson remarked that it was “unfortunately the end of a promising legislative career.”

Rob Teplitz (Democrat, S-15) emerged from the locker room, his jersey tucked into knee-length khaki shorts, his phone clipped to his belt. Paul Simon’s “Call Me Al” had overtaken the stadium air. “A man walks down the street, he says, why am I soft in the middle now…”

Lawmakers and cameras begin to fill the field, in about equal proportion. The event was about hunger, of course, but it was also about the legislators. Brubaker, the co-chair of the Legislative Hunger Caucus—“He feels personally responsible that no person goes hungry in the state of Pennsylvania,” Wilson said—posed with a bat for Fox News. “This is a really exciting day for me,” he said to the lens.

Farther off, in the nearly empty stands above the Team East dugout, a group of suits waved down Christiana, who had entered the ballpark with Tommy Sankey (Republican, H-74). They wanted to talk anesthesiology. Were they lobbying? There wasn’t time to find out. “One of us has gotta be loose. We’re the dynamic duo,” Sankey said. He dashed down the staircase towards the locker rooms.

After group photos, the teams lined up on the baselines. The First Lady, Susan Corbett, said a few words. “We really love you for being here,” she said. “Good luck to all the team members. We’ll see you coming to work tomorrow—” She did a brief pantomime of a sore, stiff lawmaker. Then she headed for the stands behind home plate, where she sat a few seats in front of her security detail.

Eddie Pashinski (Democrat, H-121) took the mound for the national anthem. The crowd fell reverentially quiet for the color guard, and then Pashinski, unamplified, gestured for a mike. “Anybody can do it with a microphone,” said Larry Farnese (Democrat, S-1). As Pashinski crooned, the crowd murmured with him, their voices small and predominantly soprano.

“And the hoooome—of the—braaaave,” Pashinski sang. A pair of helicopters screamed directly over the stadium, flying north. It was so well timed, more than one spectator observed, it could not possibly have been planned by the legislature.

The first inning’s fielding was rocky. The softball, plump and white, moved slowly, but so did the lawmakers. In the second at-bat, Lisa Boscola (Democrat, S-18) chopped one over Solobay’s head. Jake Wheatley (Democrat, H-19) recovered it, but overthrew to first base, and Boscola advanced. On the next hit, Solobay stopped the ball short but, in the process, tumbled forward and rolled onto his back.

Later, the 10-year-old daughter of Sheryl Delozier (Republican, H-88) helped to explain the abundance of errors. The lawmakers hadn’t had time to practice. “They were late out of caucus,” she said.

Team East fared no better. In the first inning, a double error along the third baseline gave up a run. In the second, John Yudichak (Democrat, S-14) fell to a questionable third-strike call. (“No way,” Brubaker keened from the sidelines. “Nooo way.”) Daylin Leach (Democrat, S-17), who had spent the entire inning on deck, test-swinging two bats, also failed to deliver. “Daylin, you’re due,” Farnese said. “You’re due.” Leach popped an infield fly for an easy out.

On an upper level, behind the glass wall of the press box, John Baer and Carmen Finestra announced the game over the stadium loudspeakers. Baer, a veteran political reporter with the Philadelphia Daily News, is known for his caustic take on the statehouse. (His blog is titled “Baer Growls.”) He and Finestra, a writer and producer for the ‘90s sitcom “Home Improvement,” have been friends since childhood. They peppered their game-calling with good-natured jabs. (“Due to the pending bill to reduce the size of the state legislature, it has been decided that any representative that does not get a hit tonight will have their seat eliminated.”)

Behind home plate—just about everyone was behind home plate—sat Lori Hoffmaster, the executive director of Channels Food Rescue, a hunger-relief nonprofit on N. 6th Street, in Uptown Harrisburg. Channels, Hoffmaster explained, is “kind of non-traditional.” Rather than store food in a warehouse, they collect food nearing or at expiration and deliver it on the same day. They also run a culinary school for “people who need a second chance,” which Hoffmaster described as the “largest commercial kitchen on the eastern seaboard.”

By the bottom of the fourth, Team East was trailing, 8-1. Errors had persisted, particularly around first base. “It makes me not feel so bad about when I played softball,” Hoffmaster said. Did Channels have a favorite? “We’re Central PA, so we’re rooting for everyone,” said Megan Coble, Channels’ development coordinator.

By the sixth, the Team West dugout, drunk on their lead and, perhaps, on the beer donated by Dick Yuengling, had started chanting. As Jerry Stern (Republican, H-80), the tourism chair, stepped up, Jeff Pyle (Republican, H-60) gave a yeasty rendition of the “Charge!” organ theme: “Na na na nah, na nahhh! Chair!”

Christiana, who had come wearing eye black, spit sunflower seeds into the dirt.

It came time for Team West’s captain, Speaker of the House Sam Smith (Republican, H-66), to slug. “Sam bats right, throws right and votes right,” Baer observed. Smith’s roster stuck out of the back pocket of his jeans. He had not come to run. “Patience, patience,” Christiana advised. Smith tapped the ball into the pitcher’s glove, tipped his hat to the crowd, took the roster out of his pocket and starting calling out positions for the seventh.

“Sam, was that a bunt or what?” someone in the crowd called.

Smith smiled, hands on his hips. “I’ve been busy.”

The game concluded in the seventh, after a diving catch from Christiana (“That was a trap!” someone in the crowd yelled. “Booo!”) and a last, uneventful at-bat from Team East. Greg Vitali (Democrat, H-166) ended the game on deck, his jersey tails dangling, as they had all game, past the ends of his rather suggestively cut shorts. “Someone tell Vitali to put some pants on,” Pyle said. It was the last comment this reporter heard before the final out.

On the field after the game, Deary handed out monogrammed bats to the team captains and the Hunger Caucus co-chairs. “Most importantly, we raised funds for the folks who need our help,” said Jay Costa (Democrat, S-43). Deary thanked everyone again and turned off the mike. “You don’t have to go home, but you have to get off my grass,” barked one of the stadium managers.

“Not having food is such a basic—I can’t imagine, you know?” Deary said later. “I never realized, thinking about how really important it is, to not have food for your family.” The event had raised more than $50,000 before it even started, mainly through corporate sponsorships, and a preliminary estimate was that the raffle, food and ticket sales at the game had raised another $10,000. “This’ll buy a lot of food, hopefully!” Deary said.

Is it bad sportsmanship to point out that the final tally is short of the nearly $7 million shortfall in the state’s food purchase program, which the legislature has consistently trimmed? In a press release this past July, Hunger-Free Pennsylvania noted that if funding “simply kept pace with food prices, the program would need $23.8 million to break even.” The 2013-2014 budget allocates $17.4 million—an increase of $100,000 over the previous year’s total, and the first boost to the fund since 2006.

At any rate, Deary, by gathering the lawmakers for a ballgame, may have found a way to circumvent partisan congestion.

Caryn Long, the executive director of Feeding Pennsylvania, said that she had spoken with one of the players on Team East. “He was saying that, you know, he’s a freshman member, and there’s so many things that are dinners, but everything is also partisan, too. And he said this is the first event that he’s gotten to take part in that was not only fun but a bipartisan event.”

Deary agreed. “One of the sponsors, and I won’t mention which one of them, said,  ‘We are willing to donate some amount of money if you will have a Capitol March Madness. And I thought, ‘That’s kind of clever!’ I don’t think I could handle it til next year, but it is a good idea. Wouldn’t it be fun to do a Capitol March Madness?”

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Non-Profit Problem: About half the property in Harrisburg is nontaxable. Can anything be done about it?

Non-profits in downtown Harrisburg.

Non-profits in downtown Harrisburg.

Forum Place. Harrisburg Hospital. The Farm Show complex. The state Capitol.

Four places, four very different businesses, one thing in common—all are regarded as nonprofit entities, so pay no property taxes to their host city, Harrisburg.

According to the city treasurer’s office, Harrisburg is home to 716 parcels that are tax-exempt due to their non-profit status. Making the situation even more difficult: more than 75 percent of those parcels belong to either the government or government-related entities, which by law cannot be taxed, according to the Harrisburg receiver’s office.

So, what’s a city to do?

For years, the answer was “not much,” as the state did with Harrisburg pretty much what it wanted. Condemn and raze entire neighborhoods? Sure. Turn local streets into forbidding, perilous highways to accommodate suburban workers? Why not? Expand and take more properties off the tax roles? OK.

During the past century, the city has toggled between actively participating in its own destruction by facilitating the state’s unquenchable thirst for more land and, more recently, lamely complaining in City Council meetings and mayoral press conferences that the state does not pay its fair share for the services it consumes.

Last month, the situation changed somewhat. The state passed a 2013-14 budget that gave Harrisburg $5 million in “fire protection” funds, representing the largest-ever direct infusion of cash from the state as part of a regular budget process.

However, as it stands right now, that level of funding is a one-shot, one-year deal. Meanwhile, there are numerous other issues emerging that could affect the capital city’s relationship with the many nonprofit entities that call Harrisburg home.

State of the State Funding

To say that John Campbell was surprised would be an understatement.

“I’ll be honest with you—I was shocked,” said Campbell, Harrisburg’s treasurer.

Campbell was speaking of the $5 million the state coughed up to the city, double the amount allocated in the 2012-13 budget. His surprise was heightened by the fact that House Republicans, in their budget plan, had already slashed the allocation to $496,000.

Most city officials, including Mayor Linda Thompson, expected the amount to increase once the budget bill was finalized. In the end, however, it surpassed nearly everyone’s expectations.

“It’s a figure we’ve never received before,” Campbell said.

State Sen. Rob Teplitz said he and Rep. Patty Kim had worked hard to get funding restored, hoping to reach $4 million, a figure most city officials had set their eyes on. Receiver William Lynch lobbied Gov. Tom Corbett and Republican legislative leaders for another $1 million, which is how Harrisburg ended up with $5 million for this fiscal year, said Teplitz.

“It really is a windfall,” he said. “But we’re not asking for extra payment. We’re only asking for fair compensation.”

That fair compensation is, technically speaking, for protecting state buildings from fire, thus the money is accounted for in the state budget’s line item for fire protection. In fact, according to Teplitz, the city had to pledge the money would go only for that purpose.

However, it’s a stretch to believe that 60 percent of the city Fire Bureau’s $8.4 million budget goes to safeguarding the 40 buildings that constitute the Capitol complex. The money, in fact, flows to the city’s general fund, which does include the Fire Bureau, but also includes most other parts of the city government. So, money that goes into the Fire Bureau budget simply frees up funds elsewhere for the financially strapped, indebted city.

In the end, the state uses fire protection as a politically expedient way to compensate Harrisburg. It’s simply easier to fund a single, existing line item for a specific use than to transfer money into the general fund of the much-criticized and ostracized city. Besides, firefighters have hero clout lacking in, let’s say, the city’s IT department.

Harrisburg is happy to go along with this process because the state has habitually underfunded the city for services rendered: use of its roads, its emergency services, its public works and sanitation staff. Each weekday, the population of Harrisburg doubles, largely due to the presence of the state government, with the small population of the largely poor city left to pick up the tab of this white-collar invasion.

Until this year, the state has never owned up to its obligation as, by far, the largest employer and landowner in Harrisburg. Exempt from having to pay property taxes, the legislature allocated whatever it wanted, with the amount bouncing around from year to year. So, under the Reed administration, the state often provided just over $1 million. In 2010, that amount was cut to $987,000 and then to $496,000 in 2011. After the city’s financial crisis hit full-on, the state used the line item to assist the city to the tune of $2.5 million for 2012 and now $5 million.

City officials seem satisfied with that level—that $5 million finally compensates the city fairly. The problem, however, is that the funding level is not guaranteed going forward. It’s subject to the legislature’s annual horse-trading extravaganza known as the budget process. So, will the state reduce funding again once the city’s finances stabilize or when Corbett is no longer governor or Lynch is no longer receiver? No one knows.

Teplitz said he’s introducing legislation in the fall that would stabilize Harrisburg’s state funding, ensuring the city fair compensation in the fire protection line item that also would allow it to plan financially from year to year.

“The legislation would require the actual cost to get reimbursed,” he said.

Teplitz acknowledged passing such legislation would be an uphill climb, but vowed to put in a strong effort.

“Then we wouldn’t have to go begging every year,” he said.

PILOT Programs

In Harrisburg, after the state government, the next largest block of tax-exempt properties in the city belongs to PinnacleHealth System, one of the area’s largest healthcare providers, which is listed as a non-profit 501(3), the IRS’s designation for a tax-exempt organization. In the city, healthcare providers alone account for 11 percent of the non-taxable properties. If taxed, the PinnacleHealth parcels alone would bring in more than $1.13 million in property tax revenue, according to the receiver’s report.

But Pinnacle, like many other non-profits, instead makes Payments In Lieu of Taxes (PILOTs) to the city, amounting to more than $120,000 a year. Pinnacle spokeswoman Kelly McCall said in an e-mail that a 1998 court settlement prevented her from discussing specifics.

“Our PILOT was established through the Settlement Agreement, and the Agreement contains a confidentiality provision. We do make PILOT payments to the City of Harrisburg, Harrisburg School District and Dauphin County,” McCall’s e-mail said.

“PinnacleHealth provided more than $14.8 million in community benefits and reached more than 2.1 million people through programs and services, such as free screenings, community health education and chronic disease management in fiscal year 2012.

In addition, PinnacleHealth has supported numerous initiatives within Harrisburg, including increasing access to healthcare for the underserved through the Keystone Continuum, donating to maintain extracurricular activities and athletic programs in the Harrisburg School District and providing nutrition and physical activity education and meals to Harrisburg School District students,” she continued.

Overall, Harrisburg received a total of more than $420,000 in PILOTs in 2009, $410,244 in 2010 and $420,286 in 2011. According to city records, Harrisburg anticipates, in its 2013 budget, receiving about $425,000 in PILOTs. Next to Pinnacle, PHEAA, the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency, state is the second biggest PILOT contributor, sending in $107,444.79 each year for properties in the city.

“Under the Purely Public Charities Act, (Act 55), any PILOT payments are totally voluntary on the part of the non-profit,” said Cory Angell, a spokesperson for city receiver Lynch.

While a noteworthy addition to any municipal budget, PILOTs rarely constitute more than 1 percent of any total budget, according to an exhaustive 2010 nationwide study of the issue conducted by the Lincoln Institute for Land Policy. In Harrisburg, PILOTs account for about three-quarters of 1 percent of the budget, a figure largely unchanged for the past decade.

Tony Ross, president of the United Way of Pennsylvania, which has members who partner with more than 5,000 not-for-profit social service agencies statewide, said that standardizing a definition of what is and what is not a non-profit in Pennsylvania would help eliminate the fear that smaller non-profits—which have fewer assets and resources than the healthcare behemoths—end up bearing an undue share of the tax burden if stripped of their tax-exempt statuses. It would also help clear up the issue of just what qualifies as a non-profit from county to county.

“We’re concerned that non-profits are getting lumped into one group,” Ross said.

Ross explained that many of his affiliates, which tend to be smaller, community-based organizations, lack the assets and resources of the healthcare giants. What is a PILOT to PinnacleHealth could be a life or death situation to a smaller organization, he said.

“From what I can tell, those sorts of distinctions aren’t being made,” Ross said.  “Whatever is done, it needs to be uniform across the state.”

“This tension has been going on for a long time,” said Joe Geiger, who until recently was the long-time director of the Pennsylvania Association of Non-Profit Organizations. “It wouldn’t even be close to enough money to offset the deficit. And there are some unintended consequences that could occur where some non-profits who are currently operating in Harrisburg may decide they need to find a more favorable environment in which to operate.” 

“Poor decisions like that are what happened with the incinerator. That’s where the problem is. It’s not the fact that non-profits aren’t paying taxes,” Geiger said. 

“Very few non-profits are property tax-exempt,” Geiger explained.  “Most of them rent their properties and pay their taxes through the rent that they pay. So, when you look at the amount of debt that Harrisburg is in and you look at the amount of money that they could leverage out of charities, it’s not going to come anywhere close to the solution.” 

“Non-profits and the local government ought to be working together to look at solutions, not taking each other to court,” he said.

Baseball & Bathrooms

After the state and PinnacleHealth, a host of smaller nonprofits dot the Harrisburg landscape (see map). In fact, you can walk through much of downtown and Midtown and hit one after another.

Did you know that Metro Bank Park is still owned by the city, so is tax-exempt even though Harrisburg sold the Senators baseball team in 2007? The team now leases the ballpark from the city.

The restrooms at Sunshine Park on Herr Street are also tax exempt, as is the controversial Forum Place building on Walnut Street, even though it’s valued at more than $63 million.

Rep. Patty Kim, a first-year Democrat representing Harrisburg’s 103rd district, said she thinks it’s time for a public hearing as legislators have been getting lots of mail from the public. She also said she thinks that the non-profit designation should be made closer to home.

“I think it should be a municipal decision if it comes to that because, if the state does it, it’s going to be like a cookie-cutter formula that doesn’t fit with everybody’s unique situations in the city,” she said.

Kim said she was working with Rep. Robert L. Freeman, a Democrat from the 136th district representing Easton and Northampton County, as a future co-sponsor of a proposed bill that would ensure additional resources to cities like Harrisburg that have a disproportionate number of tax-exempt properties.

Speaking of legislation, a legislative solution is brewing that could expand the definition of a non-profit in Pennsylvania, which might further impact Harrisburg.

In June, the House Finance Committee stopped short of a vote on a proposed law that would amend the state constitution to give the General Assembly the power to define a tax-exempt non-profit statewide. The House was taking its look at the proposed new standards, known as Senate Bill No. 4, after the Senate approved it in March.

Pinnacle’s McCall said that Pinnacle is also closely watching the progress of the proposed constitutional amendment, which likely would lead to a more liberal definition of what qualifies to be a non-profit.

“PinnacleHealth supports the legislation, as it will provide clarity and uniform treatment of charities throughout Pennsylvania,” she said.

In Pinnacle’s case, its payments are made as a result of a 1998 settlement reached with the Dauphin County Board of Assessment Appeals after the hospital appealed the county’s decision stripping the hospital’s tax exempt status in 1993. The reason the tax board took the hospital off the tax-exempt rolls? The county was not satisfied that the hospital had continued to meet the five-prong “HUP test”—established by a 1985 court decision to help determine what is a non-profit—because it engaged in competitive practices with other local healthcare providers.

Dauphin County Judge Richard A. Lewis later agreed, ruling that Pinnacle’s acquisition of local private physician practices as part of its expansion of an integrated healthcare system evidenced a private profit motive on the part of the hospital.

“The taxing authorities argue that the physician practices compete with private physicians and that such competition is evidence of a private profit motive. This court finds that [Pinnacle] cannot compete while still maintaining its charitable mission and charitable nature,” Lewis wrote.

Eric Montarti, senior policy analyst with the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy, a Pittsburgh-based non-profit taxpayer interest research group, said that hospitals, in a sense, are placed in a vulnerable position since no one wants to be seen as wishing to start taxing churches and schools.

“Take away these things that you’re never going to tax. Take away these things that the politicians are never going to go after, and what are you left with?”

Pittsburgh, like Harrisburg, has an Act 47 problem, the legislative term used to describe when the state appoints an outsider to oversee a city’s finances because the municipality is so far in debt that it has been declared a financially “distressed” city. In 2004, Pittsburgh began grappling with a $34.3 million deficit.

“It obviously didn’t solve the city of Pittsburgh’s issue,” he said.

Harrisburg, a city with a $56.3 million budget, currently faces an operating deficit of about $12 million and a $350 million debt tied to its botched incinerator retrofit, which has pushed the city to the brink of bankruptcy.

Montarti said that trying to, in effect, indirectly tax tax-exempts is the wrong direction to take as nonprofits attract people who, for example, buy properties in the municipalities and therefore later end up paying property taxes. Montarti said that those same people also end up paying taxes on local services while otherwise helping to support the local economy. The city, instead of trying to tax non-profits, should first get its own fiscal house in order, he said.

“Our argument would have been, ‘Well, okay, the city of Pittsburgh really needs to look at what it’s spending and what it’s doing in terms of how many services it provides, how many people it employs, how much cooperation there is between it and the county on similar services,’” he said.

People have made the same point about Harrisburg. Over the past few years, however, Harrisburg has slashed and slashed and slashed. The once-bloated city government now is down to its bare bones, challenged to deliver even basic services.

After years of underfunding its obligations, the state government has finally stepped up—at least for one year. PinnacleHealth also has shown that it’s willing to be civic-minded. Will other nonprofits follow suit? Given the city’s vast financial needs, PILOT payments may never amount to too much. However, Harrisburg does provide these nonprofit organizations with vital services. Given its desperate shape, the city is searching for every penny it can find.

Reggie Sheffield is a freelance reporter in Harrisburg.  He may be reached at troylus@comcast.net.

 

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Take the Field: The crack of the bat, the roar of the crowd . . . it’s time for baseball!

The grass is cut, the lines are striped and a young, starry-eyed hurler is about to throw the first heater of the new season.

Or . . . the beer is flowing, the grill is fired up and friends are talking and laughing at the newly redesigned First Base Plaza.

Or . . . it’s bobblehead night, the Cowboy Monkeys are in town and the fireworks are about to shoot off.

Maybe you attend a Harrisburg Senators game for the baseball—or for the socializing—or for the family-friendly promotions. Regardless, the long winter is finally done, and the home team is set to take the field against the Bowie Baysox on Thursday, April 4.

Like many of you, I hike across the Walnut Street Bridge for all three reasons, though, as a baseball fan, I tend to focus on the balls and strikes.

Over the past few seasons, baseball nerds like me have been in heaven, as some of the best young prospects in a generation have made their way through Metro Bank Park. So, what could possibly beat watching potential Hall of Famers like Stephen Strasburg and Bryce Harper in the infancy of their careers?

How about watching potential stars like Anthony Rendon or Brian Goodwin?

Fortunately, the Washington Nationals farm system remains stocked with players on their way up to the big leagues, and their substantial talents will be on display for at least some of the year on City Island.

“We’re looking really good this year,” said Senators Manager Matt LeCroy, adding that the team is rich with Major League prospects. “This is probably the youngest group of players in Harrisburg for a long time.”

Youth, speed, ambition—these qualities should keep the baseball exciting through the year and, with a little luck, into another post-season.

In addition, Harrisburg always benefits from its proximity to D.C., which means that we often see genuine Major League players on rehab assignments from injuries. Do you think that, years from now, I’ll still be telling the story of how I saw Strasburg playing in Harrisburg after elbow surgery? You bet I will.

But maybe you’re not in it primarily for the action on the field. That’s fine with team President Kevin Kulp, who has spent the off-season planning ever-better ways to attract folks who don’t attend primarily for the baseball.

A few years ago, Metro Bank Park underwent a significant upgrade. Now, Kulp is tweaking the plan, this year redesigning the First Base Plaza, the area behind the stands along first base.

The plaza now has a stage, an open-air grill and new tables, umbrellas and landscaping. Some of the most popular concession stands, formerly beneath the stands, will relocate to this area.

Kulp expects the plaza to be a new place for people to meet and socialize, enjoy a freshly grilled hot dog and a beer, and where bands will perform before games—sometimes even during play.

“In the off-season, we did a lot of meeting and discussing what works and what doesn’t, so we can make the experience new and different and more exciting,” said Kulp.

For families, the Senators’ promotions are always a big part of the experience. Kulp said the team will hold more promotional events this year than ever before. Almost every game will feature a reason (other than the baseball, of course) to visit the stadium.

Bobbleheads, T-shirts, posters, jerseys—giveaways will be held throughout the year, many times per month. Do you prefer your promotions on the livelier side? On 16 nights, fireworks will cap off the evening. Come July, the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders will shimmy into the stadium and, yes, boys and girls, the Cowboy Monkeys will be back, riding bareback on a few doggies.

Plan now for an exciting year at the stadium. And, if you see me, say hi. I’ll be the guy actually watching the game.

For more information on what’s in store for this season and to order tickets, visit www.senatorsbaseball.com.

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