today’s news and information gleanings from here and there!

Quote for today … “Having timely and accurate data is vital to professional fleet management.” – From the Best Practices report – Washington State Department of Enterprise Services

• Listed on page F4 of today’s LNP – Always Lancaster is the contact information for Lancaster County’s elected public servants at the State level of government. Why not cut it out of the paper and post it on your bulletin board or refrigerator? Drop a line to your representative, state senator or the governor from time to time; these folks are supposed to represent citizens and be open to their input. That’s supposed to be the case at local levels, too.

• Commenters at media articles, as these and these and these  are vital, important and need to be registered; they need, too, to be voiced to local elected public servants. To do that, citizens need to be able to contact their elected public servants. At the state and national level, that contact information (telephone numbers and email addresses) is transparent and mostly easy to get. In Columbia, though, that information is not listed at the woefully irregularly updated Website.

This email arrived within the past hour; the above photo was attached. The sender asked, “Are out of state cars permitted on Boro streets with no inspection and expired registrations?”

Wonder whether Columbia’s Police Department notices things like this as they patrol, in one of their fleet vehicles, around the borough?

PHOTO SOURCE: kpho.com

• There’s a full page of  Restaurant Inspections in the Sunday version of LNP – Always Lancaster.  Followers of Columbia news, views & reviews know that this Website has been supportive of the “single, statewide food safety inspection report system, as required in Act 106 of 2010.” When people eat or are served food in Pennsylvania establishments, they ought to have confidence that the establishments are being monitored for by consistent food serving, preparation and storage standards. By reading the recent county-wide inspections above, consumers and Customers can see the violations noted in a recent inspection of the facilities. Some well-known names appear in the list. We wonder how and why some food-serving establishments have inspection comments like these: “Repeat violation from previous year. – Rodent droppings observed in the back storage area. – Person in charge is not performing duties required by the Pennsylvania Food Code to maintain active managerial control of food safety. – Lots of products offered for sale with expired ‘sell by’ date. – Old food residue on can opener at sushi bar. – It is evident by the numerous violations that person in charge is not controlling food safety., etc., etc.” Clearly, patrons need to know the results of consistent inspections at food serving facilities.

• A complete listing of all inspections at food serving facilities in Lancaster, York counties and the entire state, except those in Columbia – Columbia persists in having its own inspection system with its own forms and inspection items – rather than the one used statewide, is available at the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture Website.

• “All Farmers Market Vendors, with a few exceptions, must obtain a Retail Food License and be under inspection to operate a food facility of any kind at a farmers market, whether the market is indoor or outside. Each individual stand is considered its own retail food facility and must obtain its own license to operate.” – PA Department of Agriculture

• Restaurant inspections in York County: – The York Dispatch [NOTE: York’s newspapers have paywalls that inhibit people from reading their posts after a minimal number of view each month … unless people pay to become subscribers. We will include links to the referenced articles, though readers may not be able to read the article.]
  

• BUT … packernet.com offers “Tips for Avoiding paywalls.” – Go Packers!
  

• “Readability is a website that pulls the content from any page and shows it to you in a nice, readable format, removing all the ads, navigation, etc.  Since it uses it’s own servers to render the page content, it’s not actually your browser that is requesting the content.”

• One side of last night’s game – The Baltimore Sun

• The other side’s side – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

• You may want to say “Thank you” to Barbie Jenkins for starting “Jobs That Actually Exist in Lancaster County PA” facebook page
  

• So … the 17512 Zip Code is bigger than Columbia Boro. Who makes up the zip code boundaries? USPS? No. The US Census Bureau? No. Good question, though; click here and here for starters.