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

Quote for today… “A lack of transparency results in distrust and a deep sense of insecurity.” – Dalai Lama

• Susquehanna Chapter of the Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame inducts two Columbia High School alums –  Lancaster OnLine

• We see lots of the findings of the Wednesday evening presentation in the in the findings in the Economic Development Strategic Plan of a few years ago.

• Several different observations that came out in Wednesday’s presentations was the call for “cooperation, collaboration and communication.” We’ve not seen much of either of these yet. For instance, there’s still noting about the Wednesday night meeting at the CEDC Website.

• Re-read today’s quote: “A lack of transparency results in distrust and a deep sense of insecurity.” – Dalai Lama

• One of the observations stressed the need for engaging in social media; the CEDC facebook page has one shared information piece … just one post all year. And not a single snippet about Wednesday’s meeting. That’s real engagement!

• A note from Wednesday’s meeting about parking. Interesting that a CEDC member who just petitioned the council for dedicated free on-street parking for a business endeavor located in the Turkey Hill Experience spoke out at Wednesday’s meeting that Columbia should have more metered parking. Hey, Council, there’s your spark to put meters along the south side of Linden Street. It’s needed, evidently, and the meters could be a revenue stream.

• Another note from Wednesday’s meeting: As citizens were asking questions or making suggestions, a CEDC member asked that each person “stand and introduce themselves” before commenting. It would have served as an example if each of the CEDC members would have been introduced at the beginning of the meeting at “upfront and center.” It’s just polite. As is polite to have an suitable audio system to insure that everyone in the room can hear all the communication. The audio system at the Thursday night Property Tax meeting was “excellent” according to one source.

“Senator Aument and Representative Hickernell were sent a clear message from the PCTA and upwards of 100 taxpayers of Columbia, Lancaster County (Thursday) night.” according to the Property Tax Independence organization’s facebook page.

• Out of town obligations made it impossible for Columbia news, views & reviews to attend the Thursday evening meetings [School Board and the Property Tax Presentation.] Thankfully for Columbia’s residents, Cole Umber has one report and we’ve heard the official school board meeting was quite brief. We’ve also heard that another school board get-together had chatter about a dire financial situation.

• We’ve not seen reports on either of the above meetings in the daily newspaper or local broadcast. Without outbound, open, transparent information from the separate entities in any community and without media (either for profit or local news channels [derisively referred to as “bloggers” by those who want to continue as is], citizens are barraged with rumors. Rumors, as the one about workers finding $7,000 cash during the clean-out of the Hotel Columbia / Hotel Locust. If there’s truth to that rumor, what does an ethical not-for-profit do with that find?

• Someone who attended the Property Tax meeting commented to us that no borough councillors nor the mayor attended this meeting. Most curious that the mayor wasn’t in attendance because of his comments at the September 2013 council meeting in which “The mayor said he’d spoken with members of the school board after a recent meeting to tell them that high school taxes were impeding “economic development” in Columbia. He then went on to say that he’s been in contact with folks from the Pennsylvania Coalition of Taxpayer Associations. He went on to extol the virtues of the organization’s premises: the abolishment of property taxes and the replacement of a broken school system.”

• On a positive note, Columbia’s Police Department has posted four items during April.

• On an equally positive note, today’s weather will be “Sunny, with a high near 57. West wind 9 to 15 mph, with gusts as high as 23 mph.”