Today’s news and information gleanings from here and there.
Quote for today … “Lancaster County’s population inched closer to the 550,000 mark in 2016, growing by more than 2,100 people over the previous year and at a pace that is among the fastest in Pennsylvania. ” –Lead sentence in an LNP – Always Lancaster article about population growth in Pennsylvania. [NOTE: Looks like community development will naturally have come to Columbia – with or without local initiatives – if anyone knew what the were.]
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- Tough selling from an empty basket | “Sears and Kmart might not have enough money to stock their shelves” – USA Today
- Things no one tells you if you live or might be considering to invest in Columbia | what happens in the Council’s Community Development committee meetings.
- Seems supporters for the weasel’s healthcare bill are hard to come by – The National Review
- Noticed a municipal brief in today’s LNP – Always Lancaster: “Deb Drury, executive director of the Elizabethtown Library, asked council to raise its annual contribution from $36,000 to about $57,500, or $5 per resident.According to the posted budget, Columbia allocates $10,000 to its library.
- AND IN THE SCHOOL BRIEFS in today’s LNP – Always Lancaster, it states, Iris Garrido resigned from the school board for “health reasons.”
- Curious because Columbia Spy reported no reason for the resignation. Some citizens believe the resignation came about as a result of a change in employment that might be considered a conflict.
- Columbia news, views & reviews was not able to attend that meeting due to a conflict, but an inconsistently reported “fact” is one of the reasons we encourage citizens to attend meetings – to get unfiltered, first-hand observation about what happened.
Columbia news, views & reviews 
I am curious as to why that piece of information was not presented publicly during the meeting when the resignation was announced. It was also mentioned that the LNP school board reporter helped serve breakfast with the powers that be and while that sounds sweet, it leads to another conflict of interest. I have always heard that the person reporting is not to work for or volunteer for the district that they are covering.
The last entry is mid December 2016 on Community Development and we are fast approaching April 2017. How do the residents that don’t attend the meetings find out any information? They are keeping us under a thick cloud cover.
https://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp
“Seek truth and report it | Ethical journalism should be accurate and fair. Journalists should be honest and courageous in gathering, reporting and interpreting information.”
LNP does not cover the committee meetings and if other media sources are not present to cover them either, and no minutes are being posted, then for all intents and purposes these meetings are PRIVATE. There are rarely any residents in attendance. By the time any proposals or issues get to full council the decisions have already been made.