No reason given  | “Borough Offices will be closed Friday, April 10, 2020.”

Penalties | Two more Lancaster County municipalities want to assess fees for delinquent property taxes: Elizabethtown and Strasburg. Columbia Borough’s upcoming council meeting agenda lists an agenda item that reads: “Consider Resolution 2020-09 Extending the period in which real estate taxes may be paid at the base rate by adopting a penalty rate of 0% for 2020.“

Other agenda items | Tuesday’s council meeting agenda also lists a few other topics of interest:

• “Consider one-time bonus, in the amount to $4,000.00 to Jack Brommer for his coverage of the Borough Manager position, in addition to his normal duties as Police Chief.”
• “Authorization for the Borough Manager to spend up to $10,000 for 7 new
  computers for Borough Council.” Only seven? Reckon the laptops will be for the councillors; doesn’t the mayor have one too? It was only less than three years ago that at a council meeting that the Borough Council meeting minutes included this item: “To approve to purchase 10 HP Pavilion Pavilion15.6″ Premium High Performance Laptop PC, AMD Quad-Core A6-5200 Processor, 4GB RAM, 500GB HDD, DVD+/-RW, Webcam, WIFI, HDMI, Windows 10 as outlined in the attached email from Council member Pamela Williams last week. Price is listed at $268.00 each.
  Included in the motion was the approval to purchase of laptop covers.” Guess the adage is true: “You get what you pay for.”
• The general lifetime of a laptop is “Less than $700: 2-4 years; $700-$1,000: 3-5 years; $1,000 or more: 4-7 years. Given the borough manager has a budget of around $1,400 per laptop, these new computers should last a while. There are lots of comparison guides for laptop computers on the Internet.
•  “deconversion” | Yep, that’s the word that’s used in the Board of Health/Zoning/Planning Report (part of the meeting packet files). WE looked online for a definition of that word as it relates to real estate and could find nothing remotely pertinent.

Most valuable | Remember to say thank you to another group of “real essential ” people you know:

• cooks and food preparation workers;
• grocer store workers;
• volunteers;
• journalists;
• neighbors and friends;
• delivery drivers (including newspaper delivery persons;
• farmers;
• pharmacists;
• postal workers;
• people who work in the funeral industry;
• all the people working in local government services
• and so many more really essential jobs.

Why are these jokers “essential workers?” | “Pa. Senate defends ‘legislative privilege’ claim, rejects appeal for redacted expense details” – Lancaster Online

Bank assistance | “Fulton Bank Joins ‘PA CARE Package’ Initiative, Offering Expanded Consumer Relief” – news release

WHEW | It’s been a blur of events this year. Let’s take a look at what’s happened with the coronavirus since January:

• Wikipedia timeline (from November 17, 2019 through January 2020) – “As far back as late November, U.S. intelligence officials were warning that a contagion was sweeping through China’s Wuhan region, changing the patterns of life and business and posing a threat to the population.”
• New York Times timeline 
• Wikipedia timeline
• Think Global Health timeline
• Trump Administration’s response timeline