Posted at the Borough Website | “COVID -19 UPDATE FROM EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT COORDINATOR”

It’s like looking for the hidden panda.

No longer posted at the Borough Website | Email contact information for the elected public servants (councillor and mayor). There is a page with email contact info for selected borough staff persons. 

“Elizbethtown is just about as as bad with contact transparency for its elected public servants. “Correspondence for Borough Council can be sent to  boro@etownonline.com or to the Borough Office. Please direct correspondence to Borough Council / Attn: Borough Manager and include contact information if follow-up correspondence is requested.”

Ephrata is forthcoming with contact information that citizens and other seek.

Mount Joy, fast-growing and transparent, shows people how to communicate with its elected public servants.

Lititz, voted one of America’s coolest towns, is only tepid with its transparency. There’s information about how to contact its borough staff (with pictures, too) and its mayor (again with pictures) but if someone wants to contact their elected representative to the democratic process, they’re out of luck.

Denver, another smaller but growing borough, pictures and lists contact information so its citizens can engage in the democratic process. Same goes for its mayor.

Communications lacking, too | No explanation, just this notice posted at the Borough facebook page: “The Budget Meeting scheduled for July 16th is canceled. The budget discussion will be added to the July 28th Borough Council Regular Meeting agenda.” A few citizen comments follow the post but there are more comments at the re-posting at Columbia Spy’s facebook page.

“People are getting nervous again | … there’s a real sense this might go on longer than expected.” That’s Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta President Raphael Bosticdiscussing the challenges of systemic racism in our economy.” Bostic: “The rate of unemployment remains blisteringly high, the airline industry, among others, is visibly hurting, bankruptcies are picking up and the surge in confirmed cases of COVID-19 shows no sign of abating.” – MarketPlace

“The cure is not, in fact, worse than the disease. | “Uncurbed COVID would cost more lives than economic shutdown.” – Futurity

a glimmer of transparency | is the borough’s livestreaming and archiving of meetings. Last night’s Parks and Recreation meeting is posted at the Borough’s facebook page and citizen’ can tune in; at this posting time — there were 160 views.

“Washington Boro Tomato Feast | Friday July 17th 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday July 18th 11 a.m. to 7 p.m — ( We are having a feast of foods in place of the Festival this year) Most of the same foods will be served from food trucks that you enjoyed previous years. However there will not be chicken corn soup! We were not able to use the kitchen to prepare the soup this year.” – Washington Boro Tomato Festival public facebook group