It looks like Hollywood Squares for municipalities doesn’t it? At least West Whiteland is recording the meetings, however. Last evening’s meeting was a bang your head on the wall kind of experience.
So there is the new assisted living facility planned for Boot Road and Ship Rd. It has to be close to West Goshen I guess. It’s 930-936 E. Boot Road, West Chester. The road is pretty narrow back there and it’s close to that odd little strip mall that once upon a time had a pizza place that never seemed to have many customers.
So about this site. Only a couple of hundred feet from Mariner East, so what happens in an emergency if this thing gets built? A crafty cottage style warehouse for often immobile senior citizens?
Apparently Bossette Tweed is an expert of what you cannot do, always from her phone screen, and never seemingly prepared ahead of time? Shall we call her Saint Theresa of No-No? Yes Supervisor Saint Theresa Hogan Santalucia, I am referring to you. And yes I can have the continued opinion that you are an unpleasant, sometimes foul mouthed, obstreperous, and useless git of a politician. The First Amendment allows it.
You are the font of NO. And you don’t really know what you are talking about, have incredibly poor speaking skills, and if you actually did your damn job you would realize that although local elected officials have to say no at times because they are hampered by bad advice and crap zoning, there are those lovely state and federally elected officials you kowtow too and pose for photos with who CAN help sometimes with sticky wickets.
Like State Reps and State Senators. Now we all know State Rep Kristine Howard is another useless git of a politician, but she is up for re-election. So Saint Theresa of No-No, Bossette Tweed, have you bothered to figured out the last time the Municipalities Planning Code of the Commonwealth of PA was comprehensively updated? Try late 1960s early 1970s. HAVE YOU EVER PRESSED THESE STATE ELECTED OFFICIALS TO ENACT AN ACT OF THE STATE CONSTITUTION TO UPDATE THIS BEFORE EVERY AREA IN PA IS DESTROYED BY OUTDATED AND OUTMODED ZONING? Instead of sitting like a blob at meetings with your nasal no-no tone, have you ever actually done what you were elected to do? Or are you still confusing West Whiteland with Upper Darby of the bad old days?
Yes, it’s not a great recording and No No Nannette mumbles and tries to hide from the camera BUT you can’t hear Supervisor Raj really either, since he often talks away from the microphone. Why did this application have to get approved preliminarily last night? Why couldn’t they have postponed a decision for a month or so? Why not TABLE for a little bit? Even until the next meeting?
It is not always an easy thing to say NO to a project as an elected official. But there are things you can do like TABLE something for a specified duration, even if just until the next meeting. Which should have been done here, somehow. But nooooo they rolled over except for Brian Dunn who just does what is right, even if not politically popular because he GETS that he was elected to serve the plurality, not special interests. I expected Theresa to be Theresa because she’s always just Theresa, but Rajesh Kumbhardare, the Chair of the Supervisors seriously disappointed residents last evening. He was hard to hear and just rolled over like a good boy. Hope they scratched his ears and gave him a cookie?
West Whiteland is still to me a huge, hot mess. This senior living facility being built deep in the blast zone of Mariner getting approved is just the latest example. If West Whiteland is SO concerned about residential safety, why not table it if you don’t have the municipal balls to say no thank you?
Now allow me to quote West Whiteland Residents for Public Safety:
How is this business owner and our township EMC, neither of whom have a background in developing emergency plans for HVL pipelines, to accomplish this when Chester County Department of Emergency Services and others have not? How can they possibly develop a plan to quickly evacuate 80 residents who cannot travel a half mile upwind on foot unassisted?
In addition to this condition, the applicant stated in the conditional use hearing on 05/25/22 that the Emergency Plan must be approved by the Township before the facility can get a license. To hear that, go to 1:17:55 at (previously recorded West Whiteland Township Meeting)
When this emergency plan is submitted by the applicant how will the WWT Supervisors possibly be able to approve it? Here is Tom Boyce, Delaware County’s Director of Emergency Services in 2019 testifying about the inability to evacuate those who cannot “get up and walk away” when Mariner East leaks. Theresa Santalucia was at the hearing and yet she, along with Rajesh Kumbhadare voted to approve this conditional use last might.
~West Whiteland Residents for public safety 6/23/22
Here also is a written form of comment by West Whiteland resident Ginny Kerslake:
This Decision and Order before you tonight contains a reference to a public comment I made at a previous meeting. It gets a couple things from my comment and about Mariner East wrong. These are significant so I emailed them to you last night and wish to repeat them now publicly.
Mariner East 2 and Mariner East 2X are NOT natural gas pipelines. They are natural gas liquids (NGL) pipelines. This is a critical point. NGLs are denser than air so in the event of a leak they do not dissipate upward like natural gas but rather form a low-lying vapor cloud. They are more explosive and have a larger blast radius. And in the case of Mariner East, they do not have an odorant added. All of this, in addition to their size, makes Mariner East uniquely more dangerous than the other pipelines we have in West Whiteland Township.
Secondly, I did not “inquire about the applicant’s evacuation strategy” but rather spoke to the impossibility of a credible strategy to evacuate these residents who cannot quickly walk or run a half mile upwind, unassisted as is required for a leak on Mariner East.
You have included in this conditional use approval a condition #9 that states: “The Applicant shall work with the Township’s Emergency Management Coordinator to develop a satisfactory strategy in the event of a pipeline-related emergency”
How will this applicant, a senior care facility developer and our township’s Emergency Manager Coordinator possibly be able to come up with a credible plan to protect these 80 residents incapable of self-evacuation when our county and other counties, our township and other townships have failed to come up with an Emergency Plan for Mariner East even for the general public, because it is an impossible plan?
Last night Edgmont Township voted NO on building another school in the blast zone of Mariner East. This was the right thing to do. I ask you again tonight to use your authority and honor your duty to ensure public safety and vote NO on granting conditional use approval for an assisted living facility at this location
~ginny kerslake
West Whiteland likes to pretend they don’t see what is in front of them. It’s wrong. I think a lot of things would have the room to grow and change however if Supervisor Theresa Hogan Santalucia RESIGNED.
#RESIGN THERESA
