Salaries and Benefits Make Up 72% of the Budget

Reading the recent Courier Times article about the budget at Council Rock, people may have gotten the impression there’s a lot of items that can be trimmed before looking at salaries and benefits.  The article stated that salaries and benefits comprise 55% of the budget.  That percentage is way understated. Next year’s proposed budget shows [...]

The Next Chapter — Will Teachers Who Knew about the Hawkins Affair Get Reinstated to Teaching Jobs in Council Rock?

The Robert Hawkins matter has not ended with the trial, his guilty plea nor now with his sentencing.  Another ugly side of the story was that other teachers apparently knew of the affair and did not report it to authorities so action could be taken to stop it.  Of these teachers, two were terminated by [...]

District’s Special Counsel Claims Melsky Deal Is Still Basically the Same — We’ll See… Is the Track Record Really That Assuring?

At last night’s School Board meeting after I raised issues over the sudden appearance of an agreement that the District would sell the entire 134 acres of Melsky to Toll Brothers (and after questioning on this matter by school board members, notably Dr. Anagnostakos), special counsel John Donaghy proffered that this was not really a [...]

Holy Cow! Another Change to Melsky: Now Toll Brothers Gets to Buy the ENTIRE Property from Council Rock School District

The agenda for tonight’s Board meeting had a motion proposed for passage that would authorize Board president Bernadette Heenan to to act as the duly authorized agent of the Board of School Directors to execute all documents presented by special counsel to finalize the sale of the Melsky Property. Sounds innocuous enough. But looking at [...]

Council Rock Sale of Melsky to Toll Brothers and Leo Holt Going Ahead — This Was First Class Work?

At the January 7th Board meeting Superintendent Mark Klein made an announcement that Toll Brothers would be going ahead with settlement on the Melsky tract purchase by the extended deadline of January 29th. Looking at the documents and the process that brought things to this point, Council Rock taxpayers have a right to ask whether [...]

Initial Look at 2010-11 Budget = 6.9% Increase in Property Taxes (Up 7.45 Mills to 115.41)

Thanks to Act 1 (not that there’s a ton for which to be thankful there), School Districts have to present preliminary budgets much earlier in the year than they had several years ago. This is a double-edged sword, since it requires Districts to make more projections when they don’t have a ton of data from [...]

Really? Eight Days After Voting No Extension, School Board Votes TO Extend Sales Agreements on Melsky Tract

At the Council Rock School Board meeting of December 17th, Paul Anagnostakos expressed the opinion that it was a bad reflection on the Board as far as its ability to make decisions for it to reconsider granting an extension of the sales agreement for the Melsky Tract to Toll Brothers and Leo Holt.  After all, [...]

Melsky Appears On Agenda Again Tonight — An Extension for Settlement Until January 29, 2010?

A new item cropped up this morning on the Board Meeting agenda posted on CRSD’s website. The earlier agenda posted did not have an item regarding the Melsky Tract and the sale to Toll Brothers and Leo Holt, but now there is.  Item 1 under Items for Board Approval is the Melsky Property.  According to [...]

Proposed Extension of Time for Melsky Tract Sale Voted Down 5-4

At last night’s special meeting of the School Board, the sole item on the agenda was whether to extend the contract during which Toll Brothers and Leo Holt could execute the purchase of the Melsky Property on Stoopville Road. The original agreement allowed Toll and Holt to get three-month extensions by paying extension fees, half [...]

Melsky Decision Tonight — Extend, or Make Toll Brothers Fish or Cut Bait?

Tonight’s special Board Meeting has been called to discuss whether to offer an extension to Toll Brothers (and to Leo Holt) for the sale of the Melsky property.  This was a contentious issue at the time of the Veteran’s Cemetery decision — Toll made the sale of land for the cemetery contingent upon getting the [...]