{"id":6698,"date":"2012-01-21T10:54:30","date_gmt":"2012-01-21T15:54:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/?p=6698"},"modified":"2012-01-21T10:54:30","modified_gmt":"2012-01-21T15:54:30","slug":"when-the-going-gets-stupid-you-must-be-in-concord","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/?p=6698","title":{"rendered":"When the going gets stupid, you must be in Concord"},"content":{"rendered":"

Unionville man falls prey to township’s vicious cycle of business harassment<\/span><\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

By Mike McGann<\/strong>, Editor, UnionvilleTimes.com<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>As Cyndi Lauper once sang (and yes, we all listened to her with our Walkmans while riding dinosaurs) \u201cGirls just wanna have fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

The same applies for boys \u2014 those pesky under-21s want to do something with their spare time and have a safe place to hang out with their friends. The options are, to be generous, kind of limited in this area. There\u2019s the movie theater in Painters Crossing, which hasn\u2019t been updated (or really cleaned) since the late 1990s and then there\u2019s\u2026<\/p>\n

Well, you get the idea.<\/p>\n

So when Unionville\u2019s own Tom Pancoast \u2014 who knows just a bit about what kids are interested in, as the father of eight, seven girls and a boy \u2014 announced plans to build an under-21 Social Club in neighboring Concord, it seemed like a win-win for everyone.<\/p>\n

Talk to Pancoast for even a few minutes, and it\u2019s clear his passion for the project is evident. He wants to do something for the youths in the area, give them something to do besides driving around aimlessly \u2014 or worse.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Tom Pancoast isn't going away quietly, as this sign, parked along US-1 in Concord indicates.<\/p><\/div>\n

With Pancoast\u2019s project, teens from around the area would have a safe place to hang out, play sports and games and do it in a secure, well-regulated environment. Local merchants would see an uptick in business from parents dropping their kids off and it would have added somewhere between 40 an 50 jobs to the local economy. And all of this would take place in a building that has sat vacant for four years.<\/p>\n

Perfect, right?<\/p>\n

Yeah, not so fast. Despite apparently fitting the zoning regulations \u2014 zoning allows for non-profit, social clubs of this sort, and Pancoast already has the appropriate 501c organization behind the effort, the township rejected it. Wouldn\u2019t even set up a meeting to rework the plan into compliance Pancoast said he was told that it was rejected because it was “age-restricted.”<\/p>\n

Wow. Don’t tell the folks at Maris Grove \u2014 which restricts residency by age \u2014 that you can’t restrict by age. And actually, it appears the ordinance doesn’t seem mention anything about age restriction.<\/p>\n

Basically, they told Pancoast: \u201cWe don\u2019t like your kind. Get lost.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not exactly the rational response one might expect, especially in a township where so much of the tax base comes from commercial enterprises.<\/p>\n

This is Concord, where business and commerce is the enemy, good government is a foreign concept and the only ones who seem to get a good deal are the folks at Delcora, who reportedly are poised to buy the township\u2019s conveniently disbanded sewer authority at half price (I\u2019m sure that had nothing to do with the allegedly proffered Delcora board seats and patronage jobs that went with it. Nope, must have been abject altruism or coupons).<\/p>\n

Ask around \u2014 and I have over the years \u2014 and it\u2019s clear Concord is a one-man town. And that one man is Dominic Pileggi. No, not the state Senator and Senate Majority Leader, who just happens to be up for reelection this year, but his cousin, who is chair of the Concord Board of Supervisors. While the state Senator is a gifted and bright guy, one must give a certain amount of pause when you realize he shares not only a name, but DNA with this other guy.<\/p>\n

Concord\u2019s Pileggi is the king of the no-syllable answer and many around town suggest that his intellect compares unfavorably with living room furniture \u2014 something others have denied furiously, citing the insult to sofas everywhere. I can\u2019t speak from personal experience, having never spoken to the man. A request for comment on this issue was \u2014 as seems to be standard operating procedure \u2014 ignored.<\/p>\n

That leaves us to guess as to the motivations \u2014 but it does fit into the pattern of harassment of local business people, a bizarre behavior for a township split by three US highways and loads of commercial real estate. It\u2019s not like there\u2019s a pristine, quaint downtown or acres of farmland to preserve.<\/p>\n

Pancoast argues he has right by use and that he is complying with the township\u2019s zoning ordinance. That\u2019s not for me to to judge, although nothing in the information he provided and the language in the ordinance makes me think he\u2019s off base. But, for sake of it, let\u2019s assume that his idea doesn\u2019t comply. Why not, then, be willing to discuss what it would take to get it into compliance?<\/p>\n

\u201cThey won\u2019t talk to me,\u201d Pancoast told me this week. \u201cBut, I\u2019m not going away.\u201d<\/p>\n

And how. If you’ve driven up U.S- 1 through Concord in the last couple of days, you know that. It\u2019s a little hard to miss the sign, on a truck parked at the site of the proposed Social Club:<\/p>\n

\u201cConcord Township Hates Kids.\u201d<\/p>\n

You wonder, though, from the multitude of stories that circulate whether Tom has limited his scope a bit too much. It would seem from here \u2014 whether it be the constant feuds with the township\u2019s largest landowners and various regional elected officials and random, pervasive harassment of small business owners, that the government of Concord Township doesn\u2019t seem to like much of anyone, except the small group of cronies running the show.<\/p>\n

And that stinks for the rest of us.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t miss the U Factor Talent show \u2014 sponsored by the Unionville-Chadds Ford Education Foundation on Jan. 28, at the the new auditorium at Unionville High School. The 3 p.m. show will feature students in seventh grade and younger, while the 7 p.m. show will feature students in 8th through 12th grade.<\/p>\n

Tickets can be ordered through the UCFEF\u2019s website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Thanks for the phone calls Friday morning to tip me off about the minor school bus accident near the Ace Hardware on Rt. 926 in Pocopson. Thankfully, no one was hurt, and the bus was able to continue taking middle and high school students home. Kudos to the school district for quickly putting word out and contacting the parents involved.<\/p>\n

Although details are a little sketchy \u2014 it appears a car rear-ended the bus at the railroad crossing there. Under state law, the bus must stop for the crossing \u2014 and I’ve seen a number of near misses involving buses, and folks not realizing that they (and some sorts of tanker trucks) must stop and look at railroad crossings.<\/p>\n

It’s a good reminder of how important it is to pay attention and drive carefully.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Unionville man falls prey to township’s vicious cycle of business harassment By Mike McGann, Editor, UnionvilleTimes.com As Cyndi Lauper once sang (and yes, we all listened to her with our Walkmans while riding dinosaurs) \u201cGirls just wanna have fun.\u201d The same applies for boys \u2014 those pesky under-21s want to do something with their spare […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6707,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[120,7],"tags":[828,128,829,24],"class_list":["post-6698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-columns","category-featured","tag-concord","tag-pileggi","tag-social-club","tag-unionville"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6698\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}