The Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes Revisited

The Bible tells us how Jesus miraculously fed masses of people starting with only five loaves of bread and two fish (Matthew 14:13–21). The East Cocalico Township Board of Supervisors seem to think they have similar powers. They mysteriously managed to turn a single ordinance revision (concerning horse boarding) into 19 separate ordinance revisions hidden in the same "package."

Here is my letter to the letter from the Ephrata Review concerning this subject:

Editor,

On October 1st (see page 2), the East Cocalico Supervisors approved a zoning ordinance amendment consisting of 19 unrelated revisions. Of these, only one was ever discussed at a public supervisors meeting (about a year ago). The other 18 were written in complete secrecy, and never mentioned at a public supervisors meeting. The first notice to the public that these changes were being made was when the hearing was advertised in the Lancaster newspapers (but not the Ephrata Review). The changes had apparently all been signed off on by each of the supervisors individually, so that the public hearing was only a formality. There was never any real chance for the public to provide any input into these changes. Comments were made about the changes at the hearing, but as usual, were all ignored.

Why, when the supervisors are making changes in the Township’s ordinances shouldn’t there be opportunity for input from the public before the language is finalized? That’s what public meetings are for. I thought this was supposed to be a democracy…

Another important process is currently being done “out of public view.” The proposed nearly half million square foot Benderson shopping center project is fast approaching final approval. None of the remaining steps in the approval process require any public notice. The two steps required for final approval are preliminary and final plan approval by the supervisors. These will happen at a regular supervisors meeting sometime in the next few months. Since the board of supervisors has refused to publish their meeting agendas prior to their meetings, there will be no warning to the public when these approvals are to be voted on. Again, there will be no real chance for additional public input since no one will know when it will be discussed.

The supervisors could keep the public informed about this very important process on their web site or through press releases to the newspapers without any cost to the taxpayers. The question is, will they? If they follow their usual pattern, the shopping center will receive final approval with less notice than for the 19 recent zoning ordinance revisions.

Ken McCrea

Stevens, PA

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The supervisors then responded in the Review claiming there had been numerous opportunities to discuss the ordinances. However they failed to mention that no one ever had any way to know it was anything but a single ordinance on a relatively trivial topic. See my response here.

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