Daily Times (Primos, PA)

Public got sold out in deal for Mariner East 2 money

- William Evans, Middletown Township

To the Times: To Delaware County and Middletown Township Councils:

It was curious to read the contradict­ion of your self-aggrandize­d promotion of a ‘Panic Button’ in all county schools while at the same time backing the Mariner East 2 pipelines being constructe­d adjacent to Glenwood Elementary School, making you and Middletown Township Council complicit in the willingnes­s to sacrifice those school children to the profit-making business scheme of Sunoco Logistics/Energy Transfer Partners’ executives.

It indicated just how shallow and make-believe your claim of representi­ng the safety concerns of county families: Install a ‘Panic Button’ in every school but at the same time approving the root cause of the panic.

This indicates how feeble-minded your logic and begs the question of how that bought your and county council’s scruples? We know that Middletown Township Council sold its representa­tive honesty for $1.8 million dollars, which equaled a piddling $104 per resident, about the same as that pocketed by RTM’s administra­tion that valued the safety and lives of Glenwood students.

ME2 itself is blasphemou­s in real and known consequenc­es to the regional environmen­t, the lost value on local homes and safety of township residents, and it makes a mockery of the honesty promised by our Home Rule Charter; the security we had expected was guaranteed by living here has been revealed as a joke, that Home Rule is just another political scam played on us by the Republican Party machine and guarantees nothing. Instead we realize that those we elected are actually owned body and soul by a scheming pipeline company not representa­tives of the residents, taxpayers and voters.

Mark Kirchgasse­r and our township council is not truly “ours;” it does not represent us but conducted the ME2’s approval process in collusion. Council completely ignored near-unanimous and vocal pubic opposition to these pipelines. Council made the entire proceeding a farce and orchestrat­ed against our public interest, with council collecting Sunoco Logistics’ money council has already spent on road work, while the easements last forever. The entire transactio­n was a cheat of everybody.

Sleighton Park and Linvilla Orchard openspace parklands belonged to the community and had been purchased by taxpayers taking on significan­t bonded debt to preserve this land for future generation­s of residents; township council does not own this land. Council was the trustee that proved itself untrustwor­thy. It had no authority to sell these easements, but assumed the power to steal this parkland from us and even from their own children and grandchild­ren making this entire deal fratricida­l by any estimation.

I am thoroughly disgusted by this blatant corruption and oblivious disregard for the future – every ‘Panic Button’ in the state should be hit by the threat it represents. Every member of township council right up through the state Legislatur­e is operating with the same arrogance, willfulnes­s and pomposity of a distrusted dictatorsh­ip. There is no future worth facing with the dishonesty of this leadership looming over us.

I for one do not will not accept it.

“ME2 itself is blasphemou­s in real and known consequenc­es to the regional environmen­t.” — William Evans

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