Upper Darby board president clarifies $50G rental deal

UPPER DARBY >> Upper Darby School Board President Rachael Mitchell was the first at the podium for a public hearing on the township’s 2019 budget to set the record straight.

Mitchell took exception to the comment made by Mayor Thomas Micozzie in his budget message last month regarding a $50,000 rental agreement from Upper Darby School District for use of high school classrooms as part of the 2019 Summer Stage.

“The school district supports Summer Stage 100 percent,” Mitchell said. “I wanted to add clarity to the mayor’s statement. The amount is estimated. It felt like a call out.”

Thomas Judge Jr., the township’s chief administrative officer, indicated he was at the meeting between the school district and township and his understanding was the $50,000 was not an estimated amount after calculating the number of classroom used and number of hours.

Budget Chair Thomas Wagner thanked Mitchell for coming to the budget hearing.

“It’s nice to have items like this clarified,” Wagner said. “We welcome your presence. This is important to all of us.”

Micozzie presented a no tax increase $80.2 million budget at council’s regular meeting in October.

A homeowner with a $108,000 average assessment will pay $2,262 next year, the same amount as this year.

Jennifer Halum, of Drexel Hill, recommended township officials consider a new web site as part of next year’s budget expenditures.

“It looks like it was created in 1990 and works like it,” Halum said. “It’s hard to get information. It needs to be easy and accessible.”

Micozzie announced plans for a new web site in January and hiring a webmaster to keep it up to date.

In other business, Micozzie honored members of Boy Scout Troop 512 for cleaning up Kirklyn Park.

Scouts and adults who participated and received the mayor’s commendation award for their efforts included three Eagle Scouts Sean Nieman, Zach Newman and Nick Meloni and scouts Dom Spatola, Dom Doyle, Fin Weiss, Lukas Miller, Brock Newnam, Nate Dole, Aidan Burrows, Alex Spatola, Aidan Doyle, Scott Slonaker, Santi Dreibelbis, Jake Byrne, Tyler Lurwick, Joe Madden, Joey Liberati, Andrew Elu, Matthew Convery and Shawn Gamble. Adults who assisted in cleanup and also honored included Scott Newman, Harry Kleinman, Mike Coates, Nick Meloni, Sr., Dave Doyle, Pat Spatola, Steve Dreibelbis and Jim Dreibelbis.