Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Citizens rally at courthouse for fair Pa. budget
Incoming Coatesville High freshman Aidan Brady was attending just his second political rally as he stood with about a dozen demonstrators outside the county courthouse Thursday night.
Brady was on hand for a vigil and rally for a Fair Pennsylvania Budget.
The event was organized by Adrienne Standley of the Pennsylvania Choice Campaign.
Brady will be too young to vote in the next presidential election, but he is excited to elect a president in a little over seven years.
“I feel like I want to make a difference and a change,” Brady said.
Brady listened to seven speakers, in the company of about a dozen demonstrators. Several passersby paused to listen to the group’s message and dozens of rush-hour motorists rolled down their car windows to hear the speakers.
“It shows that they care about the school district,” Brady said about his fellow demonstrators, “and it shows what people actually think.”
Standley led off the rally and zeroed in on deadlocked
budget talks in Harrisburg, for the new fiscal year starting July 1.
“Year after year, after year, we have the same roadblock in June,” Standley said. “We need a longterm rather than a shortterm solution.”
Kadida Kenner, campaign manager for the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center said she is an advocate for a budget that puts people first – “a people’s budget.”
She said that the state needs to both balance the budget and invest in its citizens.
“We need to raise revenue without taxing the working and middle class,” Kenner said.
She and PBPC support a “fair share tax,” while lowering taxes for the majority and placing a capital gains tax on the wealthy.
Beth Brindle, resident and public education advocate, told the demonstrators that she stood in the same spot five years ago at a rally organized by state Sen. Andy Dinniman, D-19, while asking legislators to better fund public education.
“Every year since then, our district – like hundreds of others across the Commonwealth – has been on pins and needles as the state budget deadline approaches,” she said. “Every year our school board is forced to create a budget based on assumptions– without knowing what the next year’s allocation from the state will be.”
Jennifer Wolff, policy specialist for Mental Health Partnerships, said that mental health recovery is real and is absolutely obtainable.
“Recovery is possible when services are available and properly funded to give people the chance they deserve, to lead the lives they are meant to lead,” Wolff said.
Budget cuts have forced intervention specialists to increase the use of “expensive” crisis intervention services by 51 percent, Wolff said.
“Where do you want your money to go?” she asked. “I want mine to go to recovery, not crisis!”
Blake Emmanuel is a local mother and advocate for education, special education,
and disability rights.
She said that schoolbased services are necessary to ensure the success of students with disabilities and learning disabilities, with possible funding cuts having devastating effects.
“Medicaid cuts, such as the proposed $200 million one by the House of Reps, will have severe consequences,” Emmanuel said. “These cuts will directly affect all of our local public schools, and most of our children.
“Think of it this way, do we want to pay now or pay more later, through social services such as welfare and food stamps or through the justice system, where many under- or unsupported students end up?”
Dr. Kevin Moore, director of Integrative Medicine at AIDS Care Group, talked about the need for Medicaid funding to fight a pair of epidemics--for both AIDS and opioid addiction.
Fourteen Pennsylvanians die every day from opioid addiction, with just one in a hundred receiving any kind of treatment, according to Moore.