The Penn Delco School Board is less a board than it is a theme park of stupidity and pettiness. It's countersuit against the Aston Valley Baseball League seeking monetary damages proves it.
There is no reason this matter shouldn't have been settled months ago. Instead the board is spending thousands of taxpayer dollars to beat the little league in court. Win or lose there is no reasonable justification for the board's behavior in this matter.
The league had a long term lease on a piece of school district property. Its volunteers build a baseball field on it so they would have a place for its kids to play for decades. For some reason the board, under the guidance of its new solicitor, decided to cancel the lease and take control of the field away the people who built it and not compensate them for their improvements to the property as required by the lease.
The solicitor argues that the lease was improperly entered into by a previous board and the current board should not be held to its terms. Whatever the legal merits of that argument, the board was under no legal obligation to cancel the lease, it simply did so for what the solicitor called "good government practice" reasons.
But the AVBL entered into the lease in good faith. Upon its terms it built the field, added value to the property while providing a place for the high school baseball team to play it's games and all at no cost to the district.
In its countersuit the district is now claiming the league didn't adhere to certain codes and standards in making improvements at the field. The district's claims reek of bad faith given they are being made long after its decision to take control of the field. Prior to the school board's decision to cancel the lease, the district raised no concerns with the league about any maintenance or construction issues. The superintendent admitted as much to me last year.
It is hard to believe a judge or jury won't recognize some injury to the league in the district's canceling of the lease without just compensation, and the bad faith of the school board's countersuit.
The best remedy for all this, absent the board coming to its senses (and there is basically no hope of that) is for the citizens of the district to vote in new school board members who have a better understanding of their duties and obligations to community at large.
Penn Delco has a recent history of being run by meglomaniacs and criminals. This is nothing like that. This is just dumb. But dumb isn't good either.
Oh yeah, my print column is up.
No comments:
Post a Comment