In Ward 4, which lies in Erdenheim, Democrat Alison Peirce is running against Pat Lawn, the brother of the Republican incumbent Tim Lawn.
Peirce has made the development Flourtown Country Club an issue of her campaign. At the commissioners’ business session Oct. 12, she publicly criticized the township’s management of the club. She argued that either the club should be making more money for the township, or its rates should be reduced so that more members of the community could join.
Interviewed Monday, Peirce said residents she has spoken with voice dissatisfaction with the look and feel of Bethlehem Pike, which she compared to Street Road in Northeast Philadelphia.
As commissioner, she said, she would work to make the pike friendlier to pedestrians and to ensure the facades of new buildings are more attractive, largely though a reconsideration of the zoning code.
“I think we should not lose any more historic properties in the township,” she said. “I was particularly struck when an older building was demolished to make way for a Commerce Bank.”
Peirce, a resident of Yeakel Avenue for 18 years, is self-employed as a consultant for executive education and online learning.
Her opponent, Republican Pat Lawn, grew up in Erdenheim and owns Physicians Insurance Consultants on Bethlehem Pike.
In an interview this week, Lawn said his business involves finding ways to reduce overhead at doctors’ offices, and as commissioner, he would draw on his cost-cutting expertise to prevent increases in township property taxes.
Older residents he has known all his life have been forced to leave the township because they cannot afford to pay property taxes, Lawn said, and he hopes to stem the exodus by re-evaluating township spending priorities. In the past five years, he said, the board of commissioners – not including the school board – has raised taxes a total of 8 percent, and it should not be difficult, he said, to trim the budget to prevent further increases.
“I care a lot about our community. I do not want to see taxes increased in our community,” Lawn said. “I want to look at our spending [and] re-evaluate what we want to spend money on. I’d like to look at every project.”
Lawn, 40, holds a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice from the University of Delaware. He opened Physicians Insurance Consultants in 1994 after working for several years at an insurance agency.
In Ward 6, including parts of Flourtown and Oreland, Democrat Thomas Sweeney and Republican James Dailey are competing to replace incumbent Republican Robert McGrory, who will retire after the election.
Dailey, 36, a lawyer and resident of Penn Oak Road, is an assistant counsel at the Pennsylvania Bureau of Liquor Control Enforcement, where he prosecutes liquor-license violations. Though making his first run for public office he was appointed the alternate member of the Springfield Zoning Hearing Board in November 2004.
Interviewed this week, Dailey said his experience in zoning and law enforcement would be valuable assets on the board of commissioners, but the No. 1 issue facing voters in his district is flooding.
Ward 4 includes the two areas hit hardest by floodwaters in the past year, and he wants to help implement the control plans approved by the current board, he said.
“It’s a great township and I’d like to keep it that way,” he said. “The stormwater problem has to be addressed.”
Dailey grew up in Philadelphia and studied law at Widener University. He graduated from Temple University in 1991 and then worked as assistant food service manager at St. Joseph’s Villa, Flourtown, until entering law school in 1996. He has some familiarity with catering, and the current board has acted responsibly in the choosing of the next management of the Flourtown Country Club, he said, despite questions regarding the nature of the club’s liquor license.
“To be honest, I think it’ll work out itself,” he said.
Thomas N. Sweeney, Dailey’s Democratic opponent, is also an attorney. He works for the firm of Cohen, Seglias, Tallas, Greenhall and Furman in Philadelphia, where he primarily handles business litigation.
In an interview this week, Sweeney said that as commissioner, he would combat the secretiveness that residents have perceived on the board. Too often, he said, residents find development occurs without any advance word. As an example, he cited the Flourtown Kmart, which has stood vacant for two years. Though rumors have been circulating about what might take its place, Sweeney said, the next tenant will probably appear without much community discussion.
“The one thing I’m hearing over and over is about open space and open government,” he said.
Sweeney, 32, grew up in northern New Jersey and has lived in Springfield Township for six years. He studied law at Seton Hall in Newark and in 1996 volunteered to teach for a year at in inner city school in Chicago. It was a “baptism of fire” and the most profound experience of his life, he said, and it gave him a sense of confidence for anything he will have to face in the future, including a term on the Springfield Township Board of Commissioners.
“It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. I can’t imagine anything could be harder,” he said. “There’s nothing I can confront that will be as emotionally draining, or physically draining, or intellectually draining.”
Jeff Harbison, the candidate for the board from Wyndmoor’s Ward 2, is running unopposed and is all but guaranteed a victory unless a yet-unheard-of opponent stages a successful write-in campaign.
Harbison, a Democratic committeeman who won his party’s primary in the spring, also won the Republican primary with 20 write-in votes. In Ward 2, he is perhaps best known as the president of the Wyndmoor Civic Association, which devised a plan for the revitalization of the Willow Grove Avenue business district after nearly two years of discussion.
Like Sweeney, Harbison is calling for greater openness in township government, and he said in an interview that the current board’s poor record of communication has eroded public trust.
“I think people need to have a higher level of trust in their government,” he said.
In working with the civic association on development, traffic and zoning, Harbison said, he discovered an affinity for the kinds of issues commissioners handle every day.
“I like that stuff,” he said. “The commissioners are involved. The things they do – traffic and zoning and getting the recyclables picked up – are of interest to me. They’re quality of life issues.”
Harbison, 47, grew up in Wyndmoor and remembers playing on the Stotesbury estate as a boy. He studied biology at Harvard and earned a law degree from the University of Michigan and an MBA from the Wharton School. He works from his home on Spring Lane as a consultant on small-businesses and fundraising.
“I’ve got a resume,” he said.
