U lo | I | |» » The Dallas Post SI = RAVAN CTR | =ROIO LY [\VISHV BEI =H OI =i lw | =00 BVA EH WARSI 8 WAY =H = VY VANES 0] x [00] BI FSH BE ni [OF BS September 29 thru October 5, 1999 Vol. 110 No. 39 N pu pos oe. Faria BE fe FR een lj ai Dallas, Pennsylvania RE a ee 50 Cents By KASIA McDONOUGH Post Staff LAKE-LEHMAN - At a special meeting held September 21, the Lake-Lehman School Board approved a motion giving the district authorization to borrow S10 million through PNC Bank. The money will be used to finance the expansion and renovation of Ross El- ementary School and for the construc- tion of a new middle school wing to be added to the high school. “The Ross project ‘is moving forward on schedule and the middle school construction is about six months behind that,” said Dr. William Price, Superintendent. The S10 million loan, which must be re-paid in three years, has an interest rate of 4.40%. “The loan is called a note because of the short term (of the financ- ing),” said Kathleen Williams, business manager. “It is really very similar to a bond issue in that the same state regula- tions apply.” One of the Department of Education rules governing school district debts re- quires Lake-Lehman to proceed with “We are relying on the money we do have in the Jund balance to earn interest.” Kathleen Williams Business manager planned construction in a timely man- ner. “Basically, the state regulations re- quire a good faith effort to move ahead with these projects,” said Price. “We can’t just borrow the money and invest it in- definitely.” The district is permitted to invest the funds for a short period and administra- tors plan to use the money earned from those investments to pay the interest due on the $10 million note. Interest pay- ments will be made bi-annually in $220,000 increments. ~~ This method of borrowing the funds needed to finance building projects over a short term is designed to give Lake- Lehman flexibility to refinance at a time when the market is more favorable for Helping parents to protect kids Seminar to address "Sex, Kids & the Internet’ By KASIA McDONOUGH Post Staff BACK MOUNTAIN - Atty. Bernard Walter has seen children as young as 12 or 13 years old sleeping on street corners. The image of them in their flimsy cardboard shelters, strung out on drugs, begging for food, has stuck with him. : Walter carried thé pictures of those unsmiling faces in his mind, when as a District Attorney in San Francisco he prosecuted the pimps who preyed upon their desperation. It is for those youngsters, who were ordinary kids before their inno- cence was stolen, that he is working to limit the pervasive presence of graphic and sexually explicit mate- rial on the Internet. "As a D.A., 1 specialized in prosecuting sex offend- ers so I dealt with runaway kids and pimps and all of those things,” said Walter. “It was during that time I became aware of how much the me- dia can influence young people.” Despite his experience and his conviction that pornographic images should not be accessible to children, Walter has not become an ultra-con- servative advocating the abolition of the world wide web and all its cyberspace cousins. “My approach to this problem is pragmatic. I'm not a redneck. I don’t think we should dress up in white sheets and string up pornographers on the street cor- ner,” he said. “I do think people need to be alerted to the fact that sex and money are very powerful human drives and when the two are wed a situation ripe with danger is cre- ated.” As part of his effort to raise public awareness of the predators lurking POST PHOTO/KASIA McDONOUGH Matt Harshin watched as his daughter, Lauren, 8, looked up an encyclopedia page at the Back Mountain Memorial Library. The library requires that parents accompany young children who use the Internet. on computers as high tech babysitters.” Sgt. Michael Moravec Kingston Twp. police dept. beyond the click of a mouse, Walter has coordinated an informational session entitled “Sex, Kids, & the Internet” to be held on Thursday, October 7 at the PP&L Conference Center beginning at 7 p.m. “We wanted to bring together a panel of experts for an open discussion about the dark side of the Internet,” said Walter. Some of the well publicized and shad- owy aspects of the Internet include sites displaying violent or pornographic mate- rial and chat rooms where the unsus- pecting may fall prey to predators. A 14- year-old Kingston Township girl was re- cently lured to a local hotel by a Massa- chusetts man who had disguised his true age and motives over the course of his three-year on-line relationship with the youngster. : Police officials involved in bringing that case to justice have advice for adults who don’t want their own children to end up in a similar predicament. “I think its important that parents stop relying on computers as high tech babysitters,” said Sgt. Michael Moravec, of the Kingston Township Police Department. “They need to know who their child is talking to either through a history list or by supervising their time on the Internet.” Direct parental supervision is the most effective method of preventing a child from gaining access to objec- tionable material but children fre- quently have opportunities explore the Internet on their own. “The com- puter does not belong in the bed- See INTERNET, pg 8 Prison break hearing reveals eoross negligence all around By KASIA McDONOUGH Post Staff JACKSON TOWNSHIP - As many questions as answers came out of the Department of Correc- tions’ recent public hearing into the circumstances surrounding the escape of two inmates from the SCID’s security protocol. Fact finders discovered the two escap- ees dangled from razor wire atop the perimeter fencing, unnoticed by the roving patrols which passed them repeatedly. Corrections officers conduct- ing a bed check reported prison- ers Yang and McCloskey were in L-L borrows $10 million, will keep $4 million in the bank long-term repayment. “Any time after 12 months we can convert this general obli- gation to a bond issue,” said Williams. A positive report on the status of Lake- Lehman's finances was submitted by Standard & Poor’s which conducted a check of the district credit worthiness. “They issued the district a credit rating of FP-1, which is the highest possible rat- ing, indicating they believed the district = demonstrated ‘a very strong or strong capacity to pay the ($10 million) princi- See LAKE-LEHMAN, pg 3 Township moving to control phone towers By RONALD BARTIZEK Post Staff KINGSTON TWP. - Supervisors are taking steps to regulate cellular tele- phone antennas and towers in the town- ship. sorsreviewed a draft ordinance that would be the first in the Back Mountain to specifically address communication tow- ers and antennas. The action comes two months after a county judge said the supervisors “committed an error of law” when they declared that a proposed 150- foot tower was a “semipublic” use. Judge Thomas F. Burke also suggested that the supervisors’ interpretation of zoning codes would have allowed con- struction of a tower anywhere in the township. The proposed ordinance would make attaching antennas to existing buildings a permitted use. Jeff Box, township man- ager, said the hope is that companies will want to “take the easier path” of locating small antennas on buildings over the more involved process that would be re- quired to build a large tower. While the township is trying to control the towers, which are proliferating at a rapid pace nationwide, there are limits to its ability to do so. “The Telecommunica- tions Act (the Federal Telecommunica- tions Act of 1996) says local zoning is there, but in fact it’s not,” Box said. While they can put some restrictions on them, - municipalities cannot exclude commu- nications towers, or discriminate between companies. Much of the proposed ordinance deals with the physical layout of a tower site. For example, adequate “fall zones” must surround a tower, a fence must enclose the tower site, and landscaping must hide the fencing and any buildings. The appearance of the tower itself is not ad- dressed, except to note that towers should See TOWERS, pg 8 47-0 Saturday. Pg 9. HB Knights win out on top by a single goal. Pg 9. HB Mounts romp Dallas crushed Hanover in meeting of field hockey squads, Lehman came At a special meeting Sept. 22, supervi- the State Correctional Institution their bunks although the two had The Dallas Post MAILING LABEL- Please enclose this label with any address changes, ¢ | © at Dallas (SCID). already slipped through an open- 14 Pages, 2 Sections 1] The testimony offered did little ing created by cutting through a Calendar: 5.00000 14 ! to reassure Pat Rusiloski, who metal bar on the window of their Classified............. 12-13 ] i | heads the Citizens Advisory Com- cell. The bars had apparently not Crossword... 14 | mittee. “I can’t believe it — noth- been checked for signs of damage EdHORAlS nme sis ie 4 il ing works,” she said. “The siren in months. Obituarios 12 B isn't working, the fence is falling “Installing new barsisoneof | Nw... oo GT CEdEmgaSSS BB | 0 0 7HCIIESeemenesene a down and it seems a number of Superintendent Varner’s top pri- School...................... 11 f | the security guards didn't do their ~~ orities,” said Ken Burnett, Public POST PHOTO/MON BARIIZEK SPOS... onsgivisnines 9.10 J Celebrating history | Patti and Alex Almond bought copies of a book about Misericordia’s history written and signed by Dr. Agnes Cardoni, left, and Dr. Regina Kelly, RSM. Story, more photos on page 3. Information Officer at SCID. “It’s a matter of figuring out what kind of metal to use and deciding if the See PRISON, pg 3 CALL 675-5211 FOR HOME DELIVERY, NEWS OR ADVERTISING E-mail: dalpost@aol.com @ os Areport issued by Martin Horn, Secretary of Corrections, indicated the ongoing investigation has yielded crucial information about and mail to The Dallas Post, P.O. Box 366, Dallas PA 18612-0366 VS = i
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