Free Press –
Bucks Open Space Upper Perk Golf Course
Dear Friends,
Good morning. As I read about the Bucks County Commissioners getting ready to fund nearly $9 million to Upper Bucks municipalities to further preserve open space, I thought about a recent ride to the Upper Perkiomen valley. As I approached Pennsburg, I looked at what once was the Upper Perk golf course.
A few years ago, those 100 acres (I think) were a haven to area golfers. It had previously been a farm. Three boroughs and two townships missed the chance to keep the land in open space…the chance of a lifetime. Today, bulldozers are changing the terrain and 100’s of homes will soon fill the space.
You can thank the elected officials of Marlborough and Upper Hanover Townships; the boroughs of East Greenville, Pennsburg, and Red Hill; plus the school directors of Upper Perk for this mess. I suppose the Montgomery County Commissioners are partly to blame because their lack of leadership didn’t prod the local officials to do the right thing.
In a few years, thousands of adults and children will call the former golf course home. As a golf course or farm, how many municipal roads, water and sewer lines had to be installed…and class rooms built?
None.
How will new interior roads, water and sewer lines, and additional schools be financed? Through real estate taxes of course. In my opinion, every taxpayer in these five municipalities should vote their local officials out of office just as soon as the opportunity arises…starting in 2009, 2011, and 2013. Those are the municipal and school director election years.
In the meantime, tax payers, grit your teeth. It’s your fault. You weren’t forceful enough to tell your local officials that you’d end their political careers if they wasted the opportunity to preserve the open space.
Why didn’t they?
It has to do with the unwillingness of municipalities to share power. Pennsylvania has over 2,600 municipal governments, most of whom can’t stand each other. As a result, the state is a developer’s dream. Could those five Upper Perkiomen municipalities formed an entity to purchase the golf course and preserve its open space?
Of course it could have…shame on you!
In the meantime, Bucks County municipalities will benefit from the $87 million bond issue, which will protect open space and the Delaware River waterfront.
Bucks preserved more than 15,000 acres through the first 10-year, $59 million open space program in 1997. Bravo, Bucks County!
“All eight of the natural areas projects awaiting some of the $11 million in new funding are in Upper Bucks,” Scott Kraus reported for the Morning Call. “They total 350 acres in Nockamixon, Haycock, Springfield, Milford, and East Rockhill Townships. Sixty percent of the 72 farms awaiting an infusion of $25 million for preservation also are the county’s northern reaches.”
Forty years ago, I remember my fellow county commissioner, Joe Canby, teaching me about the values of open space. Joe was a dairy farmer from Middletown Township near Newtown. “Charlie,” he said, “you don’t have to build schools for cows, horses, chickens, and pigs. And animals don’t need roads and water and sewer lines either.
Boy, was he right.
Closer to home, the six municipalities which form the Quakertown school district and the nine municipalities in the Pennridge School district don’t win any prize for municipal cooperation either.
It’s a pity that elected municipal leaders fail to see the value of combining their governments and protecting the land. Then again, we voters have the power to kick them out when they fail to govern in the public’s good.
Sincerely,
Charles Meredith