Letter to the Editor of the Daily Local News, Inquirer and Brandywine Ledger

According to Thomas Jefferson, we created government to secure our God given rights. One of those rights, as spelled out by the Fourth Amendment, is to be secure in our homes against unreasonable seizures. Coatesville's City Council, except for Rev. Winifred Mayo, seems to have forgotten their oath to uphold the Constitution in their latest move to take property, by whatever means necessary, to build a city owned golf course/recreation complex.

It has been over a year since any action has been taken in this direction. This time around they apparently have hired a public relations firm to try to drum up almost non existent local support. At the Monday (6/12) Council meeting the City had a two page hand out, that on the surface appeared to try to answer questions about the proposed golf course, but in reality was designed to sway the uninformed towards supporting the issue through Joseph Goebbels style propaganda. For instance, it states that "not a single property owner will lose his/her home as a result of this project." Like true Nazis, the very next sentence negates the previous statement: "The City has the right of eminent domain and is prepared to use this right if absolutely necessary to acquire a particular property." For Dick and Nancy Saha, this translates to: instead of living peacefully on your forty some acre horse farm, you can have a couple acres overlooking the ninth hole. Their two married daughters and their families, whose homes are on the same farm, can have a spot between the driving range and the bowling alley. Hitler would have been proud.

The same propaganda sheet flatly states that no tax money will be used to pay for construction of the complex. What it doesn't say is that the expected windfall from the sale of the Water Authority is burning a hole in their pockets before they even have it.

Besides being completely morally wrong, the whole idea is rather stupid. We elect a City Council and pay a City Manager to handle basic services such as police and fire protection. We do not have a city government to take public money and invest it in highly speculative business ventures. A number of years ago we contracted out our trash collection because it was the most efficient way to get it done. If we can't even collect our own trash efficiently, what makes us think we can run a $30 million recreation complex?

A number of people at the meeting the other night questioned why were trying to spur the revitalization of Coatesville by developing land seized in Valley Township. Why are we not focussing our efforts downtown? The City Manager's vision of non Coatesvillians spending a few hours at the golf course and then coming into Coatesville to have dinner and maybe shop or take in a jazz concert is pie in the sky at it's worst. Even native Coatesvillians know better than to walk around downtown after dark. City officials should focus their efforts at creating a safe, clean environment downtown.

After Thomas Jefferson stated the purpose of creating government, he then wrote "that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it...."

Pat Sellers
718 Madison St.
Coatesville, Pa. 19320
610-384-8339