This is How Towns Die

If you think Jenkintown has a bright future under its current administrations, you haven’t been paying attention, or you’re biding your time until your kids graduate.

Jenkintonians residing here since 2006 might have experienced a twinge of deja vu upon reading the latest email from Superintendent Jill Takacs. That year, the school district completed construction of “the link”, connecting the elementary and high schools, paying for it with debt that weighs on its budget today. While the facility provided improved working conditions for administrators, it did little to improve the educational outcomes for the children they teach.

The email and attached letter announces a proposal to purchase property at 309 Walnut adjacent to the baseball fields to accommodate a swelling student population. The question “Is it needed” must be asked loudly and often given the fact that this district now spends about $30,000 per pupil, or more than double the national average, and yet is now ranked at 238 among eastern Pennsylvania elementary schools according to the US News and World Report’s latest survey. According to the letter, the purchase cost of the Salba Apartments may be offset by “donations and/or grants”, but it will deprive the borough of an opportunity to return a property to the tax roles since its current owner is a non-profit associated with Salem Baptist Church.

The additional students expected will include many from the apartment buildings now under construction in addition to the new families that have moved into Jenkintown within the past ten years. These renters will pay per capita a fraction of the property taxes compared to homeowners still smarting from the latest six-percent tax hike.

Developers have designed these apartments to minimize their appeal to families, but anyone who lives in Beaver Hill knows full well how canny parents have gamed the system. In fact, until 2021, even the JSD’s former business manager and Philadelphia resident Zorian Dubenko rented an apartment on Highland Avenue from a Jenkintown school board member allowing him to send his two children to Jenkintown. This was completely legal. 

Blissful ignorance

Nine years ago, I emerged from my own blissful ignorance about how Jenkintown truly works. The Borough brought something to my doorstep that deeply affected my family and me in a manner that I believed unnecessary, ill-advised, and poorly implemented. The more I worked on the problem, the more I spoke with residents, lobbied my reps, and tussled with online trolls, the more I learned about the causes and personalities behind it. 

It still isn’t pretty. It is, in fact, worse. According to our own Council, the borough is now in a serious financial crisis, and their plan to fix it involves gutting our police force. I don’t worship cops. I’m not one who writes blank checks of respect to someone just because they wear a uniform, but I do recognize policing as a primary function of local government. 

When I hear “the police take up half the budget,” my first thought is, “What’s in the other half?” Policing we need. I’m not so sure about many of the other things in that budget.

As homeowners, we are always sensitive to property values. Schools, security, and tax value rank at the top of a homebuyer’s priorities. They are threads woven into the community fabric. Tug on any of those threads, people start looking for the exits.

Fraying The Fabric

The public safety thread the council now pulls threatens the security of our lives and property. It will lower the value of living here while raising its cost. Council isn’t saving money. They’ve presented zero evidence to that effect, especially after providing the chief with a $200,000 truck that he and we do not need. Municipalities and school districts that forget their priorities set their communities on a slow but inevitable decline. It won’t become obvious for years, but by then, it’ll be too late. 

Already we can see the decline as a result of the following: 

• In real dollars, our property taxes are 60% higher than when we moved here. In no way are we getting a 60% better value for our Jenkintown address.
• Deborra Sines-Pancoe asserted in council last month that the borough is in a deep financial crisis. She should know since she’s served on that board for twenty-one years, presiding over it when that crisis befell us. 
• The business district has not improved since I moved here twenty-two years ago. Yes, Jenkintown can point to several new businesses as signs of hope, but these have only filled the gaps left behind by their failed predecessors. The district is not growing. We know this because every year the school district cites the decline of the district’s property valuations behind their tax hikes. 
• Almost every week we receive a text or a postcard from a private equity firm offering cash for my house. We all know it’s a deal of last resort, but the longer I live here, the harder it is to resist. These houses turn into rentals. 
• Both the Borough and the School District pay their management more than they’re worth. Despite its failures, the JSD renewed Dr. Jill Takacs’ contract for another five years with a hefty pay raise. Chief Scott is an Abington PD reject, who “retired” when his employer told him in no uncertain terms that he will never become chief of that department. And the less said about Borough Manager George Locke, the better. People of real ability will find fortune elsewhere.

Frogs in A Pot

To those who don’t closely follow civic issues will miss the subtle but obvious signs of decline. But those who can sense the mismanagement and the lack of progress and who have the means to leave will do so — as soon as their kids graduate. 

They will leave behind the lower and middle income residents to tread water like frogs in a pot, never quite knowing when or if to jump out as the soft corruption fuels the fires below them. Eventually, only those who can afford private school and those who qualify for housing subsidies will call Jenkintown home. 

Yes, Jenkintown does have many special, endearing qualities to it. We find comfort walking around town and seeing familiar faces and hearing all the children that bring life to the playgrounds. I love its walkability, its historic charm, and its easy access to the best the Delaware Valley has to offer. 

But that small-town feel works both ways. Familiarity not only breeds contempt but the specter of group-think which makes pariahs out of those with divergent opinions who just want a seat at the table. 

It can change, but it requires involvement and sending a message to Council that they’ll fully understand: the loss of their seats. It’s easier to achieve than you might think.