You know, by our township's history, we were established as diverse communities with people from all walk of life, creed, and color. But bit by bit, diversity has disappeared due to multiple factors. One of the things that is disappearing way too fast is affordable housing. Affordable housing is not an evil thing, it is a necessary and welcome community component. In addition, good residential communities on the fringe of our retail district is just common sense, and it is so sad the way those residential neighborhoods in Bryn Mawr just disappeared - Central and Summit Grove Avenues were raped. It's a harsh word, but seriously, look at before and during and after:

To that end an amendment proposed by Maryam Phillips (and suported by many commissioners including Jenny Brown) with regard to Bryn Mawr and their new proposed zoning for that community's redevelopment should be supported and embraced by citizens throughout this entire township. We urge EVERY citizen to not only support this effort, but to send Commissioner Scott Zelov and BOC President Bruce Reed a polite note to ask him to give one up to the little guy: ask them to support Maryam's amendment, cc Maryam, and cc SAC. Here are the e-mail addresses you will need: , , , and - please remember to cc us if you e-mail, because it is important that nothing gets lost. Community input is critical to any good plan, and all in all parts of this plan are not so bad - it just needs a little tweaking to achieve the best balance, and this one amendment along with a provision that the remaining homeowners on Central Ave not only be protected no matter what, but that they should also be able to remain in their homes as long as they are able, and when they are no longer able, they should be able to pass their most valuable asset to their blood related heirs via estate planning as long as their heirs are going to physically live on Central Avenue. If the homeowners or poetntial legal heirs were interested only is selling their properties on Central Ave, then rights of first refusal should revert to the hospital. No one is saying no to development - it's just about making it the best it can be!

What are we talking about? Read this follow-up article by Diane Mastrull (and save the date of May 7 for the hearing at the township):
In Bryn Mawr, issues center on Central Avenue
The tiny street is in the middle of a just-approved zoning plan.
By Diane Mastrull
Inquirer Staff Writer

Around Bryn Mawr yesterday, there was measured relief that the revitalization of its flagging downtown was finally beginning to feel real, after more than a decade of on-and-off debate.

Late Wednesday, Lower Merion Township commissioners gave their preliminary endorsement to a new zoning plan that would allow a metamorphosis on the Lancaster Avenue and Bryn Mawr Avenue commercial corridors and the neighborhoods bordering them.

But on tiny Central Avenue, there was anxious silence, like a breath being held. As the pieces of the expansive renewal were falling into place, the commissioners had made, literally, eleventh-hour changes that could return the street to the people.

"I don't know that what's here today can be saved," said Janet Giersch, who has lived there 29 years. "But I'm hoping that a new neighborhood can be created."

That prospect had seemed impossible to Giersch ever since the summer of 2006, when 18 rowhouses and twins on the one-block street were torn down. As part of an expansion plan for Bryn Mawr Hospital, Main Line Health System's real estate division had bought 25 Central Avenue properties, to be razed primarily for parking. Along with a garage, the hospital also wanted to put new homes and stores along Central, where zoning was strictly residential.

The new Bryn Mawr Village Zoning District would give the hospital the changes it sought....After Wednesday night's meeting, however, Central Avenue's future is far from clear....Giersch and others asked the commissioners that they try to preserve Central's long-standing residential feel.....By the time the four-hour meeting had ended, another amendment was put on the table, this one by Commissioner Maryam Phillips: Central Avenue should be kept as it is, solely residential. That would require the hospital to seek a variance in order to put a garage there.

Phillips had not introduced the idea by the time Andrea Gilbert, president of Bryn Mawr Hospital, had left the meeting. Gilbert.....had urged the commissioners to keep retail as one of the acceptable uses for Central Avenue.

Reached yesterday by e-mail, Gilbert declined to comment on the amendments.

Phillips insisted yesterday that her goal was not to scuttle the hospital's plans for Central. Rather, she said, she did not want Central to become lined with stores if the hospital ultimately decided not to develop the block.

In that event, she said, "I'd like to see it revert to residential. The goal is to get a neighborhood back."

Yesterday, Commissioner V. Scott Zelov, chairman of the ad hoc committee, said he would not support Phillips' amendment.

Part two of this is....Hmmmm, even the Wall Street Journal asks questions a lot of regular folk ask...about non profit hospitals. A familiar hospital name is one -

Nonprofit Hospitals, Once For the Poor, Strike It Rich
By John Carreyrou and Barbara Martinez

Nonprofit hospitals, originally set up to serve the poor, have transformed themselves into profit machines. And as the money rolls in, the large tax breaks they receive are drawing fire.

Riding gains from investment portfolios and enjoying the pricing power that came from a decade of mergers, many nonprofit hospitals have seen earnings soar in recent years.....Nonprofits, which account for a majority of U.S. hospitals, are faring even better than their for-profit counterparts: 77% of the 2,033 U.S. nonprofit hospitals are in the black, while just 61% of for-profit hospitals are profitable, according to the AHD data.

At some nonprofits, the good times are reflected in new facilities and rich executive pay. Flush with cash, Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago has rebuilt its entire campus since 1999 at a cost of more than $1 billion. In October, it opened a new women's hospital that features marble in the lobby, birthing rooms with flat-screen televisions, 1,000 works of art and a roof topped with 10,000 square feet of gardens....But Northwestern Memorial has been frugal in its spending on charity care, the free treatment for poor patients that nonprofit hospitals are expected to provide in return for the federal and state tax breaks they receive.....To be sure, some nonprofit hospitals, particularly ones in inner cities that handle large numbers of uninsured patients, remain under financial strain and are struggling to keep their doors open.

.....But the growing gap between many nonprofit hospitals' wealth and what they give back to their communities is raising questions about the billions of dollars in tax exemptions they receive.

"Some nonprofit hospitals seem to forget that their operations are subsidized with generous tax breaks. They allow their priorities to get out of whack," says Sen. Charles Grassley. The senior Republican on the Senate Finance Committee threatened last year to introduce legislation forcing nonprofit hospitals to provide a minimum amount of charity care...In return for not paying taxes, nonprofit hospitals are supposed to provide a "community benefit," a loosely defined requirement whose most important component is charity care.....One nonprofit hospital system, St. Louis-based BJC HealthCare, counts the salaries of its employees as a community benefit....The new standards, due to take full effect in 2009, will require nonprofit hospitals to break out specifics of their community-benefit contributions. But they won't require the hospitals to provide any minimum amount of charity care.

The size of nonprofit hospitals' tax exemptions is coming under scrutiny in part because their incomes have risen so sharply in recent years, and because they represent such a big chunk of America's health-care spending. Thirty-one cents of every dollar spent on medical care is spent on hospitals.

....At the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, which runs 20 facilities, cash and investments totaled $3.35 billion at the end of last year. UPMC says the money goes toward producing "world-class health care, education and research,".
.....But some of UPMC's expenses are only tenuously related to medicine. In its 2006 fiscal year, UPMC also spent $10 million on advertising, including $1 million on ads in the New York Times.
....UPMC paid its CEO, Jeffrey Romoff, $3.3 million in fiscal 2006.
....Some nonprofit hospital executives enjoy other perks. Royal Oak, Mich.-based Beaumont Hospitals says it paid $10,795 for the country-club membership of the president of its foundation last year....The Cleveland Clinic continued to pay its former CEO, Floyd Loop, more than $1 million a year for two years after he retired...The University of California San Francisco Medical Center provided its CEO and chief operating officer low-interest mortgage loans of more than $1 million each.
...Catholic Healthcare West, a hospital system based in San Francisco, forgave a $782,541 housing loan it made to its CEO, Lloyd Dean. Counting the forgiven loan, Mr. Dean's total accrued compensation in 2005 was $5.8 million.