Four seats on township board up for election
Voters will choose four members of the Springfield Township Board of Commissioners Nov. 6, and although two incumbents are running unopposed, the differences between the candidates in the two remaining races give township residents a clear choice for the future.
The outcome of those races will determine which political party dominates the board for the next two years, as well as the direction of township policy regarding trails, historic preservation and property rights.
The unopposed candidates are Democrat Baird Standish, who is running for a second term from Ward 5, and Republican Glenn Schaum, who serves Ward 3 and was elected to the board in 1997.
In Ward 7, a relative newcomer — and a relatively new Democrat — is challenging two-term incumbent Republican Robert Gillies.
Bonny Davis tried unsuccessfully to capture the Republican nomination for township treasurer in the 2005 primary. She switched parties afterward, she said this week, because she was disappointed that the Republican Party did not support her candidacy.
Davis is an accountant with Fesnak & Associates LLP in Blue Bell and she previously worked for 15 years as a paralegal. The experience from both positions will serve her well on the board of commissioners, she said.
The two issues most important to her are the safety of the township's streets and historic preservation, she said. For 20 years, she said, she has worked to improve pedestrian safety at the intersection of Church and Paper Mill roads, and she would like to see the township place a crossing guard at Paper Mill and Bergen Road, which is near the entrance to Route 309.
"Children don't feel safe crossing the street," she said.
Davis' daughter, Jenna Solomon, works as a historic preservation officer in Annapolis, Md., and Davis said she wants to see a similar position created in Springfield after the passage of a historic preservation ordinance.
"It's unimportant to a lot of people," she said. "They don't understand when something is torn down, it's gone forever."
Gillies, who was elected to the board of commissioners in 1999, has been an outspoken opponent of spending additional township money for the preservation of the Black Horse Inn, although he supported a renovation plan, which other commissioners thought too expensive, for the parking lot at the Flourtown Country Club.
The difference between the two projects, Gillies said this week, is that the country club generates income for the township, whereas the renovation of the Black Horse will cost $2 million, and its use has not been determined.
He is also skeptical about a proposed riparian ordinance limiting development near streams in the township because, he said, it threatens to interfere with rights of property owners. In the past year, the township has managed to preserve more than 100 acres of the Tecce, Boorse and Piszek tracts by working with developers, he said.
"There's two positions being taken in the election regarding taxes and expenditures with our money, as well as property rights," he said.
Gillies is a senior project manager at Patterson and Co., a general contractor in Philadelphia.
"Being involved in construction has clearly been an advantage [on the board of commissioners], since a lot of what we do deals with actual construction," he said.
In Ward 1, Republican Roy Hanshaw Jr. and Democrat Doug Heller are competing to succeed Democrat Kathleen Lunn, who is stepping down after one term on the board.
Hanshaw grew up in Springfield and attended La Salle College High School. His father, Roy Sr., was a township commissioner from Oreland for 16 years, and, in an interview this week, Hanshaw said he first got involved in township administration in the 1990s, when his father got him appointed to the township parks committee.
He has also been the chief umpire and the vice president of the Oreland-Wyndmoor Little League, and he served one term on the Springfield School Board from 1999 to 2003.
He is self-employed, designing athletic awards systems for colleges and universities, and he counts two-thirds of high schools in Eastern Pennsylvania as his clients.
"I believe in fiscal responsibility," Hanshaw said. "I'm not against everything, but it has to make sense. I'm not one who's big on changing a lot of things in Springfield. I like Springfield the way it is.
"I like the fact that that it has a small-town feel to it. It's a community people live in and move back to."
Like Gillies, Hanshaw said he opposes using additional tax dollars to fund the Black Horse Inn renovation, and he said he would vote against any attempt to place new trails in Springfield Township.
The attitude of Hanshaw's opponent, Doug Heller, toward trails is more nuanced. In an interview this week, Heller said while he approves of trails, he would make sure the needs and concerns of residents are heard.
"The trails go in right behind my house," Heller said. "I'm right up against the Wissahickon. And frankly, they could do a much better job in communicating, in planning, in execution and in the machinery they use."
Heller became a familiar face at commissioners' meeting when he argued for the preservation of the Black Horse Inn. He helped to found the group that became the Friends of Historic Bethlehem Pike.
"The truth of it is, the raison d'etre for the Black Horse is to retain the integrity of historic Bethlehem Pike," he said. "If we had lost that and that had become just another parking lot, we really would have started heading toward [becoming] another commuter corridor.
"We have to pay attention to our historic community, We need to increase our open spaces. We need to take control of our roads."
Heller grew up in Northern New Jersey and has lived in Springfield for 17 years. He is a self-employed Web page designer and a former crossword puzzle editor.