The Columbia Courier

  Before we begin, Gentle Reader, we must express our profound sadness for those residents who just lost everything in Saturday's fire. Please consider donating to the several fundraising programs on the internet to help them. We must also convey our sincere and heartfelt admiration to the many firefighters who risked their lives and their health in extinguishing the blaze. Their courage and dedication are beyond measure.  Now, on to the topic at hand . . . Dearest Gentle Reader, Your faithful correspondent has witnessed many a spectacle in her time amongst the citizenry of our fair Columbia — the breathless social gambits, the whispered intrigues, the occasional scandals. Yet, nothing has so thoroughly upset her nerves, her composure, and her very will to cross the street, as the plague that has descended upon our beloved thoroughfares in the form of the electric bicycle and its even more audacious cousin, the electric scooter. They arrive without warning. They depart without...

Dearest Gentle Reader, Your correspondent takes up her quill with no small measure of delight — indeed, with a positively indecorous degree of satisfaction — to report upon the most extraordinary evening lately witnessed in Columbia Borough. What a spectacle it was, Dear Reader. What a magnificent, standing-room-only, barely-contained-within-its-walls spectacle! Last Tuesday, the citizens descended upon the fire hall in such numbers as to suggest either a profound civic awakening or a very poorly attended alternative event that evening.  The people came. They filled every seat and lined every wall. They spoke. And when the final vote was tallied — a unanimous rejection of the $6.35 million bid from Saadia Holdings LLC for the former McGinness Airport property — the triumph, however it arrived, belonged first and foremost to the people. You, Dearest Reader, deserve the fullest measure of praise for your attention to this four-and-a-half hour exercise in democracy. Four. And. A. Half...

Dearest Gentle Reader, Your faithful correspondent now takes up quill to address a matter of considerable local intrigue, one which has set hearts a-flutter and tempers ablaze.  We speak of rumors of a data center rising up on the former McGinness Airport site. Could Columbia Borough’s 41 remediated acres become a shining digital temple, complete with all its attendant promises, problems, and prevarications? The property has attracted a single suitor, a New York company which has tendered an offer of $6.35 million. Its intentions for the property have not been formally announced, although the council president said the company specializes in “warehousing and data centers.” Several months ago, Columbia Borough Council amended its zoning ordinance for the Light Business District to allow data centers as a use-by-right, yet councilors’ intentions remain  “under wraps.” It is worth noting, if only in passing, that the Borough’s zoning also allows warehousing (with special exceptio...

Dearest Gentle Reader, First of all, your dedicated correspondent must thank the Columbia Spy for the privilege of publishing her column in this space, which will now appear weekly on Sunday mornings and will focus on the doings in Columbia in this, its 300th year.  And now, it is with a heart most tenderly divided — between the keenest anxiety and the most cautious optimism — that your devoted correspondent takes up her quill to address the matter of Columbia Borough’s financial affairs. The present circumstances demand not merely attention, but earnest contemplation. Let us begin with the unvarnished truth: with a budget of over $9 million required to sustain Borough operations and yet a total of only $2.3 million presently in hand, one need not possess the mathematical acumen of a Cambridge scholar to perceive that the ledgers are in considerable distress. One notes, with charitable restraint, that the Borough has been conducting its fiscal affairs entirely without the guidance ...

❧ ❧ ❧  In Which Four Members of Council Outrun Both Caution and Legal Counsel — Your Correspondent Raises an Eyebrow at the Borough’s Most Irregular Work Session ✦ Columbia, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania — The Fifth of May, in the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand and Twenty-Six Dearest Gentle Reader, Your correspondent has read of many a civic spectacle in the noble Borough of Columbia, but rarely has she read of a work session with her eyebrow so thoroughly elevated as after the evening of the fifth of May — wherein council undertook to approve an employment agreement for the incoming Chief of Police with all the delicate precision of a gentleman threading a needle whilst wearing riding gloves. The new Chief, one Holly Arndt, appears by every account a most capable and suitable personage. That her agreement was nearly entangled in a thicket of contradictory contractual language is no fault of hers whatsoever. When a lawyer says a contract contradicts itself, the proper response is t...

Dearest Gentle Reader, Your humble correspondent must take up her quill today to address a matter of some considerable civic importance — one that touches upon glory misappropriated, history insufficiently celebrated, and the peculiar habit of one’s neighbors claiming credit for one’s own most magnificent inheritance. Let us speak plainly of Columbia — that storied borough upon the Susquehanna — and of two of the most extraordinary sons ever to grace its streets: Mr. William Whipper and Mr. Stephen Smith. These gentlemen, one a businessman and abolitionist of the first order, the other his equally formidable partner, operated a lumberyard in Columbia that was, in truth, something altogether more magnificent than mere commerce. Hidden within their train cars were secret compartments, and within those compartments rode human souls — men, women, and children — traveling from the darkness of bondage toward the blessed light of freedom. Dear Reader, one shudders with admiration. And yet — a...

  Dearest Gentle Reader , It is with the greatest of pleasure, and no small measure of civic pride, that your devoted correspondent takes up her quill to relay the magnificent spectacle that graced the streets of our beloved Columbia this past Saturday. For indeed, a Lancaster County Firefighters Parade of considerable grandeur unfolded before the eyes of those fortunate enough to bear witness. The procession was, in a word, resplendent. Fire apparatus of various descriptions, drawn from the stations of Lancaster County and, in a gesture of inclusivity, from York County as well, which made their way through our streets. One must commend Columbia's generous and welcoming spirit; we do not turn away a good fire truck, regardless of its county of origin.  And let us not forget all of the other organizations that participated, too numerous to list here. There were also, one is delighted to report, representatives of those indispensable if less glamorous pillars of civilized societ...