The Philadelphia Inquirer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • B1

tnladelfnqptm I Sunday, aug. 4, 2019 inquirer.com city suburbs Learning about the Philadelphian who "invented" ice cream. B3 CITY SUBURBS SOUTH JERSEY Defying the state on plastic-bag ban "It's the right thing to do," a West Chester councilman said. The ban won't take effect for a year, but some have started. Buried inside Pennsylvania's latest fiscal plan was an eleventh-hour amendment from Senate Republicans that prohibits municipalities from enacting bans on single-use plastics for a year while state officials study their potential economic impact.

West Chester went forward anyway. And, as the council took up the issue before a standing-room-only crowd on July 17, the measure eked through by one vote. Don Braceland, a member of the council for five years, was prepared to vote against the measure, unwilling to open up the borough to potential legal retribution. But he had a change of heart, and became a crucial swing vote for the measure. See BAGS on B4 By Vinny Vella STAFF WRITER The West Chester Borough Council voted last month to ban single-use plastics, enacting an ordinance that directly defied a state law passed just two weeks before.

But in a town this progressive, one that recently added a sustainability director to its payroll, officials said it wasn't a decision made out of spite. "There was a tremendous outpouring from our community and beyond who wanted the borough to go ahead anyway and pass it," said Mayor Di-anne Herrin, an early proponent of the ban, first brought to the council in 2018 by a group of forward-thinking students from West Chester Friends School. "Environmental concerns are top priority for the vast majority of our constituents here," she said. "We were simply doing our job as local officials." The Chester County borough's seven-member council had been working on the legislation, which prohibits plastic shopping bags and straws in local businesses, for the better part of a year. And throughout, there was unanimous support on the council.

That is, until June 28, when Gov. Tom Wolf signed the state budget. Mayor Dianne Herrin, a ban proponent. The state recently enacted a moratorium on such bans. ANTHONY PEZZOTTI Staff Photographer Queens at Court Seeing red, lots and lots of red 1 The city's stoplights, mostly old and prone to breakdowns, are no help to easing traffic.

By Jason Laughlin STAFF WRITER Coordinating the 19 traffic lights at the intersections around Devereaux and Algon Avenues in Oxford Circle depends on a tangle of 60-year-old technology that looks like rejected parts from the space program, pre-moon landing. Of the city's nearly 3,000 intersections with traffic signals, the lights in about two-thirds are antiquated and prone to breakdowns. They're kept running with spare parts, ingenuity, and a crew of about a dozen workers who must set the lights' timers by hand, or make repairs in one corridor of the city or another at least once a month. "We have constant maintenance with those because they're older systems," said Tom Schindler, traffic signal supervisor with the Philadelphia Streets Department. "Keeping the signals synchronized is a bigger thing than people realize." With congestion growing and the streets increasingly needing to be shared among cars, bicycles, and pedestrians, traffic-light timing is a key tool to easing traffic jams.

Except in rush hour, officials said, traffic signals' timing can make the difference between a free flow of vehicles and congestion. "It's significant off rush hour," said Patrick Callahan, traffic systems engi-See TRAFFIC LIGHTS on B8 ReRe Boylan gives it a roll under the watch of (from left) Trish Mitchell, Pat Bastian, and Roe Hufner in Stone Harbor. When the women are not running the show at beach homes for family and friends, their bocce league meets on summer Wednesdays, william thomas cain Matriarchs rule at the Shore. Bocce is for unwinding. By Amy S.

Rosenberg STAFF WRITER TONE HARBOR, N.J. Forget the cigars. And don't stand around waiting for somebody to curse in Italian. These bocce courts are in Stone Harbor, and therefore are far from makeshift. -ft They cost $21,000 each and feature artificial turf.

And a paid referee. But found on those courts are the wonderfully welcoming women who have presided over the Stone Harbor Shoobies, locals, and moments ttdownaShore WW iSfi Helen Ubinas' column does not appear this week. beach homes where perhaps you or your children may have crashed over the years some for more than 50 seasons! Don't you think they deserve to blow off a little bocce steam in style? How many weekends, how many guests, how many dinners, loads of sheets, beach tags, how much sand hosed off to avoid being tracked in the house? These women have been making the art of Shore house matriarchy look easy since the 1960s. It is in bocce where they struggle a bit. Well not everybody struggles.

There are ringers, like Marge Mirabella, who elegantly threads a bocce needle honed in Cape Coral, during the winter. (Alas, on this particular Wednesday, her See BOCCE on B5 Referee Tim Gear gets out the tape to see whose ball was closer to the smaller white ball, called a pallino. I For the latest news from the region In window box, a love lives on Tom Callen holds a photo from his wedding day with Carol, who died in June 2018, just before their 40th anniversary. The flower box, he says, is a way to feel close to her. TYGER WILLIAMS Staff Photographer flowers would die.

This spring, Tom, 70, decided he would finally start his window garden. Never out of spite for Carol, his "honey." But because imagining her fed-up laugh as he prunes the leaves makes him feel close to her. And in those imaginings, he can almost make himself believe Carol is about to walk out to him. "Come on out," he'll say. "Come on out, and give me hell for this." See LOVE STORY on B8 In their way, the petunias and impatiens that Tom Callen has planted in the window boxes of his Fishtown home are a heavenly dare.

They are for Carol, his bride of nearly 40 years, who passed last June, and left the rooms in his row-house feeling vacant, and the paradise of a garden he built in their backyard feeling empty. Carol, famously exacting, wouldn't let Tom plant out front. She worried the MIKE NEWALL (oiMikeNewall snn drain BBB. 77 CLEARING 1-YEAR CLOG FREE GUARANTEE.