The Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources awarded an $185,000 grant to the Schuylkill River Heritage Area last week. The funds are earmarked to benefit Schuylkill River Trail towns, recreation, ecotourism and local conservation organizations throughout the five counties along the river.

Although about $65,000 of the grant will be open to go to Schuylkill River Trail projects and communities – including the annual Schuylkill River Sojourn, a Schuylkill River paddle for local and community leaders, a Schuylkill River Heritage Area Interpretive Center and the heritage area’s annual art show – Schuylkill River Heritage Area Grants Project Manager Tim Fenchel said he is not sure any of the funds will benefit the Fairmount, Manayunk and East Falls areas of the trail.

“Some of the funds are going toward heritage towns and tourism partners, but they haven’t been decided yet,” Fenchel said, adding that those funds likely will be part of a smaller grant program like the SRHA’s minigrant program in the Schuylkill Highlands. “I don’t know at this point what will be going toward which area. Part is going toward the 2011 Schuylkill River Sojourn, which does make its second to last stop in Manayunk, so there is potential for there to be partners in the Manayunk area.”

SRHA’s new Schuylkill River Towns project, Fenchel added, defines a “town” as any area or community that is tied to the Schuylkill River Trail itself or has access to it, including Norristown, Pottstown, Manayunk, East Falls, Fairmount and several other towns and neighborhoods throughout the region.

East Falls Development Corporation Executive Director Gina Snyder, also an SRHA board member for the last four years, stressed the importance of getting people who live in the Schuylkill area to be happy about the trail and understand its importance to local neighborhoods and business.

“This grant is wonderful,” Snyder said. “The money that comes into the area has to go both in Philadelphia and outside of Philadelphia because the Schuylkill River is 120 miles long, so we want the whole Schuylkill area to be supported. It helps the city when people in the suburbs understand more about the river.”

If the remaining money becomes available for local organizations to obtain, Snyder said she would be interested in having her organization apply. In the event that happens, she would step back as a board member for the interim while recipients are selected.

“They have a program for the towns and tours program, and we are likely to apply for that,” she explained. “We have a signage plan that we would really like to get funded where we would use SRHA signage [in a plan that] takes their signage and puts it in our neighborhoods, pulling people from the trail and the river into the neighborhoods.”

Chris Kingsley, who established the Friends of Ivy Ridge Trail organization in Manayunk, said money going to Schuylkill trails and other development anywhere is good for all of the communities along the river.

“The DCNR has been extremely supportive of the kind of work we’re trying to do along the waterfront,” Kingsley said. “The watershed is huge and when you talk about things like recreational space and water quality, you have to tackle that regionally, which is a challenge, given politics and how local most of us are. That’s the job of the DCNR.”

Currently, Kingsley said the DCNR is also supporting a feasibility and design study of a few trails in Manayunk, including one into Lower Merion, among a few other projects with which his organization is involved.

Manayunk recently received funding in the form of two grants as part of the Pennsylvania DCNR 2010 Community Conservation Partnerships Program to fund those studies, the first of which will center on the Manayunk Bridge and Ivy Ridge Trail and the second, which will focus on the West Bank Connector between the West Bank Greenway, the newly reopened South Street Bridge and the 34th Street Bridge.

About one-third of the SRHA grant will go directly to local communities and organizations as part of the second year of SRHA’s minigrant program in the Schuylkill Highlands, which stretch from Valley Forge to Reading and Elverson to Green Lane. In partnership with the Natural Lands Trust, Fenchel said the SRHA will give minigrants up to $20,000 to small conservation organizations and local governments in the area to pay for their own projects.

Another roughly $60,000 of the grant will directly go to the SHRA’s operating budget. Fenchel said his organization is one of 12 state heritage areas to receive these funds from the Pennsylvania DCNR.

The SHRA applied for the grant as part of a Community Conservation Partnerships Program with the DCNR. Though this particular grant is fairly large, there are a number of projects in the area still in need of money.

“There are certainly a lot of projects that still remain to be funded,” Fenchel said.**

William Penn’s vision of a “Greene Country Towne” faded to black and gray long ago. Viewed from above, Philadelphia today has huge swaths of hot spots—where asphalt and concrete predominate and the color green is hard to find. This is what makes the program underway to reforest the city so interesting.

No one exactly uses the word ‘reforest,’ but the ambitious scope of the Philadelphia Tree Planting Initiative demands a re-imagining of the city’s landscape.

The plan’s ambitious—and almost certainly unattainable—goal is to plant 300,000 trees over the next five years and to double the percentage of the city’s tree cover (or canopy, as it is called) by 2026.

The initiative nearly tripped and fell before it had a chance to begin. Mayor Nutter originally allocated $2.5 million for tree planting this year in the Department of Recreation’s budget, but later deleted the line item after City Council balked at the administration’s spending plans. He made those cuts official on Thursday (July 15) and it will result in the layoff of 13 Rec Department employees who were to work in the program. It was a retreat by the mayor, who was a supporter of the initiative

But, according to Patrick Morgan of the rec department, there is still $2.5 million set aside in the city’s capital budget for three planting, plus $1.6 million in federal stimulus funds to pay for a year-long project to use laser technology to map with precision the city’s tree canopy from the air.

Morgan admits that the 300,000 new tree goal is: “a crazy number, but it’s one of those things that’s like ‘Go to the Moon.’ It’s crazy, but liberating. It frees us from institutional, bureaucratic barriers.”

Fortunately for the city, its partner in the project is the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, which has decades of experience in finding ways to add green to the city, dating back to its community garden program in the 1970s.

Among the public, the Horticultural Society is best known for the Philadelphia Flower Show, its annual extravaganza of haute gardening, but the society has strong street creds as well. Its 400 community gardens, planted on vacant and derelict lots, have greened up and helped sustain some of the city’s poorest blocks. Its Greening of Kensington project, which it ran from 1995 to 2002, is credited with helping to revitalize—and beautify—that gritty neighborhood.

As part of its current Tree Vitalize program, the society has recruited Tree Tenders in dozens of neighborhoods.

As part of that program, a group of Tree Tenders congregated in Francisville in April to plant 50 trees around the Francisville Recreation Center.

When Michael Leff, the society’s point person on the tree initiative, talks about the project, he conjures up an image of, well, a tree with numerous branches, eventually spreading out across the city. He sees it (no pun intended) as a grassroots movement.

“It’s so dependent on partnership and collaboration at all levels, all the way up and down—from individual homeowner to commercial group to city agencies involved, to multiple city agencies to each other,” Leff said. “Not to mention the state [and] federal support from the forest service Part of what makes it effective is getting that incredible partnership.”

Morgan, Leff and the Tree Initiative folks make a compelling case for expanding the city’s inventory of trees. There is nothing as lovely as a tree, but trees are not simply pretty things, they are ecological workhorses, removing pollutants from the air and absorbing the runoff of storm water, thereby reducing the likelihood of floods or the necessity of building storm water holding tanks to manage sudden flows of water.

Take the Frankford-Tacony watershed, which runs in a band along the Frankford Creek, from the near suburbs eastward to the Delaware River. According to a U.S. Forest Service study, the watershed has a 27 percent tree cover, which absorbs 761,000 tons of sulfur-dioxide, carbon-monoxide, ozone and other pollutants each year, in addition to absorbing 28 million cubic feet of storm water.

Obviously, a greater tree cover—especially in the city’s end of the watershed, where the canopy lowest—would mean more pollutants removed and more storm water absorbed.

Trees also reduce the “heat island” effect, common in dense urban environments, where acres of concrete and asphalt surfaces trap the heat. It’s the reason the temperature is always several degrees higher in Philadelphia than in northern and western suburbs, as the weather people always say.

Overall, Philadelphia’s tree canopy is much lower than other, similar urban areas. Tree cover here amounts to 15.7 percent of the city. In New York City and Baltimore it is 21 percent; in Boston 22 percent; in Washington, D.C. 28 percent, in Atlanta 37 percent, according to the Forest Service.

The ideal is a 30-percent tree canopy, according to Alan Jaffe of the Horticultural Society, and the goal of the Tree Initiative is to take it to that number over time.

That would mean doubling the existing inventory, estimated to be 1.5 million trees in parks and natural locations and about 130,000 trees now planted on city streets.

The problem is not only that we do not have enough trees, but that the canopy is poorly distributed. Dense in some areas, scant to nearly non-existent in others.

“For the most part, there are only two neighborhoods in all of Philadelphia—the Chestnut Hill area and the Germantown area—[that] have the most tree canopy,” Jaffe said. “Then, there are South Philadelphia and central North Philadelphia, where it’s like one to two percent tree cover. There are certain target areas where we know we need to plant more.”

It isn’t easy or cheap to plant street trees in particular.

Leff estimated that each tree can cost up to $500 to plant, depending on whether sidewalks need to be cut and how many trees are planted at one time (trees cost less when purchased from nurseries in bulk).

Tree planting takes a lot of work and a considerable amount of manpower. As Leff described it, the process begins with site inspection by one of PHS’ employees or the city’s arborists, who then select the type of trees best suited for the area and order the trees from the nursery. Then, contractors are brought in to cut out squares of concrete and fill the spaces with soil and mulch until the trees are ready to be planted.

Once the trees arrive for planting, PHS distributes them to volunteers who do the planting under the instruction of PHS experts. The Society plants a variable number of trees each year, including its 1,000-tree Tree Tenders plantings around the city in the spring and fall.

During the first year of a tree’s planted life, Leff said, deep-soil watering with 15 to 20 gallons per tree on a weekly basis is crucial.

“After that, they can make it on their own,” he said. “[The first year] is a tough year to be a street tree. … The success and survivability of tree is having those people in the community who take some ownership of the tree. The tree request form they have to sign part that indicates they pledge to care for their tree.”

As it turns out, it takes a village to raise a tree.

For Lindsey Holmes and Erin Ondrejka, two seniors at Little Flower Catholic High School for Girls, a campaign they organized for students to donate their hair to cancer victims hits close to home.

Both girls have been personally affected by the disease among family members, friends and even at Little Flower, where Sister Mary Craig, a beloved junior-year theology teacher, fought her own battle with cancer.

“My sister’s best friend’s mom had cancer,” Ondrejka, of Rhawnhurst, said, explaining that the woman was a close family friend. “She had real long hair, but then would have to wear bandanas (when she lost her hair). She eventually lost the battle. She’s my inspiration. And my grandpop, who just beat cancer.”

Holmes, who lives in Mayfair, shared a similar story of her 23-year-old cousin succumbing to cancer last September. Although her cousin was a man, Holmes said she could easily see how difficult it was to lose hair from treatment.

“‘What are you doing with your hair?’ is the big question,” she said. “I couldn’t imagine going to the senior prom without any hair.”

The girls, both members of the school’s Community Service Corps, started the campaign among students when they noticed it was trendy for girls at Little Flower to chop off their long locks after the senior prom.

With the help of Brooke Hauer, the school librarian and moderator for the Community Service Corps, the duo organized a two-week drive last month and encouraged Little Flower girls to deliver their shorn hair, ponytailed and packaged in plastic bags, to a collection area in the library.

The day before the drive’s conclusion on May 25, the girls had collected 190 inches of hair from more than 20 students for donation to Pantene’s Beautiful Lengths program. It surpassed a goal of 165 inches they’d originally set when they stapled a paper cutout of a ponytail on the school bulletin board to track the drive’s progress.

“The whole thing started because we both were going to cut our hair,” Ondrejka said. “It’s kind of the thing to do. Everyone lets their hair grow and then cuts it off after prom.”

Earlier this spring, Ondrejka and Holmes presented their idea to Hauer, who helped them organize it and get the word out to Little Flower students.

They chose Pantene Beautiful Lengths rather than Locks of Love, a well-known program that aids young cancer patients, because Pantene requires only eight inches of non-chemically treated hair for a donation, while Locks of Love requires at least 10, the girls explained. A donation of eight inches seemed more manageable to many of the girls, they added.

Hauer said the school’s Community Service Corps undertakes several projects during the school year and also holds many charitable collections. Ondrejka and Holmes’ hair-donation drive, though, was a first at Little Flower.

“These two girls put the whole thing together,” said Hauer, who has worked at the school for five years. “We decided they would do it after the prom since all the girls want their hair long for the prom.”

Ondrejka donated 13 inches of her hair as part of the program, shortening the length from her lower back to above her shoulders. She was nervous – she’d kept her hair long since she was very young – but she wouldn’t hesitate to donate again.

“I don’t think my mom realized how attached to my hair I was until she saw my tears,” Ondrejka said with a laugh. “I didn’t expect to break down.”

Other girls who donated several inches of hair were nervous as well, she noted, but were comforted by reminders that it would grow back.

Holmes also donated hair to the campaign, surrendering 10 inches. Last year she helped the Locks of Love program.

To encourage students to donate, Ondrejka and Holmes distributed instructions and fact sheets from Pantene. Originally, the two organizers had planned to bring volunteer hairdressers to Little Flower but later decided to allow students to visit their usual salons and bring the packaged hair to school.

Hauer said the hair will be made into wigs for women who suffer hair loss as a result of cancer treatments. According to the Pantene Beautiful Lengths fact sheet, it takes at least six ponytails of at least eight inches to make one wig.

The school does other work for cancer charities, but Ondrejka and Holmes agreed that donating their hair was more personal and unique for the girls at Little Flower.

“There’s no point in cutting it and just throwing it away if you can cut your hair and give it to people who would really appreciate it,” Ondrejka said. “We take hair for granted. You really don’t know how much you appreciate it until it’s gone.”

No plans are set for the 32-acre site in Upper Holmesburg where construction crews will eventually demolish the 436-unit Liddonfield Homes, but many neighbors are breathing a sigh of relief at the public housing development’s closure.

“They were saying for years they were going to close Liddonfield, and it never closed,” Maria Asterga, whose parents immigrated to the United States from Cuba and moved across the street from the development in 1964, said. “It was trouble and drugs. The cops came a lot. As a child, I was worried about walking up there.”

Asterga and her parents said rumors flew around the community since they moved there that the development, built as military barracks in the ‘40s and converted to public housing in the ‘50s, would be shut down.

Until earlier this year, however, at least 174 families remained in the development, before the Philadelphia Housing Authority issued relocation notifications to them, when officials decided to close Liddonfield.

PHA Executive General Manager for Operations Keith Caldwell said the process of moving families out of the development was ongoing for several years as a result of its costly and outdated plumbing, heating and electrical systems.

“Liddonfield was one of our older public housing developments, and it became functionally obsolete,” Caldwell said. “The cost of upkeep far exceeded the benefit. The decision was made we would relocated families and demolish the site. All the families fell under the Uniform Relocation Act [for relocation] to other developments within PHA or to be issued Housing Choice vouchers, formerly known as Section 8 vouchers.”

He said the last family moved out of Liddonfield April 2 and that families issued Housing Choice vouchers had the option of moving into any Section 8 housing in the nation, adding that families were “treated with dignity and respect” during the process.

“It’s a challenge for people who have lived there for most of their lives, if not all of their lives, to be told, ‘You have to relocate,’” he said. “And unfortunately, we have no other close development to Liddonfield other than our Hill Creek site [in Olney], because everyone wants to stay in the Northeast and they want to stay in PHA.”

No concrete plans were made to demolish or revamp Liddonfield until August 2006, when, according to a PHA press release, the agency received $3.5 million in funding from the state. That money was to go toward compiling the $94 million it would need to fund its then-planned project – demolishing the old homes, filling 12 acres of the space with 225 brand-new PHA units and leaving the other 20 acres for private developers to build market-rate homes.

That plan fell flat three months later, though, when PHA was denied $20 million in federal funding for the project, according to a Northeast Times article.

The PHA website lists no information regarding the four-year halt on Liddonfield’s demolition. Caldwell said no concrete plans have been made for the site, denying rumors that Holy Family University, located several blocks north of the development, is eyeing the space for student housing.

Jessica Spinosi, a mother of three young children who moved from Mayfair into a cul-de-sac across the street from Liddonfield a year ago, said she is glad to see the development shut down, but hesitant about what demolition might bring.

“All the mice and rats, I’m not looking forward to that,” she said. “[But] I’d rather have noise than violence.”

Like Asterga, Spinosi said she noticed issues with crime she related to the development.

“It wasn’t so much the kids as the adults causing trouble. There was so much fighting and drug dealing,” she said. “[Some nights,] there were groups of people, not just one or two, but seven or 12, walking up and down the street. There was a hooker.”

As for crime issues, Caldwell said anytime PHA learned of problems in the development, agency authorities dealt with it properly, even evicting some families found to be associated with drug use or dealing.

“In an urban area like Philadelphia, where you have that kind of surroundings, you’re always going to have some type of activity going on,” Caldwell said. “When that was brought to our attention … we took the appropriate action, but not every crime or not every issue with drugs was associated with Liddonfield.”

He said because Liddonfield was an open development located just off Frankford Avenue, a major Philadelphia thoroughfare, it was easy to get to and from for outsiders who may have caused trouble around the development as well.

“There was always some issue with some neighbors that felt like the people there were a problem,” he added. “But we certainly did not move to relocate them because there was a problem.”

For Samuel Nalbandian, owner of Rising Sun Pizza in Lawncrest, the business is a way of life and the recession is nothing to worry about.

“For me, it’s been the same,” he said of business during the past several months. “It’s always good, as long as I’m here managing. The customers are satisfied.”

Nalbandian, who opened the pizza parlor in 1982, said while he did see a slight drop in business last year that he attributed to the recession, he doesn’t worry about the shop.

“I do worry for other people not having jobs when the economy is bad,” he said. “But as long as I do the right thing, I don’t worry [about the business].”

Like some owners throughout the Northeast’s many neighborhoods and myriad business corridors, Nalbandian is a small business owner lucky enough to skirt the worst of the decline, avoiding being hit as hard as other businesses, especially larger ones. While there are not concrete statistics for our region of the city specifically, in terms of the economy’s effect on the businesses, a consensus exists among owners and civic leaders that while the Northeast’s businesses were hit, they largely weren’t hit too hard, and will pull through and stay profitable.

Al Taubenberger, president of the Greater Northeast Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce, said in several business corridors throughout the Northeast, especially Frankford Avenue in Mayfair, Bustleton Avenue in Somerton and Frankford Avenue’s far north end near the Bucks County line, there is no palpable decline.

“I’d have to say [those areas are] growing in a sense that a shop is always replaced if one closes,” Taubenberger said. “There’s actually probably a slight growth with new businesses being built.”

But Taubenberger said other areas in the Northeast haven’t been so lucky, especially, he pointed out, Frankford Avenue under SEPTA’s Market-Frankford Line in Frankford and lower Bustleton Avenue near Oxford Circle.

“As a child, I can remember actually shopping with my mother on Frankford Avenue, where it is now part of the Frankford [Community Development Corporation], and certainly the shops are not the same type of shops,” he said. “Frankford Avenue has had some real difficulties and real challenges over the past many years.”

Frankford CDC Main Street Coordinator Theresa Hanas, however, reported a net gain of 10 businesses in her organization’s district in 2009, the year the economy was at its worst. She said in that year, 24 new businesses opened, while 14 closed or relocated outside the CDC’s coverage zone.

“[Frankford] has been pretty consistent with other commercial corridors,” she said. “Small businesses and main streets are seeing growth. I attribute it to people being laid off or forced into retirement and seeing it as an opportunity to go into business for themselves.”

She said Frankford has a larger business corridor than most areas, with 200 storefront spaces, roughly 40 of which are currently vacant, meaning that about 80 percent of the storefronts are filled.

In the Holmesburg Village section, about 3.5 miles north of Frankford along Frankford Avenue, Holmesburg Civic Association President Fred Moore reported that 25 percent of the storefronts in the neighborhood on the Frankford Avenue corridor are vacant.

“[Business] has been doing mediocre, but the recent economic downturn hasn’t had much effect. The vacant stores just remained vacant,” Moore, who has served as president for the last 10 years and lived in the area for the last 23, explained. “That’s just an ongoing thing. It’s been that way for 20 or 30 years.”

Frankford storeowner Eugene Oliveti, who owns Lou’s Shoe Repair, opened by his father on the Avenue in 1972, said he only felt the recession hit his business “a little bit,” citing that business in the store has always been somewhat ambient.

“It always was,” he said. “It’s strange just how it works, one week we’re slow, the next week we’re busy.”

Oliveti, whose shelves and worktables were full of shoes from work boots to high heels awaiting repairs, said the average cost for a shoe repair in which he generally replaces half the soles and the heels starts around $45. Hanas reasoned that price isn’t bad, considering people often spend upward of $100 or so on a pair of shoes.

“It gets a lot of customers because it’s a working class neighborhood where people invest a lot of money in shoes and need them every day,” she said.

Unlike Oliveti, Chuck McIlvain, who works the sales department for Neil’s Discount Furniture across the street from Lou’s Shoe Repair, said business has dropped, though not enough to require the store to lay off any employees.

He didn’t blame the drop in revenue of the business, located in the area for the last 30 years, solely on the economy, though.

“I attribute some to the Frankford section changing demographics,” he said, motioning to vacant storefronts nearby. “If you look around, you’ll see all these stores closed. It’s not a good neighborhood, a safe neighborhood, any longer.”

But, McIlvain, who grew up in Frankford, said he thinks things will turn around for the area.

“You have to be optimistic and hope it does,” he said. “There are small changes.”

Peter Lyde Jr. was filling in as a bouncer at Pleasures on the Ridge in North Philadelphia when he was hit in the chest during a shoot-out between feuding bar patrons May 31.

The stepgrandson of boxing legend Joe Frazier was rushed to Hahnemann University Hospital, where he died. But the men police say are responsible for his death remain at large.

Yesterday, police announced a $10,000 reward for anyone with information leading to an arrest and conviction in Lyde’s murder.

Police issued a warrant June 9 for Rodney Evans, 32, of Ludlow Street near 55th, West Philadelphia. At yesterday’s news conference, Homicide Capt. James Clark said Evans was still at large and was to be considered “armed and extremely dangerous.”

Evans is described as a black male, 6 feet 5 and approximately 250 pounds.

The second alleged shooter in Lyde’s death was described as a black male, about 5 feet 5, who was wearing a red polo shirt at the time of the incident.

Yesterday, Lyde’s father, Peter Lyde Sr., implored the public to provide any information they may have about his son’s death.

“Please come forward with information or turn yourself in [to] give us some closure, ” he said.

The $10,000 reward was put up by local members of the boxing community, family and friends, as well as Laborers’ International Union of North America Local 332, where Lyde Jr. worked with his father.

“[Lyde] was one of the sweetest, kindest people,” said Khaliah Ali, legendary boxer Muhammad Ali’s daughter, who attended the conference yesterday to show her support.

“Our families have fought a lot of fights together, and this is yet another fight we find ourselves in together.”

Lyde was also the stepson of Municipal Court Judge Jacquelyn Frazier-Lyde.

In the hours preceding his death, Lyde was filling in as a bouncer for his friend at the bar, Pleasures on the Ridge, near 22nd Street and Ridge Avenue. He had not worked there before that evening, Lyde Sr. said. About 1:50 a.m. Lyde was shot in the chest after becoming caught in the crossfire that erupted between two feuding patrons.

Lyde Sr. added that his son usually worked as a laborer at the Pennsylvania Convention Center for trade shows.

Tipsters can contact the Citizens Crime Commission at 215-546-TIPS.

A trio of armed robbers suspected of preying on at least three area businesses may have been involved in another robbery last night, police officials said.

They suspect the cases are linked because all involve a man with a sawed-off shotgun who is about 5 feet 9 and wears dark clothing.

The crooks struck first on July 10, at the Just in Time Furniture Distributors, on Frankford Avenue near Sedgley.

The men sneaked into the East Frankford warehouse through an unlocked door about 4:20 p.m. and terrorized two employees, said police spokesman Lt. Frank Vanore.

The employees were forced to lie on the ground. One of the crooks, dressed in dark clothing, fired a shotgun at boxes to intimidate the employees, Vanore said.

The crooks made off with about $7,000. The employees were left unharmed in a locked storage locker, Vanore said.

About 5 a.m. Sunday, one man – possibly from the same band of crooks – jumped through the drive-through window of a Burger King on Cottman Avenue near Algon in Rhawnhurst, Vanore said.

The shotgun-toting man ordered employees to get on the ground and give him cash. It was unclear how much money he took.

On Thursday, surveillance footage showed three suspects barging into a Pizza Hut on Castor Avenue near Wyoming in Juniata, Vanore said.

The bandits – one armed with a shotgun, another with a silver handgun – vaulted a counter and “took over the place” while stealing an unknown amount of cash, Vanore said.

Last night, investigators were trying to determine if the same three bandits struck a check-cashing store at 47th and Spruce streets in West Philadelphia.

A man walked into the business about 4:30 p.m., pretending to be a UPS delivery man, said Lt. John Walker of Southwest Detectives.

Moments later, his two gun-toting cohorts barged in and robbed the business. The three men fled with surveillance tapes from the business, Walker said.

FOR THE LAST five years, working full time at the Bridesburg Recreation Center, Jacqueline DeSanctis didn’t receive a paycheck.

But to DeSanctis, 71, who has worked at the rec center for 50 years – 45 as an employee and five as a volunteer – money is no object.

“What you get back from a community like this, there’s no paycheck for,” DeSanctis said yesterday, her 50th anniversary at the rec center, at Richmond and Buckius streets, in Bridesburg. “There’s no money value.”

Yesterday was “Miss Jackie Day” at the center. But the festivities – including gifts, a cake with her photo on it, a congratulatory serenade and a visit from city Parks and Recreation Commissioner Mike DiBerardinis – didn’t stop DeSanctis from going about her usual day, watching the children in the pool and minding the center’s many activities.

Pool-maintenance attendant Bill Godfrey, 24, who has worked summers with DeSanctis for the last six years, said that nothing could make her miss a beat.

“If the president was here, she’d be like, ‘Sorry, Mr. Obama, I need to work by the pool now,’ ” Godfrey said.

And she was by the pool yesterday afternoon, wearing her “Queen of Bridesburg” sash and watching dozens of children during their afternoon swim lessons.

“She’s a tough cookie, but at the same time, she’s the sweetest person,” said Cathy Hammerstein, a pool-equipment operator whose children spend summers at the center. “She’s very dedicated to the kids.”

Hammerstein’s 10-year-old daughter, Caitlin, acts as a secretary for DeSanctis, running messages between DeSanctis while she works inside and Hammerstein, who spends all day by the pool.

“It’s kind of fun,” Caitlin said of working with Miss Jackie, adding that last summer she received a thank-you card in the mail from DeSanctis. “I like to volunteer and help people.”

DeSanctis’ history at Bridesburg Rec began as a temporary career for the Chester County native.

“I was going to work here for four years and leave, because I was married to a dental-school student,” she recalled. “But he left and I stayed. Now I hang my hat in Torresdale, but I spend 50 to 60 hours a week here.”

After her first husband left, DeSanctis remarried and had a son, who now has three children and lives in Maine. Her husband, she said, splits his time living with her in Torresdale, spending winters in Florida and staying with their son in New England.

“It wouldn’t work for some people, but it works for us,” she said.

Much of her dedication, after all, lies with her “kids,” as she calls them – three generations now – with whom she has worked at the rec center.

“The difference is, if the job’s your hobby, it’s not a job,” she said, adding that she usually works 8:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. “I guess it just gives me a good feeling.”

And her presence does have an impact, employees said.

“It’s awesome, especially in these days and times with so many negative things kids are bombarded with,” said Alain Joinville, Department of Recreation public-affairs coordinator, as he watched DeSanctis work by the pool yesterday. “It’s great to know they have a place to come for fun, safe activities.”

Facility manager Michael Bernaudo, who started working at Bridesburg rec center in May, said that he had not met anyone like DeSanctis at the several other rec centers in the city where he has worked.

“Bridesburg rec center is as strong as it is because of her,” said Bernaudo. “Every place has volunteers, but never anyone who does 12 hours a day, five days a week. And she loves it. She steps right up every time.”

Hammerstein, who moved to Bridesburg from Fishtown five years ago, agreed. She said that Fishtown’s neighborhood pool, one of 27 that are closed this summer as part of city budget cuts, was nothing like the one in Bridesburg.

Put simply, DeSanctis is what separates Bridesburg’s community from others, Hammerstein said.

“That’s why we’re scared if she does decide to leave us, or, God forbid, has to,” she said. “You hear ‘Bridesburg’ and you think of Miss Jackie.”

But DeSanctis said that her departure won’t happen anytime soon.

“As long as I can do what I’m doing and do it right, I have no plans on going,” she said. “What I’ve gotten from the community here you can’t buy.”

Gay-porn star Taleon Goffney won’t be making any new Internet videos with his twin brother anytime soon.

Instead, he’ll be serving three to eight years in state prison for two February 2008 rooftop burglaries of businesses near 9th Street and Washington Avenue, in South Philadelphia.

“Thank you for your lenience in accepting my plea,” Goffney, who was previously charged with similar burglaries and has been incarcerated since his February 2008 arrest, told Judge Lisa M. Rau in court yesterday. “These crimes won’t be happening again.”

Goffney yesterday pleaded guilty to two counts each of burglary and criminal conspiracy under a plea deal between his attorney, Michael F. Gushue, and Assistant District Attorney Caroline Keating.

As part of the agreement, Goffney, 27, identified his twin, Keyontyli, who is free on bail and attended the hearing, as a co-conspirator in the burglaries.

Keating alleged that Keyontyli Goffney, who is to appear in court Aug. 6 for his role in the burglaries, served as a driver and a lookout in the crimes.

During yesterday’s proceeding, she and Gushue disagreed on the original terms of the plea agreement, which included a guilty plea with consecutive two-to-four-year sentences.

Attorneys later renegotiated the deal.

Afterward, Gushue said that he and Goffney, who, he said, plans to complete his college degree while incarcerated, were content with the outcome.

“I think he’s had an epiphany,” Gushue said. “He’s a bright young man.”

Other charges, including criminal trespass, receiving stolen property and possession of an instrument of crime, were dropped.

“[The sentence] was negotiated, so it’s an appropriate sentence,” Keating said, adding that because of his prior record, Goffney is sure to serve at least the minimum three years.

“I wish him luck. I hope he does turn his life around.”

If Goffney’s case had gone to trial, he could have faced a maximum of 40 years in prison.

Bargaining teams from the city’s two municipal unions met with city negotiators yesterday, 10 days after union contracts expired, to begin hashing out new agreements.

The talks focused initially on healthcare.

“We’re looking to change the entire funding structure [on healthcare],” lead city negotiator Shannon Farmer said after a two-hour morning meeting with blue-collar union DC 33, during which each party spent most of the time in separate caucuses.

Most of a roughly two-hour afternoon meeting with white-collar union DC 47 was spent at the bargaining table. Farmer said the city proposed a similar financial restructuring for that union.

The Nutter administration has requested that both unions accept concessions to the tune of $125 million over the next five years to cope with the budget shortfall.

After yesterday’s negotiations, however, union leaders said they had no plans to back down.

“For the city to say they’re going to take what we already have, we’re not going to allow it,” DC 33 leader Pete Matthews said, adding that he has yet to review the city’s proposal. “We’ve been more than fair.”

After DC 47′s meeting, union leader Cathy Scott expressed disappointment that despite her union’s request for a list detailing city savings for each concession, bargaining team members saw nothing of the kind.

“I think we are moving in the wrong direction. We’re going backwards instead of forward,” Scott said. “To be coming in on July 10, 10 days after our contract expired, is very problematic.”

Both leaders indicated that the unions were not preparing for strike votes at this time.