Snow tow ordinance

Snow tow ordinance
SALEM -- City residents must get their vehicles off street-side parking spaces during heavy snows, or tow-truck drivers will do it for them.
City council approved changes Tuesday in a snow-emergency ordinance. They include making all city streets, instead of just a few, subject to a snow-emergency declaration.
When an emergency is announced over the radio or television, residents must take their vehicles off the street, which allows plows to more efficiently scrape snow from the roadway. Vehicles that aren't moved may be towed and their owners fined.
An emergency is likely to be declared any time 4 or more inches of snow falls at once.
English in Germany
SHARON, Pa. -- U.S Rep. Phil English of Erie, R-3rd, is in Germany seeking to improve economic development in northwestern Pennsylvania by deepening the U.S.-German alliance.
English said he has helped forge communications between local economic development groups and businesses in Germany in the past. The most important aspect of this trip is the potential to shore up the Erie-Cottbus Germany Air link, which could provide a serious local economic boost, he said. English will return Tuesday.
Zoning approval
SHARON, Pa. -- The city's Zoning Board of Appeals has granted a variance to Ralph Shingledecker, allowing him to put an electronics shop in a former gas station at 614 Spruce Ave.
It's in a single-family residential district and Shingledecker needed a variance, said Frank Smeraglia, city zoning and code officer.
The shop won't be a retail store but will deal in security equipment for stores and businesses, Smeraglia said.
The board also granted a variance Tuesday to Lynn Sherretts to allow her to move her home beauty shop from Independence Court to her new home at 956 Alcoma St., also in a single-family residential district.
She got a similar variance 13 years ago to open her shop in her Independence Court home, Smeraglia said.
Pittsburgh prison closing
PITTSBURGH (AP) -- The State Correctional Institution-Pittsburgh will close by Jan. 1, as reflected in Gov. Ed Rendell's new state budget.
SCI-Pittsburgh opened in 1882 and still has about 600 workers, but 98 so far have requested transfers to SCI-Fayette, one of two new prisons the state opened last year. The other is in Forest County, and each prison is expected to house 2,000 to 2,200 inmates.
The remaining Pittsburgh employees can also request transfers to SCI-Fayette or to any other state prison, said Susan McNaughton, a spokeswoman for the Department of Corrections.
SCI-Pittsburgh will get just $21.4 million in the 2004-2005 budget that Rendell unveiled earlier this month, down from $42.3 million in the current fiscal year budget. SCI-Fayette, by comparison, will get $54 million next fiscal year, up from $46.1 million this year.
Sex-abuse report
PITTSBURGH (AP) -- The Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh will release a report next week containing the number of sexual abuse allegations against priests since 1950.
Although some U.S. dioceses have released similar reports, the Pittsburgh diocese will wait until Feb. 27. That's when the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York will release a national survey of such statistics from all 195 U.S. dioceses.
"By waiting to release them when the national figures come out, there will be a context in which to understand what is being reported," said the Rev. Ron Lengwin, diocesan spokesman.
The individual diocesan report will also disclose how much money the church has paid out as a result of abuse allegations.