Relations With The City of Washington
Relations between the city of Washington, Pennsylvania and Washington & Jefferson College spans over two centuries, dating to the founding of both the city and the college in the 1780s. The relationship between the town and college were strong enough that the citizens of Washington offered a $50,000 donation in 1869 to the college in a successful attempt to lure the trustees to select Washington over nearby Canonsburg as the consolidated location of the college. However, the relationship was strained through most of the 20th century, as the college pursued an expansion policy that clashed with the residential neighborhood. The college's frustrations grew after preservationists unsuccessfully attempted to pass laws prohibiting the college from demolishing certain buildings that were listed on the East Washington Historic District. Relations were so bad that residents and college officials engaged in a shouting match at a meeting. Local preservationists also unsuccessfully tried to block the demolition of Hays Hall, which had been condemned. In the 1990s, the city of Washington made several unsuccessful attempts to challenge the college's tax-exempt status. In 1993, Washington appealed the Washington County Board of Assessment's determination that the college was exempt from the city's property tax. That case went to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of the college. In response, the Pennsylvania General Assembly passed a new law clarifying that that colleges were exempt from taxation, including from local property taxes. Separately, the city of Washington passed an ordinance that levied a municipal "service fee" against the College students, which was ruled to be illegal and was struck down. In the late 1990s, the college and town tried to mend fences through the Blueprint for Collaboration, a plan with detailed goals and benchmarks for the future to help the college and the city work together on economic development, environmental protection, and historic preservation.
Read more about this topic: Washington & Jefferson College
Famous quotes containing the words relations with the, relations with, relations, city and/or washington:
“Major [William] McKinley visited me. He is on a stumping tour.... I criticized the bloody-shirt course of the canvass. It seems to me to be bad “politics,” and of no use.... It is a stale issue. An increasing number of people are interested in good relations with the South.... Two ways are open to succeed in the South: 1. A division of the white voters. 2. Education of the ignorant. Bloody-shirt utterances prevent division.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“If one could be friendly with women, what a pleasure—the relationship so secret and private compared with relations with men. Why not write about it truthfully?”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“In today’s world parents find themselves at the mercy of a society which imposes pressures and priorities that allow neither time nor place for meaningful activities and relations between children and adults, which downgrade the role of parents and the functions of parenthood, and which prevent the parent from doing things he wants to do as a guide, friend, and companion to his children.”
—Urie Bronfenbrenner (b. 1917)
“How soon country people forget. When they fall in love with a city it is forever, and it is like forever. As though there never was a time when they didn’t love it. The minute they arrive at the train station or get off the ferry and glimpse the wide streets and the wasteful lamps lighting them, they know they are born for it. There, in a city, they are not so much new as themselves: their stronger, riskier selves.”
—Toni Morrison (b. 1931)
“When you wish upon a star your dreams come true.”
—Ned Washington (190l–1976)