Today is the last day to register to vote in Pennsylvania's Nov. 4 local elections, and the small-town politics of State College will soon be heating up.
There are four seats open on State College Borough Council, and only two incumbents, Tom Daubert and Cathy Dauler, are running for re-election. Seven other candidates, including three Democrats, two Republicans and two Independents, are also running for the four seats.
Daubert, a Republican, said this year's race will be harder than usual for incumbents to win, and he expects the election to be close. He added that student housing may become a major issue in the election.
Daubert said a group calling itself Citizens for a Better Borough has endorsed three candidates, Richard Garis, Jeffrey Kern and Jeffrey Deitrich. The group's members are mostly property owners and developers who rent apartments to students, he added.
"In my opinion, what they're trying to do is have very few zoning regulations and make more money with rental properties for students," he said.
Daubert added that about half the members in Citizens for a Better Borough are not actually residents of the borough.
He said the group will make the race difficult for other candidates because it has the money to advertise and get recruit voters more effectively. "You never know what's going to happen. I'm going to work very hard on this [campaign]," Daubert said. "If these three get elected, let's just say things will be a lot more different than they are."
Mary Barnes, one of the Democratic candidates, said she is also opposed to the group's involvement in State College politics. She said the group's main objectives are to defeat Daubert and Dauler and get more "developer-friendly people" on council.
Barnes has served on the State College Zoning Hearing Board for the last year and a half and said historic neighborhoods would be in danger of being overrun with slum-like student housing if the candidates endorsed by Citizens for a Better Borough are elected.
"The worst developers are the ones creating substandard housing and then renting them to students," she said. "Then students are blamed for the problems in [an] area, and that's not fair."
Kern, who is listed as a Republican candidate but said he has recently switched his political affiliation to independent, said the problem is restrictive zoning regulations imposed by council -- not the developers.
He said that as of now, developers are not allowed to build newer, bigger and nicer student housing in areas like the Urban Village. All they can do is convert the existing old houses or small buildings into apartments, and that is where the slum-like housing occurs.
"If the developers were allowed some flexibility, some of them might be willing to tear them down and build nicer housing," Kern said.
He added that Citizens for a Better Borough may be endorsing him, but he has no official affiliation with the group and has accepted no money from it for his campaign.
Kern has been chairman of various committees and commissions for council. He said council needs to change the way it works with staff members and residents. "I think they need to listen rather than lecture," Kern said.
Representatives of Citizens for a Better Borough could not be reached for comment.
Undergraduate Student Government (USG) South Halls Sen. Ace Ekhtiarzadeh said the organization has been working very hard this year to get students registered to vote locally.
"I've been here for three years, and this is the most aggressive effort I've seen," Ekhtiarzadeh said.
He said USG Senate recently passed legislation that enabled voter registration forms to be placed in all of roughly 6,500 student mailboxes on campus.
Registration forms are available online from www.dos.state.pa.us, or students can pick them up at the USG office in 203 HUB-Robeson Center. USG representatives will also forward them to the election office in Bellefonte before tonight's deadline.
