Great to see Ray Bilger kick off his race for Congress with support from so many local pols. We need men of integrity like Ray in Congress to defend our Constitutional rights and create a more affordable country for us all. I've donated to his campaign using: secure.actblue.com/donate/raybi...

I went to a vigil for MN at a church Friday night. Was asked why I came, what my self interest was. I've been thinking about that a lot. My answer is that history has shown where this leads. No one is safe. Yesterday we saw you can work to heal our veterans, to honor them but it won't keep you safe.

The real “domestic terrorists” are in the White House. The victim, Alex Jeffrey Pretti, was reportedly a law abiding US citizen & an ICU nurse at the VA. He was licensed to carry a firearm. Trump & Miller are responsible for his killing & are now lying to the American people.

We're lucky that this isn't happening in State College yet, but if it isn't stopped it will come here eventually. Our U.S. Constitution explicitly bars cruel and unusual punishment, and this sure looks cruel and unusual to me. This vile, unacceptable, and unlawful behavior must end!

My office hour today has been moved to 4 pm. I plan on testing this change through May at least to see if this works better for people. I've also created an email group to send out summaries of council meetings. You can sign up with this link if you're interested. groups.google.com/g/herndon-hi...

I'm sure you've all heard about ICE shooting and killing Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis. It's a complicated situation, that's compounded by an active disinformation campaign, but what seems uncomplicated to me is that this woman should not be dead today.

We discussed the #StateCollegePA budget again 12/8: Highlights: * We've lowered the proposed tax raise from 8 mills to 2 * This budget's expenditures are $3.2M below last year's * We've deffered $1.2M in street maintenance * We're using $2.8M transfer tax windfall to pay for recurring costs ...🧵

Last Friday staff presented the proposed 2026 budget to Council. This budget includes an 8 mill tax which would raise our property tax to 30.88 mills 35% above current levels. There've been many questions/concerns about this in the community and I'll attempt to answer them in this thread. 🧵

Today's election day. I wish there were more offices up for a vote, but the ones that are really matter. Retaining judges is key to ensuring our votes are actually counted in future elections. We also need good members on school board, their opponents literally spoke against playgrounds and solar!

As an elected member of the State College Borough Council I have sworn to support the Constitution of the United States. Today I was happy to join my fellow citizens at our local No Kings protest to call on our Federal government to honor their oaths as well and uphold our Constitution. #NoKings

@geoffrushton.bsky.social does a good job summarizing the discussion of a potential road diet on Atherton East of the intersection with Westerly. Obviously neither council nor PennDOT is fully decided on this. I hope everyone will take some time to learn more about road diets and see the potential.

Last week Council met 3 times to discuss our new #zoning. With our 9/15 and 9/24 meetings that adds to over 14 hours discussing this. New zoning has many changes that can improve our town and I'm working on a summary of them, but if you'd like to chat about it in person my office hours are tomorrow.

State College Borough Council discussed residential zoning again last night. I've been pushing to allow more homes in our residential districts. A Council Member from Falls Church (@justineunderhill.bsky.social) has made a wonderful video explaining how this can both increase value and lower costs.

We'll be discussing more zoning during tonight's borough council meeting. The focus tonight will be on our residential zones, which are crucial. This new draft does a lot to increase housing opportunity in our residential zones and with a few small tweaks it can really help with affordability here.

Last night Council got a great start on finishing our zoning update. After the draft had been transmitted to us I gave a short speech at 1:48:07 addressing community concerns that have been raised around zoning and further explaining why this update is so urgently needed. Please give it a listen.

Trying to address our housing issues by deporting people is self defeating and this data shows it. The better way forward is to fix our antiquated zoning laws to allow more people to live where they want. State College's new zoning draft will be delivered to council tonight to help us do just this.

On Monday 8/11 council discussed the Pugh garage replacement and without voting roughly agreed to maintain the existing garage for 10 years instead of 3. This article captures most of our discussion, but leaves out an important detail on long term costs that makes 10 year maintenance cheaper than 3.

A car drove right into a restaurant wall last night in College Township. This could have been tragic, but fortunately no one was in the restaurant at the time. We need stronger state laws and safer road designs to prevent crashes like this.

Tonight's council agenda includes discussing the Pugh Street garage replacement. Some are still pushing to tear this garage down ASAP and build a replacement. Back in June Council was informed that with proper maintenance this garage can last 10 more years with a far lower $/year than a new build.

Great to see that Whitehall Regional Park is finally open. It sure took a while, but the results are very impressive!

State College Borough Council has met 3 times in July. Most of our time has been spent going through the income, spending priorities and major planned spending for both the borough and COG. I'll go into some important sustainability related items we discussed in this thread. 🧵 🔌💡

June 16th's council meeting packed a lot of useful information in. I shared some graphs and maps about land use in Centre County, staff updated us on the solar power purchase agreement, and we also learned more about parking projects in the next CIP (Capital Improvement Plan) read on to learn more.

The first highlight from the new zoning I wanted to post was the new Cottage Courtyard use. This would allow 4 or more single family homes to be built around a shared communal space on a single lot. This seems like a great way to add housing, especially near our many wonderful, but underused, parks.

Last night's joint meeting is now up on C-NET. It shows how to navigate the zoning draft and provide comments on it. As I said at the meeting I am sure I'll have many comments as I read through it. I know most don't have time to read hundreds of pages so I'll be posting some highlights here.

The new zoning draft has been posted! The ordinance update page is having some issues right now, but the new zoning can still be downloaded by directly hitting its links. Here's part c link which describes what is allowed in each zone district. content.civicplus.com/api/assets/p...

State College Borough has a housing affordability crisis. Updating our zoning won't fix everything, but it's a necessary first step. After years of working and waiting to make this a reality the new zoning draft will finally be revealed to council and the public tonight at 7 pm in council chambers.

June 2's council is now live on CNET. Here's a quick summary though. We re-affirmed our commitment to inclusivity, learned about ways to extend the life of our existing garages, approved the Action Sports Park, Arts Fest updates and next year's CATA budget. Click into this thread for more...

Today's a good day to vote.

May 12th's council meeting was filled with information. You can watch the whole thing on CNET, but I understand that most don't have time for that so I'll try and summarize the highlights in this thread. 🧵

Monday's council meeting included some well deserved praise for staff's handling of last week's strong storms. After that we were given the hugely disappointing news that our zoning rewrite will face another delay. The full announcement can be viewed at 1:55:06 in the C-NET meeting recording.

Here is a live view (updated every 5 minutes) of road closures in the area. It also has information on how to report issues. I'm so grateful to the amazing borough staff for putting this together so quickly and to the utility workers and first responders working to fix things safely.

State College experienced another severe storm last night that has led to power outages and road closures. Borough staff have sent out a message detailing road closures here. I know not everyone is signed up for alerts though so I'm reposting it here. notifications.civicplus.com/message/f86f...

Here’s a useful test: ask the people claiming that there are 20 million illegal aliens in our country whether their policies would change if the actual number were far lower. If the answer is no, they’ve given their game away. They don’t want border security. They want to ignore the US Constitution.

It was amazing to see hundreds of people come together today in State College to protest the destruction of our Constitution, our jobs, our savings, and our futures. It's going to take so much work to fix the damage Trump/ Musk have done in just a few short months, but we've got to give it our all.

With over 275,000 US jobs lost in March and the S&P 500 falling over 11% in just the past month I'm reminded of this post quoting a Trump interview from 2014. It seems crazy to purposely crash the economy, but this admin's actions are doing just that. The question is what will it take to stop them?

With all the insanity going on at the federal level, it's easy to miss the amazing stuff happening locally. At our last Borough Council meeting my continued requests for a calendar detailing when our zoning rewrite process will finish were finally answered and the path to affordability is now clear.

I'll be there! We need a mass movement to stop the destruction of our Constitution and our country. Today's disclosure that military plans were made over a 3rd party app, presumably to avoid a record, is just another reason why this is so urgent. The list goes on and America can't just wait 4 years.

I agree with Congressman Jeffries that the Senate must vote no on this bill. Another key reason is that it further erodes the powers granted to Congress by the US Constitution. If Congress cedes the power of the purse to Musk and Trump the checks and balances that built our country are diminished.

As NLC ends @whitehouse.senate.gov's presentation sticks with me. He calmly and clearly explained how climate change is destroying home values across our country. Disasters cause insurance rates to rise, then policies stop being renewed, then mortgages stop being available, then home values crater.

Vice president Vance addressed today's national league of cities conference. When he discussed the need to update our zoning I was hopeful, but when he vilified and lied about 20 million people and I couldn't stay to listen any more. Now more than ever we must demand that leaders tell the truth.

Great to see thousands come out to rally for science on a random Friday afternoon in DC yesterday. The most moving speakers discussed how their lives had been saved by science. People whose childhood diseases would have been death sentences decades ago were now living adults thanks to science!

Monday's council meeting was one of the longest we've had, running past 10 pm. We spent a lot of time discussing and hearing from our community about the war in Ukraine. We passed a resolution supporting Ukraine 6-1. Fast forward to 1:09:14 to hear my reasoning on this important vote.

Monday's agenda for State College Borough Council has a number of important items on it. The most consequential local voting item is amending an ordinance to make it easier for events like Sips and Sounds to be held in Sidney Friedman Park.

Staff at Congressman Thompson's office yesterday were surprised by the number of protestors outside. ~50 people at 3 pm on a Wednesday when it's ~24 F outside? Definitely something to take note of. We need far more to get the Rs in Congress to actually defend the Constitution though. #InThisTogether

I'm headed to this protest today to tell Congressman Glenn Thompson to stop handing over power to Elon Musk. Thompson should use his power in Congress to ensure that the rules of the Constitution are actually honored and the wealthiest man in the world can't simply buy control of the US government.

AZ Attorney General Kris Mayes posted this video a week ago. Since then Musk, and Trump have continued to try and usurp power and undo the US Constitution. I don't know the perfect way to stop them but it will absolutely require millions of Americans, I hope you're ready to be one of them.

At this week's town hall one community member spoke about how Trump was elected to lower the price of eggs but it has just kept going up. Another noted the rise is from bird flu. The reality is that Trump's actions are actively hurting our response to bird flu. His layoffs today make it even worse.

Dismissing corruption charges in return for political favors is even more blatant corruption. It's nice to see that even some right wing lawyers won't comply with it. I'm not the mayor of NYC, just a council member of a small borough in PA, but if this stands I wonder how long till it's tried on me?

At last night's council meeting I noted that it had been 319 days since we gave our final inputs to the zoning consultants and that we were still waiting on a draft to review. I also noted that we were still waiting on a public calendar of when to expect the draft back, but I was wrong about this.

This Monday night people from State College will come together for a Town Hall. I didn't create this event and won't pretend to know the perfect way to deal with the challenges we face from Washington. I do know that the core of a functional democracy is organized people so I'll be there, will you?