| State support doesn't make grade
McCambridge said the tax base on new development likely easily covered the cost of that small increase. It is when Central Bucks saw growth of 900 students a year — forcing it to build schools — that the expense of new homes showed, said McCambridge and Dave Matyas, the district's business administrator. “If we had 100 kids and the kids were distributed equally throughout the school district, it wouldn't be a problem," Matyas said. “When kids come in groups, they become quite a bit more expensive." Tax increases in Central Bucks during years of explosive growth and school building demonstrate how costs can add up: Property taxes increased 67 percent from 1995 to 2004, amid huge enrollment jumps. An official with the Heritage Conservancy, a Doylestown-based land preservation group, said single-family homes in Plumstead, Buckingham and Doylestown likely do not represent the average house being built in the communities Central Bucks serves.
Gas thefts needle area merchants
Avi Amoyal allowed customers to pump gasoline at his Baltimore service station for 10 years.
But that changed two years ago.
"When the gas prices went up, and everyone was freaking out, we had one or two drive-offs," said Amoyal, who has owned the Falls Road Sunoco at 4533 Falls Road for 12 years. "Those were in one week; we had another one the next week. We had to make a decision."
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To Magedson's credit, people only know how hard he's worked to hide because they've tried just as hard to find him. He says they want to kill him. (They say they only want to serve him with lawsuits . . . although they're certainly not above posting information about him on the Internet while they're at it.) But despite his efforts to live off the public-records grid, there's plenty you can know about Ed Magedson without even talking to him: the legal battles, the allegations of extortion, even his parents' death certificates and the paperwork from that old 1970s pot bust. That's the Internet for you. And if Magedson is virtually anonymous in Maricopa County, where he's lived for almost two decades, he's famous on the Internet. Before the Internet became ubiquitous, you could only humiliate someone if you had connections, if you could get the attention of a newspaper reporter or were willing to picket in front of an office.
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