With a life-long interest in public service, becoming a policeman or a lawyer were Jack Whelan’s career choices in his youth. It all depended on whether the police academy or law school contacted him first. Law school won, thus beginning Delaware County Council Chairman Jack Whelan’s career, graduating from Temple University School of Law and also receiving a BA in criminal justice. He became Delaware County Assistant District Attorney in January 1986, as a Prosecutor, and was Trial Team Leader for the DA’s Office before starting a private practice at Doyle Whelan Doyle in 1991. In 1996 he won the race for Committeeman in Ridley Township’s 5th Ward, assigned to the police and public safety committee until 2006. In 2005 he was elected to County, and ran for Council again in 2009, and appointed chairman in 2010. He has also served as solicitor in several municipalities.

Delaware County Magazine met with Council Chairman Whelan recently to discuss a lot of Delaware County happenings, and happenings to come.

“In 2005, I ran on a platform of running on public safety and economic development. Those same issues were very prevalent, and working on them for four years those same issues were relevant in 2009 when I ran for reelection and I didn’t have to adjust my platform. When I ran in 2009 my platform again was public safety and economic development, but I had the advantage in 2009 to be able to say to the voters, to the constituents, look at my record over the last four years, look what I’ve done on my pledge to public safety and my pledge to economic development and it became a real issue as we speak today. I really didn’t think it would have so much attention, those issues when I ran in 2005, especially on the economic development and public safety, but economic development has gone to the forefront with the lost of jobs in Pennsylvania and across the country and also here in Delaware County.”

DCM: On economic development, we currently have two really big presences in Delaware County that stand out in peoples’ minds. One is Harrah’s Casino, and then we have the soccer stadium that will open up soon. JW: They’ll play their first home game on June 27th at 5 pm.

DCM: There’s going to be a big crowd down there.
JW: There will be a large, large crowd down there for that because Major League Soccer coming into Pennsylvania, into this area, on the waterfront will attract a lot of people. There are certainly a lot of soccer enthusiasts. It goes underestimated the amount of people that are interested in soccer, whether they’re parents of kids playing, who people like the Sons of Ben that have drawn my attention. When this all started I didn’t know who the Sons of Ben were, and then when I saw how enthusiastic they were, their drive, and their efforts in ticket sales has just been amazing to me because one of the criticisms of soccer is you’re not going to be able to draw the same amount of people as you do for baseball or football, and that’ll run into problems. But I believe there’s a market in this particular area for Major League Soccer.

DCM: It’s like basketball in that all you need is a ball.
JW: Right. The kids and the parents, they’re looking for a forum, a place to take the kids and show the kids that these are professional athletes and look at their skill level. The parents have these children—and I know from being a parent of four children—they involve their kids in soccer at a very young age, some 4 or 5 years old, and they keep those programs across the county up until high school in the hopes that maybe they will go on to college. Many do, some don’t. But the parents keep them involved, and they’d like to take them to a professional soccer game, and they’ve told me that as I interact. I have one child out of 4 now playing soccer, one playing football who used to play soccer, a daughter who used to play soccer but switched to basketball and volleyball, but from my experience with the soccer parents and in the Delaware County region alone—and when I say the Delaware County region I’m talking about Delaware County, Bucks County, Montgomery County, Chester County, the Philadelphia area, and then southern New Jersey from across the bridge to down the shore area, as well as northern Delaware—there’s about 20,000 kids involved in soccer, and if you just get some of them and their parents and then the regular soccer enthusiasts across the county and Philadelphia region I think you’ll be able to sell a substantial amount of tickets to justify the expenditure of soccer. One of the main concerns with the soccer stadium has been the ancillary development on the wharf. That is major. If it wasn’t for that we would have been more reluctant to spend the restricted gaming funds we invested in the soccer stadium. We invested about $28.5 million of restricted gaming funds for economic development use in this region because the City of Chester and the region needed this development and it was a great project when you look at not only having the anchor of the soccer facility and soccer but also the pledge to bring the townhomes, the restaurants, the condominiums, the expo center adjacent to the soccer, and recently the developer did commit in writing within the next 10 years to put over $200 million into that waterfront development, so that is a major advantage especially in today’s economic condition. So we’re very timely with this, and it’s going to be a great advantage to the creation of jobs, to the working families in Delaware County, the entire region quite frankly, for the unions and the laborers in that particular area.

DCM: What’s your opinion on the expansion of table games and now having them at Harrah’s Chester?
JW: I’ve never taken a formal position on gambling, but we like the idea (laughter). I’m not against or for gambling. I know people take a position, I know some are anti-gambling. I personally don’t gamble, but I’m not against it. As long as you do it reasonably and don’t expend sums that would be adverse to your family, as you as do it for entertainment, for recreation, I’m in favor of that kind of expenditure because it certainly benefits the County, benefits the City of Chester, because we get the percentages of that. Right now we’re in the unique position where we get 4 percent of the funds from gaming, different from other counties, because we had worked out an agreement since we gave the land to them that we got an additional 2 percent. The other 1 percent is that restricted account that can only be used for economic development, and the additional 1 percent is the standard state statute percentage. What we’re doing right now is we’re talking to Harrah’s about the percentages for the table games. So we’re in favor of expanding it to the extent that it will bring more money into Delaware County to keep our taxes lower.

DCM: What further economic development is on the horizon?
JW: In addition to the massive project on the waterfront, we’re constantly looking out and reaching out with our Commerce Center, our Chamber of Commerce, to try to bring new businesses into the Delaware County area. One that sticks out that I’ve been working for a number of years now on is this movie studio. This would be another massive project for Delaware County. What we’ve recently did is increase the tax incentives to bring that project to Delaware County. It’s earmarked for the Tri-State Sports area in Chester Twp and our recent discussions with the developer is that it’s not a done deal but it’s not something that’s gone away. It’s still in negotiations because of the current economic conditions and climate of the banking market, because credit is much more difficult in today’s economic conditions. That’s the problem they’re running into, getting the extension of credit. Right now we’re continuing to work with them, we’re monitoring it, we’re trying to make it easier for them to come into Delaware County because it’s actually bringing Hollywood into Delaware County, and it’s just going to be a tremendous resource for the entire area that will not only create a lot of jobs but also create a trickle expansion of other businesses that would need to be suppliers to the movie studio, including lumber and other things that are used in the building trades because they’re constantly building and breaking down studios, which we know from Albuquerque, New Mexico, where this same developer had a similar experience, and it was very, very successful. And we’re hoping that because of the work force in this region, because of the airport in close proximity and all the major transportation networks in close proximity that it makes it even better than New Mexico, and it’s just going to have a tremendous impact not only on jobs but in regard in developing that particular area of Chester Twp. They’re also working on incentives to the Chester-Upland School District to help the students. It’s a win all around, and hopefully before the end of this year we’ll be breaking ground for it.

DCM: Did you catch the Olympics where Aston, Delaware County was mentioned a few times?
JW: I didn’t. I saw bits of the Olympics.

DCM: The skaters who train out of IceWorks, every time they talked, that got play on national TV, probably international networks as well.
JW: That’s an example of how you provide this type of facility and all of a sudden people get exposure on an international level. It’s always a goal to have that effect, and on Sunday, June 27th, Delaware County will be featured on ESPN. Originally the soccer kickoff was scheduled for Saturday, but it was moved to Sunday at 5pm so ESPN could cover it.

DCM: Regarding public safety, today (March 2nd) you announced the Delaware County Green Pages on the county’s website. Media is a Transition Town. A Global project. Newer ways of doing things, solar, wind, so forth. How did the green pages come about?
JW: Years ago there may have been some criticisms that we, quote, as Republicans, were not as sensitive to environmental issues. You can debate global warming, especially given this past winter, however, we’ve always been sensitive to environment mental issues that affect our children. Again, being the father of 4, you worry about clean water, you worry about clean air, you worry about the ability of landfills. We probably have a unique situation in that county landfill is in another county, up in Berks County. We know that in approximately 15-16 years that facility is going to be filled. We have a good system where we take our trash to a transfer station, then it goes to be burned to ash, which is shipped up to the landfill. We have more land up there but it’s not available to use in this capacity unless we obtain EPA and DEP approval and that’s not going to be ruled out. But we’re always looking at ways to encourage recycling. One of the things we did build up our recycling programs to encourage the municipalities to recycle. A lot of them have moved to single-stream recycling and it’s been very effective in what’s going out to the landfill and what’s going to the different recycling plants. That’s one issue that we’ve been successful in doing. Christine (Vice-Chair Christine Fizzano Cannon) has taken the initiative on a lot of this. She suggested we form an environment and energy advisory board and we’ve done that. One of the big projects we’ve embarked on is retrofitting the entire courthouse [because of the impending PECO increases], putting in reduced-energy lightbulbs, new boilers and chillers that have more acceptable energy ratings, so we’re reducing all the energy costs for the entire county complex and we have that guarantee contract, which the savings we’re going to save will pay for the $15 million project. That’s another example of how we’ve looked at the environment issues and reacted to it to save tax dollars and to be more environmentally conscience.

DCM: Another part of Delco’s public safety is PA SAVIN (Statewide Automated Victim Information and Notification). How did that come about?
JW: SAVIN came about through an initiative by Michael Green in the DA’s office. Mike and I worked together on a lot of different projects. Mike knows that me being a former trial prosecutor, I’m very sympathetic and sensitive to whatever projects he brings forward that would benefit victims. Over the years I’ve worked with many victims groups. When he approached us with SAVIN, it was a grant however then after the first year we’d have to pay a maintenance cost and that was reasonable. I said to him it’s a good thing for Delaware County and agreed we should fund and move forward with the project. SAVIN would be a great help to victims because they feel left out of the system. Prosecutors need to do a better job of making sure they’re sensitive to the needs of victims. I think in Delaware County the prosecutors are trained in that way, but I hear complaints that Philadelphia prosecutors and about the system in general, so we want to make sure that they understand the plight of victims. One of the things this system will be able to do for victims is give them the ability to know where the offender is at all times, know when the offender is going to be released, know where the offender is in the criminal justice system as he or she moves through the system, and once they’re in a permanent place, like Graterford or even the local county facility, knowing when and if they’re going to get out.
Terrible crime victims—homicides, rapes—the person wants to know when that person gets out. It’s going to be a great tool for those victims and families. It doesn’t only apply to victims. Anyone who wants to know if so-and-so is still in jail can access the system. As long as you have a name. If it’s a common name, then it’ll provide a list.
It’s a resource similar to Meghan’s Law, but now you can go to a website and see where an individual is. With Meghan’s Law, I know they have notifications in a certain area and certain radius, but people can go on that site and scroll down the people and see that person lives near me, but it’s more of a shot in the dark where you didn’t know about them and you were just checking in general.

DCM: What other public safety factors about Delaware County would you like people to know about?
JW: We have one of the best, state-of-the-art 911 systems in the region. We have enhanced 911. More and more people are using their cell phones to dial 911, and a lot of people, especially the younger people--the older people still love that landline, I like the landline myself—just have cell phones. With landlines, your address and name will come up on the screen because your house is registered. But with cell phones we weren’t getting that. Now if you dial 911 on your cell, with our enhanced 911 system we can pinpoint your location within a foot of where that phone is. It’s a great benefit for our residents and a great public safety tool.
We’re also one of the first suburban counties outside of Philadelphia, almost a year ago, that has adopted the pandemic and strategic national stockpiling plan. In fact, one of the local counties asked us for a copy of ours to try and model theirs after ours. We’re ahead of the curve in pandemic planning emergency preparedness, and that was probably best displayed because we have a partnership with our school districts, when we were distributing the H1N1 vaccination just a few months ago we were able to go into every single school district and vaccinate every child who wanted to be vaccinated. We were very, very successful in that endeavor.
We also have Delco Alert, which we put into effect a little over a year ago. This is modeled on a system after what happened at Virginia Tech. RSAN is a remote networking system, and is used at most colleges and universities. It’s a text messaging system because all the kids are carrying cell phones they can actually text message the kids to stay in your dorm rooms, there’s a shooter on campus, or to evacuate a certain area. We took that technology and expanded it to the residents in Delaware County. You can go onto our website and sign up and we can text message you, for example, to stay inside if there’s a gas leak on your street, if there’s an escaped prisoner in Thornbury Twp don’t come out. It has a lot of practicable applications. We can also reverse-911. A lot of school districts are using it, automatically calling when schools are closed because of snow.

DCM: Delco also has all the historic records online now.
JW: Our historical archives have been enhanced over the years and we’ve been able to improve accessibility to that information. One of the neat things we have is our great library system, and through it you can access so much great information, including archives and historical information. It’s just a great system. You don’t have to be in the library—you can be—but you can use your library card and access it right from home. One of the new things just relaunched is live homework help. It’s just a great tool. Children used to be able to access it afterschool, but now it’s 24/7. If a child wants a tutor to review an English paper to correct it, they can actually email the paper to a certified English tutor who can check their grammar, their spelling, word usage, and send it back and the child can submit it in school the next day. If someone is having problem in math, they can be connected with a certified instructor in algebra, they can access a whiteboard and go over the problem with the tutor and help them with their homework and hopefully get a better grade. It’s sponsored by County Council through our library services system. That’s just one example. We also can go into the archives. We purchased archive information from different sources. You can go in and access birth and death records from years ago, you can access old obituaries, you can pull up a newspaper on the date you were born to see what was happening then. It’s just an amazing tool through clicking the library services on our website or go directly to the library services website. You can actually download books and information, at no charge, to your iPod or MP3. And archeological information is also available through that.

DCM: Where do you see Delco in ten years, in 2020?
JW: I see us as having more economic development, more growth in the county even though our county is built up. I see us as revitalizing our communities. We spent over the last five years over $20 million in revitalizing our communities and an additional $5 million in creating open space projects throughout the county. I see us continuing to spend money to revitalize our communities. I expect we would continue to get even better on the issues of public safety. The goal would be making people safe in their homes. To me, before you can address any other issue, people have to feel secure in their homes, and if they don’t, and there are certain communities that have an issue with that, and we need to address that issue, that residents in Delaware County feel safe. And we have make sure they have good paying jobs, that they the services they expect and we need to continue to provide those services, yet at the same time one of the complaints we get is that they’re being taxed to death. Their taxes are going up. Their schools are strangling them with the school taxes. The municipalities have gone up. The county tax has gone up. One of the commitments going forward, and that we’ve had in the past, is to keep the county taxes as low as possible, and one of the ways we’re doing that is we’ve gone through in the last year and have refinanced our debt so that we’re saving tax dollars on that front. We’ve also contacted the court and said we need to find ways to save tax dollars. And the courts now have been cooperated. In the past there has been a strained relationship between the courts and county council that doesn’t exist today, and the courts are conscience that even though they’ve hit record numbers in their criminal cases. In 2008-09, they went to a record high 10,000 cases, that’s felonies and misdemeanors that came into the system, not including traffic tickets or citations for disorderly conduct and that sort of thing. Even though we’ve hit record numbers, we’ve expanded on technology at the prison system. We’ve created new video rooms where now we don’t have to transport the prisoner for certain hearings, instead using video conferencing with the judge here and the prisoner there and saving the cost of transportation. We’ve also looked at other areas of the criminal justice system, with juveniles. It’s very expensive to treat them. We’re looking at other options in county and in Pennsylvania where juveniles are being treated with reduced cost. We’ve identified other programs that are adequate and at less cost to treat juvenile defenders. We’ve also initiated an early retirement incentive in 2009 and about 80 people took advantage of that. Going forward we’re going to institute an additional retirement incentive. This year, for example, I feel bad for the county employees because there was no pay raise because we’re very conscience of the economic conditions right now, and we’re very conscious of passing any additional tax burdens onto our senior citizens and working families in Delaware County so we’ve undergone this massive cost-cutting program so that what we’re doing is looking at additional tax revenues if it was to deal strictly with the issue of public safety and what we’re going to do before we walk down that path again is reduce the workforce. We believe that we’re going to have to reduce the workforce in order to tighten our budget and make sure that we’re not going to pass these types of burdens onto the residents of Delaware County. We’re very conscious of that. It was a very difficult decision in 2009 to place a tax increase on the residents and I believe even though the tax increase on the average assessed value was less than $1 a week—the average increase came out to $45 a year—even though the smallest that we could justify based on the criminal justice system, the court system and public safety issues, we believe that we have roll up our sleeves and start cutting additional costs so that in future years, as we look forward over the next few years, and the long term to, we’re cutting costs as opposed to putting additional tax burdens. I’m not sure where the school districts are going and it concerns me, and I just don’t want to overburden the residents.

I remember looking back over the four years and saying that, when I ran for reelection last year, and what did you accomplish? And when you look at all the accomplishments in that four year period I was very satisfied with what we did, and it was easy for me to campaign on my record. Even though you’re term limited, I see us aggressively moving forward and implementing new programs and trying to help the residents in better ways, trying to improve safety and economic development. I look at the term limits as an advantage. People will say the downside of term limits is you have good people that are forced out of office prematurely. However what I look at it as is that it creates a sense of urgency, where you come in every single day and you’re saying “what do I have to do today? What do I have to get done?” I want to make sure these goals that I’m setting are accomplished because you have a narrow window to accomplish them. And when I first started this job back in January of 2006, four years seemed to be, like, four years is a long time, and I’m sure high school kids when they start freshman year feel that four years is an eternity, but one of the things I learned in the Fall of 2009 is four years goes by almost with the blink of an eye. And so, when I looked at my future four years, all I could think of is that time flies so fast and that program that you’re involved in, everything you want to accomplish, the goals that you’re setting for yourself, you need to aggressively address them each and every day because, in a short period of time you’ll be at the back end of those four years saying “what have I done? What have I accomplished?” I want to be able to end the 8 year term by saying that we accomplished a tremendous amount, that we made Delaware County a better place to live, to work and to raise your family, and to make it better for the four kids I have, two teenagers and two in elementary school. That’s the goal. What can you do to create a better place? What can you do to help the residents of Delaware County? And the minute that you don’t have that as your agenda, the minute it’s not about making the place better for residents, not about helping someone in Delaware County, then it’s time to get out.