The Almanac: Hagy, Heintz, Wilding winners at Almanac banquet

For the first time in the 22-year history of the event, a male from Mt. Lebanon claimed The Almanac's prized honor as athlete of the year during the Premiere Performers All-Sports Banquet held Sunday, May 20 at the DoubleTree Hotel in Green Tree.

Nearly 200 people attended the banquet and watched as Luke Hagy was named the 2012 Male Athlete of the Year. Bethel Park resident and Seton-La Salle junior Angela Heintz was crowned the top female athlete for the school year and Upper St. Clair's Austin Wilding captured the prestigious Waldie/Shaeffer Scholarship Award.

Read the full article:

• www.thealmanac.net/alm/sportstory11/05-23-2012-banquet-story (The Almanac)

Almanac Letter: Mt. Lebanon blog is entertaining

Here at Blog-Lebo, we have always striven to offer our readers the very best in entertainment value. Now, in a letter to The Almanac, we learn that our efforts have finally been recognized:

In recent weeks, Blog Lebo has reached new heights for entertainment value. The blog, originally started as a thoughtful and well written series of comments on Mt. Lebanon, eventually became so nutty that the originator walked away.

Many people, who read it now for the first time, assume it is a parody due to the hilarious comments from the handful of people who have an opinion on everything and anything.

They seem to fall into two categories, the tin hat society or the "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore" group. In recent blogs, one of them suggests that "the entire school board must be communists if they don't sell all of the school buildings, fire half of the teachers and put everyone into one building in order to save money".

The other group, led by a former school director who was forced to resign, advocates that anything other than English and science classes should not be the responsibility of the school district and should be paid for separately with money raised by volunteers.

If anyone dares to disagree with their comments, the rebuttals are similar to taunts from fourth-graders on the play ground, ("Apparently you can't read English!"). The fact that five people make up 90 percent of the comments should make this thing so tedious and silly that most people put it in the same context as the nut cases who walk around with signs proclaiming the end of the world.

Since less than .01% of the people who read this paper actually read the blog, I am afraid this is the case. However, I would encourage people to read the blog as an alternative to the astrology section or the comics. It is certainly more entertaining than either.

James Cannon

I would like to correct one error in Mr. Cannon’s letter. It says that Blog-Lebo’s founder walked away from our beloved blog after it became too “nutty.” I have been in touch with our founder, Mr. Mike Madision, and he assures me that Mr. Cannon is mistaken. The reason he left, he told me, is because Blog-Lebo was not nutty enough.

Read more:

• Mt. Lebanon blog is entertaining (The Almanac)

Almanac: Invitation only Town Hall event draws protests

The Almanac just posted its coverage of Saturday's town-hall meeting and the corresponding protest:

A crowd of more than 70 people, with about 50 more protesting outside, met in the Mt. Lebanon commissioners' chambers on Aug. 28 to participate in a meeting about "Perspectives on Living in and Governing a Highly Taxed Community."

Organized by Mt. Lebanon Commissioner Matt Kluck as a way to learn more about what issues were important to community residents, the invitation-only event had protesters concerned that the real agenda of the meeting was to delay or reduce the scope of the planned $113 million renovations of Mt. Lebanon High School.

If you weren't at the meeting and haven't yet listened to an audio recording of it (or don't have 90 minutes to listen to it), read this article because it goes on to summarize what happened at the meeting.

Read the full article:

• Invitation only Town Hall event draws protests (The Almanac)

Keeping The Peace In Mt. Lebanon

NOTE: This editorial was from last week's Almanac, but was only recently posted to their web site:

Did the Mt. Lebanon commissioners put the cart before the horse?

In creating a balanced budget, township officials added $30,000 in the revenue column from projected alcohol and food sales at a yet-to-be realigned clubhouse at the municipal golf course. Public resistance to the plan, though, may leave a funding gap in the township’s bank account.

Read more here....