LINESVILLE - By a 4-1 vote Linesville Borough Council voted to cancel its subscription to the Community News effective immediately and demand return of the balance of the subscription within 10 days when council met Tuesday evening.

Present at roll call of the meeting were Ron Harper, Sharon Kobel, Kevin McGrath, Ron Vennare, Susan Lewandowski and Pete Fizer. Absent was Tom McGrath.

The vote came after Fizer noted he had been reading the local paper and noted a individual didn’t sign a comment run in the I Say, You Say, We Say section.

He said articles in the paper are designed to infuriate.

He said council was not wanting to adopt the proposed International Property Maintenance Code only because of David Pachuk [a property owner in the borough] but because of other buildings.

A comment from a reader in last week’s I Say column suggested council’s desire to adopt the property maintenance code was because of Pachuk who has had the condition of some buildings he owns questioned.

Fizer also said he thought other articles in the paper were meant to belittle and demean and he wanted to have the newspaper’s subscription canceled and the the balance returned within 10 days.

Ron Vennare made motion to do so, complaining of misquotes. Vennare claimed not to have made the remark about scraping snow and ice from off roofs by opening second story windows and using a shovel or broom to sweep away the snow/ice.

He also said whoever the wacko is [the person who wrote the above I Say that he had been in Vennare's house] couldn’t have been in, in over 16 years as he has remodeled since buying it and spending over $40,000 in the process.

K. McGrath commented he doesn’t like the I Say, You Say column. He said he had no problem with letters that were signed. He argued that the negativity in the I Say was keeping younger people from running for office in the borough.

Fizer also complained that he had written a letter for I Say but it wasn’t in the paper and that last month he had read a letter verbatim about what a wonderful job the borough did snow plowing this past winter in the Pal fund area, which was not even noted in the paper.

Community News owner and publisher David Schaef noted he did not run the Fizer letter because he considered it contained a threat and he would not run such an item. He also said I Say is like many sound off columns in newspapers these days run without signatures.

In the 4-1 vote to cancel the subscription McGrath, Kobel, Vennare and Fizer voted to cancel; Harper voted no; Lewandowski had left the meeting about 1/2 hour earlier.

Community News has since returned the balance of the subscription which had 3 issues left before expiring at the end of May - $1.83.

At the meeting, council voted to pay $727.01 in payments on the dump truck, taking amounts from the utility fund.

Minutes from an April 27 council meeting show council purchasing a 2011 F250-type truck for $24,434.50, on 4-1 vote, Fizer voting no.