Coatesville school board President Donna Urban is taking a dim view of City Manager Harry Walker's remarks that the school district isn't living up to its civic responsibilities.

Walker has accused the school district of turning its back on the city by closing Gordon Elementary School and failing to approve tax incentives to developers wanting to build in Coatesville. His main salvo, however, was reserved for the county for turning its back on the city and it to become the dumping ground for public housing.

"At the end of the school year we had three schools in Coatesville and at the start of this school year we will have three schools in Coatesville," said Urban. The school board did, however, vote to move elementary school students out of Gordon Elementary School to allow the district to bring back special education students from the Intermediate Unit at an annual savings of $2 million. The elementary school will now be the Gordon Education Center.

Urban also said in the last six years the district has spent nearly $50 million renovating three schools inside the city. The largest project was reopening former Scott High School as a middle school at a cost of nearly $26 million. "Scott was all but abandoned; just a hull of a building," said Urban.

The school district also moved its administrative offices out of Caln Township and into Coatesville following the multi-million transformation of Benner Elementary School into the Benner Administration Center. The district also renovated what was Gordon Middle School and changed it to Benner Elementary School.

Urban said, too, that the school board has cooperated with the city's revitalization efforts. The school board agreed in 2005 to sign off on $11 million in new taxes through a TIF (Tax Incremental Financing) plan that the city needed to provide infrastructure improvements for three of its preferred developers: Don Pulver, Carl Chetty, and Ray Iacobucci.

"They said they needed it (TIF approval) right away; it's been three years and nothing has happened," she said.

Pulver was to have broken ground on a hotel and restaurant complex on Route 82 along Route 82. Chetty has made several promises about starting construction of Pennock Place, a high-rise condominium at North Third Avenue and Lincoln Highway, And Iacobucci Homes plans for Brandywine View, a 500-plus townhouse community on the old Tarlecky lot north of Elmwood Gardens have stalled because of difficulty qualifying potential buyers. Coatesville council, however, recently approved a LERTA agreement that forgives most all city property taxes for 10 years for new homeowners in Iacobucci's planned Brandywine Ridge, which originally was to be Phase V of Brandywine View.