Spring, 1961. Vic Stevens quit as a teacher in North Wales after only one year.
July, 1968. Vic Stevens mysteriously and hurriedly quit as a teacher in the Quakertown School District, with a very bad employment rating, and moved his family to a state where he was not certified to teach, to take a non-classroom position.
December, 1969. Vic Stevens quit his new job after less than 17 months, and, at age 32, with three young children, accepted a school post that cut his pay from $14,880 to less than $10,000.
1991-2002. Vic Stevens quit the Democratic party twice, the Republicans once, and the Patriot Party once.
Summer, 1995. Vic Stevens quit as a volunteer at the Main Street Theater after his wife, Lois, got into a public shouting match with the company manager over whether the Stevenses should be allowed to see the shows for free.
October, 2002. Vic Stevens quit the Richland Township Preservation Board after a disagreement over the mission and focus of that board.
October, 2002. Vic Stevens quit the Richland Township Ordinance Review Committee in a dispute with the supervisors.
February, 2005. Vic Stevens claimed to have quit the Richland Citizens Alliance, but continues to accept their support, and they remain on his campaign committee.
This candidate for Richland supervisor certainly seems to have a long history of problems, and a questionable record of working with others. Obviously, this is not the best of backgrounds for someone who hopes to lead a township. His campaign information omits a lot. Maybe he didn't think the voters would be all that thrilled with his record...
Unexplained: After quitting jobs in North Wales, Quakertown, and North Carolina, he returned home to Richland. But he did not return to Quakertown School District, instead joining the Centennial system, an hour from his house.
Why? Because QCSD would not take him back . Michael Hresko, Stevens' principal, reported in 1969 "Low rating. Lacks industry." Esther Chilcote, the elementary supervisor, warned "Average or below. Poor planning/organization. Serious reservations. Will snow you with personality. WOULD NOT ASK HIM BACK ."
Unrevealed: If you believe that teacher salaries are partly responsible for ever-increasing school taxes, blame Stevens. In two different districts ! He helped form the QCSD teachers union, and was later president of that union in Centennial. As a long-term result of his efforts, Centennial's top-tier teachers made $89,095 last year, one of the highest rates in the state.
Centennial's projected $7.7 million revenue shortfall forced student program cuts. Sound familiar? Quakertown, like Centennial, has one of the highest teacher salary scales, and taxes are way up. Given Stevens' past, it is hard to imagine him fighting his union buddies to control those salaries and taxes.
Unrestricted: Stevens states in a press release that "Our roads have been transformed into parking lots". An interesting choice of words, and attitude. He is an ardent proponent of the rights of all tractor trailer drivers, and motor home and boat owners, to unrestricted parking along all our streets. Before he quit the Ordinance Review Committee, he was the only member to object to proposed regulations.
Unresolved: He claims to having been "Chairman of Historical Preservation for the Preservation Board". According to the board's minutes, there is no such title. However, he was Chairman of a PB subcommittee called "Building Historic Sites".
That subcommittee drafted an ordinance imposing such onerous conditions on historic properties that at least one landowner, of the Loux farm on East Pumping Station Road, withdrew his offer of historic deed restriction after learning what it entailed. A second property, the Cohen House, was preserved only when the Board of Supervisors stepped in and modified the extreme restrictions, so that the property could be sold to a buyer willing to fix it up.
But Stevens, and his subcommittee allies, had a totally different view when it came to remodeling their own historic homes. Stevens added a half-dozen 25-foot high out-of-character columns to his house. PB ally Kathy Fedorocsko has vinyl siding and modern replacement windows. Their proposed ordinance would have prohibited everyone else from doing these things.
Unsubstantiated: Stevens claims that he was a "Program Associate for training teachers for the Regional Educational Laboratory for the Carolinas and Virginia under the Vice President of Duke University". But what does that mean?
Mike Bowler, Director of Outreach and Communications, U.S. Department of Education, said " One of our librarians in the National Library of Education, a guy who could find a needle of datum in a haystack of data, couldn't find your guy". And Tim Pyatt, the Duke University Archivist, wrote "I have made a search of our records, and did not find any entries for Victor Stevens".
Stevens apparently held some insignificant non-teaching office job there 37 years ago, drafting instructional materials. However, the major beneficiary may have been - Vic Stevens...
A scathing report by two former members of the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI), which oversees these laboratories, concluded, "The putative ( supposed ) beneficiaries are schoolchildren who need to learn more. Yet the money actually goes to well-paid professionals functioning as middlemen, sitting in comfortable offices distant from the classroom, and devoting much of their energy to ensuring that their federal gravy train does not halt on the tracks."
Unrepentant: Stevens was a founding member of the radical Richland Citizens Alliance. Supervisor Mike Zowniriw called Stevens among his "dearest friends and supporters". Z's website says, in large flashing letters, "Vote for Vic Stevens November 2005". It is fortunate for Zowniriw's neighbors that Stevens wasn't on the board to help Z when they battled him over cutting off their water.
As an amateur historian, Stevens understands the famous saying, "Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it".