County Commissioner Jim Eckstein professes to want more diversity among county appointees, then opposes the reappointment of two women to the Butler County Community College board of trustees.

While Eckstein opposed the reappointments of Kim Geyer, administrative assistant to Commissioner Bill McCarrier, and Butler attorney Jennifer Linn, he voted in favor of the reappointments of two male trustees without dissent.

Do we detect a pattern here? Eckstein has a history of run-ins with women department heads in county government.

In 2012, Eckstein's first year in office, a female county employee filed a complaint against him with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. That case was settled out of court after the county agreed to step up its sensitivity training.

And earlier this year, the county hired a Pittsburgh legal firm to investigate allegations of sexual discrimination against Eckstein. The findings were inconclusive, but a 12-page report stated, in essence, that Eckstein mistreats everybody.

Diversity? Yeah, right.

To be fair, Eckstein marches to a drumbeat nobody else can hear. His definition of diversity is giving fewer appointments to friends of his counterparts in the Republican majority.

Eckstein, a Democrat, is entitled to vote any way he wants, as are GOP commissioners McCarrier and Dale Pinkerton. He hasn't caught on yet that the minority commissioner needs to deploy gentler forms of persuasion if he expects to get his way occasionally. Perhaps he never will.

Cheer C

We salute Jeanne Westerman and her husband, Adams Township Police Chief Bill Westerman. For nearly 30 years, the Evans City couple have been gathering castoff medical supplies for clinics in Third World clinics.

In the mid 1980s, Jeanne Westerman learned about Third World missionaries, who visited her church, Westminster United Presbyterian in Evans City, and the crying need for even the most basic medical supplies, instruments and equipment in poverty-stricken areas of the globe.

Westerman, an emergency department nurse, began taking notice of the good items thrown away at work each day. She said they included a suture pack that was not used, so she began collecting the hemostats, tiny scissors and other untouched items from the packs.

Since 1986, Jeanne and her husband have delivered at least one pickup truckload of items to be distributed by the Erie-based CHOSEN, which stands for Christian Hospitals Overseas Secure Equipment Needs. The supplies they gather include gauze, IV equipment and tubes, bassinets, surgical tables and equipment, overhead lights, defibrillators, crutches, walkers and the occasional prosthetic limb.

“Do the thing that's right in front of you,” Mother Teresa used to say. That's exactly what the Westermans have been doing, in their own way, for close to three decades.

Recent discussion about Butler's 1909 Huselton roadster has been a bit like a visit to the Antiques Roadshow program: discovering that our dusty, rusty relic has intrinsic as well as sentimental value, we suddenly wonder whether selling a piece of our past can help secure our financial future.That discussion ended Thursday on a happy note when Councilwoman Kathy Kline, who originally proposed selling the Huselton, said the city will keep the vehicle, which was made in Butler. Kline said she had a recent telephone conversation with B.C. Huselton III, descendant of the car's builder, who had donated it to the city in 1984. “Mr. Huselton absolutely does not want ownership passed on to anyone,” Kline said, “so with that being said, I guess the city retains ownership of it.”That's especially good news for members of the Old Stone House Region of the Antique Automobile Club of America, who lovingly restored the Huselton at their own expense and have taken care of it for nearly 30 years — in essence, keeping it a piece of living history. They note it's better to operate the vehicle occasionally — in parades, car shows and other local functions — than it would be to let it sit as an unused museum piece, gathering rust and dust.The city should consider the Huselton and the Old Stone House Region AAC as a package deal. Let's hope the talk about selling, which stirred up and threatened a long-lasting arrangement, has ultimately reinforced it.