Mayor Tom Donaldson earns a preliminary cheer for bringing up an issue that has plagued Butler for years — street damage caused by utility work and substandard asphalt patches following the utility work.

It's not so much that utility repairs are the problem, although it's frustrating to see a newly paved street torn up for water line work. The big problem is that patches in the pavement are generally awful — and the utilities are rarely forced to comeback and make it right.

For years, Butler city officials have either accepted the lousy street patching work or they didn't press the utilities to come back and make the patch level and even with the street surface.

It can be accepted that an initial patch will be dimpled or rough because the soil beneath the patch will settle after the patch is made. But eventually, the ground is no longer moving and the patch should be redone so that it is even with the surrounding pavement.

Unfortunately, Butler officials have allowed substandard patch work to exist in many areas of the city, including parts of Main Street, West Cunningham Street and various areas of the West End. In fact, a list of bad street patching work would be too long to list here.

Donaldson said at last week's city council meeting that he wants a review of the city's ordinances regarding street patching done by utilities. He said he wants either a stricter enforcement or a tougher ordinance because many street patches are “substandard. They're nonexistent.”

He is right — and he deserves credit for bringing up the issue and promising change. But Donaldson also knows that bad streets are a small part of a larger problem — many of Butler's streets are in terribe condition following years, if not decades, of neglect.

So, Donaldson should certainly crack down on utilities that leave streets a mess with bad patches, but he also has to find a way to accelerate resurfacing work to make up for years of poor maintenance.

The bad pavement patches in Butler should never have been allowed to get this bad. Donaldson's statements — and implied promise — rate a tentative cheer now. Stronger cheers will be heard from all city motorists if Donaldson and city council can actually make progress on getting the bad patch work corrected and future patches done right.

If there's a method to Hobson McKown's madness, we don't see it.The State College resident calls himself a “constitutional and criminal law frontiersman,” and his frontier of choice is governed by a Second Amendment right to bear arms without any restrictions whatsoever.That's simply not realistic, as Butler County's criminal case against McKown demonstrates.Last month, McKown entered the Butler County Government Center while armed with a pellet gun designed to look like a .45-caliber handgun. Deputy sheriffs arrested McKown and charged him with criminal mischief, a third-degree misdemeanor.In his preliminary hearing last week before District Judge Pete Shaffer, it became apparent that McKown was trying to set up a challenge to the state law forbidding firearms in court facilities. It also became apparent his challenge was seriously flawed by the fact he was carrying a replica gun — not the real thing — and consequently he was not charged with a firearms violation. You can't legally challenge a law if you're not charged with violating it.A greater flaw was that McKown acted as his own attorney. A barrage of objections from the prosecuting attorney and warnings from Shaffer only added to McKown's apparent lack of legal expertise.But the most serious flaw in McKown's strategem is that he put lives in serious danger — not just his own life, but the lives of deputies and any individuals who happended to be present at the security checkpoint in the Government Center lobby.McKown contends such security checkpoints are illegal. Actions like his make them necessary.

Cheers to Margaret Manjerovic and her lacrosse teammates at Mars High School. At Thursday's game against Knoch — the first ever for the Planets' new varsity program — technical problems with the public address system delayed the pregame playing of the national anthem.Anxious to get the game started, Margaret started singing to break the silence. Her teammates joined in, alleviating Margaret's nerves.“I started to think, this is our nation. Let's just sing,” she said later. “I didn't think the music was going to come on. Luckily, everyone joined in.”It might not seem like that big an event, but we can all identify with the adrenaline surge she must have experienced, stepping out of line, breaking the silence with song, not knowing who or how many might follow her lead.But in essence, that's the recipe for leadership: take a little courage in the face of indecision, add a bit of initiative, and turn up the heat. That's leadership, a character trait that often separates success and failure. Leadership separates champions from the rest.Probably without realizing it, Margaret set the tone for the rest of the game — a hard-fought victory for Mars. It may turn out she set a standard for the rest of the season and, even beyond that, for the Planets' fledgling girls lacross program for years to come.