Calderaio runs for reelection on Buckingham’s environmental stewardship

Going east of Delaware Valley University, U.S. Route 202 crosses some of Bucks County’s quaintest downtowns, with busy art scenes and luxe neighborhoods.

And the progressive attitudes usually connected with them. 

At the ends of this stretch, Doylestown and New Hope boroughs are politically cobalt blue. But in the middle, Buckingham Township is home to an all-Republican board of supervisors, though its members exalt local environmental policy as zealously as their Democratic neighbors. One supervisor, Paul Calderaio, is seeking reelection this year. 

Philadelphia-born and Florida-raised, the network-solutions specialist first ran for office in Boca Raton in 1995, though his first electoral victory came after he returned to Pennsylvania and, in 2001, ran for Buckingham auditor. Calderaio was reelected in 2007 with 56 percent of the vote and did one point better running for supervisor in 2013. 

Yet the nature of local politics hasn’t let him coast. His win six years ago was a close 53 percent and last month’s primary saw 2,158 Democrats vote for township supervisor to Republicans’ 1,630. 

And Bucks County’s famous blue-to-red flip last year didn’t happen in Buckingham which decisively favored Kamala Harris over Donald Trump. 

Calderaio hopes to meet his reelection challenge from Democratic pet-toy company manager Mike Bateman by reminding township voters of Buckingham’s strengths and Calderaio’s own role in maintaining them. 

“When you move to Buckingham, everybody wants to be the last house built,” he told The Independence, alluding to the community’s aggressive land-preservation efforts. “And I don’t say that as a bad thing; it’s that, I think, when people move here, they realize what Buckingham actually has to offer.”

A 33-square-mile expanse encompassing most of Peddler’s Village, many historic buildings, and numerous vast parks, farms, and fields, it’s Bucks County’s largest municipality by area and easily one of its more populous at over 20,000 residents. And it excels by many key measures. The journalism platform Stacker ranks it as the 30th best suburb to call home in Pennsylvania. Niche, a website that analyzes school districts, places it first among the best places to live in Bucks County.

A major reason is safety. Elite Personal Finance considers Buckingham one of Pennsylvania’s safest communities. Two months ago, the homeownership-education site House Grail named it the third-safest town in America.

It has much to boast of economically too, with the second-lowest property tax among Bucks’s townships at 4.75 mills. (Milford Township has the lowest at two mills, though Calderaio points out Milford is a far smaller community with no police force whereas Buckingham has a 21-member police department.) The half of the local one-percent income tax that doesn’t go to Central Bucks School District provides the township’s entire general fund, with the municipal property tax only funding fire stations, emergency medical services, and open space. S&P Global gives Buckingham a AAA bond rating, one of just three now held by Keystone State municipalities. 

Calderaio seems to speak most fondly of the township’s environmental stewardship, including a system of wastewater treatment and spray irrigation, an ongoing transition to renewable electricity, and 6,500 acres of preserved open space.

“It doesn’t cost much to educate a cow,” Calderaio said, echoing a local phrase suggesting that saving farmland and other verdure keeps infrastructure, schooling, and other public costs relatively low. In 2008, he championed the $20 million bond referendum that enabled vast green-space purchases. 

Bateman did not reply to a request for comment, though his public statements so far show he wants to make the environment a focal point in his campaign. In one Facebook post, he decried hearing that Buckingham water systems tested above the legal limit for polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), also called “forever chemicals,” that pose health risks. 

“It’s vital that the water that all Buckingham residents drink is safe and legal for consumption,” he wrote. “This must be fixed and addressed immediately.”

The article he cited however referred to parts of the township that received water from sources other than Buckingham’s wells: North Penn Water Authority and Central Bucks School District. Recently, news came out showing PFAS chemicals in the township’s Cold Spring supply exceeded proposed federal limits for PFAS, prompting administrators to link Cold Spring to another supply, Fieldstone, and facilitate PFAS removal. Numerous other areas in Bucks county similarly exceeded the prospective federal limits.

Township Manager Dana Cozza noted that Cold Spring’s PFAS levels are under Pennsylvania’s limits. She added that Buckingham’s work on a new treatment system for the water supply began before the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency imposed more stringent water standards. Her office is applying for grant money to offset the system’s cost. 

“It’s a top priority here at the township,” she said.

She mentioned the community is partnering with energy and sustainability students at Pennsylvania State University to create an environmental action plan focusing on various issues, chief among them climate change. Calderaio has put these matters at the forefront of his legislative agenda and campaign platform.

To counteract the locality’s carbon footprint, officials agreed to move municipal buildings and infrastructure to 50 percent renewable sources (i.e., wind and solar) years ago and recently legislated to move the buildings to 100 percent renewable energy. Township officials hope to have an entirely carbon-neutral municipal government by 2050. 

“We have a lot going on in our environmental world here,” Cozza said, adding that while the contracts for wind and solar power have posed a cost increase, “it has been reasonable and acceptable.”

Some experts doubt such actions have the desired effect. H. Sterling Burnett, director of the free-market Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy at the Illinois-based Heartland Institute, characterized moves toward renewables as “virtue signaling.” He doubted the sources’ reliability, citing Spain and Portugal, both of which draw much of their power from renewables and suffered major outages this spring. 

“It’s always reliable until it’s not,” he said, averring that “green energy” contracts provide wind and solar power in places like Pennsylvania but fall back on traditional sources like coal, nuclear, and natural gas when renewables don’t supply enough electricity due to weather conditions. “[The] larger grid contains electrons from other sources of energy.”

Burnett blamed Pennsylvania’s high energy costs compared with neighboring Ohio and West Virginia on the Keystone State’s relatively high use of renewables. “To say that they are not affected by the fact that they are buying more and more renewable energy is just wrong.” 

He doesn’t object as vehemently to Buckingham’s land-preservation policy since local residents approved the open-space purchases, even though he generally believes government shouldn’t perpetually restrict development of nonpublic areas.

“At least if the decisions are made,” he said, “I like the fact that they’re being made at the local level rather than people in Harrisburg deciding for Philadelphia or their suburbs, ‘No, your land should be said aside for this, that, or the other.’” 

Ultimately, Calderaio thinks he has struck the right philosophical balance for a non-ideological locale like the one he represents.

“I’m not going to defund police, and I’m not going to say no to environmental policy,” he said. 

He and Bateman have clashed on a few contentious subjects, including the recent rejection of a 150,000-square foot warehouse with 30 truck bays just northeast of Doylestown Airport. While both candidates opposed it, Calderaio rebuked Bateman for publicly assuming beforehand that the Republican supervisors would approve it. 

“If he knew me, he would have probably known how I was going to vote,” Calderaio said.

The two have also disagreed on the legal strategy to keep J.G. Petrucci Company from securing a right to develop the land: Bateman calls the planned development a truck terminal but Calderaio says it is not and that defining it as such would compromise Buckingham’s position in court. 

On his website, Bateman promises a legislative agenda that includes competitive bidding requirements for third-party vendors, more aggressive road-safety measures, and open-space preservation. Yet that last priority forces him to acknowledge some of what has already been done with his opponent’s help.

“Buckingham is a beautiful place and our open spaces and farmland make us an iconic and envious [sic] part of Pennsylvania,” the Democrat wrote. “My goal would be to continue our land preservation efforts and to keep new large communities at bay as much as possible while still allowing small land owners in Buckingham looking to build their single family homes easily and hassle free.”

Despite political headwinds, Calderaio will have a timely advantage, appearing on the ballot with his wife Ann, Buckingham’s popular tax collector. She ran unopposed four years ago, and though she now faces a challenge from Democrat Jeff Crawford, her husband thinks the level of service she has provided will carry her and hopes his own record — and steadfast campaigning — will do the same for him.

“In the big scheme of life, it’s not like I got [into office] yesterday,” he said. “I’ve been there long enough that I understand it; I know the job. But I’ve been in there short enough that I still have a lot to offer.”

Bradley Vasoli is the senior editor of The Independence.