Sent out today – 8.9.19 Borough Council Press Release
Independent candidate for State College Borough Council Katherine Watt and a small group of supporters successfully collected enough nominating signatures for Watt’s name to be printed on the general election ballot November 5 as an option for Borough voters.
The nominating papers were accepted by the Centre County Office of Elections and Voter Registration on July 25.
Watt owns and operates KW Investigations LLC, a small business offering investigative reporting, freelance writing, and paralegal services on contract. Watt also publishes Bailiwick News, an independent newspaper focused on public corruption, government accountability and ecological resilience in Centre County.
She earned a philosophy degree from Penn State in 1996, and has been active in local civic life since returning to State College with her family in 2008, through her work with Spring Creek Homesteading Fund and the Keller Street Community Garden (2011 to present); State College Community Bill of Rights campaign (2011); Centre Daily Times Sustainable Centre County page (2010-2012); Stop the PSU Pipeline campaign (2013); Voices of Central Pennsylvania (2013-2015); Friends & Farmers Cooperative and Online Market (2013-2015); Save State College Water Campaign, fighting corporate Penn State’s profiteering sale of farm and water supply recharge land for luxury student housing development (2015-2018); the Stop Nestle campaign in Spring Township (2018); and other citizen-led campaigns for more accountable local government and more ecologically-resilient regional self-governance.
Watt is not affiliated with any political party.
“I would like to be elected by voters who usually don’t vote because they believe government is the servant of corporations, doing corporate bidding on behalf of corporate donors and lobbyists, and screwing individuals, families, small businesses and communities in the process,” Watt said.
“If elected, I intend to cast my one vote on Borough Council and at the Centre Region Council of Governments General Forum to disrupt business-as-usual: redistribute political power by increasing the power of individual human citizens and communities and disempowering corporate ‘persons,’ including corporate Penn State and local government bureaucracies.”
Watt supports:
- municipal government civil disobedience to fight against anti-democratic state and federal preemption of local sovereignty;
- confronting corporate Penn State’s abuse of power through its simultaneous claim of property estate tax exemptions as a “public” entity (depriving the Borough of at least $3 million in annual revenue and shifting that tax burden to homeowners) alongside its claim of exemption from state transparency and ethics laws as a “private” entity (depriving citizens of a primary tool that could be used to hold the institution accountable for institutional mismanagement and cover-ups) to help break the conspiracy of profiteering silence within which Penn State’s corporate executives now function;
- withdrawal of State College from the Centre Region Council of Governments, which she views as highly-manipulated rubber-stamp performance art that only pretends to be representative, deliberative and democratic;
- merger of the private Penn State police force with the public State College Borough police department to eliminate dual-jurisdiction law enforcement in the Borough.
For more campaign information, please visit Watt’s campaign webpage.
