EAST VARNUM, Pa. — The East Varnum Borough Council spent four hours and 11 minutes Tuesday night debating whether a bench outside the public library is a chair, ultimately voting 4-3 to table the matter until it can be determined whether the council itself is seated on chairs.
The bench, a six-foot slatted model purchased for $640 from a municipal supply catalog, was installed in August. In September, a resident filed a complaint alleging that it was functioning as a chair without a permit, in violation of borough Ordinance 14-212, which requires a permit for any outdoor seating “of the chair type.” The bench has no permit, because it is a bench, according to the borough’s Department of Public Works, which installed it.
“A bench is a chair that won’t commit,” Councilman Earl Whitlow said during the debate’s second hour. Councilwoman Diane Pasternak countered that a chair seats one person, while a bench seats “as many people as want it, which is a whole different philosophy, and frankly not one I’m comfortable with in front of a library.”
The council heard a 38-slide presentation from the borough solicitor, which defined a chair as “a bench with opinions,” followed by public comment from 46 residents, nine of whom brought their own chairs as exhibits. Two residents brought benches, which were sworn in and asked to testify. The library bench itself was then summoned to the meeting, carried in by four public works employees at 9:40 p.m., and placed at the witness table, where it declined to answer questions on the advice of counsel. At 10:15 p.m., Councilman Reggie Toms moved to classify the bench as “a couch that went outside.” The motion failed for lack of a second, the member expected to second it having stood up to stretch.
Prof. Desmond Achterberg, who holds the Prewitt Chair in Comparative Annoyance at Ellery State University, said the bench-chair question is among the oldest unresolved disputes in civic life.
“There is a council in 14th-century Flanders that debated it for 11 years, during which the bench in question was replaced twice and the council once,” Achterberg said. “They never voted. The scholarship on this is very clear, and I wrote it.” Achterberg said his own title, the Prewitt Chair, is held from a bench, “for reasons the university has never explained to me.”
The council lost its quorum twice during the evening, at 8:52 p.m. and again at 10:31 p.m., when members left the chamber to retrieve additional chairs from the hallway so they could be compared with the bench. The second recess lasted 26 minutes, during which three council members were observed sitting on the library bench, which a majority of the council then agreed could not be entered into the record.
Council President Barbara Lisk said the matter would return at the council’s next regular meeting, when members are also expected to take up whether a stool counts as a chair, a bench, or “its own thing.” She asked that residents planning to attend be prepared to stand.