First Priority Bank

Malvern-based First Priority Bank reported that net income for the nine months ended Sept. 30 increased 45 percent to $2.27 million, or $0.31 per basic common share and $0.30 per fully diluted common share versus $1.56 million, or $0.19 per basic and fully diluted common share for the same period in 2016.

Quarterly net income totaled $719,000, or $0.10 per basic common share and $0.09 per fully diluted common share for the third quarter of 2017, a 51 percent increase compared to $476,000, or $0.06 per basic and fully diluted common share in the third quarter of 2016. Third quarter net income compares to second quarter net income of $766,000, or $0.11 per basic common share and $0.10 per fully diluted common share.

“Our company’s operating performance for the current quarter and first nine months of 2017 has increased significantly from the comparable 2016 periods, reflecting the impact of the $64 million loan and relationship purchase completed in August 2016,” said First Priority CEO David E. Sparks. “We have also continued to experience strong asset quality as non-performing loans totaled 0.16 percent of total loans, strong deposit growth as total deposits exceeded $500 million for the first time, and we have maintained our focus on prudent expense control.”

Chester County Sheriff’s Office

A club designed to foster kindness, compassion, and service to others recently lived up to its name at Pocopson Elementary School. Students in grades three through five, members of the school’s fledgling Kids with Heart Club, enthusiastically greeted representatives of the Chester County Sheriff’s Office. They were eager to show off their “Good-for-You Groceries” project for less-privileged children.

Students got busy stuffing 50 grocery bags with healthful food and snacks, crafting notes to the recipients, and finally, using chalk to write positive messages on the sidewalk outside the cafeteria.

After the students completed their tasks, they each got a club t-shirt. The front of the red shirt contained the club’s name; the back, its mantra: “Kindness is the new cool.”

Chester County Sheriff Carolyn “Bunny” Welsh and a couple of deputies delivered the gifts to the Chester County Family Academy in West Chester. The K-2 school was founded in 1997 to carry out the vision of local philanthropists Dick and Sheila Sanford “to make a difference in the lives of children.”

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Landscapes3

The Chester County Planning Commission will be hosting its first public meeting on Thursday, Oct. 26 about Landscapes3, the county’s next long-range comprehensive plan for the future. The meeting will be held from 5:30-7:30 PM at the West Whiteland Township Building, located at 101 Commerce Drive in Exton.

If you have any questions, please contact Planning Commission Communications Specialist Danielle Lynch at 610-344-6285 and dlynch@chesco.org or Communications Coordinator Rebecca Brain at 610-344-6279 and rbrain@chesco.org.

Lincoln University

Brenda A. Allen has been officially inaugurated as Lincoln’s 14th president. Allen, a member of the university’s Class of 1981, becomes the institution’s first alumna president.

“As an alumna, I am acutely aware of the expectations I have accepted for moving our university into her next chapter,” she said.

In her remarks, Allen cited Horace Mann Bond’s publication, Education for Freedom, in which he wrote that Lincoln is the first institution founded anywhere in the world designed to provide higher education in the arts and sciences for youth of African descent.

“I am often amazed by the boldness of this idea,” Allen said. “Our founder, John Miller Dickey, had the audacity to propose educating Black people in a time when most in this nation viewed us nothing more than chattel.”

Fischer Cunnane & Associates

“The standard image of the accountant during tax season is of an overworked wretch hunched over a keypad,” writes Daniel Hood for Accounting Today. “But it turns out that if they’re at a Best Firm to Work For, they’re fairly likely to be in a massage chair getting the kinks worked out, or stuffing their face with free food.”

Virtually all of the Best Firms keep their employees well-fed during tax season, and well over half of them offer massages.

West Chester-based Fischer Cunnane & Associates has kicked the latter perk up a notch, hiring a chiropractor who provides free chair massages for all employees during tax season.

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