Did The Pawlowski Administration Lie?

...I presented information to City Council this evening (December 18, 2013) that shows how Allentown now stands to lose more than $113,000,000 over the 35-year Delta Thermo Energy Incinerator contract. I plugged the recent $40.44/ton that Easton's Mayor Panto signed with Chrin into the financial projections that Mayor Pawlowski and PFM presented to City Council and the Public. The original projections from the Mayor and PFM used a starting landfill cost of $92.29/ton. The Pennsylvania Waste Industries Association has told the PA DEP that the public was given false and misleading information regarding tipping fees. Quoted from the PPWIA letter to the PA DEP: "Representatives from Delta Thermo Falsely Exaggerated Landfill Tipping Fees". landfill fees that the Mayor and PFM used were "Falsely Exaggerated" I have warned the Mayor and City Council that the financial projections from PFM were useless. Only Eichenwald and O'Connell voted against this incinerator. A $113,000,000 LOSS after the Mayor claimed a $25,000,000 SAVINGS seems like an issue for the citizens of Allentown. $40.44/ton Landfill cost to Easton from 2014 to 2020. Allentown will pay DTE $119.37/ton in 2020. Almost a $3,000,000 loss in 2020 alone. These numbers are real losses in my book. The Mayor and PFM used the wrong starting assumptions. They were way off. Did they lie? 
Rich Fegley
Blogger's Note: The above is a comment by Rich Fegley submitted to an earlier post on this blog. I also have a copy of the letter from The Pennsylvania Waste Industries Association(PWIA) to the Pa. DEP. Allentown City Council made a decision based on very erroneous information, which should be legally revisited in light of this fact.

Allentown or Zombietown

When I think back to the excitement and pride which was Allentown this time of year, back in the day, I cringe at what we have become. Although there's a little buzz about the arena, when you divide the state taxes diverted by the people who will attend, it's a very expensive ticket. Circumstances have conspired against Allentown; Demographically, center city keeps becoming poorer. We have become a one party town, not benefiting by a meaningful civic discourse. What was once a powerful local newspaper is now in an idle mode, waiting for another consequence of corporate takeover. This blog will continue to write about both history and politics, but will never blend them together into some sort of artificial smoothie.

Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria

The Church and Theology School in Alexandria was established by the Apostle Mark in 60AD. Most of the early converts were common Egyptians who spoke Coptic. Although Christians became the majority before the Arab invasion in 636, by the 12th century they were the minority. The concept of monasteries in Christianity was started by the Coptics in the deserts of Egypt. Currently, the Coptics are threatened by transitions in Egypt, let us pray for their safety.

photograph of St. Marks Coptic Church in Alexandria, Egypt.

reprinted from December 2012

Doing Less With More In Allentown

While Mayor Pawlowski spent the weekend in New York City auditioning for governor, Allentown got zapped with an ice storm. Previous to the Big Water Sell Off this summer, here in the Little Apple, all departments would help out during a storm or other emergency. With the loss of the water department to the Lehigh County Authority, that system has been disrupted. Although we loss some efficiency, we will not see a corresponding savings. A previous undisclosed expense involved in the water transfer was creating a new department for the storm sewer system. Furthermore, apparently $150 million has been designated for the pension fund, as opposed to an earlier projection of 160. What's $10 million among friends and taxpayers?

photocredit:Tay Ney/The Morning Call/December10,2013

A Park Protester From The Past

`Green' Curtain Blocks Sledding And The View
January 09, 1992|The Morning Call
To the Editor:
Hold your sleds girls and boys! Others, too, on the alert! With the planting of a dense cluster of 60 evergreen trees and the erection of a "No Sledding" sign, creating a veritable iron curtain, the park and watershed people have once again undertaken their repetitive effort of the past 45 years to eliminate a most popular sledding slope in Lehigh Parkway. The motive -- crass self-interest in defiance of public good. The effect -- an impassable barrier and concealment of a magnificent vista of "one of the finest valleys in Eastern Pennsylvania."
Children and adults from the 400 homes with longtime and easy access to the slope and others arriving in cars have enjoyed sledding here after school and into the night and throughout the day and night on weekends. Yet sledding is but one of the attractions of this enduring slope. In summer children and teachers from Lehigh Parkway Elementary School have enjoyed a walk down the slope and into the park for a break from book and blackboard. Birders, joggers, hikers and others on a leisurely stroll engrossed in their particular interest have found the slope irresistible.
For a host of others, this opening into the park after a long stretch of woods presents a charming vista and urge to descend. Interest is immediately evoked by the sight of a mid-19th century log house (now tenanted by a city employee whose privacy is further enhanced by the closure of the slope) and a historic wagon trail leading past the site of a lime kiln to tillable lands of earlier times.
The view takes in an expanse of meadowlands, now groomed, to the Little Lehigh River and up the western slope to Lehigh Parkway North. Indeed, a pleasant view to be esteemed and preserved for generations to come. It was distressing on New Year's Day to see a family and their guests intent upon a walk down the slope suddenly stop in amazement and shock as the closure became evident.
The cost in dollars through the years of the park peoples' fixation on destroying the Parkway slope must be staggering indeed without dwelling on other deliberate depletions. Typically, the placement of the 1991 "No Sledding" sign employed a team of four men with three vehicles -- a backhoe, a panel truck, and a super cab pickup truck, the latter furnishing radio music.
BERT A. LUCKENBACH
ALLENTOWN The Morning Call, January 9, 1992
reprinted from May 25, 2010

I grew up in the same neighborhood and spent my childhood winters sledding on the same hill. Mr. Luckenbach would also be saddened that the historic Wagon Trail is now also blocked off, near it's exit halfway on the hill. I suppose children, mittens and sledding is too passive a recreation for this Administration's taste.

reprinted from January 2012

Christmas Past In Lehigh Valley, 1962