If you attend many meetings of local government, as I do, it's easy to see the hypocrisy. Mayors and council members hold themselves up as incorruptible public servants looking out for you, but many of them serve the agenda of the special interests that got them elected in the first place. Democrats serve public sector unions whose contracts have enslaved the rest of us. Republicans serve businesses, whose bottom line means more than the welfare of the people who work for them, or the public who buys their product. Few of them really serve us. In Bethlehem, for example, Mayor John Callahan …
The year 2010 was a lousy one for real estate in Northampton County. Realtors escrowed licenses, and the the local recorder of deeds office was about as busy as a church on Monday. The next year would be better, everyone said. Guess what? It's worse. Throughout the first seven months of 2011, the real estate market has slumped another 7.1 percent in Northampton County. You'd have to go all the way back to 1983, 28 years ago, when Madonna was still Like a Virgin, to find a worse year. The 3,088 deeds recorded during the first seven months of 2011 is a whopping 35 percent below the 4,740-deed …
It was an Oscar-worthy performance. Beating back tears, the Nature Conservancy's Ellen Lott made an impassioned plea that Northampton County Council save 130 acres of woodland in Upper Mount Bethel. "I am here to speak for the trees because they have no tongues." She also claimed to speak for salamanders, frogs and "a place where raptors soar overhead and water trickles down." The trees, lizards and chicken hawks need your dough, and they got it, too. After hearing Lott compare Ron Angle country to the Amazon rain forest, it was unanimous, the presiding council approved $260,400 of your …
Their message was loud and clear. Over 120 people braved tornado warnings and pouring rain on April 20 to storm into Fowler Family Southside Center and let four state representatives know, in both Spanish and English, what they thought of Governor Corbett's proposed $27.3 billion budget. Teresa Donate, a professor at Northampton Community College, summed up the mood of this crowd. "Vengo prendia en candelo!" she fumed. Translated, that's"I'm on fire."This anger is in stark contrast to the electorate's mood when Tom Corbett was first elected just last November, in a near landslide. Now, his …
Like my Patch bunk buddy, Jonathan Geeting, I'd love to see a bi-county public health department here in the Lehigh Valley. Never mind that Erie County, which has a public health department, ranks 52 out of 67 counties in that ominous "morbidity" rating. Never mind that Northampton County, which has no public health department, actually ranks 10 in health factors like smoking and STD. No, damn the evidence, and spend away. Replace the "pro-morbidity" pols, as Geeting calls them.What Jonathan and other spenders fail to realize is that, before we have public health or nice choo-choo trains to …
We were all horrified by a February 10 UGI gas explosion that killed five people and leveled a city block in Allentown. For five hours, natural gas fueled the flames, as City and UGI officials scrambled to find a shutoff valve. Had the explosion occurred just half a block away, it would have been a school. And that's the real tragedy. Throughout the Lehigh Valley, not just Allentown, there are miles and miles of aging cast iron pipelines, some of them over 100 years old. If you live in Bethlehem, Easton or any of the boroughs, what happened in Allentown could easily happen to you.Last week, …
Last weekend, a host of kids, both boys and girls, participated in the 3rd Annual Dakota Galusha Basketball Tournament in Northampton, to honor the memory of a lively and pleasant 12-year old athlete who lost his life in a tragic bus accident. As one of the many volunteers at this well-organized event explained, the money raised would pay for "acts of kindness" in Dakota's name.My grandson is only a fifth-grader, but was asked to play with a 6th-grade "Junior Cadet" Liberty 'Canes team put together at the last minute, facing nine other teams. He loves basketball and I love Northampton food, …
In "John Morganelli, Bon Vivant," I told you that our local top crime dog, DA John Morganelli, regularly dips into his campaign fund for meals at posh places like the Blue Grille and Emeril's Chop House. He blew over $13,000 on himself last year to dine out (35 times), fill up the tank (15 times) and even to buy DA uniforms at Macy's. But there's one eatery he missed - Darto's Restaurant in Bethlehem. The owners must be looking for his business because the first thing you see when you walk into this North Street breakfast nook is a poster telling you to sign Morganelli's election petition for…
Last year, Northampton County District Attorney John Morganelli raked in $87,874.37 from well-wishers, including people who work for him and lots of $250 checks from defense lawyers. Morganelli is sitting on a $130,000 mountain of cash. But don't worry. He made lots of contributions last year, too. To himself. Campaign finance records reveal that Morganelli donated $13,625.87 to himself last year, a year in which he wasn't running for anything. Thta's right. His campaign fund became his personal ATM machine. So what did he do with all that dough? He blew $1,109.99 at Macy's, presumably to buy…
The last thing you should ever do is give legislators a pile of money and tell them they can only spend it on emergencies. They'll find more code blues than you'll hear in a year at your local hospital. Unfortunately, there's just such a fund in the People's Republic of Northampton County, called the "contingency fund." As you might have guessed, Council members find all kinds of reasons to just throw it away. Last week, they voted to give $25,000 for a halfway house to a woman with no lease, no nonprofit, no board of directors and no real plan. Let me tell you the story. It actually started…
Are right-wing maniacs to blame for the Tucson tragedy in which Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Az) was shot outside a Safeway during a meeting with her constituents? That's what left-wing maniacs claim. Late last week, Bethlehem Patch published a little ditty about a small group outside State Rep. Joe Brennan's office, carrying "Stop the Toxic Rhetoric" and "Hate Speech is Violence" signs. They will continue their mission at Bethlehem's Town Hall on Tuesday night, where they will stand "in support of Bethlehem City Council members and against right-wing disruptions of their meetings."Instead of …
Do you love the smell of methane in the morning? If you work for Chrin Landfill in Williams Township, chances are you do. A familiar rotten-egg odor wafts through south Easton regularly, the byproduct of decomposing scrapple and other garbage. Last year alone, there were seventy DEP inspections, culminating in a $187,500 civil penalty in late December.Not to worry. The Chrins have a insurance plan to combat pesky state regulators. Campaign contributions. Since 2000, they've contributed over $250,000 to candidates seeking state office in Pennsylvania. That includes judges, prosecutors, state …
We're fickle. For younger people, the average job only lasts between three to five years. We trade in our cars every five years. About a year later, we trade in our homes. We even trade in our wives and husbands. They last around 15 years, before half of us decide to trade up.We reassess.But when some elected official starts talking about reassessing real estate, we trade him in. Last time Northampton County reassessed, in 1994, Jerry Seyfried was County Executive. Voters traded him in.Nobody likes reassessment. Not homeowners, who convince themselves it's a tax increase in disguise. Not …
Want to drive a card-carrying public sector union member nutz? Just whisper "Privatize!" in his ear and then run like hell. It's like a stake through the heart. "Private businesses only care about the bottom line," he'll roar. "We care about people." And, of course, that 5% annual salary increase. Unions are roaring right now about the privatization of Gracedale, the Northampton County-owned nursing home. They've taken out half page ads in the local paper and are making a last-minute push to get the signatures needed for voters to decide Gracedale's fate in a May referendum. They have 10,774 …
