After reading of the latest shooting in Allentown, it was less than consoling to learn Mayor Pawlowski is seeking outside help to create a strategy to combat crime. He wants to spend $100,000 for a consultant to talk with residents and identify problems. Mayor, here's a freebie, "Too many scumbags are moving to Allentown, and your too worried about affordable housing and hanging banners. Please, before the last middle class resident moves, stop the destruction of our city and the waste of our money. Stop making the police chief attend your endless press conferences and let him fight the predators." Its time for tough love, its time to shut the door and save the city. Its not our responsibility to solve the national issues of crime and poverty. The emphasis must be on restoring a quality of life for the existing homeowners.
Shootings are bad and most of the time result in death.
ReplyDeleteBut we have many many stabbings as well in Allentown that are never published.
Neither was the follow up and any kind of arrest for the $100,000 damage to the Wm Allen High School.
The MC has a address to send in news as it happens and last night there was a stabbing on Liberty Street.
allentown has become a hole. every body i grew up with does not live in the city anymore. my freinds have a saying "will the last white person leaving the city please turn out the lights". i grew up here i do not understand the lifestyles of the citizens that now inhabit the neighborhoods i grew up in.it has become a cesspool!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteex allentownian, i prefer the term "middle class flight". although very politically incorrect, it's not inaccurate of you to note the degree of" white" flight, especially in the inner city.
ReplyDelete"Desperate times call for desperate measures".
ReplyDeleteMayor Ed shows all the signs of a desperate Mayor, one who feels the pressure to "save" the downtown. Allentown's downtown has decayed from the inside out over the past thirty five years or so. The housing stock downtown has been turned over to renters. Atown is now probably 50/50 renters to owner occupied. That's not good. Unless that is reversed, I'm afraid the decline will continue. Take a close look at a successful city and I am certain it begins with a better ratio than Atown's. Crowded residential neighborhoods, too many people, too many cars, too many poor folks -- you may not want to hear this, but this is a big part of the problem. The Mayor knows it and the deep pocket people know it. You don't think Mr. Butz agreed to move to 9th & Hamilton without a couple of "deals" do you? Deal 1 - "Get riff-raff" off Hamilton Street.