Nov 22, 2007
Camden On The Lehigh
Last evening when I entered City Council Chambers, as is my custom, I scanned the document table for the agenda and specific ordinances under consideration. There on the table, printed, fastened and disguised as an official document complete with charts, was an attack piece against one of the nay-sayers or reactionaries who challenge the administration. The victim was Robert Romancheck, who served on the zoning board for 12 years, and is a neighborhood leader in the Raub Middle School area. The fabrication stated Romancheck mismanaged Perkasie, resulting in a tax increase. Coincidentally, todays' Morning Call has an article on Perkasie which features that boroughs financial stability. The victim or misinformation to me is irrelevant, the fact that it was on the document table was outrageous. Between the committee meeting and the regular Council Meeting, I approached our elected, appointed and hired officials with this document and my discontent about it. Their reaction, to the man, ranged from amusement to indifference. I contribute this cavalier attitude to the one party sweep this past election. I believe Mayor Pawlowski, although a misguided micro-manager, has integrity and is free from corruption; however, an arrogance has taken over city hall, and we know where that will lead us in the coming years.
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I know what you mean by Camden but the city evokes a bunch of associations--bombed out, irrecoverable--that I hope you didn't intend.
ReplyDeleteBy the way: you are owed a congratulations, and my genuine admiration, for pushing hard for (and not just blogging about) those abandoned merchants on Hamilton Street. I think that I have said that I don't buy the intentional strangling-by-gentrification theory that you have floated, but I DO commend you for your selfless work on the merchants' behalf--merchants who were, as you were first to highlight, screwed.
jeff, yes in this post i'm referring to large city machines which have lost their integrity. i think this political arrogance is a bigger danger to allentown than any verbal associations about the buildings in camden, n.j. the house of chen has seen dadonna,heydt and afflerbach come and go. they will see pawlowski go also. dadonna put the canopies up, heydt took them down. after the koz expires chen will be here, after the subsidized projects move on. if the city planners would ever sit down with the "chen's" of allentown, instead of the developer of the month, perhaps something sustainable for the long term could be created.
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