Uncle Sam has given the Lehigh Valley $3.4million dollars to study development. Our tax dollars will be spread out among the bureaucrats, and those in training, to insure that nothing tangible results from the money. Those in charge are experienced in the art of nebulous double talk. Holly Edinger, from the Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corp. said "This spending from HUD will enable the Lehigh Valley to have an unprecedented community conversation about our future." Allentown will use our share to study the now closed factory, where both Obama and Romney had press conferences. Community Development Director Sara Hailstone said "What this will allow us to do is bring jobs back to the core where people can walk to work and walk home from work and we believe that is one of the most sustainable projects we can be involved with." Actually, Sarah, in a time long before you, workers did just that, using the WPA Fountain Park Steps. Using our share to repair those steps would actually produce a return on both the money and your words. Phil Mitman said "This is really about our taxpayer money coming back to the Lehigh Valley." I suppose Phil's right, at least the money is being wasted in the valley.
UPDATE: Alan Jennings and Renew LV are dancing in their underpants about the HUD grant. Most of grant will fund the salaries in various such organizations to conduct public input meetings and other abstractions.
This post is a commentary on a Morning Call article by Scott Kraus.
I wonder how many gas lines and water lines could be replaced for 3.4 million dollars?
ReplyDeleteThis town is studying developmnet - on OUR dime - while our city crumbles. A community conversation about our future is unnecessary if our city has fallen apart in the near future.
Why not use part of the grant to get jobs in the building on Union Blvd that 6000 People worked for LUCENT, In factthe loss of those jobs are more than what is estimated that the hockey arena will bring to Allentown at a cost of seveal hundreds million dollars that will be paid for with taxpayers money.
ReplyDeleteMM -
ReplyDeleteHopefully they will produce a report, to go on the shelf next to all the other reports that have been produced and long since forgotten.
Mitman's comment is a perfect example of why our country is in such a mess at the national level. To the politicians and bureaucrats, it's all about getting taxpayer money back and (of course) none of it is part of the $1.5 TRILLION we're borrowing each year at the federal level.
Multiply our share of this "pot of gold" by thousands of other communties and then add it to the thousands of other "pots of gold" the government doles out each year and you find the formula for economic collapse.
Unless we start electing people who think differently, and they start appointing people who think differently, things will only get worse.
Michael this is an instance where things are moving in the direction of your views.
ReplyDeleteThe Partnership for Sustainable Communities grants are about concentrating housing and commercial development near dense public transportation networks.
The organizations that applied for the grant are trying to do exactly what you want. You think it was better when people lived in the city and walked/took the trolley to their jobs. The groups that applied for the grants want to return to that.
There are plenty of terrible ideas out there to get agitated about. This isn't one of them. People are moving closer to your view on this, and you're still complaining about it. Why? Why raise the cost for people to come around to your point of view?
jon, i do not believe that the grant, and program for it's expenditure, will result in that result. please recall that the metal fabricator went out of business, even though they had a highly publicized visit from obama. if government cannot even retain our existing manufacturers, how can they create viable new ones?
ReplyDeleteThe money should be spent to study Edinger and Hailstone.
ReplyDeleteSorry, Mr. Molovinsky.
ReplyDeleteKnowing that the U.S. borrows nearly 40 cents of EVERY dollar it spends just makes me want to laugh in the face of Big Government cheerleaders yacking on about this or that super, special grant designed to do x,y,z because, the bottom line is, we are more than 14 TRILLION dollars in debt and, apparently, aching to spend even more and more.
(just ask the "Super Committee" sometime)
Nevertheless - a heartfelt Happy Thanksgiving to you and your constituents, all the same from this particular Citizen of the People's Democratic City of Allentown.
"If government cannot even retain our existing manufacturers, how can they create viable new ones?"
ReplyDelete--------
too bad no one in the laughing stock Main Stream Media has the guts to ask 0-bama questions like that.
November 23, 2011 8:07 AM
ReplyDeleteWell said.
There somewhere around 267 U.S. cities with more than 100,000 population.
Here in allentown. 50K here, a few million there.....
Small towns vie for the free money too.
.
and the things that they want to do with it.