While City Hall was opening the bids yesterday on selling out the public's water supply, readers from all over the country were reading about the plight of democracy in Allentown.
The Huffington Post article was not flattering. While Pawlowski's Palace of Ice Sport has not made the national radar, the short sighted water lease gained the spotlight. Yesterday, Ed Rendell found out the hard way that his connection to hydraulic frackuring is a hard sell. Candidate Pawlowski, and our City Council, should realize that this ill fated water lease debacle could be their legacy.
Wow! Pawlowski's becoming nationally known as being incompetent. By his own political allies!
ReplyDeleteDoes City Council want to be a part of THAT?
I have seen Pawloski on the Democratic T.V. network(MSNBC) at least twice on the Melissa Harris Perry show explaining to a national audience how he's turned Allentown around
ReplyDelete9:33 -
ReplyDeleteMe too!
It's good to see that someone's actually looking into things and exposing the truth.
God knows that won't happen on MSNBC. I'm just surprised it came from Huffington.
"What goes around, comes around" and sooner or later it bites you.
ReplyDeleteActions speak louder than words, and this incompetent Mayor's actions are starting to create the real legacy he deserves. But the destruction he will leave in his "wake" will haunt us, the tax payers, for years to come....PJF
Everyone will know soon. Everyone will know how bad this 50-year lease idea was from the very beginning.
ReplyDeleteWhat a huge waste of time and (public) money.
PFM and the Mayor told us we needed an additional $12.5 million dollars annually to cover the pension costs. Yet the Mayor suggests we LEASE the water & sewer systems for 50-years in exchange for a quick payment of $100-$200 million. This will be used to "pay off the credit card debt" as the Mayor would say.
Right now we need to figure out how to generate $12.5 million annually. And...we don't need that full amount right away, we will need that amount in 5-years.
After 20-years, these "payments" will no longer be as much as $12.5 million. They could return to the amount we are paying now.
So why do we need a 50-year lease for a 20-year problem?
The final RFP that went out to bidders created an additional $100-million loss, higher rates and little protection for the union workers pensions. I really don't see how City Council could honestly support the Mayor's plan.
MM, please when will be the next tell tale exception of the consessionair¿
ReplyDeleteThe Emperor wears no cloths!
ReplyDelete''Studies have found that without transparency and accountability, water privatization is more likely to result in corruption, high long-term costs and large rate increases.''
ReplyDeleteThis is very true, the whole deal has been closed doors backdoor politics. It's a shame when city council doesn't even have answers to your questions, where are the checks and balances? O, I forgot, this is the city without limits, that leases and rents everything.
Our government is interesting, if you don't take interest in it, it has a unique way of taking interest in you, typically in a financial way or into your private lives. All the residents of allentown should be beating down city halls doors demanding this lease stops now, most people are still un or under informed.
The king has constantly said, that without the lease taxes will go up, and most people are eating that up. The truth is, taxes will go up either way, much higher with the lease. The city has so many ways to make that 12.5mil for the fire and police pension without the sale of the water resources.