Whether Mayor Edwin Pawlowski is convicted or not, nobody can have any doubt about the corruption this city has experienced over the last decade. Every contract was negotiated not for the taxpayer's sake, but rather the position of the mayor. These distorted criterion infected every department. Those who follow this blog realize that while both local politics and history are my topics of choice, the park system is my passion.
Although the Cedar Beach Pool contract was investigated as corrupt, it was not the only questionable decision made by the park department under Pawlowski. First and foremost, two new parcels should have never been purchased; This is the land by Basin Street, and the former fertilizer plant land along Martin Luther King Drive. The existing park system has been neglected since Pawlowski was elected in 2005, with the iconic WPA Stone Structures literally crumbling.
If the administration and city council had taken suggestions made on this blog to heart, the entrance wall of Lehigh Parkway would have never collapsed. I do not possess unique insight, but rather the simple understanding that Allentown has a magnificent park system which needs only to be maintained.
blogger surveying entrance road wall after it collapsed in Lehigh Parkway
photo courtesy of Michael Adams
above, with title (revision), reprinted from February of 2018
ADDENDUM AUGUST 28, 2022: This blog and I remain outsiders in the town of our birth. Nobody in either City Hall or The Morning Call wants to be reminded of the corrupt years, or their acquiescence to them. The new administration wants to think that the Pawlowski corruption was ancient history, and that they're a shiny clean new face. The mayor is a clean new face, but there remain remnants of the Pawlowski era in city hall.
While the paper now occasionally promotes itself as a watchdog, their new young staff has no institutional knowledge of what and who is behind the curtains.
Needless to say I'm invited nowhere, but this blog is monitored by those concerned with revelations of previous and current shenanigans.
Mike, The Morning Call actively collaborated with Pawlowski to destroy and silence critics. They implied false motives, questioned our sanity, labeled us as grand standers and nay sayers. We were free to speak out but no one would listen ad a result .
ReplyDeleteThey got what they wanted, silence and acquiescence from the population. They could have saved Allentown, they did far more damage than Ed.
The new is just the same old with a different spin.
ReplyDelete