Allentown City Hall was excited about a $milliion dollar shade tree grant. It was supposedly going to save the residents in reduced electric costs. The grant is now tied up because of the Trump administration fund freezes. Mayor Tuerk even complained that the freeze hurts our kids...“Every kid knows how important trees are to clean air and clean water."
Of course this miserable blogger has a different take on city trees. Unless they're planted southwest of the house, and at a certain distance, they won't help cool the house in the summer. But wait until the homeowners have to repair and replace their raised sidewalks, at their expense, from the tree roots. Wait until they have to clean the endless tree leaves and other tree droppings from their gutters.
I do share Tuerk's desire for our kids to experience water. What Allentown should do is take care of their parks as they were intended. They should replace the aging, damaged and now gone Weeping Willow trees along the creek banks. Besides for the Willows, which is all they need, they should mow the grass, so those kids can see and enjoy the water from our creek banks.
Mayor Tuerk: Replace our Salix babylonica now!
ReplyDeleteTrees are dirty and as living organisms require cooperation from other living things to flourish.
ReplyDeleteSymbiosis.
Not a good plan for the for former Queen City.
Shade,like birds,are overrated, and dirty. They can,and do,spread disease.
Forward, in full sun!
You know what else is important to kids? A safe city with leaders that hold slumlords accountable. The tree grant was a joke from the start. Just wondering…why would we hire a contractor to plant trees? Doesn’t the city Parks dept operate to do this kind of stuff? I am glad Trump pulled the funding. There is so much more that could have been done.
ReplyDeleteThe changes coming from the Tuerk administration seem to favor the slumlords. I wonder why? Does he own property in Allentown? Do council members? Inquiring minds.
While we wait for answers, Tuerk will be delivering a tree to each child. Pay attention to the tree kids, not the man behind the curtain.
Only a delusional, well-intentioned far left liberal thinks planting trees will reduce anyone's electric bill. I agree that trees are beneficial to clean air and clean water, but don't try to hoodwink people into thinking their electric bills will be reduced. I'd be worried than once DOGE goes through this they will find out that only a small amount of the money goes to purchasing and planting trees.
ReplyDeleteActually, if Mayor Turek is concerned with the amount of Carbon Dioxide in the air, he should be planting as many trees as possible.
DeleteTrees love Carbon Dioxide. CO2 is essentially plant food that plants turn into Oxygen. The warmer the atmosphere becomes, the more plants will grow also. Flowers everywhere, more grass and trees..
President Trump is going to take away alot more than just tree money from Allentown. I'm sure he's reminded by his staff on the welcoming he got when he came here. Another great move by the Mayor. There just are no words left to describe this Mayor.
ReplyDeleteMayor McPronouns is upset that the Emperor Mandarin froze the tree funds. Because children. And clean air and water.
ReplyDeleteAs a venture socialist McPronouns is very very concerned with these types of social issues. And equity. How... virtuous. He signals (4th degree blackbelt and all).
What he isn't concerned with is actually being a useful chief executive of a city. Oh he is in his mind but in the minds of people who are not him he just isn't cutting it. That includes the latinos who he claims genetic heritage.
Time for Ed Zucal. Put this nonsense behind us.
I’m fine with trees in the city, and tree-lined streets add to the charm of any town. Yes, they need to be maintained, cleaned up after, and can cause problems with sidewalks. But still better to have them than not.
ReplyDeleteThat said, providing grants to plant trees is NOT a function of the federal government.
If Allentown wants to provide money for shade trees, great. If the state wants to give grants to local municipalities, it’s again not really a responsibility of that level of government but still more acceptable than if the federal government did it.
But it is NEVER acceptable for the federal government to be doing this! The Constitution grants the federal government specific, enumerated powers with anything not specifically mentioned being in the domain of the states (and the local municipalities under the states’ jurisdiction).
Tree grants from the federal government are a perfect example of how far we’ve strayed from the Constitution, and why the federal government is in a fiscal crisis.
It’s time for the mayor and City Hall to stop looking for handouts and start making real decisions about how to spend the money it collects.
Has the City of Allentown always relied on grant money from the federal government for improvements to the city ?
ReplyDeleteAllentown seems to collect a good deal of money from its residents in terms of property taxes and other fees. Perhaps what the city needs is an Elon Musk review of how it spends its money to insure there is no waste of the money siezed by the city from its residents?
Or perhaps it needs to look at how it spends the money it collects and perhaps it can find a few dollars to buy some saplings to plant without relying on the federal government ?
Tuerk relies heavily on grant money to fund the city. He claims the city doesn't have enough resources to fight the Feds. The Feds shouldn’t be sending money for tree inventory or planting. It seems we have staff that could have done this work while on the payroll. Tuerk is clearly fighting the termination of allocated money because he can’t survive without financyhandouts from Fed and State bank accounts.
DeleteHis claim that the cutting of funding to count trees and plant new ones is a quality of life issue is a real stretch and shows exactly how clueless he really is.
The Mayor’s comments in this article say a lot about his lack of experience: https://www.mcall.com/2025/02/13/as-josh-shapiro-sues-trump-administration-over-funding-freeze-allentown-mayor-says-citys-funds-are-affected-too/
Saplings aren’t appropriate for street trees. Not too many years ago the local public radio station did a promotional program that donated several thousand saplings to the city for the parks. Most were planted in the Cedar Beach Park area. The survival rate was was abysmal. The entire experience was a complete disaster.
DeleteThey were trying to expand the faux riparian buffer. Although the storm water system is piped directly into Cedar Creek, they widened the buffer. When we finally get our traditional park system back, those trees planted out from the creek will only make the grass maintenance more labor intensive.
DeleteNo storm water is piped into Little Cedar Creek.
Deleteanon@4:47: are you a troll, a liar or just plain uninformed. If you go to the Rose Gardens and look across the creek, you will see a large concrete construction with a large pipe outlet into the creek. The pipe is such a large diameter, that you will notice the ground raised on the park's southern side to accommodate it. This is the entire runoff from the Hamilton Park section of the city. Likewise there are smaller multiple pipes along the north side of the creek, with runoff from the west end. On the city's south side, the entire Lehigh Little Manor Neighborhood is piped in the Little Lehigh, near the Robin Hood Bridge.
DeleteIf you use the pedestrian bridge behind Haines Mill to go to the parking lot you can see a big pipe that empties into the creek.
Delete