Subscribers to this blog know that for years I have been advocating for the park department to keep the large pavilion in the picnic grove. Instead, with typical bureaucratic mentality, they submitted the structure to benign neglect, intent on replacement.
That former beautiful structure met its demise yesterday. A park employee gave me the company line that it wasn't safe. What won't be as safe is its metal lightning rod replacement. In addition to bad planning, talk about bad timing!! Now, after all these years, they tear it down right before the picnic season begins?
While some in the administration don't appreciate my unsolicited sidewalk supervision, I actually have been holding my tongue on many items. If I printed my punch list for the parks, I'd have to have five posts a day. Like Popeye, now-a-days I only speak out on the things I can't stand anymore.
So how long will it take the city have the pavilions replaced?
ReplyDeleteSurely City Hall wouldn’t be foolish enough to tear the pavilions down now without having the replacements ready to be installed.
Metal... uuuugh
ReplyDeleteI suppose the city has never hear of pressure-treated wood?
I am also certain that some group could be found to seal the wood also as a volunteer project.
The same with cutting the grass at Lehigh Parkway. Sounds like good community service jobs for those so sentenced as well as picking up trash.
There must be some regulation or union rule against those common-sense things however.
DeleteBrent, common sense is uncommon, as one can witness it in spades here in beautiful, downtown, $h**hole, historic Allentown.
Garbage proliferates and some of that (TV sets, computers, etc) can be blamed on the non collecting garbage collectors... hate to say... prove me wrong.
Yes, the 'union rule' is actually...the union. Don't touch 'my work' or you'll be in trouble. I've said for years that the parks department should me 'mostly' manned by welfare recipients and volunteers.
DeleteYou should post your punch lists. Helps those that care/want to help hear different perspectives
ReplyDeleteSlightly off topic but since this post deals with the lack of planning by the city, and a previous post dealt with street tree grants, I thought it might be appropriate:
ReplyDeleteIf you want to see an example of municipal waste and no follow-up, please take a drive along Chew Street, between 5th and 7th. There are many street trees in those blocks that look like they were all planted at the same time, likely 3-7 years ago. Because the tree sizes are the same, I’m assuming the funding came from a grant or CDBG funds were appropriated by City Hall.
However, now that the trees have blossomed and are once again getting their leaves, it’s obvious that a large number of the trees are either dying or already completely dead.
That’s certainly a huge waste of the funds that were used to acquire and plant the trees.
Will they be replaced? Who knows. Will the dead trees at least be removed? That’s another mystery in our mismanaged city.
Certainly no tree is a better look - and safer - than a dead one. In either case, many sidewalk slabs won’t be getting lifted on those blocks.
The bigger question is how is this not seen by our city leaders? Those blocks are within a three minute drive from City Hall. If our elected officials and city employees can’t see a problem as obvious as this and fix it, what hope is there that they can solve the more complex challenges facing the city?