As events quickly resolve to remove the Cinema Paradiso property from the tax rolls and ground is broken for another bureaucrat-style, yellow brick, one-story building at one of our major city intersections, it is good to reflect on the pressures behind this unfortunate outcome.

First, Abraham Atiyeh gave Northampton County District Attorney John Morganelli a $5,000 campaign contribution for the DA's assured, unopposed reelection.

In return, Morganelli wrote Easton City Council a letter urging it to support a KOEZ (Keystone Opportunity Expansion Zone) designation for Atiyeh's Cinema Paradiso property. Atiyeh had recently acquired the property from Martin Cohen, a Palmer Township lawyer. The KOEZ designation would exempt Atiyeh from payment of all taxes - City, County, State; School, Real Estate, and Earned Income - for 13 years.

The April 10, 2002, KOEZ legislation, sponsored by Easton's State Representative Robert Freeman, springs from the October 6, 1998, KOZ statute that Freeman also supported - over the strongest objections then of Billy Givens - objections that Givens also voiced to Northampton County Executive Glenn Reibman, as well as to county council and its president, Wayne Grube.

Freeman and Reibman both blew Givens off.

The original KOZ included the Sherwood's for Kids building at South Pine, across South Third from the Alpha Building, after the latter's renovation by Harrisburg developer Bill Roberts and his company called Incubator - named for the evil spirit Incubus, no doubt, who went stealthily through the night, robbing maidens of their virginity as they slept, unaware of their ravaging.

That was when Easton Mayor Thomas Goldsmith and Northampton County Executive Bill Brackbill also stole away the Art Deco City Hall Building at 650 Ferry Street, together with the state-of-the-art police station on Union Street, while the residents of Easton slept.

Goldsmith sold the historic City Hall Building, which Brackbill then tore down, providing the money Goldsmith needed to move City Hall to the Incubus Building, along with the money needed for a new police station in the adjacent parking garage - the station needed to replace the Union Street one that Brackbill gave to the county sheriff's department. Brackbill and his successor, Glenn Reibman, replaced the Art Deco City Hall Building with the county's jail for juveniles.

To soften the harshness of the parking garage-new police station's sheet-metal air shafts, jutting out over the sidewalk like the menacing tusks of a weird primordial mastadon, Goldsmith beautified the building housing Sherwood's for Kids, and the Masonic Lodge, directly across the street.

Goldsmith paid for this beautification effort with Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funds administered by his Façade Committee. A trompe l'oeil scene was painted in the building's upper windows, meant to reflect the beauty of the unique, iron-clad Drake Building that before succumbing to the Urban Renewal wrecking ball of the '60's and '70's rose from the site where the parking garage-police station-The Express-Times now stands.

Now, two doors down South Third Street from this ugly structure, City of Easton, and county and state officials, bribed by Allentown real estate speculator Abraham Atiyeh, want to put his Cinema Paradiso under the tax-exempt KOEZ.

Atiyeh needs the exemption to defray the cost of constructing an ugly new Social Security Administration Building, like the one in the 200 block of Ferry Street across from the post office, on vacant lots next to the vacant theater.

After the ordeal that Downtown Easton went through in saving the old Phoenix Hose Company and adjacent building next door to the post office, which wanted to tear them down for a parking lot, Givens as a candidate for Easton Mayor in the November 4, 2003, general election is not about to let Atiyeh build another ugly SSA building in Easton. For starters, zoning doesn't permit it. City Council would first have to change the zoning of the proposed SSA building site from commercial to community-civic-education (CCE).

This no doubt is what Easton developer and restaurateur Greg Schuyler has in mind when he says that the SSA building belongs in the Government Center, which is zoned CCE.

Two bodies that exist in this State for the investigation of these sub rosa activities that affect who pays taxes in this City and who can wantonly destroy the historic fabric of this City are: