Some background on the bond issue:
Why the concern over this bond issue? In Pennsylvania, bond issues need not appear on the ballot. They are often decided behind closed doors by county Councils. Principal, interest, and administrative costs -not insignificant - are generally paid back out of taxpayer pockets. Administrative costs can cause the debt to escalate far beyond its face value.
The current bond issue is the third proposed by Northampton County Council over the last 14 months. The amount of the current issue was first packaged in with Bond Issue 1, a general purpose issue of $113 million that Council adopted on June 15, 2000. This bond was challenged by a lawsuit and subsequently rejected by the state's Department of Community and Economic Development on grounds of inadequate cost estimates.
Bond Issue 2, a rework of Bond Issue 1, was adopted by Council almost exactly a year later on July 19, 2001. It kept $111 of the original $113 and will be channeled to the General Purpose Authority (GPA) as originally proposed.
The difference between the state-rejected $113 million Bond Issue 1 and the $111 million Bond Issue 2 has resulted in Bond Issue 3. The $2 million deleted from the first bond issue went into the current proposal and would be channeled through the Industrial Development Authority (IDA). IDA chair Marilyn Lieberman hopes thus to satisfy her supporters in her bid for reelection to Council.
Once again, this bond's dollar figure would far exceed $2 million dollars and would include:
Wayne Grube is Northampton Council President. J. Michael Dowd is a Council member representing District 2, Easton. Jim Hickey is the County Administrator.
According to today's Morning Call, Council expects to consider a third
bond issue on 9/6 on projects that will include, among other things, $2.35
million for an expandable parking deck for customers of Hotel Easton and to
alleviate an alleged growing downtown parking problem.
The Hotel owners have magnanimously agreed to wait until mid September
for county and municipal officials to prepare a bond issue. Grube states he
will schedule separate hearings the week of September 11 on projects for the
third bond issue. The earliest vote will be September 20.
It was my hope that the current bond challenge would dissuade Council
from proceeding with a third bond issue during an election year, but these
folks are moving ahead. I now know why Grube has spent so much time at the
courthouse lately.
Will this third bond issue be IDA or GPA? I don't know. Will the
enabling act be the MAA of '45 or the Industrial Development Authority law?
I don't know. What specific projects are planned? I don't know. Our open
government is hard at work in back rooms making the deals that it will
announce in its supposed public hearings.
I know there is majority support for Hotel Easton. That was confirmed
to me by Hickey himself, who told me he brokered the deal to get Dowd
majority support for Hotel Easton in exchange for Dowd's "yes" vote on the
$111 million GPA bond.
I oppose Hotel Easton for the following reasons: 1) It primarily
benefits two NY aristocrats and their "luxury" customers at the expense of the
taxpayer. 2) If it is to be done, it should be done with nondebt revenue
bonds as opposed to general obligation bonds. If the cost for the project is
paid by the revenue it generates, I would have no objection. 3) The Mayor of
Easton goes out of his way to get handouts for these wealthy few while he
literally evicts people from their homes if they fail to pay their water
bills. This is hypocrisy 4) The City has sufficient funds to finance this
project on its own. If Goldsmith thinks this is so fiscally prudent, he
could float a bond thru Easton's parking authority.
Because a deal has already been brokered for the Hotel Easton parking
garage, we know that whatever hearings are scheduled will be a sham. I have
no idea what other projects have been planned.
Does anyone know a downtown Easton resident who is willing to state on
the record that there is no parking problem in Easton that would be solved by
planting a parking deck right next to the Delaware River?
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