The newly elected Northampton County Council has descended on the $111 million megabond like a pack of hyenas. Never mind that a State Superior Court has recommended that the megabond's issuer, Northampton County, and litigants opposing the bond, mediate their differences. Set aside also the authority that Northampton County District Attorney John Morganelli has given County Council to pursue a legal quo warranto action against the bond that would have let the merits of the bond be decided in the courts.
Northampton County Council is eschewing both of these formal avenues - both involving the courts - and insists on resolving the dispute in an informal, ad hoc manner. The purpose of council, under the chairmanship of J. Michael Dowd, is to let each council member negotiate individually with the county's de facto executive, James Hickey, and pick off whatever he or she can for his or her district.
Dowd, for example, who represents the county's District 2, which includes Easton, wants to dictate the terms of the prison expansion. Ann McHale, council's member representing Bethlehem, wants to dictate the disbursement of the megabond's $13.1 million allocated for that city and for Bethlehem Steel.
Just a few days ago, billybytes saw Council member Tim Merwarth meeting privately with Jim Hickey in the Government Center lobby, a meeting the two concluded with a warm handshake. What was Merwarth seeking from Hickey? God knows. Merwarth, elected last November on a platform of farmland preservation, has developed his own huge farm and every other square inch of developable farmland in Forks Township.
Worse yet, as a Forks Township supervisor, Merwarth was instrumental in preventing the shutdown of Braden Airport, under misrepresentation to the public that the airport would never expand. In fact, Merwarth and the other township supervisors, in collusion with township manager George Gemmel, township attorney Karl Kline, Lafayette College President Arthur Rothkopf, and Lehigh Valley International Airport Authority director George Doughty, kept Braden Airport open for the express purpose of expanding it.
For what purpose? To qualify for state and federal department of transportation grants and to relieve traffic, both air and ground, at the main terminal in Hanover Township.
To stay open and operating, Braden Airport required adjacent land belonging to Forks Township and to Lafayette College. The township's share came from land acquired from Lafayette College's 300-acre tract. This land, about 30 acres, allowed the airport to extend its runway. This is the tract the township acquired under the pretense that it would be a public playground.
This 30 acres still wasn't enough to allow a runway long enough to satisfy state and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) requirements. To satisfy this requirement, Lafayette College sold an additional parcel of land to the airport, in violation of its own deed restriction barring use of that land for any airport purpose.
Thus a third reason for keeping the airport open was to prevent the expansion of Lafayette College into Forks Township. And what was the purpose of this? To confine the college's continuing expansion to Easton. Thus instead of expanding onto the 300 acres in Forks, the college plans to continue to expand in Easton. Evidence of this is its acquisition of the former Hoffman auto restoration building, the former Case's Tire Company property, the former Easton Electric Company property adjacent, and the parking lot at the corner of North 3rd and Snyder streets.
The college also plans to demolish more than 100 low- to moderate-priced residential properties it owns adjacent to its campus. These demolitions will removes hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxable properties from the tax rolls - city, county, and school district - and deprive the city of affordable housing for low- to moderate-income families.